PreCursive

Chapter 297 - The Nature of Divinity

“…what?” I asked in complete disbelief. I suppressed a small laugh from escaping me at Shurenga’s ridiculous words. “I’m not killing gods here, Shurenga. Most of the people I’ve stolen Skills from have been regular mortals.”

Wel, I’m not killing gods yet. I hadn’t forgotten Alveron’s request just after the events of Caer Drarrow to slay his grandfather the Mad God, nor had I forgotten said grandfather’s stirring last week.

But my laugh died in my throat at the complete seriousness that Shurenga was treating her words. This wasn’t a joke to her. “Consider this, Nathaniel,” She said softly. “At first, I was puzzled by the spontaneity of your ability theft. There was not a clear, connecting element between the mortals you slew and gained new powers from. That was…until you stated that both times you triumphed over specific Calamities and gained powerful abilities from them. There is a connecting element behind Rhazal, Father of Monstrosity, and Tatsugan, Dread Wyrm. They are both Godbound.”

A frown slowly crept over my lips, to match the one Shurenga sported. “In other words,” I said slowly. “The pet super-weapons of the ‘gods’.”

“Just so,” Shurenga inclined her furry head. “But do you know how the long banished ones imbued such frightening existences with the control and obedience required to direct them, even after millennia? It is because each of them were implanted with a fraction of a fraction of their Mantle. Their Divinity itself.”

I was…very startled to hear that. “What? Mantles are…divine? But I’ve seen regular, if not powerful people use them all the time! Grey for instance sure as hell isn’t a god!”

Shurenga quirked one eyebrow at me. “I see your education on matters of import has lagged somewhat, Nathaniel, if you have yet to be instructed on what Mantles even are. Come, sit with me. I will explain, and you will understand my reasoning.”

I did as Shurenga asked, sitting cross-legged on the balcony as the saber-tooth sat on her haunches and loomed over me like a large, feline school teacher.

“A Mantle is an expression of power that those of your kind forge from a fragment of your boundless soul, upon breaching what is termed the fifth ‘breakpoint’,” Shurenga lectured patiently. “In other words, when you reach level five-hundred you undergo the process to create one. It is a container and a separate spiritual being all in one. It lingers about the existence of its owner, out of phase with reality and dwelling within the Concord. In a sense, it is not dissimilar to Spirits themselves. And yet, it has no mind nor driving will beyond that of the one who forges it.”

I furrowed my brow, considering her words. I…could see how that fit in, with my limited understanding of how Mantle’s manifested themselves. I’d always thought they were odd, in some way. It didn’t surprise me to learn they were partly Spirit based.

“At the levels you are aware of, Nathaniel, people tend to use them as a weapon. A cudgel, almost.” Shurenga tsked at her own words, shaking her head. “When a Mantle is manifested into the physical world, it has very distinct, wholly unique effect on the environment around them. Tell me, what have you experienced in this regard?”

I gazed past Shurenga, thinking. “Grey’s…darkens the world around him,” I started slowly. “Like a sort of localized night. Honoka’s heats up her surroundings, feeling like you’re standing right next to a bonfire. My old commander’s sort of…sharpened the air, making it feel like it was almost shaving you. And…,” I paused before continuing. “An old enemy’s felt like a huge, bloodthirsty bear was breathing down my neck.”

I don’t think I had ever once mourned the death of General Longstripe, and I never would.

“All plausible, and all unique,” Shurenga stressed. “Mantle’s are, in essence, the load bearing pillar for the growing power of ‘classers’. As they grow in power, their own strength begins to weigh on the world around them, and it is necessary to lean more heavily on them as time progresses. Thus it comes to be that this is the origin of the disease known as ‘Core Collapse’, that your…acquaintance Shacklock is suffering from. His Mantle is cracking slowly, and in the coming decades will fail entirely, spilling the whole of his gathered strength into the world of the physical. In…a likely very odd manner, from the feel of his spirit.”

Huh. That was very interesting, in an academic manner. I was always glad to learn more about how the strength and abilities granted to me by my Status would advance in the future. Not to mention the actual mechanics of how it all worked.

“But…what does that have to do with Divinity, and how I’m stealing Skills?” I asked in confusion.

Shurenga was quiet for a moment, staring off into the distance at the physical form of her ‘aunt’. “The Great Spirits do not know what it is that the ‘gods’ stole, in order to ascend into the existences that they did,” The daughter of one of said Great Spirits said. “But they know what it did. Whatever it is that the Seven gods of Order and the Seven gods of Chaos stole, it implanted itself into their Mantles. And they ballooned, magnifying over and over and over again until their strength grew to the extent that it outshined even my Father at his zenith. Within the Concord, their Mantles hung like great and terrible stars that drew all within their orbit, nearly subjugating the totality of Spirits within that realm to the will of the new ‘gods’. A greater weight fell upon their mere existence, and they manifested strange and frightening powers of a kind that we do not believe originated from the ‘System’. This added weight, this…Spark, for the lack of a better term, came to be known as ‘Divinity’.” Shurenga turned to me with a grave look on her feline features. “And they wielded it with impunity, easily conquering all seven planets within the already existing portal network and bending them to their will. One of these methods was the doling out of portions of their infinite Mantles, and implanting it in carefully selected monsters…to create the Godbound.”

I considered the contemplative feline sitting before me for a moment. “You…talk almost as if you were there.”

“Because I was,” Shurenga said softly, smiling slightly at my startlement. She laughed lightly. “I was very young, however. I came to be some few decades before the advent of the War in Heaven, when tensions between the gods were once again reaching their height. I was…the very first of the Mystic Beasts, as you know them, at first an experiment on behalf of my Father. He did not consider me as his daughter until many years had passed. He did not set out to discover a new method of reproduction for Spiritkind with my creation. Rather, he was looking for a weapon, something he could aim at the hearts of his tormentors. The Spirits had suffered under the yoke of the gods for such a long, long time by the point I came into existence that my Father’s frustration reached a boiling point. Thus, he implanted a portion of his strength into a young cub that stalked this isle in ages past, with the intent of raising me into a naked blade raised in vengeance. I was raised in secret and instructed in combat by my Father and his siblings, only…I was not needed. The gods fell into a greater conflict than any they had instigated until that point and slaughtered each other. In the end, I and the other Mystic Beasts that the Great Spirits had borne were not needed for their original purpose. Instead, we became their children and heirs instead.”

“You, Taran, and…” I trailed off, but I think my meaning was clear.

“There are many of my kind out in the wider world, Nathaniel,” Shurenga smiled at me almost mischievously. “Perhaps you will even meet them, one day. But we have strayed from our original conversation. While the Godbound were actively implanted with a portion of Divinity, there were those who were passively granted such grace. You’ve even met one of them.”

I was silent for a moment, as I realized who she was talking about. “‘The gods were physical existences, after all,’”, I quoted softly from memory, recalling the words of a hidden Elven sorcerer. “Alveron. The gods had children, and those children…”

“Received a portion of their parent’s Divinity,” Shurenga nodded. “A small portion, admittedly, but enough that it boosted their potential to the point they were known as ‘Demigods’. This Divinity does not fade with time or the passing of generations. It continues to exist within a bloodline, propagating itself unto the successive children of the line, over and over again, stretching its tendrils unto each newborn heir of those ancient thieves. Thus, when you strike out at an opponent possessing the Spark of Divinity and slay them with the scintillant fire of your kind…”

“It acts as a conduit,” I breathed in shock, finally realizing the implications of what Shurenga was saying. “I’m not really stealing a Skill, am I? I’m stealing the Divinity that exists within them. Either from a distant ancestor, or from the god that created each specific Godbound!”

“Exactly, Nathaniel, exactly!” Shurenga leaned in closer to me almost excitedly. “Through you, I believe the System is reclaiming whatever it is that ‘gods’ stole so long ago, in order to Spark their own Divinity! You do not retain it, I believe, since you do not possess a Mantle of your own for the Spark to settle within. Rather, it passes through you and back onto the System itself. What is left behind is a gift from the System for services rendered. A Skill, or a Talent, meant to empower you for further reclamation. However…the passing of Divinity through your soul has left a mark upon you. An almost scent, if you will. Have you perhaps noticed that it is easy for those of power to notice what you truly are as a Precursor? To those with sharp enough senses, none need to actually use an ability similar to your Observe to tell, even if they do not recognize Divinity for what it is. The bedrock of your soul feels different to other mortals, even if you are still one yourself.”

I leaned back on my hands as I absorbed Shurenga’s words, almost reeling at the enormity of them. Everything…all of it…

It fit to me, from what I understood of the nature of Precursors. All of us had an ability similar to my own The Scintillant Blade, from what Alveron had told me. While it was a great force equalizer with the ability to strike through all Mystic defences, its true purpose was to act as an almost…an almost siphon against whatever soul or spirit possessed an ounce of Divinity. And through that Skill, the System was reclaiming, bit by bit, whatever it was that the gods had stolen from it in ages past.

I let out a shuddering breath at the implications.

It turns out I had stumbled into a role that was almost natural to me when I joined the Nocturne Division. I was existentially intended to be an assassin, poised at the hearts of the gods. If…the Divinity I stole passed through me when I killed someone that possessed a bit of it…and it wasn’t implanting into a Mantle because I didn’t have one…

What would happen when I did? More than that…

What would happen if I actually killed one of the gods? They presumably possessed a much larger portion of Divinity than the mortals and Godbound I’d already slain.

This was too much for me to think about right now. I had too much on my plate to consider matters of becoming a fucking god.

I couldn’t deal with it right now.

I shoved such thoughts away, and focused back on Shurenga.

“During their time ruling the seven planets, the gods had many children,” She mused. “It is unsurprising that you’ve encountered a handful of their descendants as opponents. That some would rise to the position of an unyielding knight in the service of a prison warden is almost expected. Or even, perhaps…the blood would manifest itself as one of the ruling houses of Dwarven kind.”

Magnus and House Savoy. To think, that feculent little psychopath would be one of the descendants of what was likely to be the Dwarven god.

Somehow I was unsurprised.

“I have a request, Nathaniel,” Shurenga said suddenly, pinning with her amber eyes once more. “I suspect you still hold the Spark of Divinity within you, waiting within your Status for you to update it once more. Then, it will pass back onto the System, and you will receive your gift from it. I cannot sense it at the moment, hidden within the complex mechanism that is a Status. However…I might be able to sense it at the point of passing if you allow me to observe the process. Then, we will have confirmed our suspicions about the mechanism of your Skill ‘stealing’, and how it is not truly spontaneous at all. With your permission?”

I met her eyes, and after a moments though, nodded my head wordlessly. After all, I had nothing to lose. I’d been about to do that anyway before the daughter of Tarus had dropped her bombs on me.

At the movement, Shurenga leaned down until her large, feline nose was barely an inch away from my chest and closed her eyes.

I took that for the prompt that it was…

And called for Hidden Amidst the Spheres.

Would you like to review your Status?

Y/N

I wordlessly clicked yes, and the moment I did, I heard a sharp intake of breath from Shurenga. That…told me quite a bit, but for now I focused on what the System was telling me.

You have gained 13 levels!

You are now level 179!

Flight had reached level 2!

You have 130 unspent Virtue points.

You have gained the ability Vacua Vestiga.

Vacua Vestiga…even the name felt hollow somehow, never mind the ability itself. I could tell it was a Talent of some kind, and, well…

I’m not sure it did anything. But I could already tell why.

The moment I gained the ability I’d stolen from Tatsugan, I felt Synergy start to pulse once again, resonating both with the ability I’d just gotten…

And my other, newest class Skill.

Manifestation of Agony, my Sprite Skill.

I…

Had the System…deliberately fed me a Talent that was meant only as something to combine with another Skill of mine?

Was that why it had felt so…miniscule when I stole it from the dying form of Tatsugan?

Wordlessly, I activated the combination ability I’d received as a gift from the System for my creation of a way to break the bonds of Mystic slavery. As I did, I fed it both Manifestation of Agony and Vacua Vestiga.

With the crimson and azure space of my soul, I felt a new, much more powerful Skill bloom into being. Like Vis Maledicata Exactoris, this too was directly chained to the star of my soul. Where that one manifested as one of Rhazal’s Revenant hounds, patiently waiting for the moment I called on it, this one appeared as something just as familiar.

One of the Wyrmkin formed of what appeared to be a shadow. In the space of my soul, it flitted to and fro, almost hiding from my sight, barely visible. Though it nearly hid from me in the shafts of alternating red and blue light, I could tell this new Skill would come easily when called.

I…checked my Status again, to find a pop-up waiting for me.

You have gained the ability, Umbra Gemina Exactoris.

Though I wasn’t focusing on her, I heard Shurenga’s next words, said in an almost reverent tone. “And so the shadow of the gods passes back to its true master…”

I closed my eyes at the implication.

It…was all true. Alveron’s suspicion about Precursors…Shurenga’s suspicions about the purpose of it…

I was meant to kill the gods…

And reclaim their Divinity.

<<Chapter 296 | Table of Contents | Chapter 298>>

Chapter 296 - Apprehension

“I got Acting from that,” Kazuma said numbly, his hands still shaking even hours after the confrontation with the Kawamaran delegation. I don’t think he even noticed how the trembling was causing his drink to slosh and spill in his cup. “I can’t believe I got a General Talent from that. How did I get a Talent from…that?”

I hid a smirk behind the rim of my smirk, as I hung out with most of my companions after the Kawamaran delegates had left. It was Azarus, Kazuma, Renauld, and Liora in our chamber deep in the heart of Mt. Umetsuji, all of us celebrating what looked to be the end of our Goryuen campaign. It was past dark by now, and I’d already put Aveline to bed in a separate chamber overseen by Mitsuri and her army of Shurengan cubs. I wasn’t finding it hard to convince a little girl to bed down in a chamber surrounded by over a dozen different intelligent kittens. They were just as interested in her as she was delighted by them.

I was honestly pretty thankful that Mitsuri had allowed Aveline time with her charges. I had…noticed that my new charge was, in her own way, haunted by the events that had occurred since her awakening in the bunker, and I didn’t blame her. Aveline had woken up to an alien world where not only was her mother long since dead, but her entire people were as well. In the last few days, she’d needed help in order to fall asleep in the first place. Either through my presence or through some quick sleeping potions I’d whipped up for her through some supplies in the Order encampment. I didn’t intend to keep her on them forever, though, so I hoped that a little animal companionship might take her mind off of what she’d lost. Thankfully, she’d seemed to have the easiest time falling asleep there among the cubs that she’d had since coming up from the bunker.

Bella wasn’t with us tonight because apparently the Thorny Reef and her crew had been coopted into being part of the fleet that sailed with us to the island. A sheepish Masayuki had told an irritated Bella that they’d been press-ganged into accompaniment because it was known she was here with me, and if it had turned out I and my companions had betrayed his trust…

Well.

At least that wasn’t a factor anymore. It had seemed like the Kawamarans were tentatively willing to believe us before they’d left on their own expedition into the heart of the island. General Hisakane and his forces wanted to confirm with their own eyes the destruction of Mt. Gorenzan, since that seemed the easiest way to see if we were telling the truth about the final death of Tatsugan. A token force led by his adjutant Captain Tanigawa, much more respectful of us after the talks, had been left behind to supervise us. However, he hadn’t been welcomed into the volcano like we had, so he and his forces were pitching tents not far from the Solstice Flame encampment while they waited for their leaders to come back. Masayuki had gone with the General as well, telling me that he was dying to see what exactly I’d done to the historic mountain.

I hoped he liked it. Even with as dangerous as the glowing crater was now, even I had to admit it was a striking sight.

Aside from Bella, oddly enough Venix wasn’t with us as well. After the talks, the strangely contemplative Antium man had caught Shacklock’s attention and dragged the ancient madman away for a conversation of his own. That just left us law-abiding youngsters behind to have a drink celebrating our accomplishments, here in a lava-lit obsidian cave.

Azarus didn’t bother hiding his smirk after quaffing his mug of ale from the cask we’d…acquired from the Order camp. However, his own smirk was directed at me. “If I’m right, Nate here got the same Talent pullin’ a stunt not that different from yer own.”

At the interested stares from the rest of the room, I shrugged. “Ah…sort of similar, but with much lower stakes.”

Renauld leaned forward from his reclining posture to fix me with an interested stare. “Well, go on. I don’t think I’ve heard this story before.”

“Nor I,” Liora said quietly, cupping her own mug of ale.

I nodded easily and launched into the story of mine and Azarus’s courtly escapades in Rhoscara last year. The ridiculousness of what we’d pulled there before the Raven Throne seemed to distract Kazuma from the enormity of what he’d accomplished, drawing his attention as Renauld outright laughed at me.

Meanwhile, my Core was doing something entirely different as I waxed poetically, reenacting my grand gestures from back then.

It was scolding me, in fact.

You see, even days after surviving the bunker and slaying Tatsugan’s true form, I’d been avoiding something.

Checking and updating my Status.

I wasn’t afraid of the levels that I’d surely gotten from killing the ancient monster of Lucretia’s design. With the Aetherial weight of the leech, I might have gained more than ten levels and gotten a new class ability. I wouldn’t be surprised by such a thing at all.

However, I hadn’t forgotten how I’d stolen something from the pathetic, wriggling form of Tatsugan as I slew it. I had no way of knowing if it had been a Skill or a Talent or whatever, but at the time I’d noted that what it was, it seemed…slight. As if the ‘acquired’ ability wasn’t whole, somehow. In the past, when I’d stolen something, I could almost taste the Aether and its abundance when I’d done so.

And with this, it had seemed miniscule.

That wasn’t why I was avoiding checking my Status, though. It was because the last time I’d updated my Status after killing a Calamity, it had almost ruined my fucking life. Vis Maledicta Exactoris was a powerful Skill, I had no reason to deny that fact. Not only did it grant me a larger, more powerful body to work with, but it opened up the skies to me.

But that didn’t change the fact it had rendered me something other than human.

Well, human seeming. The jury was still out on whatever Precursor’s actually were.

I hadn’t forgotten Aveline’s words in the bunker about how the Netherim had needed to be ‘adjusted’ to the Aether of Vereden, to survive its density. Nor could I ignore how the exact shade of emerald green graced our irises.

But I digress. The point was that I had refrained from updating my Status for fear of what I’d gained from Tatsugan changing me more. Whatever it was had the chance of changing me even further.

And I was terrified of that.

My Core ring, though, had a different perspective on things. Out of respect for the Outer ring, it had refrained from updating our Status itself. As much as I…essentially ribbed myself from time to time, one ring to another, we still worked mostly in concert even though we had our own trains of thought. Not to say that we were different people, but it’s just…

God, how to describe this?

My separate rings were all one person, just with different, wholly separate existences. I really couldn’t explain it better than that, to someone who just couldn’t understand.

We both missed the Middle Ring, though. It had always been more analytical than the Core and I.

Speaking of it, though, the argument of the Core was essentially that we had to do it sometime. We couldn’t go the rest of our lives with never updating our Status again. Not only was that just antithetical to life on Vereden, but we had responsibilities now. Last I’d checked, someone in their mid level one-hundreds was just average for someone my age. Even with all of my advantages as Precursor-

(Which I had to admit were significant.)

It wasn’t enough to ensure I could protect Aveline from all the dangers of Vereden.

I had to grow stronger than I was. For the first time, I felt I had a true, personal drive for progress other than the joy of it alone.

That wasn’t even counting the fact that I still had questions about what was going on with Vereden, its history, and Precursor’s themselves. Travers had let slip a number of different things to me, which had provided at least a little bit of information. Some of which I’m sure Grey would even be very interested in.

The mere existence of the Netherim, the false nature of the Veredenese ‘gods’ themselves, the ‘Administrator’, and…

How Precursors, were in a way, patterned off of the Netherim.

I was a ‘pretender’, after all. But a pretender to what? Questions remained, and I would find the answers.

Eventually.

For now, though, it was time to put all of that on hold.

My Core had put forth a convincing argument. Later, though. I’d update my Status later.

I had a party to get back to.

……………………………………………

Hours after everyone else had gone to sleep, I had left the cave to stand on the same vantage point Kazuma and I had watched the Kawamaran forces advance across earlier in the day. Below me, I could see hundreds of tents in one of two styles dotted across the stony plains that lay before Mt. Umetsuji. This late at night, only a few campfires still shone through the blackness. I leaned across the sheer cut wall near to the door and pondered the crescent form of Elys hanging full on the horizon, mentally preparing myself for what I was about to do. I found it oddly…comforting to know that out on the mainland, Fade was likely looking up at the same moon. Probably howling at it, too.

I smiled slightly at the mental image of Taran teaching the younger wolf how to properly howl at the moon.

Before I was startled by a voice coming from above me.

“Penny for your thoughts, Nathaniel?” I heard a familiar female voice ask in a languid tone. Turning and flicking my eyes up, I was unsurprised to find the mistress of the mountain having crept up on me. Laying on a flat section of rock, illuminated by the light of Elys was Shurenga in her mid-size form, watching me with patient eyes as her flaming mane twirled behind her in the midnight air. "Why are you out here, instead of carousing with your fellows?"

“Ah…” I said, finding my voice. “I was just about to check my Status, actually. I…haven’t done that since I…got out.”

One crimson eyebrow on the saber-tooth rose at my words. “Truly? How very odd,” She mused. “I’m given to understand that those with a Status are typically eager to update it. Whyever have you refrained in the days since your escapade?”

I looked away from her wise amber eyes, not answering for a second. I…felt like I could trust Shurenga, honestly. If I was being honest, she struck me as more trustworthy than even Taran. The elder Spirit Wolf was very much associated with a faction of humanity I had only secondary ties to myself, and was inclined to place their needs over my own. While I felt like I could trust him to instruct his newest younger ‘brother’, I wasn’t sure I could trust him with all of my secrets.

But Shurenga…her only loyalty was to her children and her Father.

And she’d already told me about the legendary trustworthiness of Taran, when it came to secrets.

“I…” I started slowly. “As part of my…Precursor abilities I can sometimes…‘steal’ Skills and Talents from people and…” I frowned. “Things I kill. It doesn’t always work, but I got something from Tatsugan when I killed his true form. And I’m wary of seeing what it is. Last time I stole a Skill like this, it was from Rhazal…and it turned me into this.” I finished, flicking one of my pointed, scaled ears.

Strangely, I saw Shurenga’s lips curl down and she focused on something I hadn’t expected. “It occurs sporadically, you say?” She said with a frown. “How odd. It is my understanding that the System, though fragmented, operates on generally clear rules. There is no hint given as to the activation requirements of this…‘ability theft’?”

I blinked at her, startled. “Ah, no. It just seems to pop up whenever it wants to, honestly.”

Shurenga stood up then and leaped down to join me on her own balcony. She shook her head. “I do not believe that is the case, Nathaniel. Please, let me help you. Tell me about each instance this has occurred.”

I…

Well, alright.

Slowly, I told Shurenga about each and every time I’d stolen a Skill or Talent since my Status had been awoken. First, it had been Magnus.

May he burn in whatever Hell he believed in for all eternity.

After that, it had activated when I killed that full armor-clad knight during the fight in Caer Drarrow. Then I think there had been a lull? The next time I’d stolen a Skill, it had been with the death of Rhazal.

And finally, when I killed the true form of Tatsugan.

“…what’s more,” I continued. “Is that I can sometimes combine some skills and abilities with another ability, Synergy. Only, I’ve figured out that I can only do it with something that I’ve stolen, and with something that I’ve learned the normal way, together. I’ve talked with my mentor a lot about this, and neither of us really have a clue as to what’s going on.”

I expected Shurenga to say something when I was done with my explanation, only to hear nothing. Turning to face her, I felt a chill run down my back at what I found.

Shurenga was devoting the whole of her attention to me, in a way I’d never seen from the daughter of Tarus. There was an unnerving intensity in her amber gaze, leaving me feeling almost pinned in place. After a moment, she turned away from me to stare up at the silver form of Elys on the horizon. “Father, Lady Elys…” I heard her murmur. “Do you suspect the same thing I do? Is that why you support this mortal so?”

I shivered when I swear, I thought I saw a slight sheen travel across the curved form of Elys. As if in response, Shurenga nodded to herself, before turning to face me. “I believe I understand the activation requirement of your…abilities, Nathaniel,” She said in a grave tone. “There is a single, underlying component that I believe your Status is reacting to when it reaches out to ‘steal’ an ability. Only…the correct term should be reclaim.”

“It is divinity you are truly stealing from your victims.”

<<Chapter 295 | Table of Contents | Chapter 297>>

Chapter 295 - Layers Within Layers

AN:

Happy Valentine's Day.

Have some political intrigue. Very romantic, don't ya' know.

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“In fact, I’m goin’ to have to say hells no,” Shacklock continued, almost conversationally so. With every word that came out of the old madman’s mouth, the expressions on the younger Imperials and the two flag bearers' faces darkened. On the other hand, though, the elder Imperial’s face looked to have been carved from stone, not a single muscle twitching out of place.

Meanwhile, Masayuki looked like he was barely paying attention to Shacklock. Instead, his eyes had never budged from their place locked onto me. Strangely, though, the more he looked at me, the more I got the impression he was staring into my soul. It looked more like he was studying me like I was a specimen in a lab than I was a potential opponent.

“Me and my men fought and died for this gods-forsaken hunk of rock, fixin’ your damned problem, and I ain’t intending to step another foot off of it. Possibly ever,” Shacklock mused, rubbing his ancient, bare chin in mock thought. “I might just decide this where I’m goin’ to live out the rest of my days. What’s not to like? Beautiful beaches, balmy weather. Hells, I even got me some friendly neighbors. They’re a bit furry, but everyone has flaws.”

The younger Imperial lurched forward in his saddle, hand flying to the hilt of the sheathed katana at his waist. “If it’s death you seek, you disgusting old relic, I’ll be happy to oblige you,” He snarled. He stopped, though, when the older Imperial raised his hand to stop the young man without even turning to face him.

“Peace, Haruto,” The old man said calmly. “He is provoking you.” With one last glare, ‘Haruto’ let go of his weapon and sat back in his saddle. In the meanwhile, his superior was studying Shacklock with even, steel-grey eyes. “You mock us, Grand Marshal Shacklock. However, I sense it is not without reason. You…you are not the guiding force behind this meeting.”

What a sharp guy.

In response, Shacklock snorted almost disappointingly. “Old General Greybeard, eh? I thought you were dead, honestly. What hole did they drag you out of, that you’re here right now?”

I swear I thought I saw ‘Old General Greybeard’ roll his eyes at Shacklock, entirely unmoved by the other man’s provocations. But if he actually did it, then it was such a slight movement as to be nearly imperceptible.

Kazuma suddenly stepped forward, interposing himself in the space between the two men. His movement drew the eyes of the entire delegation. In particular, I saw a spark of recognition appear in the General’s eyes at the sight of the young samurai. “Please, ignore Grand Marshall Shacklock’s words, honored delegates, General Hisakane. It is his way to poke and prod. I am afraid old age and the onset of Core Collapse has rendered his tongue especially impolite.”

That certainly drew their attention, in the way we had suspected when I advised Kazuma to let ‘slip’ that fact. I was careful to regulate my body to not let any tells through, but Kazuma was downright stiff in his delivery, despite how I’d coached him.

Masayuki must have noticed, because he suddenly met my eyes almost curiously from across the distance. He tilted his head and, all of a sudden, smiled at me. A great deal of the tension in his tall frame eased, and he relaxed in his saddle.

I resisted the urge to smile at him. I was starting to suspect that ‘Master of Ceremonies’ was the least of Masayuki’s role in the court of Emperor Seimei, and that he ran in similar circles to my old one in the Nocturne Division.

He could see that something was up here, I could tell.

Meanwhile, General Hisakune had reached up in order to stroke one end of his enormous mustache. “Oh, I see,” He mused, staring at the stiff form of Kazuma. “You are…Kazuma, of the Higanashi Clan, are you not? I can recognize some of Gozen in you. It’s the nose, I think.”

Kazuma gave the General a strained smile at the odd compliment. “Ah…thank you, my lord. It’s an honor to meet your esteemed self, despite the circumstances. The tactical acumen of General Tsutomu Hisakane is renowned throughout all the Land of Rivers.” With the ceremonial compliments over, Kazuma finally got around to enacting the plan I’d concocted with the help of a pair of old monsters. “Perhaps we should introduce our companions before talks resume?”

The General inclined his head. “Very well. I am General Hisakane, Head of the Imperial Guard and strong right hand of his eminence, Emperor Seimei. With me I have my aid, Captain Haruto Tanigawa,” He gestured towards the younger Imperial at his side. At our regard, the Captain just narrowed his eyes. “And Lord Masayuki Ashiwara, Master of Ceremonies to the River Court. He is here on request of the Emperor, to act as his eyes and ears.”

Eyes and ears, huh. That might as well have confirmed my suspicions.

Masayuki languidly inclined his head, curious eyes roaming over those gathered in front of him. “Truly, it is an honor to be among such esteemed company.”

Kazuma took a deep breath as it came time to introduce us now. First, he gestured towards the one person that I don’t believe any of the gathered Kawamarans likely knew.

Shurenga.

I don’t know what they were suspecting, but it wasn’t for Kazuma to sweep his hand over to large, flaming cat sitting patiently on its haunches, watching with knowing eyes. Perhaps they had thought she was merely some strange, wild beast that Shacklock had found and tamed on the isle. After all, Venix had told me just after our arrival on Goryuen that the Imperials didn't actually know what was up with the Shurengans, merely that they existed.

They were...a bit more than mere animals, though.

“I have the honor of announcing the Lady Shurenga,” Kazuma said heavily. “Mistress of Mt. Umetsuji, progenitor of her people…and only daughter of Lord Tarus, He Whose Light We Walk In.”

Proving once again that Tarus was a nosy, spying bastard, the sunlight in our immediate area intensified. Flicking my eyes up, I was unsurprised to see that the star of the Vereden system was sitting perfectly poised at the tip of Mt. Umetsuji looming above us, and casting visible, directed rays of sunlight down onto Shurenga. Likely long used to her father’s antics, Shurenga stood up and padded forward to join Kazuma with long-suffering patience.

I think the Captain and the two flag bearers almost had a heart attack when Shurenga actually spoke to them. “Greetings, River Lords, and be welcome on the slopes of my home. You stand on the stone of Umetsuji, the Hissing Lord, and the ancient meeting place between Sun and Earth. I have allowed these proceedings to commence here, in a mirror of ages past, as payment for services rendered onto the House of Tarus.”

While a smile crept onto the face of Masayuki at the drama and absurdity that had just crept into this meeting, the General seemed far more cautious. “I was unaware that the Lord of Light possessed any fruit of his…spiritual loins,” He said, eyeing Shurenga like she was a snake about to reach out and bite him. “As far as I’m aware, you do not feature into the scripture of the Temples. Lord Tarus has not enlightened us as to your…existence.”

Shurenga’s furry lips stretched into a feline smile. “Because I asked him not to, of course. Allow a family it’s secrets, my lord.”

As the gathered Kawamarans adapted to the reality where one of the prime objects of their worship possessed a semi-physical daughter, Kazuma had already moved on. “I’m sure you’re familiar,” He started loudly, drawing attention once more. With one hand, he gestured towards a visibly bored Shacklock. To my disgust, the old man was picking at his nose with one pinky and barely reacted when his descendent pointed to him. “With Grand Marshall Shacklock, of the Order of Solstice’s Flame. What you are likely not aware of is my relation to the man. He is…the pater progenitor of my clan. It was the man who would come to be known as Shacklock who fathered the Lady Higanashi, the Crimson Lily of War herself. It was with the help of Grand Marshall Shacklock and Lady Shurenga that I retrieved this!” He finished with a shout, reaching behind him and retrieving a wrapped package. A few people of the Kawamara party tensed at the move, but all of them, including the General and Masayuki, outright gaped at what happened next.

Kazuma channeled the smallest, most imperceptible amount of Ki into the package, and the entire length of canvas instantly vaporized.

Revealing the full length of his ancestral blade, pulsing with an empty, razor sharp might in the light of Tarus.

“Behold!” Kazuma shouted. “The Shōmetsu no Kiba, returned to the service of Kawamara once again!”

Funny thing, about the bond Shurenga had placed on the sword. It had stabilized enough, by this point, that Kazuma could activate a haze of the erasure effect to manifest along the length of the blade. He still couldn’t risk fully activating it, even if he was strong enough to do so. But for a dramatic purpose like this, well.

It worked in convincing those it needed to.

General Hisakane gazed at the legendary blade with a small, wistful smile on his face. “That is indeed the Shōmetsu no Kiba,” He said. “I would recognize it anywhere. Congratulations, young man. This alone would likely see your Clan restored to its place within the court. We were all under the impression that it had been destroyed, in the previous campaign. But you were saying some-”

“And with it,” Kazuma continued in a raised voice, speaking over the General. “And the help of my last companion, together we finally accomplished the fervent dream of every last Kawamaran man, woman, and child. My lords, may I introduce Sir Nathaniel Hart, Apprentice of Grand Marshall Greycton of the Shattered Sun. The man…who assisted me in finally slaying the Dread Wyrm Tatsugan, once and for all.”

I stepped forward to join Kazuma and the others, as silence descended on the plains before Mt. Umetsuji. Not only were the bearers and the Captain gaping at us from Kazuma’s audacious announcement, but we’d finally managed to shock General Hisakane from his stoic countenance. The old man’s mouth had fallen open in his surprise. In one swift movement, the older Kawamaran man swung himself out of the saddle of the horse he’d been sitting in the entire time, and started his way towards Kazuma. Masayuki followed suit, and the rest of their retinue followed.

I bowed at the waist in the ensuing silence, as the retinue came to a stop before us. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lords." To my amusement, most of them entirely ignored me, still shocked by Kazuma's words. The only one who acknowledged me beyond a brief nod was Masayuki, and that was only a raised eyebrow before he focused back on the young Lord of Higanashi.

“How…can you possibly know that?” The General asked, half wonderingly. “It is a grand deed that you have done indeed, if you have slain Tatsugan once more. But to say you have slain him permanently?” He shook his head slowly. “How is that possible?”

Kazuma smiled broadly, to my eyes looking half relieved that our plan seemed to be working. “Let me tell the tale, my Lord of Hisakane!”

With that, Kazuma launched into the somewhat…doctored tale of what had truly happened at Goryuen that we’d workshopped in the last few days. In this version, there was no Netherim bunker, no ancient, cursed trap laid by a distant goddess. There was no Harlow, and we were keeping the existence of Aveline a closely kept secret. As far as the Kawamarans were concerned, if she was discovered, the cover story was that Aveline was the stranded child of a pair of Herztalian merchants whose ship had crashed upon the shores of Goryuen. Shurenga had chanced upon the poor child as the only survivor, and I had decided to…

Ah…big word time.

Adopt her in the aftermath of the fight.

But we were leaving the…broad strokes of the story intact. The mountain of Gorenzan had been hollow all this time, and with help from the bag of tricks taught to me by Grey, I had opened the secret door that lay upon the mountain. Once inside, Kazuma and ‘his’ companions had fought their way through the guardian left by one of the banished gods to find the true form of Tatsugan, who, wouldn’t you know it?

It turned out that the Tatsugan everyone knew was just a projection.

With Shōmetsu no Kiba in hand, and his living ancestor keeping the projection busy outside the mountain, Kazuma had slain the disgusting true form of Tatsugan, thus ridding Kawamara of its ancient foe.

Once and for all.

I had to give it to Kazuma. I knew what he was saying was bullshit, and even I was tempted to fall for it. It certainly looked like he was convincing even General Hisakane. However, halfway through Kazuma’s rendition of the story, Masayuki sidled my way, all but looming over me. A twitch of his finger saw an imperceptible veil of silence descend between the two of us.

I was impressed. I’d only seen something like this once before, and Hook had needed to use an artifact to do it-

Ah, wait. There it was. I could feel a spell originating from a ring on Masayuki’s finger. Pretty smart, I had to say.

Yoink.

I’ll just take that idea. My Core ring filed it away neatly to explore at another time, as Masayuki smiled at me in amusement. “What a grand tale young Lord Higanashi is spinning,” Massyuki mused out loud before his smile transformed into a grin. “I wonder, how much of it is truthful?”

I smiled back at him, perfectly prepared for this. After all, the point of this plan had been to construct a heroic tale that the River Throne could tell its people in the first place. We needed there to be popular support for welcoming in the Order of Solstice’s Flame among the people, after all.

The point to subterfuge, I’d discovered, was layers.

“Oh, about fifty-fifty I’d say,” I replied to the man I was starting to suspect ran the Kawamaran intelligence bureau. I didn’t elaborate on what was fudged, though. Only on what wasn’t. “But Tatsugan really was just a projection, feeding on an ancient source of power in the heart of the mountain. It was left there from before the War in Heaven, we think. Probably from just as the reign of the gods began.”

Masayuki nodded thoughtfully at my words as Kazuma continued his doctored tale in the background. “Yes…that sounds believable. Records indicate that Tatsugan’s first appearance was only a few years after the end of that conflict and in the middle of the Initialization Wars. What else are you willing to tell me, Sir Hart?”

This time, my smile had a sheepish tinge to it. “Ah…I’m afraid that the artifact powering Tatsugan…exploded with his death. Rather intensely so, in fact,” I coughed into my fist. “Gorenzan is…gone.”

The painted man blinked at me, not understanding. “Gone? As in…destroyed?”

“Completely and totally,” I nodded. “I…wouldn’t recommend venturing into the crater, either. The heat is a bit…intense.”

Masayuki blinked rapidly, staring over my head in the direction of where Gorenzan used to dominate the skyline. “The tallest mountain on Vereden….” He said slowly, almost tasting the words. “Gone.” He shook his head wonderingly, before smiling at me in an almost teasing manner. “Remind me not to set impossible tasks before you again, Sir Hart.”

“You’ll deliver impossible feats.”

<<Chapter 294 | Table of Contents | Chapter 296>>

Chapter 294 - Meeting Grounds

Three days later, I stood on familiar ground, surrounded both by familiar and unfamiliar people.

After our little meeting back in the Order encampment where I had wrangled a handful of concessions out of Shacklock, we’d all packed up rapidly. As per my agreement with Shurenga, Sena had stayed behind with I and my party while she rapidly transported herself back to her home volcano in order to make preparations for what I’d asked. The Shurengan that I had rescued back in the bunker had slunk out of the shadows, looking suitably chastened as she watched her vanish with an almost relieved cast to her furry face.

Turns out, I needn’t have asked. Sena was going to remain behind anyway.

Permanently, it turned out.

I learned that part of Azarus’s pact with Tarus was that he needed an advisor in order to fulfill his duties as an Envoy. The Great Spirit of the Sun had no other real agents on the face of Vereden other than some scattered priests on the mainland, and the greater, more politically powerful priesthood in Hinaga. None of them were suitable, so he had decided that his oldest granddaughter would suit the position just fine.

In other words, Sena. Apparently, an amused Shurenga had agreed with her father, citing that it would count as a good punishment for the wayward saber-tooth. Thus, Sena was now Azarus’s companion in much the same way that Fade was meant to be mine.

Soon, buddy.

Honestly, Azarus and Sena were amusedly awkward together, for two people who were meant to be spending the next decades or even centuries fighting together.

But what I had wanted her for was as a mount for Aveline. Frankly, I was still too weak from my injury to be carrying her around, and it’s not like the little girl was capable of traversing a deadly mountain range all by herself. Thankfully, Sena had no problems with that.

I think she actually liked it.

Just as thankfully, it seemed like most of the monsters had cleared out from not only the central mountain range of the island, but the whole of Goryuen as well. With the true death of Tatsugan, there were no more Wyrmkin to infest these shores, and there was nothing drawing in the Oni in literal droves. That meant the Aether of the island was thrown all out of whack, and thus there were no naturally occurring monsters currently forming on the shores of the ‘Garden’.

It would take time for the natural Aether of Goryuen to reach equilibrium and start spawning a new breed of monster once more. But until then, this was probably one of the safest patches of land on the face of Vereden.

An odd flip, from being one of the densest Aether zones on the planet.

When everything was ready, we all departed from the encampment, and the encampment followed with us.

Under Shacklock’s command, the Order of Solstice’s Flame had packed up and followed us to where we were now.

Mt. Umetsuji, the volcano home of the Shurengan people.

Part of the plan that I had cooked up with the help of Shurenga and Shacklock had to do with presenting a united front. Such a thing would work better if did that from a place of power, and now that Tatsugan was slain, and Mt. Gorenzan was literally gone, the volcano was likely the best place to do so on the island. Plus, it was closer to the coast than the now glowing crater that resided at the heart of Goryuen.

I’d…had a look, before we left. There, at least, the Aether wasn’t as diminished as the rest of the island. It was so thick in the air from the destabilization of the Core that if I got close enough, the small hairs on the back of my arm started to sizzle. Plus, I wasn’t joking about the glow.

The caldera that used to house the roost of Tatsugan had been glassed by the force of the explosion. Thin spires of smooth, alternatingly green and blue stone were all that remained of the once great mountain, and deep in the heart where the Core had fallen with the bunker pulsed a slow star of rainbow Aether. It…remained to be seen what would result from such a thing, but Shacklock seemed to think it was a good thing.

Before we’d left, the greedy old monster had said something about mining rights.

Anyway.

The point was, the entirety of the Order of Solstice’s flame was now camped out on the surrounding banks of Mt. Umetsuji, with Shurenga’s welcome. Scores of adult Shurengans lingered and watched from atop every crag and boulder, out in the open and openly curious about the strange people who had come to visit them. While the Order had been given leave by the mistress of the mount to pitch their tents, part of our plan wasn’t to construct fortifications for a battle.

As previous guests, my friends and I were allowed to stay inside of the volcano itself, residing in the very same obsidian room that we’d spent the night in before. For the most part, the rest of my friends had little to do with the current goings-on with the Order of Solstice’s Flame. Azarus was busy learning from Sena about his duties and new abilities as an Envoy, while Liora was…disinclined to become involved in another nation’s politics, shall we say. Venix, as usual these days, was watching Kazuma like a hawk, almost acting like the younger samurai’s bodyguard in all the meetings between him, Shacklock, Shurenga, and myself. Bella, meanwhile, was a pirate.

Excuse me, privateer currently.

From what she’d told me in the few, brief moments we had to ourselves, she thought it was best to stay out of sight during all of this. Something I had…noticed, though, was that Bella was somewhat…

Wel, to be frank, she was avoiding Aveline. I’m not sure my erstwhile lover had said more than two words to the little girl in the entire time since we’d come back from the bunker. It was almost like Aveline made her uncomfortable or something. I didn’t have time to unpack whatever was going on with her right now, so I just left the Captain be.

Meanwhile, Renauld was keeping an eye on Aveline for me, for which I was thankful. I had noticed that she was a little overwhelmed with everything going on, and I was taking the time to reassure her, I swear I was. I wasn’t just pawning Aveline off on the first person to come along, no matter if he was a Healer and I trusted him implicitly. I made whatever time possible I could for the Netherim child. I was still determined to…to…well…

Raise her, I suppose.

It was just a chaotic time right now, and Renauld was happy to be my babysitter when the situation arose. It just made sense for a backline Healer to stay in the backline and watch someone important to me. It wasn’t likely to come to open battle with the Kawamaran’s, but better safe than sorry.

We were trying to avoid such a thing. Luckily, even Shacklock grudgingly admitted that we were likely to pull it off.

Which was good, because two days past, just a day after we’d reached the volcano, we’d received word that the subjugation fleet had landed on the shores of Goryuen. Hundreds of hardened Kawamaran classer-level soldiers had spilled from those transports, and they’d wasted no time at all. From what the Order scouts told us, they didn’t even bother to set up a main base camp on the beach.

They’d just immediately started marching inland, almost unnervingly making a beeline towards our position. Somehow, it was like they knew exactly where we were.

Shacklock suspected a spy in our midst, possibly lurking in the rank and file of the Order, possibly slinking around the edges of the encampment, entirely unseen. I was inclined to agree with the assessment, as was Liora.

We were likely being watched. But that suited us just fine.

We wanted the Kawamarans to come to us.

Shortly thereafter, the Shurengans informed us that they spotted additional, much less skilled scouts lurking just along the edges of the jungle tree line, watching us. The advance force reached us in record time, now that the island was essentially empty of everything but our two forces. It may have taken my party a week to trek through the jungle, but that had been when every few feet we were in danger of being jumped by Wyrmkin.

Without monsters getting in their way, the Kawamaran subjugation force reached us in two days. On the dawn of the third, they appeared at the delineation point between the stony plains and the thick jungle. It almost seemed like they were melting out of the brush, announced by high banners bearing the standard of the Imperial house. The golden lotus of the Kawatsuyo dynasty stood out proudly from the riverine blue rippled disc that it lay upon, all on a pure white banner.

But one was different and familiar to me.

“Six banners,” Kazuma said quietly to my right. The two of us stood alone at a high vantage point on the flank of Mt. Umetsuji. The Kawamaran forces had arrived right at the green period of the morning and stopped just after leaving the tree line. It was our belief that they were surveying the situation and possibly observing us with far-eyes now that they’d reached us. “Look, five are of the Imperial house, but one is not. Black and yellow, depicting crossed stalks of wheat. I’m…not up to date on heraldry. I don’t know who that is.”

I observed the additional banner silently for a moment, pondering its implications. “I do,” I finally said. “It belongs to the Master of Ceremonies for the court. Lord Ashiwara.”

So.

Masayuki was here. I hadn’t expected that. It made me wonder if he had brought his son along with him, and the sword I’d forged for the young Lord.

“An…odd choice for a force such as this,” Kazuma said slowly. I remained quiet, even though I suspected why Masayuki had come along. “Either way, each banner represents a company, and each company holds one hundred men. Which means the Emperor has sent six hundred of his finest soldiers to root us out of his Garden.”

I hummed in response, watching those six banners wave in the wind across the distance. “And how many can the Order field, future Grand Marshall?” I asked, letting my gaze drift down to said soldiers as I asked. Shacklock had assembled them in neat, orderly ranks facing the gathered Kawamaras across the field. His own banners bearing the flaming spear of the Order flapped in the volcanic wind as well.

Kazuma sighed. “Four hundred and thirty-two,” He said tiredly. At my raised eyebrow, he chuckled mirthlessly. “From what Shacklock told me, they suffered many desertions upon their exile from Herztal, which isn’t even counting the casualties they suffered fighting for the losing side in the war. They’re much diminished from what they used to be.”

I’ll say. To my understanding as a former member, the Order of the Eclipsed Dawn had nearly three times that many soldiers it could field, before I’d resigned. There was a noticeable gap in numbers between our two forces.

Luckily, we weren’t after an open battle.

Movement on the far side of the stony plain caught my eye, and I watched as five armored warriors atop fine steeds separated from the bulk of the Kawamaran army and began to gallop toward the neat frontlines of the Order. Two of them appeared to just be standard bearers for both the Imperial throne and the Ashiwara clan, while the other three looked to be the movers and shakers. Two Imperials…

And one man that I think I recognized, even from this distance. He’d been very tall, after all.

I nudged Kazuma in the ribs at the sight. “Look alive. It’s time to get this show on the road.” I exchanged a nod with the other man, and the two of us took off sprinting down the slight steps carved into the face of the volcano, quickly reaching the backlines. We pushed through the armor-clad classers until we had reached the front, and found three people waiting for us. One looked to be a familiar Order officer, the Lieutenant who had first greeted I and my companions out on the waves. Salzen, I think he was named. The Lieutenant must have noticed me as well, because I saw one brown eye wink at me briefly before he turned back around to watch the oncoming Kawamarans. The fully armored man was carrying the banner of the Order of Solstice’s Flame, standing next to Shacklock. The madman looked the same as he always did, in his oddly colored coat and cowboy hat over a Herztalian officer’s uniform. He barely spared Kazuma and I a brief glance before he returned to leaning on his overside greatword.

The last person waiting for us was Shurenga herself. The daughter of Tarus wasn’t quite as small as I sometimes saw her as, but she hadn’t assumed her full, massive form. Instead, she was about the same height as a man from her haunches to the tips of her ears. She spared the two of us a brief smile and nodded to a position to her right. Kazuma took it, while I stood to his right.

The four of us waited patiently there, some distance in front of the Orders battle lines, while the Kawamarans approached our position. As they drew closer, I was able to make them out better. I paid no mind to the standard bearers, as I didn’t recognize them through their open-faced helmets. There appeared to be two Imperial officers, to my understanding, and both of them were in full plate in the Kawamaran style, white with gold trimmings. One was a younger man, with seemingly fewer accolades and embellishments on his armor. The other, though, was a much older man with long, steel grey hair trailing behind him in the wind, while an equally impressive, bushy mustache lurked on his upper lip.

Meanwhile, I’d been correct about the other person. Masayuki Ashiwara himself had accompanied the subjugation fleet, and the man looked…much fiercer than he had last we’d met.

Masayuki’s tall, lithe frame was covered from head to toe in pitch-black Kawamaran plate with yellow accents. To my eyes, his armor was visibly thicker than that of the Imperials, and much less embellished. This wasn’t plate meant to be used in a parade, like I almost thought the Imperials was.

This was the accouterments of war.

Slung over Masayuki’s lap was a long halberd of a particular regional variant I had seen sometimes in Hinaga. Naginata, I believe they called them. The broad-bladed spear looked to have been darkened in an…almost familiar way.

If I didn’t know any better, I would say that was Oninite.

Hah. I wonder where he got it.

His face paint was…different, too, I noticed. Where before it had looked like something you would see in a play, now it was fiercer, with sharper lines, deeper shadows, and crimson edging. Masayuki was now done up in proper war paint, to my eyes. He must have noticed my inspection, as he and the rest of the retinue came to a stop before us, because my former benefactor gave me a decidedly cool look. I suppose he wasn’t impressed to see me among the people he was meant to help root out when he had secured my presence on this island in the first place.

Hopefully, that sentiment wouldn’t last through the talks ahead.

Our two groups stood perhaps twenty feet across from each other for several minutes, visibly sizing each other up. Eventually, though, the older Imperial gave a slight nod to thin air, and his standard bearer trotted forward and unfurled a scroll to read from it.

“Hear this sacred proclamation from the River Throne of his Imperial Majesty Seimei of the Kawatsuyo dynasty, long may he reign!” The message bearer cried, his voice echoing out across the silent, stony plains around us. “To those who trespass upon this sacred, forbidden land of Goryuen heed these words: You stand in defiance of divine law, profaning the very soil beneath you with your presence. You taint the sanctity of every sacrifice that has been lost in noble struggle with the Dread Wyrm with your every breath!”

Okay, that was…a bit harsh. I saw Kazuma wince to my left, while Shacklock audibly snorted down the line.

The messenger continued, undaunted. “By decree of His Imperial Majesty, you are ordered to vacate all lands that belong to his Grace, Emperor Seimei! Failure to comply shall render you criminals before the court, and your fate shall be sealed! Those who resist shall suffer a swift death! Submit yourself to the judgment of the River Throne, or risk being met with righteous vengeance!”

In return, Shacklock straightened up from leaning on his sword and audibly cracked his aged neck, back and forth. This time, I was the one who winced at the sound. The old madman took a deep, deep breath before speaking, and repeated the word we’d all agreed upon.

“No.”

<<Chapter 293 | Table of Contents | Chapter 295>>

Chapter 293 - Deferred Responsibility

Name: Aveline Claire Montblanc

Age: 10 years

Species: Human

That was what Observe read to me when I used the Skill on the little girl as we walked through the busy Solstice’s Flame camp, hand in hand. I had used it for multiple reasons, after my little realization back in the Healer’s tent. One, I wanted to see if Aveline would actually register as having some kind of hidden, early Status in the eyes of the System. And two, to see if Aveline would react to the crawling, tingling sensation on the back of the neck that signified someone using Observe on you.

But no. What I got back from the Skill was the perfectly ordinary reading of a pre-Awakening child. Aveline didn’t even react to it as well, which should have told me that there was no significant concentration of Aether in the body of the child. Something that was both frustrating and relieving at the same time was that her Status also only categorized her as a plain Human, and not as one of the Netherim people. Frustrating, because it was another dead-end as to the mystery of her vanished people.

Relieving, because Aveline was protected from the prying eyes of other people if they had the same idea that I did and used the exceedingly common Skill on her. She would register to them as nothing more than a normal little girl.

For now, it was looking like there was next to nothing I could do other than wait for her to reach the age of sixteen. Then, we could try and get her Awakened to see if the Status granted to her was odd in any way.

Or if the one I suspect was already extant and hidden revealed itself further. Either way, I had to drop it for now.

Even more than a week after the victory over Tatsugan, the soldiers were still in a good mood all about us, as Aveline, my friends, and I strolled through it. All around us were relieved, happy classers chatting around campfires, content ones tending to their kit, and focused, unbothered warriors keeping their skills sharp through practice and sparring.

Mood and morale seemed high, and for good reason.

In their minds, the promise given by the leadership of their Order had been fulfilled. Although it might not have been their Grandmaster that truly slew the Wyrm, I had to admit that their help had led to it. I’m not sure if any of us would have been able to even reach the bunker in order to be sucked into Lucretia’s ancient trap, with the way the projected form of Tatsugan had been harrying Shacklock and his soldiers. They, and their master, deserved at least a little bit of the credit for freeing Kawamara from the millennia-long grip of the Returning One.

Who would return no more.

However, they…possibly deserved even more of the credit, if Shacklock was amendable to the idea rolling around my rings. Which was why my party and I, Shurenga included, were going to see him at the large command tent set up in the middle of the camp. I think Shacklock had been keeping an eye on me somehow and knew that I was finally awake, even though it had barely been an hour. He’d sent a messenger requesting my presence at his command center. I didn’t mind trekking over there, even though I was still a little wobbly on my feet.

Apparently, that was where Kazuma and Venix were spending most of their time now.

We reached the large, orange tent before long, and the two Solstice guards posted outside wordlessly drew back the flaps to let us inside. There must have been a sound dampening enchantment on the tent, because when they did, I winced at the noise that greeted me.

Because there was loud shouting now echoing out into the air of Goryuen.

“-be dense, boy!” I heard Shacklock’s raised, frustrated voice reach me. “Of course there’s goin’ to be a bloody fight! There’s always a fight! And ye’ll be grateful for it in the long run, mind you me!”

“Blow it out your ass, you stupid codger!” I heard Kazuma yell back at his ancestor. “Those are my countrymen!”

I stopped at the doorway as I felt Aveline’s hand tighten in my own, the little girl cringing away from the screaming match. I cursed myself for a fool immediately. I Should have known better than to take a child into the presence of someone so…unstable. I caught Renauld’s eye before I went any longer, and to my relief, he immediately understood.

The Gnollish Healer bent down to eye level and whispered something in Aveline’s ear, causing her to relax in relief. When she looked at me, I nodded at her with a smile in lieu of speaking, as Kazuma and Shacklock continued to tear into each other. Without another word, my friend led her away as I turned back around to face the tent, a new frown on my face.

In the center of the tent, Kazuma and Shacklock were standing close enough together that they would have been nose to nose if Shacklock wasn’t a shrunken old man. As it was, the aged Grandmaster was having to stand on his tip toes to scream directly into his descendants' face.

My attention was stolen from the…somewhat ridiculous scene, when I heard a voice echo out from my right, sounding audibly bored. “They’ve been at it for hours now.”

I cut my eyes in that direction to find Venix standing with all four of his arms folded in front of him and tucked the sleeves of his white and pink robe. He smiled slightly when he noticed my attention. “I am glad you have awakened, Hart. You will make a full recovery, I trust?”

My own returning smile was slight as I answered him. “Eventually, yes,” I saw elusively, before changing the subject. “So, what are they fighting about?”

Venix sighed as the squabbling continued in the background. “It turns out that the subjugation fleet from Kawamara is arriving faster than expected. Solstice scouts upon their naval assets off the coast have reported that a fleet of at least a dozen warships have been sighted perhaps only a day’s sail away. They come to root out the presence of this foreign Sect, root and stem.”

Ah. That didn’t sound good.

“And I’m guessing Kazuma doesn’t want to fight them, while Shacklock does,” I concluded.

That earned me a mirthless smile from the Antium samurai. “Correct. Thus, the argument.”

I turned back around to watch the argument, curious despite myself.

“Ye’ve got to establish a reputation for yourself now, boy!” Shacklock flung at Kazuma with a raised voice. “The wet chair thinks nothin’ of you and yours after your banishment! If you’re goin’ to lead this Order one day, ye’ll need to present a strong front from the beginning! You’re too weak otherwise! A show of force from me and the men will make ‘em respect ye in the long run!”

Kazuma agitatedly slashed one hand out horizontally. “No, you madman! I have friends in the Imperial Navy! I know plenty of those people! For System’s sake, I grew up in a port town! My home wasn’t too far away from the Imperial shipyards! I know I can talk them down, subjugation fleet or otherwise! That’s beside the fact that as soon as we tell them that Tatsugan is permanently dead, they’ll all but be bowing at our feet! We just accomplished a legendary feat! The Emperor will probably throw us a damned festival for this!”

‘We’, huh. You’d think I might be upset by Kazuma essentially stealing part of the glory, when I was the one to slay the Wyrm’s true form.

It was the opposite, actually. This was a good point for me to interject.

I cleared my throat, causing the eyes of Shacklock and Kazuma to snap over to me. The two distantly related men had completely opposite reactions to the sight of me and the others standing in the doorway, watching the confrontation. While Kazuma brightened up and hurried over to greet me and the others, Shacklock rolled his eyes irritably. “Don’t just stand there gaping like a pack of feckless infants!” He barked, waving a hand forward. “Get in here and shut the damned door behind you!”

We complied, fully stepping into the tent and letting the flaps fall behind us. The minute the pieces of cloth had settled into place, the noise of the hustle and bustle of the camp immediately cut away, leaving only silence in the tent.

Kazuma shot Shacklock one last filthy look before turning to face me with a relieved smile. “Nathan! I’d heard you were awake, but I didn’t know you were up and about. What are you doing here?”

I raised one eyebrow at him, before shifting my gaze over his shoulder in the direction of Shacklock. Kazuma followed my gaze to find that his ancestor looked entirely unapologetic.

“Oh,” I said dryly. “No reason in particular.”

Kazuma scowled once more at Shacklock, causing the old man to simply shrug. “Come and sit, you lot,” The Grandmaster said, his gaze lingering on the smaller form of Shurenga almost warily. He dragged his eyes away from her to meet my eyes after a moment. “We got some things to talk about, now that lazybones is up.” He turned away to walk towards his throne-like chair, but I still heard him mutter to himself. “Mebbe ye can talk some sense into the brat.”

His words didn’t seem to be meant to be quiet, so said ‘brat’ made a rude gesture behind his back. I stifled a smirk as I and everyone else approached the same table where Shacklock had revealed both his and Grey’s past to us only…well. I wanted to say days since that’s what it felt like to me. But in reality, that tense conversation had been well over a week ago now.

I smiled slightly at the sight of Shurenga hopping up onto one of the chairs to sit on her haunches, straight-backed and proud like the queen she was. I noticed, though, that Venix stayed back near his position close to the tent flap. The Antium man remained silent, seemingly content to let the conversation pass him by for now.

Once we were all arranged, Shacklock folded his fingers together and looked straight at me. “Now, I understand a bit o’ what happened, from what this lot told me,” He said, making a dismissive gesture towards the rest of my companions, including Kazuma. “I’m given to understand that I have ye to thank for killin’ the worm. Apparently, he was just some kinda projection the whole time, and ye shived its real body down in the mountain?” Shacklock raised one craggy eyebrow at me. “The mountain that’s gone, by the by.”

I inclined my head. “That’s right. But that’s part of what I want to talk about. I want to make a deal with you, Grandmaster Shacklock.”

The old monster’s other eyebrow rose to join the first. “Oh? Well, don’t keep me waitin’. Go on.”

I cut my eyes over to Kazuma for a moment and smiled, to his confusion. “I would like it if Kazuma was the one to take credit for slaying Tatsugan’s true body.”

My companions reacted with shock and surprise at my words, including Kazuma himself. The samurai outright goggled at my words.

However, I noticed that neither Shurenga nor Shacklock looked all that surprised. In fact, the queen of Mt. Umetsuji outright smirked at Shacklock with feline lips, to which said Grandmaster looked mildly uncomfortable. He shook it off after a moment, though. “Oh, is that so?” He said, shaking his head with a small, almost surrendering smile. “What do ye want for such a concession, boy?”

Kazuma finally found his voice, jumping to his feet. “Wait! Wait a second. Sir Hart-Nathan,” He corrected himself. “I apologize if my comments led you to believe I desired this. I have no wish to rob you of your rightful place in the history books. This is a truly momentous thing you’ve done. My ancestors would spit on me if I was to so cravenly steal it from you.”

At the head of the table, Shacklock snorted. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Kazuma turned and shot his living ancestor a foul look. “The respectable ones would.”

I smiled slightly at the byplay, but still shook my head. “I imagine your ancestors would not spit on you so when I’m outright offering, Kazuma. Besides, I’m already going to be in the history books for a deed I’ve done,” At his blank look, I laughed lightly. “Do you remember hearing about the Calamity that briefly rose in Elderwyck, in the tail of the Construct War? I was the one to kill it, Kazuma.”

Kazuma outright choked on his own spit at my words, goggling at me. I couldn’t help but laugh again at the look on his face, and I wasn’t the only one around the table to do so. It wasn’t mean-spirited, though.

It was a pretty funny face he was making.

After all, I had never told him about that. I hadn’t been sure I could trust the man before our time together in the bunker.

Now, I knew I could.

Kazuma flushed and straightened his collar. “Ah…I didn’t know that. Then, why?”

“I think I can make a guess,” Azarus spoke up, for the first time since this ‘meeting’ had begun. He turned to face me with an amused smirk on his bearded lips. “Ya don’t want the fame, do ya?”

I pointed at him and nodded. “Nailed it. After all, I’m already going to be known as the man who killed a Calamity before he even hit the first breakpoint. I don’t need the extra eyes that will drift my way when it’s discovered that I indirectly slew a second Calamity. No. No, let us instead simply say that I and my party accompanied Kazuma, Lord of the Higanashi Clan, into the depths of the mountain and assisted him in avenging his Great-Grandfather with the newly retrieved family blade.” I nodded to the still-wrapped katana, now returned to Kazuma and slung over his back. “I’ll still receive a bit of attention from the escapade, but most of the credit will fall on him. Because we’ll say so. And,” This time I turned to face Shacklock, who had an amused, almost resigned cast to the crags of his aged face. “It’ll build Kazuma’s reputation in the eyes of the River Throne and allow the Order to avoid a costly, stupid conflict with the Kawamara Navy.”

Liora chuckled lowly at my words. “And perhaps it will aid in restoring relations with Herztal as well, hmm? After all, Nathan is the public apprentice of Headmaster Greycton, and I am a well-known former partisan of the Crown. Elegantly reasoned, Nathan.”

I accepted the thanks in the spirit it was given. Partisan, huh? Yeah, I guess the Order of Eclipsed Dawn kind of was like a political party.

Kazuma just looked overwhelmed at our words, as we argued in favor of giving the man everything he had ever wanted. Justice, for his slain Great-Grandfather. Recognition, for his clan.

And a future for his family.

Shacklock nodded sharply at my words. “Alright, I can tell when I’m beaten. I’ll play ball with your little scheme. Now, what do ye want in return?”

I caught Shurenga’s eye, then, causing the daughter of Tarus to raise one crimson eyebrow at me. I smiled at her and then turned back to face Shacklock.

And then spoke.

<<Chapter 292 | Table of Contents | Chapter 294>>

Chapter 292 - Something Odd

Well.

That was…a bit suboptimal. If I couldn’t go out to fight, then how was I going to keep growing…?

Is what I would say, if I wasn’t me. I had my Aetherial Mending, after all. With it, I received the full stack of Profession experience just from using it. It was one of its benefits, after all. I think the only reason I hadn’t shut myself into a workroom and crafted myself into an early grave was because I…just kind of didn’t want to? Sure, it would be safer.

But it would also be a little boring.

Vereden had changed me. I was well aware of that.

So, I needed time to fully recover from one too many knocks on the head. Eh, I’ll live. My growth would slow since even with the way I received the full measure of crafting experience it still wasn’t much. But I would still grow, and with the extended lifespan given to me by my Status, I wasn’t too upset by potentially losing out on six months to possibly even a year of dedicated hunting growth.

It's not like I was on a time limit or something.

I shrugged at Renauld and regretted it a moment later when it caused a spike of pain to shoot down my back. I kept it off my face, though. “Alright, message received. No fighting.”

Renauld stood up and eyed me weirdly for a moment. “I gotta say, I was expecting more whining about it,” He said, ignoring my faint ‘hey’ in protest. “You have a bit of a tendency to run around, Nate.”

I picked up the mug of water Aveline had left on my bedside table and took a sip before answering. “Well, it’s not like I’m planning another major expedition like this anytime soon. Besides, we have the same plans for the rest of the year anyway.”

The Gnoll nodded at my words. “Yeah, that’s true. I bet it’s almost time for the Academy to-”

His words were cut off as the flap to our tent opened, letting Aveline slip back inside. Following close behind her were three familiar faces.

Azarus, Liora, and Bella.

Curiously, I didn’t see Kazuma or Venix anywhere.

I put it out of my mind and instead greeted my friends with as wide of a smile as I could, as Aveline hurried back over to me. The little girl hopped up onto the bed and sat where Renauld had been only moments ago and reached out to grab my hand. That helped take the edge off, I could say. My smile softened as Liora and Azarus approached as well.

“Nate,” Azarus said with a relieved sigh. I noticed that a tension in his broad shoulders eased at the sight of me awake. “How’re ya doin’? Everythin’…alright?”

I exchanged a brief glance with Renauld, only for the Gnoll to shake his head at me. Ah, I see.

Good old-fashioned doctor-patient confidentiality.

I didn’t want to put a damper on the reunion, so I nodded. “Ah…more or less. We can talk about it later. How about you guys? I see you weren’t as banged up as I was, in the blast.”

The near nuclear blast, as I recalled. A small one, admittedly.

But still.

Fuck me, I hadn’t expected that. At the time, I’d just been worried that the mountain would come down. I hadn’t realized that there was so much power stored in the ancient Netherim ‘Aether Collider’ that it would outright vaporize it into a mushroom cloud.

I could only hope that radiation wasn’t a factor here. I don’t think so, though. If it was, I don’t think any of us would be alive right now for a reunion.

I snapped out of my woolgathering when Liora shook her head at me in mild, relieved amusement. “We are all fine, Nathan. Before you ask,” She held up a hand to stop me. “Several hours after you and the others were…apparently abducted into a curse, Grandmaster Shacklock descended from the heavens on the barge. He was quite irate at the time, you see, as his opponent had abruptly dissipated into a cloud of corrupted Aether. Not even true Miasma, to signify a death. The skies cleared almost immediately with the disappearance of the Wyrm, and Bella and I,” She nodded at the pirate woman, who had oddly stayed back to watch the conversation silently. “Were quite alarmed at the time, as the inland sea began to drain rapidly. However, the Grandmaster was grateful enough to spirit the two us away from the situation on his flying sword. Shortly thereafter, the mountain itself began to shake in an alarming manner, almost as if it were a volcano, in truth.”

Bella finally made a noise, snorting from her arms-crossed position near the far wall of the tent. “Turned out, it sure as hell wasn’t.”

“Indeed,” Liora said with a small, wry smile. Still, I couldn’t help but notice the brief, sharp look that the Gnoll woman shot my erstwhile lover. Bella winced for some reason, as Liora continued. “Sir Kazuma suffered a brief break in his sword arm, but that was the extent of anyone’s injuries. Among our party, at the very least.”

Azarus sighed and scratched the back of his head. “Ya…the heat and light from that explosion just about burned the eyeballs outta the sockets o’ some of the Order men. A few more were crushed by fallin’ stone. If it hadn’t be fer yer warnin’…”

I nodded quietly in acknowledgment of his unspoken thanks. I was…aware of some curious looks being thrown my way, possibly about how I’d known to warn people away from looking at the explosion. After all, I sincerely doubted anything that intense had ever been seen on the surface of Vereden.

Maybe I was wrong, but I don’t think even the ‘gods’ had been capable of small, localized nuclear blasts.

Hopefully.

The point was, though, that I was deliberately ignoring them. I had absolutely no desire to even hint to the possibility of nuclear weaponry to the people of Vereden. I was interested in possibly reverse engineering some old conveniences and technologies from back on Earth with Enchanting, sure.

(Especially now that I was essentially being told by my Healer to stay away from the monsters.)

But I was never going to talk about nukes.

Some things should stay on Earth.

Liora must have recognized my reticence as a brief awkward silence descended on the group because she picked up the conversation. “Anyway,” She said loudly. Well, loudly for her. “The Order welcomed us into their encampment in the aftermath, and we’ve been waiting here for you to recover ever since.”

To my surprise, I saw Renauld suddenly smirk over at Azarus. “Well, that and laugh at Azarus.”

I quirked an eyebrow first at him, and then at my dwarven friend. I was unsurprised to see that he was glowering at the Gnoll, but under my curious stare, he suddenly looked embarrassed. “What’s going on?”

Bella finally approached the group to lean one arm on the shoulder of Azarus and smirk in amusement at him. “Well…” She drawled. “Turns out that becomin’ the high and mighty ‘Envoy’ comes with a few responsibilities.”

Azarus shrugged her arm off irritably but refused to meet my eyes as he spoke next. “It’s nothin’. Just, Sena and Shurenga have been teachin’ me some things, now that the ol’ gasbag reaffirmed the pact. May not have been me that saved Sena, but it was enough fer him. Thanks…I guess.”

I’m not sure that thank you was particularly sincere, but I wasn’t willing to start mocking Azarus until I knew what I was supposed to be doing it about first. I figured I would find out later. Instead, I asked about the two others just mentioned. “So, they stuck around afterward?”

I was a bit startled when my answer came not from my companions, but from the flap of the tent parting once more to let someone in. I hadn’t felt anyone coming from my blood sense that my Core was now monitoring again, but when I saw who it was, my surprise faded.

Spirits didn’t have blood, after all.

The miniaturized form of Shurenga that I had glimpsed back at Mt. Umetsuji strolled into the tent as if she owned it. For some reason, at the sight of her Azarus’s shoulders fell in resignation, causing the daughter of the sun to eye him with open amusement. After one smug moment, the cat’s amber eyes fell on me with an assessing gaze. “Finally up, are you? Good, good. Thank you for saving my foolish daughter from her erstwhile adventure, Nathaniel. Rest assured, I have…corrected her in response to her reckless behavior. Four centuries old, and my eldest still acts like a cub sometimes.” Shurenga outright tsked with her feline lips, shaking her head from side to side as she did so.

I didn’t even know cats could make a sound like that.

“Ah…” I floundered for a moment before I was startled when Aveline hopped off the bed and scurried over to Shurenga with a wide smile on her face. When she reached the dog-sized saber-tooth, she outright threw her young arms around Shurenga’s furry neck. The mischievousness faded from those amber orbs, to be replaced with the patience of a mother. She rubbed her whiskers against the cheek of the child, causing Aveline to giggle from the sensation.

“Shurry!” Aveline laughed, playfully pushing Shurenga away before fixing the near Spirit with suddenly hopeful eyes. “Did you manage to fix it?!”

To Aveline’s apparent disappointment, Shurenga shook her shaggy head from side to side. “No, child. Unfortunately, I could not. Whatever method of construction resulted in your glee, I am unable to understand it. Deepest apologies.”

I…had no idea what they were talking about, particularly in regards to whatever the hell a 'glee' was. But still…

The sight of Aveline and Shurenga was heartwarming enough that I felt a measure of tenseness ease from my shoulders. I had been worried that after everything Aveline had been through, and all she had lost, the little girl would be incapable of even the smallest happiness. How she’d greeted me on my awakening had slightly worried me. She had sounded almost desperately attached to me, despite the short amount of time we’d spent together. Not that I was opposed to Aveline caring for me, no. It just wasn’t exactly healthy behavior to beg someone not to leave.

But I’d always heard about how children were surprisingly resilient in the face of trauma, as long as they had support. I’d just have to place some faith in the kid. Well, that and ask for some help from Honoka the next time I saw her.

The ornery old woman was the only person I knew who had been a parent, once upon a time. I’m…not sure I counted Grey, especially in circumstances like this.

However, there was something that was strangely bothering me about the sight of them together, as well. While Aveline seemingly got over her disappointment quickly in order to chat excitedly with a patient Shurenga, I furrowed my brow in thought. Some was wrong about the scene, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. It’s not like I disapproved of Shurenga or something. The ancient cat was a mother dozens and dozens of times over and had raised children since before I was a twinkle in my medieval ancestors' eye.

There was nothing wrong about this at all. She was just talking and responding to-

My lips parted in realization, as both my Core ring and I came to the same conclusion.

Shurenga was understanding Aveline. In fact, I suddenly recalled how Renauld and Aveline had been able to understand each other earlier.

I tried not to tense, clamping down on my physical responses harshly with Acting as I did so. Luckily, I don’t think even Liora noticed my sudden focus, as everyone else in the tent was watching the almost idyllic scene between animal and child with varying degrees of amusement.

I had to test this first, before I jumped to any conclusions. I turned to face Renauld standing off to the side of my bed, and spoke.

Only this time, I turned off Language Adaptation entirely before I did so.

“Renauld, you stink,” I said bluntly in English, over the still understandable chatter of Aveline in the same language. “You don’t take enough baths, and because of that you smell like wet dog a lot of the time.”

The second the last syllable left my lips, I switched the foundational Racial Talent back on. Just in time to watch as Renauld turned to me with a completely baffled look on his furry face. “What? What the hell was that? Did you turn off Language Adaptation or something? It sounded like that weird voice we heard in the bunker.”

I muttered something to him about it being turned off accidentally, to which I received a suspicious look from the Gnoll.

Well, test one completed. English hadn’t been suddenly added to the list of languages that Language Adaptation covered.

Now for Shurenga.

I switched off the Racial once more, and spoke towards the cat, cutting off the babble from Aveline and drawing strange looks from my companions. “Shurenga, do you understand what’s happening?”

As before, I immediately switched the Talent back on in order to understand her. In the meanwhile, Shurenga stared at me with knowing, almost approving eyes. “No fool indeed,” I heard her mutter under her breath softly, before she shook her head. “I did not understand your words, Nathaniel. Was that perhaps the mother tongue of your distant people?”

I drew in a deep sigh, and then let it out slowly. As I did so, I switched my gaze over to Aveline. The little girl looked puzzled by what was going on, but thankfully not frightened. “Yes,” I said softly. “Yes, it was.”

But you hadn’t understood it, even though Aveline had been talking to you in the same language.

And…Aveline didn’t have a Status. Nor did she have Language Adaptation, in order to make to make herself understandable to the people of Vereden.

That is…

Presumably.

Just what kind of access to the System did the Netherim have?

<<Chapter 291 | Table of Contents | Chapter 293>>

Chapter 291 - Flash & Bang

Split second thought from my core was the only reason I even considered what I did next. My inner self frantically pointed out a half-remembered history lesson from my youth, on the effects of particularly intense explosions.

I tensed, and yelled as loudly as I could over the rumblings of the earth, directing my words to my companions who had rubbernecked along with me. “DON’T LOOK AT IT!” I screamed. “TURN AWAY, TURN AWAY!” There was no time for me to see if they were going to listen, though I prayed they would. Instead, I turned back around and crushed Aveline and myself as closely as I could to the fur of Shurenga’s back, ignoring her protests at the movement.

They soon turned to screams, anyway. This time, I could tell that I was screaming alongside us.

The core finally went critical, and the world went white. An impossibly loud booming noise echoed out from behind us, and a light so bright that I could see it through both my closed eyelids and my turned head struck me with an almost physical force. Screaming gale force winds suddenly struck Shurenga and everyone upon her flying back, and I think if it wasn’t for our Status-enhanced strengths, all of us would have been sent flying from her back. In fact, I think one of us nearly did.

From behind me, I heard Renauld let out a pained, panicked scream as I…I think he lost his grip. My heart dropped out of my chest, but I didn’t dare turn in place to see what had happened. I think if I did, my eyes would have been burned out of their sockets by the light of the explosion

Thankfully, it came to a halt a moment later, driven mainly by a scream of effort from Kazuma. I think the Kawamaran samurai might have caught him if I was correct.

But I was occupied by something else. Something much, much more immediately dangerous.

There was a rising wave of heat coming from behind us. Every millisecond, the temperature all around our fleeing forms was rising to an alarming degree. Even though Shurenga was covering dozens of feet ever second on her conjured path, the heat wasn’t decreasing.

That didn’t seem good.

I hissed as I felt the enchanted silk of my cloak catch fire on my back. I didn’t dare try and put it out, though. That would just expose Aveline to the force of the explosion behind us, and she was the most fragile person here. The little girl was years away from gaining a Status.

Beneath me, I heard Shurenga speak, sounding audibly angry. “Think you I shall be slain by mere fire? I am the daughter of flame itself! I shall not be defeated by some pale imitation of my father!”  

Shurenga growled, and in that rumble, I heard the tone of words in an incomprehensible language. I…think she was chanting a spell of some kind.

I was shortly proven right. All around Shurenga’s sprinting form, and most importantly us, a bubble shield of what looked to be transparent orange-colored Mana. Immediately, the temperature inside the bubble dropped to something much more pleasant. Tentatively, I straightened up from my desperate huddle on the back of the enormous feline and looked ahead of us. To my relief, I found that Shurenga was only seconds away from reaching the ridgeline. That probably wasn’t a safe enough distance, but it would have to be good enough.

And then something happened that I wasn’t expecting.

A second explosion boomed through the air from behind us, much, much bigger than what occurred what felt like only moments ago. The shockwave of it hit Shurenga only moments later and the force of it impacted her shield like the impact point of a hammer.

Thankfully, the shield held.

Not so thankfully, that just meant the forward momentum of the blast flung everyone, Shurenga included, spinning through the air. The daughter of Tarus was knocked off of her conjured path, and all her passengers were flung off of her back to tumble into the space of her protective spell. Mid-air, I had only moments to see the surface of the range rushing up to meet us before I frantically tried to turn in midair and curl around Aveline’s tiny, fragile body as much as I could.

Impact.

The entire bubble holding Shurenga, her daughter, my friends and companions, and most importantly Aveline and I…

Shattered, and I hit the ground back first. My head bounced off of the hard stone of the mountains, and somehow…somehow I didn’t lose consciousness.

A minor miracle, my Core ring noted distantly, considering my track record. I was too out of it to snap back at it. But not too much to see what was now looming on the horizon, flat on my back as the world darkened with the blooming of a second, surface-born star.

The mountain of Gorenzan, famous roost of the Dread Wyrm Tatsugan and tallest mountain on Vereden, was gone. In its place rose an enormous mushroom cloud, so dense with Aether that the fire of it glowed with an intense, cascading rainbow light. Sharp fingers were all that remained of the once titanic mountain, jutting up from the surface of the caldera like the hand of some ancient giant, fossilized and frozen and in time. For a moment, I was delirious enough at the impossible sight of the cloud rising high into the sky that I could only goggle at it, wondering where all the stone had gone.

Until I saw the thousands and thousands of tiny, fiery stars high in the sky, falling from the heavens like a swarm of meteors.

In fact…

One of them looked like it was falling towards us.

As I felt a warm liquid ooze from somewhere on the back of my head, all I could do was tighten my arms around…something I held in my arms. I couldn’t remember what it was, or why I was so protective of it. All I could recall was that it was beyond precious.

And that I had made a promise to someone.

Soon, all I could see was the form of a massive hunk of stone rapidly falling towards me.

As I felt myself start to lose the battle for consciousness, my eyes drifting shut one by one, I caught a strange noise. It almost sounded like the shattering of stone, upon an immense metal surface. Surrounded by the tinkling of stone, I thought I heard a voice.

A creaky, aged, irritated one.

“The hells did you kids do?”

That was the last thing I heard before I lost the battle with consciousness.

…………………………………….

The world was warm, and dark, and quiet all around me. I was nothing, nothing was part of me, and nothing became me. No thoughts swam through the space of my expanded mind, no feelings or worries.

I simply floated in a black space that felt all too familiar.

Nothing stirred in the still pond of ink that became my existence.

Occasionally, oh so occasionally, I thought I heard something as if from a great distance, impossibly vast in scope.

Voices.

I thought I heard voices, at times calling out to me, and at times simply…talking. Sometimes I thought I might recognize those voices, even though I couldn’t make out the words. They were too muffled to properly reach me.

One was low, and gruff, and short. When it spoke, it spoke infrequently, but when it did, I could feel the concern in its deep tones.

One was higher pitched, almost animalistic in tone. It sounded harried, and when it spoke it was in clipped, observational tones. Still, sometimes concern would creep into it.

One sounded like a woman, smoky and rough. This voice was awkward, struggling to convey the emotions I could hear buried deep inside of it. This voice never stuck around for long, and when it did, it almost seemed desperate to be anywhere else.

Only one other voice ever truly reached me, in my comforting darkness. It was small, quiet, and young. There was a purity to it that was almost comforting. This voice was the most common, in truth. It was almost always present, speaking to me from the closest distance, small murmurs of youth that spoke of anything and everything.

A truly remote part of myself almost thought that the existence that was myself should be relieved to hear it, in rare moments of lucidity. But those instances were few and far between, and the idea never stuck.

Gradually, though, the darkness began to recede. I couldn’t say how long it took. It could have been days, weeks, or even years. But eventually, light began to stream into my comforting pool. Over time, it grew until eventually…

My eyes creaked open, to stare unseeingly up at an indistinct ceiling. I didn’t truly register what lay above me, and yet my ears still worked. I heard a sudden, high-pitched shout somewhere off to my left, followed by more. Rapid footsteps approached where I lay flat on my back until suddenly a triangular black thing appeared in my field of view.

I flinched away from it when it began to emit a bright, white light. I groaned as the light began to move back and forth in front of my eyes. However, it was doing its job. My mind grew more aware, and I focused more on the object in front of me. This time, I could tell that it seemed to be a black claw of some kind, attached to an equally black, furry finger. Just beyond it, I could see a grey canvas ceiling.

My lips parted, and I blinked. Before I could even ask, the rim of something cool and ceramic was at my lips, and something cool and sweet greeted a tongue I hadn’t even realized was drier than a desert. I greedily drank from the vessel at my lips and with that…

Full awareness snapped into being, and I realized where I was, and what was happening to me.

I turned my head, and I found what I was expecting.

Looming over me was the Gnollish form of one of my friends.

Renauld.

The Healer was the one wagging one Mana brightened finger over my field of view, and just beyond that I could see his stressed features. However, when I focused on him fully for the first time, a wave of relief swept over him. Although my friend wasn’t that old, it still seemed as if he lost several years from the creases beneath his fur. Still, something puzzled me. Renauld wasn’t the one who had held the cup to my lips.

I turned my head and found someone who nearly caused me to start weeping in realization.

The one who had given me the cup…was Aveline.

She stood off to the side of my bed with a wide smile on her small face, looking as relieved as I believe a child could be. The little girl I hadn’t failed to save in the end was wearing a small yellow sundress, free from the white hospital gown of her long imprisonment in the halls of the Netherim bunker. I felt a fleeting moment of concern at the sight of a long white bandage wrapped around her forehead, but she seemed fine to me. When she saw that I was looking at her, her smile grew even wider, and she flung her arms around my neck in a hug, uncaring about the water she splashed on the Gnoll above me. The Healer yelped from it, but both of us ignored it.

Instead, I shakily raised one weak hand and rested it on the head of the daughter of Cecily Montblanc and Jonathon Travers. “Aveline,” I managed to croak weakly, soul-deep relief rolling over me.

“Mr. Hart…” She murmured back, in the crook of my neck. “You’re awake…”

Tears welled up in my eyes at the sound of it.

I’d done it.

Despite everything, and despite how I had feared that I would fail…I’d done it.

I had actually managed to save Aveline from the bunker.

I buried my face in her hair, and let silent tears flow from my eyes in the golden mass.

………………………………

Renauld let us have our moment, but eventually, he cleared his throat professionally. The sound of it caused Aveline to draw back from me embarrassedly, though I didn’t think she had anything to be embarrassed about. The Gnoll smiled down at her kindly with closed lips. “Aveline, be a dear and go tell the others that lazy-bones here is finally up, eh? I’m sure they’ll want to see him.”

Aveline nodded up at him shyly. “Okay, Mr. Renauld,” She said quietly, glancing over at me quickly. “I-I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t…please don’t go anywhere.” Before I could even process that, the little Netherim girl scurried out of the small, private tent that I was just now realizing we were in.

I didn’t realize I was staring after her before Renauld spoke up again. “She’s been here by your side the whole time, Nate. That’s a good kid you found down in that hell.”

I dragged my still unsteady eyes away from the waving tent flap and looked up at the Gnoll. “Whole time?” I asked a bit groggily. “How…how long have I been out?”

Renauld grimaced, then. “A week,” He said, after a pause. I tensed in shock at his words, adrenaline racing through me, and unexpectedly, sending a bolt of pain lancing through my head. I raised one hand to hold it, only to finally realize that my entire skull was wrapped in bandages similar to Aveline’s own. Renauld stopped me before I could explore it too much. “Don’t! Don’t touch it too much, Nate. That’s…that’s part of what we have to talk about.”

I raised my head and furrowed my brow at the Healer. Because that was definitely Reanauld’s Healer voice. I’d heard him use it before when it came to serious situations.

That he was using it now wasn’t a good sign.

Renauld sat on the side of the bed and faced me with a serious frown. “This was a close one for you, Nate. Like, really close, for multiple reasons. The explosion that happened a week ago hurt some people, and it even killed a few unfortunate Solstice’s Flame members-”

That answered one question my newly awakened Core ring had. We must be in one of the encampments of the Order of Solstice’s Flame.

“-but it was the fall that nearly killed you,” Renauld continued. “It almost cracked your head open like a melon. In fact, when I found you, it was open. I could see your damn brain, Nate.”

Oh.

That…didn’t sound good. It made me a little queasy, actually.

“If you weren’t past the first breakthrough, I’m pretty sure you’d be dead right now,” The Gnoll said with a sigh, picking up a vial and handing it to me. I recognized it as a mild nausea potion. I suppose he had noticed the effect of his words on me. I drank it down as my Healer kept speaking. “Luckily I managed to stabilize you by the time the Order rolled in, but you were still in a coma for the last week. But in that time I’ve done some deeper probes on your condition, Nate. And it’s not exactly good.”

I sighed, setting down the now empty bottle. “Hit me.”

“You can’t afford another concussion, Nate,” Renauld said bluntly. “At least, not for another half a year, at the very least. That means no fighting, no sparring, and sure as hell no heavy combat like we’ve been doing. You need that time to let your Status fix the built-up damage in your brain. They’re delicate things, Nate, even with the System. Not even Honoka advises outright healing something like this. You just can’t take the risk. Instead, you need to let the quickened natural healing of your Status take the reigns. If you don’t take it easy, and you take another hard hit to the skull, I’m not sure if you’ll ever wake up again.” 

I was quiet for a moment, absorbing that. “Was it really that bad this time?”

To my surprise, Renauld shook his head. “Yes and no. From what I could tell, this looks like built-up damage over the course of a year or so that just wasn’t visible until now. In other words, you’ve been knocked out way too often since you landed on Vereden, and this, combined with your injury, pushed things to the edge.”

“For now, Nate…that means you’re benched.”

…………………………….

AN:

Hey, remember all those times Nate has been knocked out over the course of the whole story?

Yeah. I had a plan for that. He’s still human, after all, despite his advantages.

How convenient it is, though, that the next major arc might just involve a school…

<<Chapter 290 | Table of Contents | Chapter 292>>

Chapter 290 - From the Light

AN:

Apologies if this one is a little rough. I came down with a cold on Saturday, when I normaly sit down to start writing the week's chapters, and couldn't manage to get any words down. I felt good enough to bang this out on Sunday, though I'm unsure if it went entirely the way I want it to.

Honestly, I was really close to taking a one week break for a hiatus. I haven't done one of those in the nearly 2 years I've been posting now, and I've been thinking about it. But, I got this down and I'll finish the rest of the week's chapters behind my internal schedule.

...............................................................................

I was somewhat surprised when the collected spirits of the ancient Netherim bunker flew out of the hole that they had made themselves. In…retrospect, it made sense that they were doing this for more reasons than to just save Aveline. I had no compunctions that these long-dead betrayed people were trying to save my companions and I. We were nothing to them.

I think…they were after freedom. Freedom from the torturous hell they’d been trapped in for millennia. Freedom from the confines of this damned mountain.

And freedom from their undeath. That they were saving us at the same time was merely a side benefit for us, and surely something Cecily had considered.

The moment all of the spirits streaming past us touched the bright light of Tarus in the open air, they dispersed. Their indistinct, ghostly green forms wavered in the light before fading like the morning mist. Each time it happened, I could hear an almost sigh of relief from the now-free Netherim. The combined sound of so many Netherim finding absolution was almost akin to the blowing of a slight wind.

I could only spare the almost awe-inspiring sight a single glance before my attention was stolen by something else.

Something far, far more dire.

All around us, the mountain of Gorenzan suddenly shook. I was nearly knocked off of my feet from the intense earthquake that shook loose stone from the tunnel we stood in. Rock dust and pebbles both fell from the roof and rattled upon the melted floor of Lucretia’s ancient ingress.

I felt my stomach tighten as I realized what that must be.

The bunker must have finally fallen, all the way to the interior base of the mountain. Turning away from the exit, I thought I might just be able to see a faint blue-green light in the distance, all the way down the tunnel which we had escaped down.

That had to be the core. Like I’d feared, it was destabilizing in some way.

The ghostly form of Cecily was still standing before me, cradling Aveline in her arms. I met the long-dead engineer’s eyes, and a mutual realization passed between us.

It was time to go.

Almost reluctantly, Cecily approached and handed me the heart-sick form of Aveline. I took the little girl in my arms and got a good grip on her. I was somewhat surprised that she didn’t protest being given away from her mother, for the last time. But Aveline still stared at the ghostly form of Cecily with longing in her eyes, though she clutched tightly at me.

Cecily smiled tenderly at Aveline one last time, and brushed a hand along her daughter’s cheeks before she met my eyes. “Go.” She said with finality. “The core will annihilate this mountain shortly.”

Ah.

That…presented another problem, but maybe a solution would present itself? It was…all I could hope for.

I gave Cecily Montblanc one last wary nod, still unsettled by her words to me, before I turned away from her. In my arms, Aveline sobbed slightly and buried her face into my chest. I was a little surprised, and a little touched, that my friends and companions had yet to climb out of the hole in the side of the mountain. I smiled at them slightly and then nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Bout damn time,” I heard Azarus mutter, and then all of us, including Sena, were bounding towards the door that the Netherim had opened. By that point, only a few stragglers among the undead remained, so thankfully we weren’t running through clouds of ectoplasm to do so. In moments, we had climbed over the roughly hewn rim and stepped into the fresh air of Vereden once again.

It was…beyond relieving to do so. I hadn’t realized just how oppressive the inside of the mountain had been until we were free from it. In stark contrast to how it had been before we’d all been sucked into the bunker, it was a bright, sunny, almost cheerful day outside. The storm had cleared and there were little more than wisps of white cloud in the sky, leaving the totality of Tarus to shine down on the world below.

We stood on a broad, flat terrace cut into the surface of Gorenzan. It was, frankly, kind of massive, easily as large as a parking lot from back home. I was initially a little confused at the sight of where we were, as I hadn’t seen anything like this on the surface of the mountain during our approach. I suppose it was…possible that we had just missed this through the darkness and the rain of Tatsugan’s storm.

That was until I approached the ledge of the cliff, accompanied by all, that I realized just where we were. I hadn’t seen this terrace because it had been submerged by the water. Looking up and down, I could see the watermark where the inland sea had been previously.

Because it had subsided.

Looking down, I couldn’t see even an ounce of the enormous pool of water that had collected around the base of the mountain. Which was nuts to me. That enormous lake had been so deep, and so wide as to fill the entirety of the gigantic, miles-wide caldera Gorenzan rested within. That had been millions of gallons of water!

Where the hell had it all gone?! I know I’d been told it would drain in some way after Tatsugan’s death, but I hadn’t expected that to happen…so…quickly…

How…long had we been in the bunker, anyway…? That was a question for later, I decided.

Right now, we had to get off of this mountain before we were vaporized by the core. The problem was…

I had no idea how to do that.

Looking around, I couldn’t see the barge that had ferried us anywhere. Liora and Bella were nowhere to be found. Casting another eye downward into the dark, empty chasm of the caldera below, I hoped to God that they had gotten out before they’d been sucked down into wherever the sea had gone. That, or they were possibly even now stranded on the face of the mountain, wherever the hell the trapped bunker entrance was in relation to where we were.

I was knocked out of my half-panicked observations by Kazuma coming to stand next to me. “We aren’t out of danger yet, are we?” He stated loudly, drawing the attention of everyone who had been looking around.

I grimaced but nodded. “No, we’re not,” I reluctantly acknowledged. I floundered, then, realizing that I didn’t know how to explain what the actual danger was.

How do you explain something like a destabilizing power core to people who merely understood lightning, much less electricity?

“There’s something in the bunker that’s going to explode and destroy the mountain,” I eventually settled on. “We have to get off, and I don’t know how.”

At the grim looks my companions exchanged, I was non-plussed. Huh.

I guess it hadn’t been that hard to explain.

As if to underscore my explanation, we all felt it as another tremor struck Goryuen. Somewhere deep, deep below us, I could hear a cracking and groaning sound, as if the very bones of Vereden were struggling to withstand a mighty force. The noise echoed up out of the bowl of the caldera eerily, resounding as if it were little more than a speaker. Everyone winced at the assault on their ears.

In my arms, I felt Aveline shudder anew and tighten her grip, causing me to realize I hadn’t covered her ears during my words to the group. I did my best to comfort her, laying one hand on her head and whispering in her ear. “Don’t worry,” I whispered to her, causing one fearful emerald eye to meet my own. I smiled at her. “No matter what, I’ll get you out of here.”

And…I would. I had realized one way that I could save Aveline and I from the explosion.

I could fly us out of here.

With the wings granted to me by Vis Maledicta Exactoris, I could simply fly away from the collapsing mountain with Aveline in my arms. She would be safe, then, and I would be keeping my promise to Cecily.

But to do so would be to leave all of my friends behind to die in the collapse. I don’t think I would be able to come back for anyone, too. The distance from here to the ridges and plateaus of the mountain range would already be the single longest distance I had yet flown. I would be exhausted by the time I reached a point where I could set the child down and wing back.

That wasn’t even considering that the mountain might have gone up by then.

No.

If I did this, it would be solely to save Aveline and I. It would be the ultimate betrayal of every ounce of trust that my friends and companions had placed in me. Not just on the large, arduous trek to reach the mountain, in the entire time I had known each and every one of these people. I...don't even think most of them would blame me for it, either. They were all noble enough, in their own way, that I suspected that some wouldn't begrudge me that choice. But…

But.

I…I think…if it came down to it…

I would do i-

I was knocked out of my grim thoughts by an unexpected sound. Sena had abruptly tensed her entire body and crouched down. Not to leap once more, as she had down at the door to the bunker.

No, this time, she threw back her head…

And roared, arcing her back as she did so.

Loud, deep, and bassy, something in my primordial DNA tensed at the sound of it. That was a call akin to a creature that hunted my kind across the plains and savannahs, back at the dawn of mankind. It echoed out across the caldera in a cacophony, almost defiantly drowning out the creaking and groaning coming from the base of Gorenzan. When the last note of the roar had faded, everyone looked over at the Shurengan with varying degrees of confusion or irritation.

“The hells was the point of that-”

Azarus never got the chance to finish his griping.

An answering roar echoed out across the caldera, even louder and deeper. There was a note of something familiar in that call that shivered across the Aether of the air, touching at the very soul. For a moment, I wasn’t able to parse where the cry had come from.

And then I followed Sena’s gaze and looked up.

Something was falling out of the sun.

At least it looked like that. At first it was a distant, indistinct black dot. But in seconds it grew larger and larger and larger until features became more visible.

It…looked like a cat?

My eyes widened as I made the connection, and I shouted. “MOVE!”

I and my companions scattered out of the way, and just in time. The figure that had almost seemed to be hiding in the light of Tarus above touched down onto the terrace we all stood upon with a small, localized earthquake. I stumbled from the force of it and looked up to see who I was already expecting to have descended on us.

Shurenga herself, only daughter of Tarus.

So that’s what she had meant, when she had said could scout around the island unseen. The daughter of the sun could literally hide in the light of her father on high and move about that way.

Kinda terrifying, honestly.

The already gargantuan form of Sena’s mother looked to have grown even more. The first time I had seen the titanic crimson-and-black saber-tooth tiger, she had stood multiple body lengths above me, and that has just been from the ground to her shoulders. Never mind her length. Now, though, she was larger.

I had already known Shurenga could change her size at will, considering the smaller form she had showed us that night in Mt. Umetsuji. But this was the exact opposite. Now the progenitor of the Shurengan people looked to be larger and longer than an eighteen-wheeled cargo truck from back home. Her long, flaming mane of Aetherial hair flowed in the wind as she pondered the whole of us, her amber eyes lingering briefly on the form of Aveline huddling in my arms. Then, she looked down at Sena near her feet and appeared to frown at her daughter. Sena’s ears flattened on her skull, and she bowed her head in contrition to her matriarch.

Ah, that’s right. In all the chaos, I had briefly forgotten that Sena had apparently followed us against the will of Shurenga and Tarus. That’s how she had ended up in the bunker herself when she had stalked her way up to the alcove hiding the bunker entrance. Just in time to get sucked in with the rest of us.

I shook that off at the same time Shurenga apparently put off her daughter’s punishment for later. “All of you, on my back,” Shurenga ordered us, her spiritual voice easily carrying over the rumblings increasing below us. “I shall ferry you away from this tomb.”

Guess Tarus had been keeping her updated.

Her tone brooked no room for argument, and why would I? Shurenga might as well be an angel descended from on high to save us from certain doom.

Almost literally.

Nobody argued with the gigantic Spirit made flesh, and instead clambered and jumped their way up onto the extremely broad, furry back of Shurenga. I situated myself near her head, with the rest of my companions at my back, so I could ask her a question.

I leaned into closer to an ear taller than I was and almost shouted into it. “What about Bella and Liora!? They were out here while we were in there!”

Shurenga shook her massive head slightly, as she crouched in place. “Worry not for your companions, Nathan Hart. Another has already seen to their safety. You shall see. Now, HOLD ON!”

I did as she asked, burying one hand deeply into the massive feline’s fur as the other held onto Aveline tightly. I hunched in place from what I was expecting to be quite the jump.

I wasn’t wrong.

Shurenga launched herself up and forwards in a display of physical might I hadn’t been sure was possible, and I was driven down almost flat onto her back from the g-forces alone. I heard the massive terrace we had been standing upon only moments ago outright shatter from the force of her leap, to crumble into the caldera blow. We all sailed out into the open space over the chasm that surrounded Gorenzan, some of us hollering in glee, some of us shouting in fear.

I couldn’t really tell which I was doing.

However, as I raised back up, trepidation rolled over me.

It wasn’t enough. Shurenga’s leap only appeared to have taken us halfway across the miles-wide distance from the mountain to the greater range. The daughter of Tarus already felt like she was starting to descend, and there was nothing but open air beneath us now. I opened my mouth to shout a warning or ask a question or something.

But I needn’t have worried.

Unexpectedly, Shurenga’s paws touched down onto something that sounded almost crystalline, and she started racing forward. At first, although I was relieved, I didn’t see what she was already sprinting along. But in moments, her path had extended out in front of her and revealed itself to me.

It looked like fire. Pure, solidified flame, in a form that almost resembled that of the communication stone she had given me those days ago. Shurenga was manifesting a road of the material in which to race across the breadth of the caldera to the other side. I shook my head in wonderment at the sight and I relaxed.

Sometimes, Vereden really did have magnificent sights to show me.

I relaxed too soon.

Behind me, I felt the increased rumblings of it first, and then the light. I turned my head just in time to watch as the gargantuan mountain of Gorenzan…

Began to crack, and an intense, blue-green light began to shine up from those fissures.

The core had finally gone critical.

<<Chapter 289 | Table of Contents | Chapter 291>>

Chapter 289 - Intervention

The questing tentacles of Lucretia’s curse lashed out blindly where I had been standing only moments ago, but I was already gone. I floated in the middle of the mountain cavern outside the bunker, everything for miles illuminated by the floating ball of fire conjured by Sena. Far off into the distance, hanging above the edge of the bunker, I could see the cable that had snapped and caused the entire structure to tilt. The frayed edge of it swung slowly in midair, while the connection point looked to have shattered completely.

My attention was immediately caught, though, when I heard another shattering, twanging sound coming off from my right. I followed it just in time to watch as another one of the suspension cables that trailed off miles above me snapped. The bunker shuddered and slumped further as I heard the same robotic voice echo out of the exit I had just flown from, now at an angle below me.

“T-MINUS SEVEN MINUTES UNTIL DETACHMENT.”

I snapped out of it and shook my head. We were still in danger, as far as I was concerned. I wheeled about in midair and flapped my way over towards the ledge where the rest of my companions stood waiting for me. In moments, I had touched down onto the stone path that looked to have been melted into place millennia ago. As I did so, I found a sight that both relieved and saddened me.

It looked like Aveline had fully woken up while I was escaping the bunker. Azarus was standing off to the side awkwardly as the little girl sat on Sena’s back, burying her face in the Shurengan’s crimson fur. Luckily, it didn’t look like the saber-tooth minded all that much. I was…pretty thankful that the child I had risked so much to save hadn’t seen me in my full, monstrous state yet. I gave Azarus a thankful nod as I passed him, which he returned, and then I vaulted back up onto Sena’s back. That caused Aveline to tense further and risk a single eye back to see who was now sitting behind her.

She teared up when she saw it was me and twisted in her seat to bury her face into my stomach, sobbing for the first time since I’d met her. While she vented her fear, I addressed the group. “We need to keep going,” I said lowly, trying not to frighten Aveline any more than necessary. “I’m not sure we’re safe yet. We need to try and get out of the mountain before the bunker falls. Renauld, back up with me. You’re not fast enough on your own. Everyone else, we run.”

That caused the questions on everyone's lips to die and nods to come my way. I held out a hand to help Renauld to help him into a sitting position behind me, and nodded to Sena’s questing eye when he had a good grip on me.

The granddaughter of Tarus lumbered back to her feat, and we were all off once more. Fading into the distance, I heard the last sound I’d ever hear from the Netherim bunker.

“T-minus six minutes until detachment…”

And then we were out of earshot. But I knew that likely wasn’t far enough. I situated Aveline closer on my hip, which the distraught child barely seemed to notice, and leaned down closer to Sena’s ear. “Six minutes, Sena. We have to be out of here by then.”

In response, Sena lowered her head and bore down harder into the stone of the tunnel, while I heard small explosions from the pads of her feat once more. I leaned up and covered Aveline’s ears as best I could, and shouted into the darkness of the tunnel. “ENHANCEMENT SKILLS! WE HAVE TO GO FASTER!”

Azarus exploded into his full transformed state once more, white light once again shone through Venix’s chitinous plates and wispy streams of what looked like water began to flow from each of Kazuma’s joints, trailing behind him. To my surprise, each of them were able to keep up with the sprinting form of the Shurengan beneath me. I expected that from Venix, but certainly not Kazuma, and Azarus wasn’t exactly known for his speed.

I started to have hope that this would be enough. With this, surely we would make it in time.

It turns out, though, that Lucretia wasn’t done with us.

Abruptly, we reached the end of the tunnel, and we discovered why this entrance into the mountain wasn’t known.

I slid down off of Sena’s back to stare at it in despair.

It was sealed off.

Dominating our view was a large, melted patch of stone that spanned over thirty feet above us. It almost looked like some kind of plug blocking off the path that Lucretia had created into her former home.

After they’d come in…they had disguised their entrance.

I grit my teeth at the sight, while I felt tears of frustration unexpectedly well up in my eyes.

This couldn’t be it. Not after everything. Not after all we had endured, in that ancient, corroded hellscape. It couldn’t be to sit here, trapped like rats, as the artificial star of the Core went off like a bomb and incinerated us in a storm of Aetherial fire.

There had to be something, anything we could do!

I nearly ordered everyone to start digging and blasting their way through the stone of the mountain when I heard something behind us. Something that caused the bottom of my stomach to drop even further.

A faint whispering.

At first, I thought that on top of everything, Lucretia’s curse had followed us beyond the bounds of the bunker and into the tunnel. I expected to find hordes and hordes of violet, corrupted tentacles hunting in order to drag us back into that doomed bunker.

I was wrong, though. While there were hordes coming up the tunnel behind us, they weren’t born of the curse.

Instead…it was the dead.

My mouth dropped open in shock as I watched dozens, hundreds…no…

Thousand and thousands and thousands of ghosts come flying down the length of the tunnel. Indistinct and formed of ethereal emerald energy, they poured forth in masses and masses of vaguely human-shaped figures spiraling and winding among themselves in a nearly solid wall of…

What? Ectoplasm? Was that a thing?

I…had heard from Sylvia, months and months ago that ghosts were real as a subspecies of undead, but…

I hadn’t expected my first encounter with them to be such an unbelievable amount.

I wasn’t the only person to notice the oncoming wave of ghosts. All of my companions turned around to see what I had and stopped with open shock at the near tide of phantasm that were nearly on us. Aveline stirred from her fright long enough to try and raise her head from its buried position in my chest, but I stopped that.

“What the hells…” I heard Kazuma mutter off to the side.

If…these were…hostile…I wanted to spare her the sight of them.

Because there was nothing we could to do stop this.

We braced ourselves for the wave, only for them to flow around us. The ghosts ignored us altogether in order to crash against the sealed form of the tunnel instead. The surface of the sealed stone exploded into fragments of loosed rock each and every time one of the spirits impacted the plug. They would reform afterward into that same, ghostly emerald shape, only to immediately crash into the seal once more.

And there were a lot of them.

So much stone was being excavated every second that all of us still among the living had to take a step back in order to not be shredded by it. Every moment, the plug was reduced, and we were one step closer to the open air.

“System save me…” I heard Renauld breathe, for the first time since I’d known him making the sign of the Gyre with his hands. I hadn’t known he was religious…but I didn’t blame him for it, at the otherworldly sight.

I wasn’t even Catholic, and I wanted to make the sign of the cross anyway.

While my friends and companions were gaping in wonder at the sight of the undead saving our hides, something caught my attention. A whispering almost directly behind me, feminine in nature. I shivered as I felt a presence manifest at my back. Cautiously, I turned in place, only to see a familiar sight.

I recognized this person.

Travers had used her likeness to get us through the Engineering sector, after all.

Standing before me was the ghostly form of Doctor Cecily Montblanc, Chief Engineer of the Netherim bunker. The color had been leeched from her, unlike Traver's illusion, to be replaced by the emerald green of the ectoplasm of her fellow spirits. Her long, ghostly hair floated in an unfelt breeze as she ignored me completely, instead slowly approaching the child held in my arms.

“Cecily…” I breathed in shock at the sight of her. “You…you came to save us…all of them.” I shook my head in wondering realization. “You roused them for us, you must have…”

All of the long dead souls that must have lay in the Maturation Halls, possibly even the entire bunker…

They had come when their Chief Engineer called.

Aveline must have heard me because she looked up from where her head had been buried in my chest. “Mama?” I heard her whisper in sudden hope.

I…could have stopped her then, before she turned around to see the deathless form of her ghostly mother…

But I didn’t think it was my place. Nor would it be right to.

The moment Aveline laid eyes on Cecily, she recognized her. No matter the state of living, a child knew when their mother was near.

Aveline instantly started struggling in my arms, reaching for her mother with yearning, outstretched hands. “MAMA!” She shrieked, sudden tears flowing freely down her face. I set her down without protest, and the little girl immediately sprinted the short distance to the ghostly form of Cecily.

Next to and behind me, I saw and felt it as the rest of my friends turned to watch the reunion of mother and daughter, drawn by the scream. All of them to the last immediately understood what was happening, and both them and I stared solemnly at what this could only be.

A final goodbye.

I expected Aveline to tragically pass through the immaterial form of her mother. I was both relieved and surprised when instead, she fell into the arms of Cecily in a sobbing hug, held firmly in the dead woman’s arms. The ghostly emerald eyes of Cecily Montblanc stared down fondly at the distraught form of her still living daughter, reaching up to idly brush a loose strand of hair behind Aveline’s ear.

“My little hazelnut…” I heard a soft voice whisper upon the wind. “This…is farewell…”

Aveline raised her head in order to stare up at her mother pleadingly. “Mama, no…”

“I’m sorry, Aveline,” Cecily said, sorrow thick in her breathless voice. “But I cannot stay. I was only granted this last chance by She Who Breathes herself. Soon, I will pass beyond the veil and we shall not see each again for a very, very long time.” She cupped Aveline’s cheeks with two ghostly hands as her daughter started sobbing once more in renewed, childish grief.

She…truly was a smart kid. She understood what that meant.

“Dry your tears, my little hazelnut. This is not goodbye. Only…until next time,” Cecily whispered, surprisingly at peace with her own death. “You are meant for great things, Aveline Montblanc. We shall meet again, one day, in a land much purer than this. When that time comes, we shall dance together and you can tell me of all that you accomplished. It will be a happy day, I promise you. But it will not come for many, many years. Now YOU must promise me that you will live well. Mourn me little, my dear. A part of me shall always be with you.”

Aveline screwed at her eyes with one small fist, staring up at her mother with reddened eyes…

And nodded. “Okay,” I heard her whisper, voice quavering. “I promise.” With that, she leaned back into hug her undead mother once more.

To my surprise, I heard muffled sobbing coming from my left. Turning my head, I saw that it was coming from Renauld. The Gnoll Healer looked to be overcome by the parting scene of mother and child, and wasn’t able to hold back his tears.

I…couldn’t blame him.

Solemnly, Azarus offered Renauld a dirty handkerchief the dwarf pulled from under his breastplate. The Gnoll didn’t care, he just took it and blew into it.

When I turned back to face the duo, I felt a chill run down my spine when I noticed that Cecily was now staring straight at me. The two of them had stood up from their crouch, and while I was fixed by the mother, the daughter was still clutching at her ghostly pants, unwilling to let go as of yet. Slowly, the two of them approached me.

Before I could speak, I was silenced by Cecily’s raised hand. “Remember your promise,” Her voice drifted my way. “I hold you to it now and forever more, Nathaniel Hart.”

I nodded, relieved that was all she had to ask of me. I was already intending to do that, anyway. “I will.”

Cecily’s eyes narrowed at me. Quicker than I could track, her ethereal hand darted up, grabbed my collar, and dragged me close enough that I could feel a cold wind blowing into my face. This close to her, I swear I could see the faint outline of a skeleton inside of her ghostly form, its hollow sockets staring into my eyes. “Remember,” She hissed at me. “Now and forevermore, seedling.”

The most intense shivers I’d ever felt in my life hit me then, all at once. They started from my spine before traveling to all corners of my body. I seized briefly, my fingers and toes curling involuntarily as I stared at Cecily in sudden, intense, soul-deep shock.

That name…how…

That must have been the reaction Cecily wanted because she stepped back in order to have one more private parting with her daughter. I staggered away from her as she did, only to be caught by the mailed hands of Azarus. I barely heard him at first, but eventually, his voice reached me.

“…ate! Nate, are ya alright?!”

I stared up at him blankly for a moment before I got hold of myself. “How did she know that…” I whispered, terrified that I knew the answer.

“What? Knew what, Nate?” I heard Azarus say, as if from a vast distance.

Slowly, I met Azarus’s name. “She…she called me by my mother’s childhood nickname for me,” said haltingly. “Nobody…nobody should know that here.”

Azarus knew what that meant. I’d told him, after all, that my mother was dead.

And had been for a long, long time.

My Dwarven friend shivered with me and made the sign of the Gyre.

We were interrupted, then, by something new. Coming from behind us, I saw something that nearly made me weep it was so welcome.

A shaft of sunlight, bright and beautiful, piercing through the dark of the tunnel.

The uncountable horde of ghosts had broken through.

<<Chapter 288 | Table of Contents | Chapter 290>>

Chapter 288 - Erasure Protocol

I barely had more than a second to gape at the cloud of ash that settled onto the white steel floor of the bunker where the Lich had stood moments ago, before a loud, clear female voice began to echo through the halls. I couldn’t even where it was coming from, as all the light sources around us began to pulse an ominous red.

“ALL HANDS, EVACTUATE,” The robotic female voice droned. “I REPEAT, ALL HANDS, EVACUATE. ERASURE PROTOCOL HAS BEEN ACTIVATED, UNDER AUTHORITY OF…‘DOCTOR CECILY MONTBLANC. OCCUPATION: CHIEF ENGINEER.’ FACILITY CABLES WILL BE DETACHED IN T-MINUS FIFTEEN MINUTES.”

My eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets at the implication of that, as I felt the now dissipated Lich’s bindings vanish as well.

Travers had activated something called the Erasure Protocol?! He’d done it with Cecily’s ID card at that! If…the cables holding this entire facility suspended in the center of the mountain were the be released…

Then it would plunge straight down to the bottom, right to where Kazuma and I had rescued Venix. The entire bunker would be annihilated from such a fall.

Wait. Waitwaitwait.

What the fuck would that do to the Core in such a crash?

I cast a quick look over the artificial star composed of Mana and Ki, and was alarmed to notice that it was starting to bulge oddly in places. In that split second, I saw the containment shield fail briefly in a single spot before it reasserted itself. But not before a single emerald lick of flame lashed out and scored the steel ceiling.

If that thing went up…

Just how big of an explosion would it be?

Alright.

Enough standing around.

Time to get the fuck out of here.

I bent down and scooped up the small form of Aveline from the floor, noting as I did so that she was starting to stir ever so slightly. Over the panicked adrenaline that was now starting to pound through my veins, my Core Ring idly noted that with Travers true death, whatever he was using to keep his daughter asleep had passed with him.

I told it to shut the hell up and keep focused.

But before we could dash out of what might just be the most perilous sector of the entire bunker right now, I was stopped by the sound of a door of all things. A sliding, pneumatic one, not all that dissimilar to the one that had been on Travers clinic.

I risked a glance over to my right and blinked at the odd sight I found.

A small section of the spherical chamber, set into the wall, had abruptly receded to reveal a hidden alcove. On the other side of it, I could see a number of physical switches, screens, and monitors. I…had little idea of what it could have been, but none of that mattered. What did was what came drunkenly stumbling out of the small room.

The lost Shurengan that Tarus had asked us to find down here, as part of Azarus’s agreement to become his Envoy.

Oddly, I recognized this cat.

That was Sena. One of the guardians of Mt. Umetsuji, and possibly the second strongest of the Shurengans next to Tarus’s daughter herself. What the hell had she been doing, tailing us? Honestly, I would have expected her brother Gin instead of her. The male Shurengan had struck me as particularly willful.

A droning, mechanical female voice echoing up and down the halls reminded me that I didn’t have time to consider such things.

“T-MINUS FOURTEEN MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

Fuck it. I could question her later.

Assuming there was a later.

“SENA!” I bellowed over the sound of the klaxons and the voice, waving my free hand. “OVER HERE!”

Previously Sena had looked to be near drunk, wincing at the piercing sounds echoing all around us. Still, one of her ears twitched my way at my call, and she looked much more alert as she faced me. In seconds, the large saber-tooth had bounded over our way.

“HART!” Sena shouted, to be heard over the cacophony. “WHAT IS GOIN-”

I cut her off. “WE NEED TO GET GOING NOW OR WE’RE DEAD! FOLLOW ME!” Without even looking at the sapient feline, I turned towards the exit hall and sprinted that way, pumping my legs as hard as I possibly could. Thankfully, Sena must have realized that now wasn’t the time for questions as I heard her start padding swiftly after us.

Good.

I barely paid any attention to the piles and piles of dead, shattered AutoMats that Travers had left in his wake as we exited the Core room, chased by the sounds of blaring alarms and droning robotic women. Instead, I focused more on clutching the limp form of Aveline closer to my chest with both arms.

Please, please let her stay out of it long enough for us to get out of here. A panicking child would make everything so much harder, and my idea was already a stretch as it was.

I’d had it on the walk to the Core, after all. I just had to hope that my friends and companions had dealt with Harlow quickly, so they could get out as well.

Fuck I hope their idea of an exit was better than mine.

“T-MINUS THIRTEEN MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

I was startled as I felt a large, furry mass abruptly shove itself under my legs as I ran. In seconds, I found myself sitting astride the broad, crimson back of Sena as she picked up speed down the narrow corridors of the Engineering sector.

“Where?” Sena growled shortly from beneath me.

I took a deep breath and nodded sharply, taking one hand from Aveline and clutching at the scruff of Sena’s striped neck. I leaned down closer to her ear. “Ahead! And then stop at the intersection!”

Sena picked up the pace underneath me. Now the white steel walls, illuminated by blaring red klaxons, were really flying by. We arrived at the four-way, tree-shaped intersection that marked the separation points the Engineering sector, the Core sector, and the rest of the bunker within what felt like moments.

“T-MINUS TWELVE MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

I opened my mouth to direct Sena once more, but I was interrupted again before I could do so. Coming from my left was a piercing, shrieking noise so loud that it cut through both the wailing of the klaxons and the droning of the voice.

Both Sena and I turned our heads towards the left tunnel just in time to watch as the massive, corroded door that led towards the upper floors of the bunker bulged outwards. The sound was coming from the already tortured steel of the door warping more and more from repeated impacts, coming one after the other. In seconds, the door was barely hanging on by a thread, and with one last impact, was blown from its frame to skip down the hallway. Sena dodged out of the way with Aveline and I on her back, letting the slab of corroded steel skitter away from us down the corridor of the Engineering sector.

When we looked back down the hall it had come down, I was both relieved by what I saw and frustrated at the same time.

Those blows had been coming from Azarus in his transformed state. The massive armored form of the dwarf loomed large in the doorway, and rather than try to edge through it, my friend dispelled his own transformation in order to fit through. Following behind him came the rest of my companions, Kazuma, Renauld, and Venix.

You couldn’t have directed them anywhere else before you died, Harlow?!

None of them looked as alarmed as they should be, with the announcements being broadcast through the entirety of the bunker. I grit my teeth as I realized why.

They were in English, and Language Adaptation didn’t cover my birth tongue. To them, all of this flash and noise was likely nothing more than an annoyance.

When they hurried up to me, flush from their likely victory over Harlow and relieved to see us, I disabused them of that notion. Before they could even open their mouths, I was shouting at them. “WE HAVE TO GET OUT NOW! THE BUNKER IS GOING TO FALL AND KILL US IF WE DON’T! FOLLOW ME!”

The smiles on their faces died at my words, while I saw Sena’s head briefly jerk up to stare at me in alarm as she finally understood why I had been so frantic. Thankfully, none of them argued with me. All of them followed after us, as I directed Sena down the hallway to our right.

“T-MINUS ELEVEN MINTUES TO DETACHMENT.”

The one where the open door to the interior of the mountain lay, air from the hollow howling across its surface. However, halfway down that length of corridor, all of us had to catch our balance as the entire structure of the suspended bunker abruptly lurched all around us, tilting to the right. Just outside of the black exit, I heard an enormously deep twanging sound, as if the bow of an immense violin had been thrummed too tightly and snapped from the force of it.

My heart stuttered in my chest as I realized what that had to be. One of the cables holding up the bunker must have sheared away prematurely. Thankfully, for now, it only appeared to be one of them. But that meant the entire structure was now out of alignment. Undue pressure was being exerted on the rest of the cables. Any of them could snap at any moment now.

I couldn’t expect the countdown to be accurate anymore.

I spurred Sena on, despite the angle we all had to walk at now. “KEEP GOING, HURRY! TO THE DOOR!”

I heard Sena’s fangs grind together beneath me and the claws on her feet dig into the steel beneath her. With only a few bounding strides, we reached the end of the hall and looked into blackness, now from a right angle. A few moments later, I heard everyone else reach us.

“LIGHT!” I bellowed, reaching for Starfire Veiling and Arboreal Channeling so I could easily channel my Mana. “WE NEED LIGHT TO FIND THE EXIT! THERE SHOULD BE SOMETHING OUT THERE!”

That’s what I had realized, earlier. At the time, I’d been thinking about how I had no idea where the actual door that had sucked us into the bunker lay in here. It could have been anywhere, considering I never found it in all of my wanderings through these halls. Back then, I’d thought about how Lucretia and her assault force had likely needed some way to reach this door from outside of the mountain. Maybe a tunnel of some kind, that we could have leisurely searched for in order to find a way outside of the mountain.

But we didn’t have the time for leisure, now. All I could do was hope that luck would be on our side, and the very woman who had doomed the Netherim would be our last chance to survive this.

Turns out, I didn’t even need to ask my companions for assistance. Beneath me, I felt it as the enormous lungs of the saber-tooth cat I sat astride inflated massively. Before I could process what that meant, Sena spat a gargantuan ball of flame out into the howling darkness of the mountain cavern. It didn’t dissipate, either. The shining ball of brilliant orange flame hung in the space like a small star, an almost natural reflection of the core in the process of destabilizing behind us.

Its light revealed our salvation.

On the opposite wall from us, I could see an absolutely massive hole dug into the rock wall of the mountain, easily large enough for an entire army to fit through.

There was a problem, however.

It was…quite far away. I had hoped that the wall wouldn’t be far from this particular side of the bunker like Harlow’s quarters had been. But no.

That…almost looked to be nearly an entire city block away from us.

I heard it as Azarus’s mailed feet came to a stop to mine and Sena’s left. “That’s…a damned long jump.” I heard him mutter, just barely audible over the alarms.

“T-MINUS TEN MINUTES TO DETACHMENT. ALL HANDS, EVACTUATE.”

I grit my teeth at the reminder. I looked over my shoulder at the rest of my friends, and considered everyone.

Who could make that jump, I wondered? Venix, most definitely. Me, no problem with my wings.

But everyone else?

The two of us would need to-

Before I could even voice that thought, I heard Sena speak up from underneath me. “I CAN TAKE FOUR OF YOU AT ONCE!” She shouted over the alarms. “THE REST I SHALL RETURN FOR!”

That…worked too. But she didn’t need to return, I’m thinking.

I slid off of the giant cat’s shoulders with Aveline in my arms, catching everyone else’s attention. Trying not to jostle the fitfully sleeping child, I set her into the arms of the person I trusted most in this world.

Azarus.

The dwarf had only a moment to look stunned before I grabbed him by the shoulders. “TAKE CARE OF HER! PROMISE ME, AZARUS!”

The expression on my best friend’s face…hardened, and he nodded at me. I noticed his grip tighten on the slim shoulders of the little girl. I nodded back, before turning to face the rest of my friends. “EVERYONE BUT VENIX, GET ON SENA! VENIX AND I CAN MAKE THE JUMP OURSELVES!”

I think.

I caught the Antium’s eyes, to find that he was already inspecting the gap with a critical eye. After a microsecond, he looked back at me and nodded decisively. I refrained from sighing in relief.

In moments, everyone but the Antium samurai and I had crawled up onto the broad back of the Shurengan.

She didn’t waste any time. I saw each of her four furred feet erupt into flames before she crouched just on the edge of the doorway.

Sena jumped.

What a leap it was. Sena left dents in the steel from the mini-explosions she seemed to have used to propel her across the distance to the cavern on the other side. Thanks to her floating flame, I easily saw it as she landed on the other side.

Once they were safe, I exchanged a glance with Venix and nodded his way, gesturing with one hand for him to go.

I wanted to be the last one out of here.

“T-MINUS NINE MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

Venix frowned at me but nodded. He must have realized we didn’t have time to argue about it. The Antium man approached the edge of the doorway and crouched lightly. I saw him draw in a deep breath before a white light began to shine through the cracks in his chitinous, armored skin as he activated some kind of Skill.

The force of his jump from that edge left deeper dents in the steel of the floor than even Sena’s explosions had. He touched down next to everyone else on the other side just as easily as the Shurengan had.

Now it was only me. I took a deep breath to settle my nerves as well, and approached the dented edge. Once there, activated Vis Maledicta Exactoris, shooting up to my full transformed height and unfurling my wings.

Before I stepped off the other edge to flap my way over to my friends, I stopped briefly to look over my shoulder. I’d wanted one last glance at the bunker I’d fought so hard to reach, and gotten such scattered answers from.

But I saw something else instead.

The curse.

I don’t know if Lucretia’s hex had enough sentience to it to realize that everything was coming to an end or not, or if it was just trying to stop me in particular from escaping like it had when I’d slipped from the grasp of my trial. But those same violet tentacles of corrupted Aether were slowly crawling their way down the hallway that led into the bunker proper, visible from around the corner.

Even more alarming, I thought I heard a feminine voice just on the edge of my hearing, full of a deep, malevolent hatred. It hissed and spat at me, almost indignant that I dared to escape the trap laid by Lucretia Mors all those millennia ago.

“…pretender…rule-breaker…”

Okay.

That was enough of that.

I kicked off of the edge of the doorway and flapped out into the darkness, chased by the sound of alarms and warnings.

“T-MINUS EIGHT MINUTES TO DETACHMENT.”

……………………………………

AN:

An entire chapter that takes place in the span of seven whole minutes. That’s got to be a new record for me.

Feels a bit…excessive, but it’s meant to be a really tense seven minutes.

<<Chapter 287 | Table of Contents | Chapter 289>>

Chapter 287 - Wyrmfall

I crouched, motionless, along the outer rim of the railing that separated the inner walkway of the Core control room as a game of cat and mouse played out before my eyes. Just ahead of me, I watched as the tiny Sprite of azure flame and crimson thorn, shaped in the image of a tiny fairy, darted here and there before the enormous sphere of clashing Mana and Ki. Every so often, the construct under the control of my Core Ring would stop and perform a mocking gesture of some kind, directed towards the parasite at the center of the Netherim bunker’s power system.

The true form of the Dread Wyrm Tatsugan, he who had haunted Kawamara for centuries.

I was lucky that the small, indistinct form of the Wyrm inside that boiling sphere of energy didn’t seem to be able to fire indiscriminately at my own construct. It might have a near, perhaps even truly endless well of power to draw upon, but it didn’t seem to have the ability to use it efficiently. I noted coldly that the pause between blasts at my Sprite seemed to last at least a second each time it fired the stream of refined, mingled Aether.

That wasn’t much, admittedly.

But it would be enough for my purposes.

Still, not yet. My window of action had yet to come. The monster of Lucretia Mor’s making wasn’t nearly agitated enough for me to strike.

After all, it had yet to move from the center of the Core as it fired upon the creature vexing it. I couldn’t act before it did. I just didn’t have the means to reach it, there in the center of the captured artificial star of Netherim making. While the residual heat in this chamber wasn’t enough to sear my skin, that seemed to be because of a thin barrier I’d noticed clinging tightly to the surface of the Core. It didn’t seem to be doing much more than containing the heat, though. As part of its taunting, my Sprite had picked up a nearby shard of white steel and tossed it mockingly at the Wyrm. I’d noted that it seemed to pass through the thin bubble, only to start melting immediately once inside. The thin creature in residence had slapped the blob of slag away from it with what seemed to be its tail.

That had immediately told me several things.

Encouraging things.

This wasn’t an actual star. If it had been, that metal would have been immediately vaporized, I’m guessing. This was just a ball of superheated, Aetherial plasma.

Hot.

But not unworkable for my plan.

Eventually…

Eventually, an opportunity came.

As I’d hoped, the taunting of my Sprite began to get to the monster. It felt safe in the center of its home of millennia. I’m guessing nobody had ever made a serious attempt at its life over all of its time. After all, there was both nobody that could get in here, and nobody with the right authorization to do so. Plus, my little Sprite had yet to even try and attack the Wyrm. For the last several minutes, the fairy had done nothing but taunt and enrage it.

And so…

It drifted from the center of the star up to the edge of it, growing more distinct as it did so. Now I could make out what seemed to be grey, colorless scales upon a serpentine body. My belief was that the true form of the Dread Wyrm was trying to get a better bead on the Sprite mocking it.

But that was a mistake.

I immediately tensed at the sight and activated Might of the Wyrdwood at the highest intensity that I dared, hoping it wouldn’t shatter my veiling.

Twenty-five percent.

Luckily…

It held.

I dashed forward, stretching out one limb in particular.

My left, false one shaped from white-rainbow Primordium by the spiritual hands of Orus himself. It plunged into the boiling hot plasma of the contained Netherim star, and the leather glove concealing it was vaporized in an instant.

But more importantly, the arm itself held. All I felt from the residual sense of Aetherial touch from my prosthetic limb was a slight heat.

It truly was a mythical metal.

The completely unaware Wyrm didn’t even have the chance to react before my metal hand closed triumphantly around its slim body as tightly as I could.

And yanked it straight out of its burning home.

A panicked screech filled the air as the true body of Tatsugan was exposed to it, for the first time in likely millennia. The high-pitched frightened shrieks of the Wyrm as it writhed in my grip almost seemed to quiet the sounds of Travers battle beyond the entrance of the control room, as I got my first look at it.

The sight of the damned thing was…disgusting. It had the same basic body type of the Wyrmkin that I had encountered upon the shores of Goryuen so often, only…lesser, somehow. The angles of its skull were less defined, for one. Not quite as canine as it was almost rodent-like, and missing all of the wispy white hair of those that shared its same basic body type. It lacked the distinct, electric blue hue of the near revenants that it produced, as well as the darkened cobalt of its projection. Instead, the entire length of the squirming, crying abomination was a slate grey. It didn’t even have many scales, now that I looked closer at it. There were rows upon rows of them that looked to have fallen off, leaving only dry, cracked skin behind.

Actually, the entire look looked…withered, somehow. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought this creature was as undead as the Lich that had brought me to this point. But no. I could feel the pumping of blood behind my hands, signaling life.

Even the horns of the Wyrm were pathetic, compared to any other kind of Wyrmkin. Small and stubby, they barely looked to have developed at all.

I almost felt…pity, for the obviously aged, decrepit creature in my grip. Lucretia had created this thing ages and ages ago, only to abandon it in a fiery, dim hell. Not even limitless Aetherial power could truly forestall the march of time, I guess.

Not even for monsters.

But none of that changed the fact this thing needed to die if the people of Kawamara were ever wanted to be free of its shadow.

I lifted my drawn right dagger, and flipped the blade until it was pointed downwards, directly at Tatsugan. The movement seemed to knock the Wyrm out of it’s panic briefly, causing it to look up at me with wide, monstrous amber eyes.

It opened its rat-like mouth, and from between its cracked, yellowed fangs, I saw a blue-green glow.

I jerked my head to the side, just in time to dodge a thin spear of mingled Mana and Ki as it lanced out from the back of Tatsugan’s throat. Not fast, enough though, and not nearly strong enough to stop me. That was a far cry from the intense beams it had been shooting only moments earlier. I hissed as I felt the laser score the flesh of my left cheek, but mentally shrugged the pain off.

Just another scar for the collection, I suppose. It would soon be covered in blackened scales, anyway.

Enough of this.

I ignited my dagger in the cascading flames of The Scintillant Blade, and brought it down on the true, pathetic form of Tatsugan. The squirming mass seized in my palm as my blade easily pierced its thin scales, spasming in my palm as I stole its life. The contractions soon ceased, anyway.

Tatsugan stilled in my grip, and the life left its yellow eyes.

The Wyrm…was finally dead. And the instant it left its mortal coil, something happened that I had...somewhat expected. After all, the same thing had happened the last time I had directly slain one of the servants of the banished gods.

My Racial Talents spun up in a familiar way, drawing in environmental Aether as they prepared to drain something from the corpse of Tatsugan.

I was stealing a Skill again. I braced myself for the flood of power that was surely about to hit, praying all the while that whatever it was I got from the Dread Wyrm, it wasn't as momentous as Vis Maledicta had turned out to be. I'm not sure I could deal with another transformation that drastic.

I was...relieved, disappointed, and confused at the same time when what I drew from Tatsugan was the barest trickle of monstrous Aether, already being purified for my use. In moments, I felt something that was...a little minuscule settle into the core of my soul.

Huh. A bit...odd.

I didn’t get long to ponder the strangeness of my latest stolen Skill or exult in my victory over my second Calamity level threat, in the space of a mere six months.

A monstrously strong hand clamped down on my head from behind, and I felt the sizzle of Mana as some spell was cast on me. I stumbled away from the hand that had grabbed me, slumping to my knees as I felt Tatsugan’s slim body disperse into Miasma in my left hand. A tremendous sense of dizziness was rolling over me, all of a sudden. As my Outer Ring started to slip into unconsciousness, I felt it as my Sprite dissipated and my Core Ring slid home.

It pointed out something, as awareness fled from the both of us.

We had forgotten our suspicions about Travers, in the moment of our triumph.

Light fled from me, and the world descended into darkness.

…………………………………

I jerked awake violently. A sharp, bony foot was digging into the flesh of my ribs, almost grinding against me. I couldn’t have stayed asleep if I tried. Nor could I even try and pretend to be asleep, as my Nocturne training tried to insist I do. I’d flinched too obviously at the unkind awakening.

“Wake up, pretender,” I heard a familiar voice say from above me, flat in tone and devoid of emotion. “It’s time to finish all of this.”

My eyes flickered open, to find that the tall, desiccated form of Travers was staring down at me with an alien expression on his skeletal face. Despite the fact that I’d killed the Wyrm, and at least partially avenged his people, the Lich didn’t look like he cared at all.

About much of…anything, really.

I slowly sat up from where I had been lying discarded on the floor, idly noting that we were still in the Core control room.

I also noticed that my hands were tied behind my back in some way, likely through some Spell of the Lich's making. Subtle tensing of my muscles told me that there was no way I was going to break those bonds. I don’t think I could snap whatever Travers was holding me with through even the full strength of Vis Maledicta Exactoris combined with Might of the Wyrdwood.

Oh.

And he’d apparently bound my feet together too. Lovely.

All I could do was struggle into a kneeling position, driven there under the cold gaze of the Lich that I’d been outright expecting to betray me at the last moment.

Good job, Nate. Real on the ball, there.

I didn’t say anything to Travers, as I defiantly met his flaming, undead eyes. His lips curled slightly in response. I…couldn’t discern from what emotion, though.

It could have been either disgust…

Or amusement.

“I’ve…debated with myself, what I was going to do to you, pretender,” Travers said slowly, still meeting my eyes. “I have options, after all.”

“You could always just let me go to save your daughter,” I said flatly, refusing to be intimidated.

To my surprise, Travers nodded easily at my words. “Yes…that is one of them,” He acknowledged. “Another is that I could simply kill you, for the temerity of your pretension. Oh, save it,” He said, waving a hand to stop my mouth from opening in protest. Suddenly, some force beyond my control paralyzed my jaw, keeping me from speaking. All I could do was grunt up at the Lich, robbed of even my words. Travers continued his own monologue now that I was too muzzled to interrupt him, tapping his bony jaw in faux thought. “I could also simply force your soul from your body without killing it, leaving your empty husk behind, free for an enterprising Lich to inhabit. With a little effort on my part, I could once again find myself among the living to walk in the Garden beyond this wretched bunker.”

That didn’t sound good. I reached for Vis Maledicta Exactoris in response to the threat, and to my shock, found that it slipped beyond my fingers. In fact, I couldn’t use any of my Skills or abilities. Nothing would move or activate when I called for it.

Somehow, Travers had locked me out of my Status. At least…the active part of it. I think I still possessed the passive enhancements of my Virtues.

As if he could somehow tell what I had just done, the Lich smirked at me with dry, fleshless lips. “I may not be the Admin, pretender, but I still have higher access to the System than you do. Another mark against his desperate gamble. A fifteen-minute lockout may be the extent of my ability, but it shall be enough to decide your fate.”

He’d…suppressed my Status…

That…that had dire implications for dealing with…

To my surprise, Travers rolled his deathless eyes at me. “You’re thinking about Lucretia and her little conspirators, aren’t you? Jumping the gun, aren’t we? You should worry more about the now, instead of the future. Still, I wouldn’t worry about that, pretender. One of the first things the Admin did, during the fall, was strip them of access. Even with what they stole, it could not be restored to them,” He knelt down to eye level with me, resting his forearms upon the exposed bone of his knees, and winked at me. “The System is forever lost to them, not to fear. But back to you.”

Before I could react, Travers skeletonized fingers shot out to wrap around my throat. I choked as I was dragged up along with the Lich, as he rose to his full height. To my surprise, once the two of us were standing, he shoved me backward until I hit the railing behind me with a clatter.

“I’ve decided to let you live,” I heard, causing my head to snap up and back to the undead Doctor. I stared at him in sheer incredulity.

All of this, and he was apparently just going to let me go?!

Travers outright smirked at me. “But I’ll leave nothing for the vultures to pick over. One moment,” He turned away from me, and with a wave of his hand, the door to his clinic opened up right there in the middle of the Core control room. Under the much calmer green and blue glow of the artificial star, the door slid open and Travers walked through it. I thought about trying to break my bonds again, but before I could, the Lich appeared once more.

This time, carrying the slumbering form of his own daughter.

Aveline.

Travers walked over to where I was standing and tenderly set the little girl clutching her toy down onto the white steel floor. I could see the slight expansion and contraction of her chest as she slept easily, through all the the tension that filled the air.

Completely ignoring the both of us, now, Travers walked back over to stand in front of the Core with his back turned to the two of us, the bound and the sleeping. He raised his hands, and to my shock, something appeared at his fingertips.

It looked like some kind of hard-light control interface. I…had been wondering about the ‘control’ part of the control room, since I hadn’t seen anything like that in here with us. But I guess the Netherim had set it up to be as unobtrusive as possible. The red light of the hardened illusion cast an ominous glow back onto Aveline and I, outlining the Lich’s skeletal form.

Travers rapidly flickered through dozens and dozens of pages, commands, and buttons in the space of seconds. I noticed that he even reached into his coat and withdrew a familiar plastic rectangle, holding it over the interface until an answering beep recognized it. Finally, though, he seemed to reach the end of whatever it was that he was doing. His finger hovered over one last, large button before he turned to face me once more.

From the pocket of his Doctor’s coat, I saw Travers retrieve something…oddly familiar.

A small, toy doll. Naked and female, it seemed to be wrought from plastic with synthetic golden hair, fading with the passage of millennia. He clutched it tightly in his left hand and gazed down at it, almost seeming afraid. But then his gaze drifted up to rest on Aveline, and the fire of his undead eyes seemed to firm.

Doctor Jonathon Travers nodded at me one last time. “You’ll have plenty of time, the both of you. Though this is goodbye, I left a little gift within the gleam for your eyes only.” He said cryptically. “Live well, Nathan Hart. Live well…Aveline Elise Montblanc-Travers.”

His right finger stabbed down onto the hard light button of the control panel, while a green fire erupted in his left hand holding the doll. In moments…

The doll was little more than ash.

The Lich that had once been Aveline’s Father immediately collapsed into dust, and a wailing klaxon filled the air.

<<Chapter 286 | Table of Contents | Chapter 288>>

Chapter 286 - Collision

AN:

You know, something just occurred to me about something you guys might be interested in. Last month my publisher conducted an interview about me and Sins, and included it in an article on their website. Up until this moment, I didn't even think that maybe you guys might be interested in that.

Maybe.

Derp.

Link posted below, if you're at all curious. The section with me is the last one at the bottom of the page.

https://www.levelup.pub/litrpg-weak-to-strong-mc

........................................

Three things happened simultaneously, then.

The first was that Travers swiped the ID card he had retrieved from the recently animated bones of his long lost lover. The minute the small piece of plastic reached the end of the reader, the blinking light on the console switched from red to a solid green. Hidden mechanisms and gears in the walls to the sides of the vault door came to life smoothly, and the gigantic doors began to slide open slowly.

The second was that the beeping of the AutoMats abruptly ceased, causing a sudden, ringing silence to echo up and down the halls we were party of. The red LED of the defense robots no longer blinked with the sounding of their scanners.

Instead, it strengthened. In fact, so much so that a long, thin, red beam projected itself from the front of every single one of the murder roombas.

It didn’t burn what it touched.

But it was marking the target.

Travers.

And I…

The third thing was that my cast of Thorn Cloak activated, buoyed by my new Talent Starfire Veiling.

Only…it was different now.

Instead of a cloak comprised entirely of crimson red thorns, burrs, and snarls, it was instead a cloak of night. In a rolling wave, the silk of my cloak transformed itself into a reflection of the night sky, complete with stars. Only, these weren’t the pure white light of stars that truly existed within the void beyond the sky.

They were blue. Bright blue, and visibly burning with lashing azure flames. Each and every one of them seared through the void, and framing it all were familiar shapes. As if what I wore was still a true cloak comprised of cloth, the stitching of the garment was hewn from the crimson red of my common theming.

The endlessly crawling crimson of my thorns. It flowed in lines of thread along the edges, almost seeming like the border that kept the wavering flame contained in my cloak from spilling out into the world, edging along and framing it all.

At first, I was confused. The function of this enhanced version of my Thorn Cloak didn’t seem all that different, despite the different theming. I appeared to still be camouflaged and fading into the background of the Atrim, thankfully to the extent that none of the AutoMats were able to get a lock on me. Was this really all that Starfire Veiling had done?

And in the midst of all of that, I felt it.

The enhanced Skill had a secondary trigger to it, waiting just out of my reach.

In the moments before I touched upon it, I looked up from my brief, awed inspection of my newest ability and intended to meet Travers disguised eyes.

Only…

They were no longer the illusioned orbs of Cecily Montblanc.

In that brief moment, Travers had dropped his illusion of his daughter’s mother and reverted to his true undead state. All around me I could hear a sudden humming coming from the hundreds of AutoMats that surrounded us as the targeting beams painting his figure intensified.

I met the glowing orbs of the Lich before me…

And exchanged a nod with him. For once, I didn’t get the impression that Travers despised my very existence. Instead, I received a sincere parting.

“Good luck,” He breathed

And then the AutoMats fired.

From dozens and dozens of guard drones leapt intense beams of searing hot red light that screamed through the air, far more powerful than the apparently weak beam I’d seen back at Harlow’s lair. I was lucky that I’d already ducked and rolled out of the way from the seemingly endless barrage of fiery death that the AutoMats were bombarding the ancient Lich with.

There was no way I would have been able to survive that. I would have been atomized from such an assault in an instant.

But not Travers.

Instead, microseconds before they impacted him, the Lich raised one hand…

And a bubble shield of cold, deathless, green Mana enveloped his skeletal form. The rays of searing hot beams collided with the shield, and they were found wanting.

At least, initially. Inside of that safe zone, I could see the undead Doctor grimacing from the effort to sustain his defense.

Even though it had only been seconds since the console had been activated, I decided it was time to stop dawdling. I reached for the secondary activation of my enhanced cloak, and triggered it before the doors could fully open.

Instantly, I disappeared from sight. Where before my cloak had only been camouflaging me from sight, it now seemed like I was truly invisible. Looking down, I couldn’t even see my own body, even if I moved my hand from outside of my cloak.

So.

This was the true power of what Starfire Veiling had done for Thorn Cloak. I couldn’t help but wish I’d gotten this cloak last year when I was actually acting as a covert Agent and assassin.

It probably would have helped.

Might have just encouraged me, though.

I shook off such useless thoughts and turned to face the monstrously huge vault doors blocking the way into the core control room. Turns out, they weren’t the only set. The outer doors must have been three feet thick, but apparently, that wasn’t enough for the Netherim. Beyond the first ones, I could see that another pair were starting to open. And beyond that, another.

At least nine whole feet of strange, ceramic-like steel protecting their power core.

And it hadn’t been enough to stop Lucretia, in the end.

I had to duck into the opening of the first doors to escape the barrage against Travers, as the AutoMats started to whirr and circle the atrium, almost like they were searching for a weak spot in his shield. If I hadn’t, I probably would have been cut in half just as an unintended casualty. As it was, I had to wait while the second set of doors opened enough for me to step into that gap.

As I waited in that small, cramped alcove I made the decision to send the signal we'd agreed upon to tell my companions to start their assault on Harlow. At...the time, I had thought it was a mildy humorous way to poke fun at Azarus. Maybe lighten the mood a little.

Now I realized it just sounded a bit dumb. Oh well.

No use crying over spilled milk.

As the second set of doors creeped open, I looked up and whispered. "Azarus isn't as good of griller as he thinks he is."

Hope you're paying attention, Tarus.

It turned out that the third set of doors turned out to be the last. As they slid open, an intense, searing light spilled out in the darkness of the hall before the control room, and I finally learned just what an Aetheric Fusion Collider truly was.

It was a star.

A captured, artificial star composed entirely of purest Mana and Ki.

I braced myself against the wave of wind and heat that rolled over me, barely registering the large, spherical chamber that the captured sun sat smack dab in the middle of. To the best of what my quick glance could tell, it wasn’t as well put together as the rest of the core sector was. There were great rents in the walls through which massive, thick cables could be seen running up and down through. Some were cut in half, some were not, and I could see sparks of what seemed to be electrical power occasionally flying out of.

I didn’t see a single AutoMat inside this chamber. It made me think the Wyrm didn’t allow them inside its holdfast, not even to repair the possible ancient battle damage.

This chamber might not have been opened once in the last five millennia. Possibly more.

More than that though...

I didn't see the Shurengan who had inadvertently followed us into this hell within. No crimson and black-furred saber-tooth cats were in residence in the Core control room, despite what Harlow had told us.

Had the former Security Chief lied?

But I didn't have time to consider that any longer, because the bulk of my attention lay upon the star.

It was massive, easily over twenty feet in diameter. Violent streams and waves of verdant Ki and oceanic Mana clashed endlessly in the artificial star. At any moment, one type of converted Aether would dominate the bulk of the sphere, only for that change at a moment's notice in an eternal war. The entire star was suspended over a small podium of a…different kind of metal, while huge rings of that same familiar material slowly rotated around the sphere, almost like the revolution of a solar system.

My lips parted in pure shock as I recognized it.

That…that wasn’t the strange ceramic steel that the Netherim has seemed to be so fond of. That was Primordium. The same metal that Tlazo had called an outright myth. The same metal that had taken a Greater Spirit to condense the smallest amount.

The same metal that comprised my new prosthetic limb.

And here the Netherim had built an entire power core, ringed in tons of the mythical metal.

How…? Where did they get it all?

I didn’t get the chance to goggle at the titanic feet of engineering before me for long. I was brutally reminded of my entire purpose down here when I saw faint movement in the mass of shifting emerald and sapphire power.

A faint, sinuous outline floated up from the bottom of the sphere, where it had been lingering. I hadn’t noticed it at first, mistaking it for a mere darkened patch at the base. Perhaps a connection to whatever system was maintaining the edifice? But no.

Now there was a slim line seemingly swimming through the Aetheric fire of the core, upright and no longer than my arm. It floated through the shaped pool of pure energy like it was so much water.

That had to be my target.

The parasite Lucretia had implanted in her own people’s lifeblood.

The Wyrm that had haunted Kawamara for millennia.

Tatsugan’s true form.

Two bright yellow lights opened up on the dim outline of the creature, around where the head was.

They flashed.

I don’t know what it was that saved me then. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was the sounds of battle from behind me, a reminder of how hazardous this bunker was.

But my instincts suddenly screamed at me.

I ducked, and that was the only reason I didn’t die.

A thick, continuous spear of burning Mana and Ki, mingled together into a laser, screamed through the air as it passed overhead of me. I watched, breathless, as it soared all the way past me and far down the hallway Travers and I had so carefully strode down what felt like only moments ago. It traveled so far that I could see all the way down to the intersection easily. Not only that, but the last, third door that led to the core chamber hadn’t fully opened when the Wyrm fired in my direction.

The heat of the beam had been enough to melt both sides of the doorway opening, and the edges of it glowed cherry red as they dripped molten steel to the floor.

I may have dodged the first blast, but I was doomed if the Wyrm fired again. I had no room to maneuver where I crouched.

But nothing came. Those barely visible golden eyes simply stared in my direction, without ever seeing me.

I wanted to breathe out in relief as I realized what happened, but I didn’t dare make the noise.

It couldn’t see me…

It couldn’t see me!

The Wyrm had just fired in the general direction of the opening, at around normal height for someone. It’d hoped to slay whoever had been curious and capable enough to reach the core chamber and open the doors.

But it had missed, because my newly enhanced cloaking Skill made me flat out invisible.

And there lay my chance.

Carefully, I slowly started to edge my way forward as the doors slid open more and more. I tensed as I felt another blast from the Wyrm lance overhead, but to my surprise, I heard something else.

A sound akin to a ringing gong.

Risking a quick glance back, I saw that Travers had briefly stepped away from the console and into line of fire down the hall, as he dealt with the AutoMats. The beam from the Wyrm had skimmed the dome shield around the Lich, and the sound I’d heard was the mingled Mana and Ki scattering off of the surface. Hastily, Travers ducked back out of the way, once more focusing on the robots. For a moment, I was confused as to why he’d done that…

But then I realized the gift he’d given me.

Travers was the only person the Wyrm had sighted, since the opening of the door. He’d deliberately drawn it’s attention in order to make the creature think he actually was the only person down here.

A smile crossed my lips, and I turned back around once more. This time, I slid forward much more confidently, although I was still careful not to make noise as I did so. In moments, I had entered into the chamber proper, and as I did so, I couldn’t help but grimace.

The heat from the thrumming Aetheric core was much more intense, once you were actually inside here. It wasn’t more than I could handle, but it was making me wonder how I was going actually attack the Wyrm if it was hiding in the heart of an artificial star.

How the hell was that thing surviving such temperatures?

God, that wasn’t even the only issue. As I slunk along the edges of the spherical chamber, circling the creature still watching the hall, I was dismayed to see that it really was in the exact center of the core. That meant there was at least ten feet of burning hot Aether on each side of the Wyrm.

I didn’t have a way to hit it, buried in that near plasma as it was. As hardy as Oninite was, there was no way it could survive those temperatures.

I would know. I’d forged all of those weapons.

Even if my extendable spears might just have the length to hit the monster, I’d have to throw them in order to do that. If I did, The Scintillant Blade wouldn’t last in order to strike the monster before the Skill faded.

And that was the only way I was willing to actually slay it. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t be certain of this thing’s death otherwise.

An idea…did occur to my own Core Ring, as I was considering the entire edifice of the artificial star. Specifically…

The Primordium.

I grimaced but reluctantly agreed with it. That…might work.

But I’d have to distract the Wyrm to the extent that it drew closer to the edge of the sphere. Luckily, I had another idea of how to accomplish that.

I mentally sighed, and reached for Manifestation of Agony and cast it. In moments, the little Sprite of mingled crimson thorns and azure flame sprang into being, my Core Ring neatly sliding inside. As it did, I dove off to the left of the construct, while said Sprite did the same to the right.

Good thing, too.

The Wyrm immediately swiveled to face our previous position and fired. The searing hot beam of Mana and Ki missed both of us and scored the outer wall of the chamber, severing several different cables inside in a shower of electrical sparks.

I stayed away, wary of any stray shots as my Sprite reoriented midair.

And stuck its little thorn thumbs into its non-existent ears and waggled its eight other thorn fingers, blowing a soundless raspberry as it did so.

That was my Core and I’s grand scheme.

Mockery.

The barely visible glowing golden eyes inside the core…

Narrowed.

The Wyrm fired at the Sprite once again, and the chase was on.

<<Chapter 285 | Table of Contents | Chapter 287>>

Chapter 285 - Core Sector

Travers and I had to walk slowly through the AutoMat infested hallway in order to not alarm or alert the sentry roombas in any way. If we picked up our pace at all, the beeping of their scans as we paced our way down the path would increase, almost as if they were bombs ready to go off at any moment.

Bombs with lasers that would incinerate both myself and the Lich disguised as his long-dead lover.

Because of the slow pace as we maneuvered among the AutoMats, I had plenty of time to check my Status. It had been quite a while since I’d had the time or the presence of mind to do so. I don’t think I’d even considered doing it ever since the fight with the Oni way back in the middle of the Goryuen range.

I’d gotten into…quite a few fights, since that admittedly large battle.

I called up my Status with Hidden Amidst the Spheres.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Not at all.

You have gained 24 levels!

You are now level 166.

Dual Wielding is now Lvl. 4

General Weapons Proficiency is now Lvl. 4

Flight is now Lvl. 2

You have 240 unspent Virtue points

Level 160 Class ability inherited.

Would you like to review your Status?

Y/N

Yes, yes I would like to review my Status, thank you very much. I imagine any kind of gains would help me here at the last moment, before I did my best to kill an ancient, god-born parasite. I allocated my unspent Virtue points in a downright routine manner by now.

Name: Nathaniel Eugene Hart

Titles: Unbound Liberator, Calamity Slayer

Level: 166

Age: 25 Sol

Race: Human (Precursor)

Affinity: Terrestrial/Celestial

Classes: Thornblade Acolyte (Uncommon)

Professions: Aetherial Melding

Health: 20250/2250

Mana: 81%

Vitality: 225

Strength: 100

Spirit: 60

Dexterity: 390

Perception: 225

Intelligence: 535

Wisdom: 535

Free Points: 0

Options: [Talent Page], [Skill Page], [Profession Page]

And then it was time for what I was really interested in.

Level 160 Class Ability

Starfire Veiling (Talent): Touch the Terrestrial with the Celestial. Augment the Crimson with the Azure.

Well, I was getting used to the odd descriptions of abilities that the System doled out by this point. I could take a guess as to what this did. It was something that I had…honestly been expecting. Something nice and straightforward.

This, I think, was an activated Talent that I could use to enhance my abilities with the azure fire of my newer Celestial Affinity. Something that would just increase the potency of my activated Skills by uh…

Well, I think it ignited them in some way?

It…maybe would have different effects, based on which Skill it was applied to at the time. That was as much as I could tell, poking and prodding at the new, smaller blue star now orbiting the greater mass of my Mana Core in the center of my soul.

God but Ringed Mind was useful. My Core ring could dive into the center of my mind, all the while my Outer was busy threading the needle around a particularly stubborn AutoMat lingering in the middle of the hall.

The damned thing beeped warningly at Travers and I as we edged past it.

However, to my disappointment, I don’t think I could channel Starfire Veiling towards other Talents. It would only activate when I guided the star toward Skills.

Wait, shit.

This was another channeled ability I had. My first was Arboreal Channeling, the Talent meant to help me in managing my Man-

Wait.

Waitwaitwaitwait.

I halted in the middle of the hallway, causing Travers to look over ‘her’ shoulder and glare at me. “What are you doing, ‘Jonathon’?” ‘She’ said, audibly fighting to stay calm at me.

My Core just ignored ‘her’ as implications of what that particular combo of Talents might do for me, while my Outer ring got us back underway.

I…

Maybe the System really was watching out for me.

First, though, I had to test it. I hadn’t been able to activate the Talent on any other Talent’s, but I had yet to try Arboreal Channeling. Carefully, I coaxed the little blue star towards the bundle of roots that represented Arboreal Channeling in my soul.

Activation.

Connection.

The roots of Arboreal Channeling unfurled, and the star of Starfire Veiling fit into the hollow that they formed. To my surprise, a root I had never noticed on the back of the ball lashed out and, without my consent, connected a third Talent to the new trifecta. This time, it was a passive Talent that I rarely even noticed by the name of Bloodroot Resilience. That had been something I’d picked up just before the fight with Rhazal.

And with that…

Something astonishing happened.

I felt my Mana, more keenly than I ever had before. Somehow, someway…this new combination of Talents was bringing me more in tune with my Mana than I had ever been before. Excitedly, I reached out and drew from the dual-colored well of Mana that resided in the core of my soul.

It flowed as easily as water, in a way I had never experienced before. I could feel an outright tingling in the fingers of my flesh hand as the Mana gathered at my call, almost feeling downright eager.

Ha!

Elder Jinshin was wrong! I hadn’t needed a special meditation method in order to call on my Mana after all! I had just needed the right combination of abilities instead!

With this…

With this, I could cast whatever spell I fucking wanted to.

Almost giddy, I carved out a small portion of mingled Mana, focused on a particular thought-form…

And cast my light-Spell, easier and quicker than I ever had before.

Travers flinched in front of me, at the sudden shadow his illusioned form cast down the hallway. It was weak because of the intensity of the light above us, coming from the fluorescent panes. But it was there.

And…so was the death glare the disguised Lich was now shooting at me.

Alright, alright. I get it. Playtime in the middle of a covert operation was over.

Huh.

You know, this kind of carelessness really wasn’t like me. I…usually had better sense than to play around like that in the middle of danger such as this. Even with the importance of the Talent combo I’d just discovered.

Odd.

Sheepishly, I canceled the little bobbing ball of light under the force of Travers glare. I could see the Lich visibly gather his patience as he turned back around and kept walking, now seemingly intent on ignoring me.

As I followed behind him, I nearly stopped once more as I heard something, just beyond the edge of my hearing.

A voice. Female, faintly familiar…

And a bit sheepish.

Sorry…

What…

What the fuck?

If I didn’t know any better…that might have been Anima.

But…how?

As if in answer, I heard that same voice, growing fainter and fainter as it spoke.

Later, Nathan…later…

I don’t think Travers had heard a thing.

That voice had been meant for me.

And then it disappeared. I only realized after the fact it was because I separated Starfire Veiling from its cocoon, no longer nestled in the grip of Arboreal Channeling. Bloodroot Resilience drifted away as well, dormant in its passive state once more.

I…

I couldn’t deal with this right now.

Right now, I had a job to do.

And a very firm reminder not to fucking mess with new abilities in the middle of important situations.

I nearly bumped into the back of the disguised Travers as ‘she’ suddenly came to a halt. I hadn’t been paying any attention at all to the path in front of us, and now that I was, I could see we’d come to the split in the path I’d noticed all the way back when we’d entered the hall.

There were now three paths before us. All three of them terminated in huge steel doors, and all three of them looked different. The center door seemed to be comprised of the same almost ceramic-looking steel as the walls of this hallway, bright white and shining. The right, meanwhile, was altogether different.

It was rusted and corroded, in the same way the rest of the bunker seemed to be. The surface of the right door had such large pits in the surface of it that I-wait. I…actually think those were claw marks and not corrosion from the curse. Familiar ones, at that.

I think that matched the pattern of Harlow’s claws.

On the other hand, calling the left door a door at all was a bit of a stretch. It wasn’t corroded in any way, but it was barely there at all. There were only scraps of a door that looked to have been torn away in some manner. If I didn’t know any better, it looked to have been blasted inwards. On the other side of it I could only see darkness.

Familiar darkness.

I think the left tunnel opened out into the open air of the mountain interior. I…almost expected to hear something from that direction, perhaps the play of air across the surface of that exit.

But no.

It was eerily quiet down there.

I edged closer to the illusioned form of Travers, aware of the ‘eyes’ of dozens of AutoMats on us. “Cecily, be a dear and remind which way we’re going again?”

Said Lich curled ‘her’ lip at me, but still answered. “The right path is the access tunnel to the rest of the complex…Jonathon. Chief Harlow often uses it in his…duties. While the left path,” I saw ‘her’ stare over my shoulder at the destroyed door. I was a bit surprised at the depth of…weariness I could see in those false emerald eyes. “Is where Tender Lucretia Mors and her party of ‘inspectors’ entered our home, all those years ago. For a purely routine inspection, of course.”

So. Lucretia, with the help of Harlow, had let her fellow conspirators in there. Violently, it seems.

I cast a glance over at it myself.

They’d come in from the bottom of the complex, then, infiltrating through the mountain itself first.

That…

Hmm.

That gave me an idea. Later, though.

I turned back to Travers. “After you, Cecily. We have business to attend to.”

“So we do,” Travers inclined ‘her’ head. In moments, I was following the disguised Lich down the central path.

It wasn’t much farther toward the core control room down here. The path only extended another hundred feet or so, and I could see the looming form of the vault door along it. Even from the crossroads itself, I could tell that it was massive. Easily larger than the gigantic doors that had blocked off the Maturation Halls, they loomed larger and larger in my vision as we grew closer to them.

And as we got closer, the amount of AutoMats all around us grew thicker as well. There had to be hundreds of the things just on the approach to the vault itself. They were so numerous they were starting to block off the light from the panels ahead. The world gradually began to darken around us as we approached the door, never quite growing as dim as the rest of the bunker, but getting close. I began to notice that upon the surface of each AutoMat was a single lens upon the front of it visible only in the darkness, and from that lens came a slight red glow as they used their scanner on our illusioned forms.

But it was the sound of them that started to fray on me.

So many of them beeping all at once as they walked down the path grated on my ears. The slight noise seemed to come in waves as we drew closer to the vault door, echoing up and down the hallway. I had to grit my teeth to resist the urge to clamp my hands over my ears. I could already feel a headache coming on from the incessant noise of it all.

But I endured. I had to.

It dawned on me, then, that so many of the damned robots in one place had to be acting as a form of secondary defense. You know.

Beyond the lasers.

The noise of that beeping had to be an alert system for the Wyrm. I could only hope it was too busy dealing with Shacklock battling it’s projection to pay attention to its hounds.

At last, we came to a halt before the massive, looming, white steel doors that led to the door. I felt a bit…small standing before them, to be honest. The atrium before them extended off to either side, wider than the hallway itself.

It was absolutely packed with AutoMats, all of them staring at Travers and I. There was barely enough room to walk through them they were so thick around us. Carefully, my temporary companion and I threaded our way to the only other feature before the door.

What looked like a small podium, standing directly to the right of it. The only features on the ivory steel were a single card reader and a blinking red light, not too dissimilar to those of the AutoMats beeping incessantly.

Once the two of us had reached that console, Travers stopped for a moment. “If you have some way to mask your presence,” The false woman breathed to me, only barely audible over the endless beeping. “I suggest you activate it now. The moment you do, I’ll open the doors and drop the illusions. It all starts then. Be ready.”

I took a deep breath…

And nodded.

Everything I’d been working towards for the last month of my life led to this. I couldn’t mess this up. So much was counting on me here.

I knew I had just resolved not to test new abilities in tense situations, but…

I don’t think Starfire Veiling would give me bad results, no matter what it was applied to.

I reached for my newest Talent and applied it to on my oldest, and perhaps most used Skill.

I cast it.

And for the first time, I truly disappeared.

<<Chapter 284 | Table of Contents | Chapter 286>>

Chapter 284 - Automatic

The door of Traver’s mysteriously teleporting clinic slid open once again, and this time, the environment on the other side was much, much different. I don’t know what I had been expecting for the area that the power core of this facility resided in. Maybe I had thought it would be even more corroded and miserable than the rest of the bunker combined. My Core, for instance, had thought it might possess more monsters stalking the halls.

But no.

It looked to be the exact opposite.

It was…it was completely pristine on the other side of Traver’s door. The far wall of the seeming hallway we appeared to be just outside of was totally spotless. Cool fluorescent light shone brightly from overhead just beyond the doorway, illuminating the immaculate walls of the oddly white, nearly ceramic steel. I could see bright yellow guidelines seemingly painted onto the floor of the wide hallway floor just in front of me.

“What?” I breathed, the sight of the uncorroded bunker raising my hackles for some reason. Something about it felt…wrong.

Wrong, but real. This didn’t have the half-dreamlike atmosphere of Traver’s illusioned clinic.

“Behold where the bulk of the power from the core has been going, all these long years,” I heard Travers sneer from my right. Shifting my eyes his way, I saw the ancient Lich wave one hand dismissively towards the opening we still hadn’t walked through. “Lucretia made sure the curse would not inhabit the halls of the Engineering sector, for fear that it would degrade the core itself. Even then, if nothing else had been done this area would have rotted to a certain degree. However, I believe the creature itself took a page from its creator’s book. It’s vain and fastidious. It doesn’t want to dwell for millennia in a moldering ruin. Thus, the AutoMats are still running in this sector, maintaining and cleaning its immediate environs.”

I furrowed my brow at the disguised undead. “The what?”

Travers didn’t need to speak. I got my answer anyway.

I heard the sound of it before it came into sight. From beyond the doorway and off to the right, I heard what sounded like the whir of gears and the hum of an electrical device. Before I could even prepare myself, a matte black, seemingly plastic rim appeared, creeping along the far wall of the hallway. In moments, it fully came into view.

If I didn’t know any better…I would say that was a fucking roomba.

It was larger than the small, robotic vacuum cleaners I was familiar with from back on Earth. The circumference of the device was greater than the typical foot of the conveniences, looking to be two to three times greater. It somehow clung to the far wall through no mechanism I could see, no rail or guidelines visible before it. There were no markings or seems on the surface of the apparent automaton, and the result was that the device looked like nothing more than a disturbing black circle of void upon the pristine surface.

Either that or an insect, patiently inspecting its prey.

Because it was watching us. Somehow, although I could see no sensors or lenses on it’s shell, I could tell.

This thing could see us.

Oddly, the thing let out a flat beeping noise, and then resumed its journey. In moments, it had whirred away out of sight of the doorway and down the hall from us. I could hear the journey of the thing far after it had fled my line of sight, slowly creeping down the hall from us.

I eventually found my voice. “The fuck was that?”

Travers snorted at me. “One of the AutoMats. Caretakers and defenders both, for this facility and the others. They clean, they repair, and they could even kill in defense of the Netherim people. Once upon a time, we truly depended on them. Until the man who was the Security Chief in charge of the AutoMats disabled them so Lucretia and her defilers could slaughter us all. Enamored as he was, I’m sure if Harlow could, he would have turned their Lases upon us. At the time, they were unable to attack residents. However…that merely meant they sat dormant while we were slaughtered to the last.”

Lases…

While the Lich had been talking, another one of the ‘AutoMat’s had crept past. This time, it had been along the ceiling. It had beeped at the two of us, as well.

“Why are they…?”

“It’s registering our presence,” Travers explained, surprisingly patient. “It recognizes my disguised form, but you are not in the resident database. My presence is the only reason they’re not immediately opening fire upon you, pretender, and only because we’re not technically in the Core Sector yet. The environs of my clinic still register to the AutoMats as being part of the Medical Center. If we had stepped out into the hall, we would both be ash right about now.”

I felt a shiver run down my spine at that thought. “Please tell me I’m not going to be dodging lasers from glorified vacuum cleaners as I try and kill this damn thing.”

“Oh, are you scared, pretender?” Travers mocked. “Don’t be. I’ve already thought of this. Here. Put this on your lapel.”

I looked down at the Lich’s disguised, bony hand to find that he was holding a somewhat familiar sight.

An ID card, not that dissimilar to the one Cecily had both told me to take and then used to save Aveline and I from the controlled bulk of Harlow. Only instead of being hers, I could tell this card belonged to Traver’s himself. Printed on the surface of it was a much younger, much more relaxed, and much more living version of the undead at my side, along with his name and a string of numbers.

I did as he asked, taking it from his palm and snapping the alligator clip onto the mantle of my cloak. “What about you? Don’t you need this?”

“Normally, yes,” Travers nodded, reaching into the illusioned breast of his decayed lab coat. “The Core Sector has heightened security, as I said. If I wandered out there without a valid keycard, then I’m liable to be…‘lasered’, as you put it. However…while you were busy fetching your fellows, I went and retrieved this.”

To my shock, the Lich pulled out another familiar item from his coat. So familiar, in fact, that I’d had it myself earlier.

Another ID card.

Cecily’s.

“How?!”

Travers smirked at me with deathless, illusioned lips. “I told you. While you were gone, I anticipated this issue. I retraced your steps to the Maturation Hall-”

The fuck was that? Was the talking about the giant hall filled with dead people that I’d been mentally referring to the ‘hall of the dead’?

Maturation Hall….

What had been matured there?

“-and retrieved the card from Cecily’s withered corpse,” Travers continued, seemingly unaware of his slip-up. “With this, the both of us will be able to venture these halls to the main control room, where the Wyrm waits. One moment.” After clipping the ID card of his daughter’s deceased mother to his own lapel, the Lich briefly narrowed his eyes in concentration….

And swept out one hand sharply.

The last time he had made a move like that, my companions and I had been swept from his lap like we were refuse telekinetically.

This time, though…

The both of us changed.

I felt it as a wave of cold Mana swept over me, and suddenly I was no longer Nathan. Instead, as I looked down at myself, I was Travers instead. I frantically patted myself down for a moment, only to be relieved when they passed through the surface of the illusion suddenly layered over my body. The Lich had transferred his own false appearance onto me instead. Looking up, I nearly expected to see a desiccated zombie in a lab coat standing before me, shorn of its own illusion.

Instead, I found Cecily.

At least, I thought it was her.

Cecily Montblanc was…a short woman, honestly. The top of her head barely came up to the bottom of my shoulders. Long, straight blonde hair fell down her back in a curtain of gold, while her slight form was clothed in a red turtle neck, black slacks, and a pristine white lab coat. Thin wire-frame glasses were perched upon her slightly larger-than-average nose, the circular lenses glinting in the fluorescent light. Almost irritably, ‘Cecily’ swiped her loose hair behind one ear and fixed me with bright emerald eyes. A familiar expression of disdain crossed those features, of which I could see more than a hint of Aveline in.

I took a deep breath. “I see,” I said quietly, inspecting the ‘woman’. “So this is what Cecily looked like, in life.”

Travers, because that had to be who this actually was, nodded at me, illusioned as his long-dead lover. “Yes,” ‘She’ said, in a clear voice, surprisingly much smokier than I was expecting. “This is her shortly before her death at the hands of Lucretia.” Seemingly unmoved, ‘she’ nodded firmly. “This will do. Now, listen closely. The Core Sector isn’t large, but it is filled with the AutoMats. Your illusion would not hold up under intense scrutiny from another. It will shatter the moment you reach out and touch anything. It will barely hold under your footsteps.”

Don’t touch anything, got it.

“Luckily, the AutoMats are not programmed to be intelligent,” ‘She’ said, with a dour smirk. It looked…odd on Cecily’s face. “They will scan us, but their scanners are not capable of piercing illusions. We’ll simply register as Dr’s Travers and Montblanc, here to check on the core. The foolish Wyrm has relied too heavily on Harlow and the army of AutoMat’s inside the control room to defend itself.”

“Hold up,” I said, raising a hand to stop him. “Is that why you’ve never tried to kill the Wyrm before now? The AutoMats and Harlow?”

The disguised Lich eyed me evilly for a moment and then shook ‘her’ head. “No,” ‘She’ said irritably. “You need a valid Engineering sector ID card to enter the core, and Cecily was Chief Engineer. I was…never able to breach the door to the Maturation Hall, where I knew she and Aveline lay. Harlow, however, did the job for me when he was chasing you. Thus, we now have the ability to get in with her card. Now, if you’re finished?”

I raised my other hand in surrender.

“Once inside, I’ll distract the beast and the AutoMats so you can try to slay it. You would not be able to withstand the concentrated fire. I can, and I’ll make sure to deal with the automatons while it calls for Harlow. It’ll be your job to deal with the Wyrm once inside. Do you understand?”

I frowned at him. “There’s no other way into the core than the front door? Kind of a…bad way to conduct an assassination, even of a monster.”

Travers shook ‘her’ head sharply. “No. The Core control room was constructed in such a way as to have only one way in and out. No vents, no access paths, no side ducts. It doesn’t even have rest facilities inside. It’s the perfect stronghold if you’re a leech. No way in, or out, with a vault door thicker even than the one on the Maturation Hall.”

“Then…I guess I’m ready.”

As I’ll ever be.

At that, Travers turned on ‘her’ heel and strode out into the hall without another word. As I followed ‘her’ out, I don’t know what I was expecting.

But it sure as hell wasn’t a pleasantly scented air that smelled freshly cleaned.

To my right, I saw Travers wrinkle ‘her’ nose. “After all these years, these still use pine scent,” ‘She’ grumbled, before shaking her head. “I hate pine scent. Follow me…Jonathon.”

I nodded at the disguised Lich, casting an eye up and down the hall we were in as I did so. “After you…Cecily.”

Travers stalked off and I followed.

Now that we were out in the hall, I could see that these pristine white walls were veritably festooned with pitch-black automats crawling on them. There must have been dozens of them all along the length of the hallway, and I think most of them were meant to be stationary. They seemed to be crouching over the entrances to different rooms, their sliding doors bared by the circular shape of their bodies.

The hall itself was…pretty damn long, I could see. Maybe a few hundred feet away, I thought I could see a separation at the end of it, but the bright white light was hurting my eyes after so long spent in the dark of the rest of the bunker. I couldn’t be sure.

All I could do was follow Travers disguised form down the hall that led towards the Aetheric Fusion Collider core.

The entire time, I was greeted by beeps from the AutoMats as they scanned me.

That was going to get old quick.

I could just tell.

<<Chapter | Table of Contents | Chapter>>

Chapter 283 - Admittance

“But first,” I said loudly. “We need to find the lost Shurengan down here. None of this is going to matter if we can’t free the last person stuck in their trial.”

Azarus paused, where before he seemed almost amused at the idea of me acting as an assassin once more. “Ah. Tha’s…right.”

Harlow interrupted our sideshow before it could progress. “I do nooot know what a ‘Shurengan’ is, buuut if you refer to the laaast presence withiiin the facilityyy, it is with It. Find the core, slay It, and your last companion shall be freed.”

Oh.

Well.

I guess we couldn’t put it off any longer.

Time to get this show on the road.

Renauld deflated where he stood. “I guess I’m not leaving just yet, after all.”

“Do not fear, Sir Renauld,” Kazuma stepped forward proudly. “I shall protect you in the fight to come.”

Meanwhile, Azarus walked up to the Gnoll and nudged him with an elbow. “And I’ll be here to lift your spirits, eh?” He said with a smirk.

In response, Renauld gave the both of them a tired side-eye. “Oh. Yay.”

Venix ignored the second side-show and turned to face me. “Good luck, Hart. I doubt you shall need it, however. This is hardly the greatest beast you have felled.”

I…wanted to point out that I hadn’t actually assassinated Rhazal, per se. I’d kinda…killed him in a rigged duel in the middle of some wacky Spirit realm.

But instead, I took the encouragement in the ‘spirit’ it was given.

Heh.

“Thanks…I guess,” I said, before turning to the three others essentially joking around under the gaze of one very confused horrific monster. “Alright, now we need a signal that I can give Tarus. And…I think I have one in mind.”

Azarus looked up from his nudging of Renauld. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I smirked at him. “I’ll look up, and say the words ‘Azarus isn’t as good of a griller as he thinks he is’.”

My Dwarven friend affected what looked to be a genuinely affronted expression. “Hey know, that’s a mite uncalled f-and now he’s laughin’ at me. Thanks, Nate.”

I couldn’t help but laugh briefly myself, before the reality of the situation dawned on me. All this joking around…

It was because the time had finally come for us to settle matters here in the bunker. Everyone else had realized that as well. We were all happy to be reunited, to a degree, but there was a subtle, battle-ready tension in the lines of my companion’s bodies. In these final hours down here in this tomb, we would be separated in the final act. Them, so they could fight and keep Harlow busy and away from the core. And me, who had to go it alone in the den of the creature capable of projecting an existence that had plagued Kawamara for millennia.

A Calamity level threat.

That’s…fine. I was used to it, in some ways. Even though I may have put that life behind me, I still retained the abilities of an assassin.

And besides.

My main objection to that lifestyle had been about the senseless waste of human life, caught up in the midst of an equally senseless war. I could deal with an old monster like this that way, no problem.

Azarus must have read the resolve that grew on my face because he abandoned the others in order to reach out and extend his hand. I grasped it firmly in response halfway up his forearm, in a warrior's exchange, meeting his eyes.

“Good luck, Azarus.”

“You too…Nathan.”

Looking around, I received equally firm acknowledgments from all the people who had followed me, wittingly or unwittingly, into this hell at the heart of this island. For a moment, I was…grateful.

Indescribably so.

I don’t know what exactly I had done to engender such loyalty in my companions, or even accomplished to be deserving of it. And maybe questioning it at all was to spit on their faith.

But I never wanted to take it for granted.

“Good luck to all of you. Even…even you, Harlow.” I said, gazing up at the monstrosity looming over the goodbye. “May you find the end you seek, no matter your sins.”

Harlow bowed his head to me. “Mayyy you find your dreeeam in the waking wooorld…whatever it may beee, warrior.”

An odd saying. But he had come from an odd people, I’m guessing.

With one last glance around at my companions, I turned my back and walked away from Harlow's cavern.

I was intending to call out for Travers as soon as I exited Harlow's ancient room. However, I didn’t need to. The moment I passed through the ‘seeming’ that the transformed man had cast on his doorway, I found another. Standing patiently right in the middle of the hallway, not far from where I stood, was the sliding door of the Lich’s clinic.

Strangely, this time, he wasn’t waiting for me in the doorway.

I took a deep breath and approached it. Seemingly motion-activated, it slid open at my approach. Once inside, I initially didn’t see the ornery Lich himself. However, I should have known where I would find him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the illusioned form of Travers standing eerily still over the bed which held Aveline’s sleeping form. He didn’t look up as I approached his watching form, nor did he acknowledge me. For once, I didn’t interrupt him.

Instead, I joined him.

Gazing down at the peacefully resting form of Aveline I felt a…myriad of different emotions.

Exhaustion, for one. It had taken a lot to get to this point. Weeks of travel, and battle, and intrigue across the breadth of an island that might charitably be called a small continent. And once we’d reached the mountain at the center of it all, I’d unwittingly thrust the bulk of my companions into a strange, haunted hell. As much as I’d been looking forward to this trip back in Hinaga, I was beyond ready for it to be over.

I wanted to say that I was determined as well, but…that would be a lie. I was mostly nervous about the task ahead. I told myself it was just pre-battle jitters, but I knew that was a lie. I’d come up short before whenever I had to confront a problem head-on by myself. The truth was, that I was simply more comfortable operating in a group. Although I’d agreed to take this task on, I was…apprehensive about actually performing it. All I could do was try, I suppose.

That, or die. And possibly get all of my closest friends killed in the process.

So.

No pressure.

But the sight of Aveline in particular…

Well, I felt a certain sense of wonder.

This girl…I fully intended for her to become a cornerstone of my life. It was frankly shocking to me just how certain I was about how I’d made that decision, rather than the decision itself. It was like I had instantly, subconsciously decided that I would care for her for as long as she could possibly need.

Odd, that. I didn’t realize I was that kind of person.

But…in a way…I could see why I’d done that.

Aveline was like me. Not…exactly like me, per se. She wasn’t a Precursor.

(I think. She didn’t have a Status right now to Observe, so I couldn’t be sure. We’d have to wait for her sixteenth birthday.)

Nor was she from Earth. But what she was, was a frightened, stranded little girl with no one to care for or support her in the world but me. Although she was presumably born here, modern-day Vereden might as well be an alien planet to her. I was skeptical about how much Aveline might even know about Vereden itself, considering just how isolated the Netherim appeared to have been.

Aveline needed help. So had I, and I had gotten it. Even if it had been under fairly…dire initial circumstances. She was like me. I was more determined to help her than I was to actually kill the Wyrm in the core.

Ah.

There it went. I wasn’t nervous about the fight anymore.

Now I was ready.

I must have given off a tell of some kind because Travers finally stirred from his own contemplation. “So,” He said in a monotone. “Harlow has joined your little conspiracy.”

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, somehow unsurprised. “You were watching us, then.”

It makes sense. How else would he know to direct the door to wherever we had gone?

Travers inclined his head ever so slightly but didn’t take his eyes off of Aveline. “In a way.” He said, refusing to elaborate. A small, mirthless smile stole across his face, and he finally turned to face me. “Did you notice, Nathaniel Hart?”

“…notice what?”

“That Harlow never once expressed regret for what he did,” Travers said, in a voice carrying an old, old fury. Not at me, though. I could tell that. “Nor did he even mention me. And believe me, we’ve crossed paths on occasion, through the years. He knows I’m here. All he wanted was to be free of his punishment.”

I was quiet for a moment, absorbing that. He was…right, I suppose. But…

“There comes a time,” I started slowly. “When punishment outweighs the crime. Millennia of deathless, transformative torture at the hands of a monster might just verge on that. I’m not sure I can blame such a person for just wanting a way out.”

My words caused Travers's false lips to curl. “How easy it is for you to say that, pretender,” He said in disgust. “You did not watch as your entire civilization fell to treachery, from he who was supposed to defend us. It was not you who lingered beyond death to look after the sleeping form of your only daug-” He cut himself off mid-sentence, but the damage had already been done.

Silence descended between the two of us again, and Travers briefly looked away in embarrassment. Eventually, though, the once Doctor met my eyes again, almost defiantly, nearly daring me to challenge him.

Instead, I nodded quietly, a suspicion confirmed. “Your daughter.”

In a move that I would almost term subconscious, the disguised Lich let out a slow sigh.

And nodded. “My daughter.”

“She…didn’t call you father, though?”

“Because that’s what Cecily wanted,” Travers said sharply. “We were not…married in the sense you would understand, pretender. Aveline…she wasn’t a love child. She was born from a drunken moment of passion, between two intellectuals at the height of their careers. When Cecily Montblanc discovered she was bearing my child, she was very clear. I was not to be involved in the child's life, as anything other than a childhood Doctor. She did not want my…other interests-”

Necromancy, I’m guessing.

“-to influence an innocent soul. How ironic, then, that it was those same ‘disgusting fascinations’ that granted me the eternity needed to watch over our child,” Travers laughed bitterly. “I…respected her decision, if only with the promise that I would be allowed to tell her once she came of age. And so it came to be that the man once known as Jonathon Travers was not ‘Papa’, to his own child. He was merely ‘Doctor’.”

“You…speak as if you aren’t that man,” I said slowly.

Jonathon Travers shook his head with finality. “Because I am not. That man is dead and gone. I am what remains, and I do not regret my decisions!” He finished with an almost crazed shout, turning to face the door of his own clinic and clenching a fist towards it defiantly. “Do you hear me, Cecily?! I do not regret it! You are little more than a shade, but I am still here to watch over her!”

I cast a glance over at Aveline and was relieved to see the little girl still sleeping peacefully. Those must have been some strong sleeping aids.

She didn’t need to hear this.

When I looked back at Travers, I was unsurprised to see the Lich heaving in place, like he was trying to draw in breath to lungs that had long since withered. “Do you,” I said, pausing briefly when his attention snapped back to me. “Want me to tell her that, when she’s older?”

Travers closed his eyes, partly I think to consider, and partly to calm himself. “No,” He said finally. “No, I do not. If I am not the one to tell her, I do not want her to know. She will grow, eventually, and realize the truth of what I am now. I…do not want her memories of me to be tainted by that knowledge. Let me remain as the man who would give her lollies after an injection and not her undead forebear.”

“…as you wish.”

I may have chosen to take up the task of caring for Aveline, but that didn’t mean it was my place to gainsay her actual Father.

…not yet.

“Enough,” Travers finally growled. “Enough of this. Let the past lay amongst the dead. Let Harlow have his lessened sentence. And let my only remaining link to this damned world be free of this wretched tomb. Come, pretender.”

“It’s time to settle this.”

<<Chapter 282 | Table of Contents | Chapter 284>>

Chapter 282 - Captive Audience

Renauld jumped to his padded feet at the sight of us, while a large smile stole across his vulpine face. He made as if to sprint our way in greeting, before he stilled as Akhoroth shifted from across the incongruously small table the two of them were sitting at. His smile faltered, but to my eyes, he still didn’t look like he was in distress as he motioned us closer across the distance separating us. I saw him cup one hand over his mouth as he shouted at us, the acoustics of the hewn cavern causing an odd echo. “C’MON!”

I…didn’t know what was going on. Renauld didn’t seem like he was being held captive by the ancient betrayer of the Netherim people, but neither did it seem like he was free to leave.

I exchanged puzzled, wary glances with the rest of my companions, a question obvious in my gaze. Venix was stoic under, Kazuma looked uncertain, and Azarus just shrugged at me. I suppose they thought I would know what to do in these circumstances.

I didn’t, really. But…

I guess I’d go with my gut, as I sometimes seemed to do. And it was telling me to join them, no matter how hostile Akhoroth had been earlier in the hall of the dead.

Oh, whatever. My gut feelings had yet to steer me wrong before.

I cautiously crept forward along with the rest of my party, our weapons still drawn.

I was willing to give this odd situation a chance, but I wasn’t willing to be stupid about it.

Trust but verify.

Before long, the four of us stood before the table that Renauld and Akhoroth were around, shadows dancing in the light of the flickering lamp and our light abilities. This time, when Renauld stepped around the table to approach us and Akhoroth didn’t protest in any way. The great bulk of the man-turned-monster merely sat watching us quietly.

To my surprise, Renauld immediately stepped forward and embraced me in a furry hug. Despite the unexpectedness of the move, I was glad to return the hug.

Even with the oddity of the situation, it was relieving to see him in one piece.

Our arms still around each other, Renauld leaned up until his snout was next to my ear. “Get me out of here,” He whispered furiously.

Ah.

I leaned in closer to his own fuzzy ear. My breath caused it to twitch from the proximity. “Is he holding you here?”

The answer to my question didn’t come from Renauld himself.

Instead, Akhoroth finally spoke up. The sound of his hissing voice causing the skin along my spine to crawl. “Yesss, for hisss safetyyy.”

I suppose we weren’t being as circumspect as we’d thought we were being. In retrospect, the monster than had once been Jensen Harlow must have enhanced senses to some degree. To my surprise, Renauld broke away from the embrace and turned back to him and gestured in exasperation. “Look, Harlow. I appreciate everything that you’ve done, but you don’t have to keep me here anymore. My friends can look after me now.”

He called him Harlow, not Akhoroth. The only way I could conceive of him knowing that name was if the once-man had told Renauld himself.

Ahkoroth merely hissed in response.

“What is going on here?” Venix asked with a frown, sheathing his four blades now that it seemed like we weren’t about to engage in battle.

“Good question,” Azarus muttered, lowering his hammer and shield but not putting them away.

Yeah, what they said.

“What are you playing at, monster?” Kazuma directly asked Akhoroth defiantly. Instead of lowering his weapon like the others, he raised his. “Why do you confine our companion to this dour hole?”

To everyone’s surprise, Renauld turned to the Kawamaran samurai and held up his hands. “Hey, woah. Calm down, Kazuma. If it wasn’t for Harlow, I don’t know what would have happened to me. I just want to leave now that you guys are here.” He turned a side eye towards Akhoroth. “Hint, hint.”

I slowly sheathed my own daggers, and directed a curious eye up towards the monster who had led to the death of every soul in this bunker. “What did you do, Jensen Harlow? And how did you do it? I thought…I thought you were essentially the slave of the Wyrm?”

Akhoroth seemed to flinch from the sound of his own full name, but stayed silent. Instead, it was Renauld that answered my question, finally explaining himself.

“I barely remember what happened after the door tried to eat us,” Renauld started, copying Venix and crossing his arms. “I felt like I was falling for awhile, and then everything went weird somehow. It was like…the world started twisting and something started to reach for my mind. From what Harlow told me,” He nodded up to the twisted monster, causing him to shift once more. “Some wacky curse was trying to dig itself into my soul. I was supposed to experience some sort of…messed up ‘trial’ or something, but the door spat me out not far from where Harlow was resting. He grabbed me from the room I was in and ran me into this cave, and supposedly that was enough to keep the curse from attaching to me. We’ve…mostly been here the whole time, with him filling me on what’s going on in this place. And keeping me from leaving.”

“Ya never even had a trial?” I heard Azarus mutter under his breath, a note of jealousy in his voice.

I didn’t blame him for it. I was a little jealous myself, and my own trial had been relatively mild in comparison to what everyone else seemed to be put through.

“Is that so?” I asked, finally speaking up. I frowned up at Akhoroth. “And did you mention how you tried to run me and a helpless little girl down and slaughter us?”

Renauld…winced. “Ah…he did, actually.”

Oh.

Huh.

“Nooot I,” Akhoroth broke his own silence, sorrow thick in his voice. “When It is awaaake, I cannot control myyyself. It puppeeets me. I would neveeeer wish to harm the giiirl. I felt iiit when the dooor was opened once more, after so many yeeears. I rushed frooom my refuuuge to save who I couuuld, and fouuund this…creatuuure.”

I saw Renauld’s eyebrow twitch at that. “I told you. I’m a Gnoll. They didn’t have Gnolls back in your day?”

I swear I saw Akhoroth shrug his monstrous shoulders at that. “Perhaaaps at other facilitiiies.”

Meanwhile, I was frowning at something Akhoroth had said. “Your ‘refuge’? What is this place? Did you make it?”

Akhoroth turned back to me and bobbed it’s caninesque head. “Through the looong years, It had nothiiing better to do than tooorment myyyself and ooothers. To escaaape It I duuug into the rooock of the mountain and cast a seeeming on the dooor. In thiiis place, I can eeescape It for a tiiime, when it is tooorturing ooothers. Buuut if it focuuuses, it can still graaab me, especiaaaly when I am outside these waaalls.”

Kazuma finally lowered his blade, but did not sheathe it. “And you left this hole in order to grab Renauld.”

“Yeees.” Akhoroth nodded once again. “That is hooow I was made to chaaase you earlier. I do not want to huuurt anyone else. Noot anymore.”

“And why hasn’t it ‘grabbed’ you again?” I asked with a frown.

“I…do nooot know,” The twisted creature grudgingly admitted. “I coud feel It’s excitement when the dooor opened. It knooows you are here. But sooon after, It’s attention drifted and focused upon sooomething else.”

Wait. Its attention wasn’t on us right now?

Kazuma and I exchanged a quick look at that as we seemingly realized at the same time what that must mean. “It’s still fighting Shacklock up there,” I breathed.

“And can’t focus on us.” Kazuma finished, triumph in his voice. “Ha! The old man still has it.”

Well, I wanted to point out that it might just be the time dilation effect between the bunker and the range outside, but I didn’t. Kazuma could have his moment of relief.

Akhoroth tilted his head in confusion, seemingly unaware of the true purpose of the thing he called ‘It’. Just like Travers, Akhoroth-

No.

Harlow didn’t understand the true purpose of the creature Lucretia had implanted in their power core.

“Okay. I get it. So…can we go now?” Renauld interjected, seemingly antsy. I suppose for as much as he didn’t want to hurt us, Akhoroth was still a ticking time bomb of a monster. At any moment, the Wyrm’s attention could fall back on us, and then we would have to either flee or kill.

Which, now that I thought of it…

Weren’t we going to have to kill him anyway?

Harlow simply stared at the five of us for a moment, his head swinging back and forth as he seemingly studied us. “Nooo. I have kept yooou here for a reason, creatuuure. To draw your companiooons to your side.”

Almost to a one, we all tensed. Kazuma and Azarus raised their weapons once more, and the samurai in particular almost looked ready to immediately attack the long, coiled form of the Maw.

But I didn’t. I…think I knew what was about to happen, considering what Travers had told me.

“I have but one desiiire, after all these looong years,” Harlow said, ignoring our posturing and simply staring off into space over our heads. “You cannooot imagine it. Milleniiia spent as the plaything of a detestable worm. Huuudling, terrified, in the remnants of my ooown clothing. Sleeping, sleeping…and then tooorture. No maaatter my sins…nooothing could justifyyy this…” Finally, he turned his monstrous head down towards us once more. “Kill me, so that I may finally know reeest…”

I…guess I was right. Considering everything…

I might want to die as well.

Venix was the first to react to Harlow’s request. He nodded stoically, and drew only one of his four blades. “Very well, creature. Lower you head and I shall strike it clean. You shall have your rest.”

Harlow shook the very head that Venix had offered to take. “That will not work. Lucretiaaa,” He hissed, with more hate in a single word than I’d ever heard before. “Bound my life to It’s. If you striiike me down, then I shall simply come baaack. And theeen it shall know we conspire against It. The grip shall tighten, and I do nooot think you five can slay me. You lack the streeength.”

Venix seemed a bit offended by the implication, but I didn’t let it bother me. To be honest, I’d wondered the same thing. The creature that Harlow had become, Akhoroth, Maw of the Wyrm, did seem a…bit out of our league. He wasn’t on the level of something that only Grey or Honoka could handle, but…

I was confident that together, the five of us could slay Akhoroth in a straight up fight, especially with my benefits. But in the midst of that battle, who knows what could happen?

It might be a bit of a risk.

And I was all about mitigating risks.

There was…another problem, too. Travers hadn’t told me that the Wyrm could just resurrect Akhoroth when we killed him.

I’ll be fair, though. Maybe he didn’t know.

Maybe.

And if he just kept coming back, while we were trying to get past him to the Wyrm’s true body…

“There is ooonly one way to do this,” Harlow undulated in place, almost in anticipation. “We must ensure It remains distraaacted, so a single blade can slaaay it. You must separaaate. One goes to the cooore, the rest keep it’s attention away from it’s true body.”

“So, wait,” Renauld held up one hand at Harlow’s…idea. “Let me get this straight. Your plan is for one of us to go on ahead and sneak into the core. While at the same time, the rest of us stay behind, and at some signal, try and fight you so that this…thing’s attention doesn’t wander onto the assassin.”

Oh, please don’t say that word.

Venix cupped his chin. “It could…conceivably work,” He said slowly. “The only problem is we don’t have a way for the assassin to indicate that the battle must commence.”

Not you too.

Azarus shrugged, and raised his hand like he was in a classroom. “I’ve got a line to ol’ Gas Bag, and he has an eye on everythin’ goin’ on in here. Hell, I can faintly hear ‘im right now. I bet if I ask-” He cut himself off for a moment, wincing, and then nodding. “Yup, he’s willin’. All the assassin would need to do is make some kinda signal and Tarus will tell me we’re good to go.”

I saw that smirk, you asshole.

Kazuma cupped his chin in thought. “But who shall we send to do the deed? I would ask Ms. Valen to do it, but she is unfortunately not here.” In response to his question, he received only silence. To the extent that he looked around for a moment in confusion. “What-? Oh.”

To find that everyone else, including Harlow for some reason, was looking at me.

I sighed.

“Fine. I’ll do it. It’s not like we have any better ideas.”

<<Chapter 281 | Table of Contents | Chapter 283>>

Chapter 281 - Find of the Century

By the time Venix, Kazuma, and I reached where Azarus had been shouting from, he had ducked into a nearby doorway. As the two samurai raced ahead of me, I skidded to a halt just before I followed after them. Something on the side of the door had caught my eye. Something that gave me a moments pause, and caused my heart to leap in my chest.

There were words written on a plaque to the right of it, clearly visible and legible after all these years.

In English.

‘Cpt. Jensen Harlow, Sec.’

Harlow.

The name of the man who had sold out his fellow Netherim to Lucretia and all her conspirators.

The man who had become the creature known now as Akhoroth.

The portal before me yawned open wide, a deep darkness obscuring all within. It felt like I stood on the precipice of some gigantic, monstrous mouth, complete with jagged metal teeth from the destroyed sliding door halfway hanging out of its recess. I swear I felt a breath of hot, muggy air escape the confines of the room ahead, like the breath of some hungry arcane beast.

This had to be Akhoroth’s lair. It was too late to call out to Venix and Kazuma, much less Azarus. The three of them had been swallowed by the abyss before me and were beyond my sight. Though, I could still hear them on the other side, if only faintly.

“Nate!” I heard Azarus shout, his voice muffled and warbling as if it were coming from the other side of some deep, dark pool of water. “In here!”

I cursed myself as a fool for not telling my companions about Akhoroth’s once Human name, and plunged into the darkness. I shivered at the feeling as I did. It felt like I was passing through some kind of thin mucosal membrane, as if I were the veritable tadpole emerging from its egg.

Oddly, though, the room on the other side almost seemed…normal.

Well, normal for the living quarters, at least. It was still a wrecked, crumbling ruin of a small bedroom, complete with shattered instruments and exposed wiring. Perhaps it was a little bit larger than the others we had found down here, owing to Harlow’s once high position in the Netherim hierarchy. But it was hard to tell. However, it did have one major difference from all the other rooms down here.

On the far wall of the room was a large, jagged rent into the corroded steel, something beyond the norm for the curse-ravaged bunker. It looked to me like two enormous clawed hands had pierced into the shell of the room and tore it open, to expose the air of the hollow mountain on the other side. The gash covered the entirety of the far wall, and my three companions stood on the edge of the gash, staring out beyond the edge of it.

Because there was something on the other side.

This room must have been sitting snug on the wall of the mountain. If I understood this complex right, it hung in the middle of Gorenzan, suspended by thick steel girders driven into the rocky walls, with further support from immensely long cables that snaked miles into the air. I’d caught glimpses of both of them, during my brief flight outside of the bunker after escaping my trial.

However, the four of us weren’t seeing a solid stone wall on the other side of the gash.

Instead, there was a hole.

It was just as large as the rent in the steel, and strangely, looked to have been carefully carved by the same claws. The hole in the mountain wall extended beyond sight, with only yawning darkness on the other side. Strangely, though, this wasn’t the same supernatural darkness I had seen from the other side of the door. It just looked like the absence of light.

Azarus was the first to break the silence the four of us had fallen into. “That’s damned odd,” He muttered, drawing our attention. To my surprise, I noticed that my Dwarven friend wasn’t actually looking at the hole.

Instead, he seemed to be inspecting the edges of it.

“What is it?” Venix asked quietly, voicing what the rest of us were thinking.

The smith looked up briefly with a furrowed brow. “This,” He said, gesturing towards the edges of the opening. “I’ve never seen anythin’ like it. It’s like…it’s like someone welded the stone and steel together, to create some kinda seal. I…didn’t even know somethin’ like that was possible.”

My eyebrows shot up, and I joined him closer to the edge to see. Sure enough, Azarus was right. The rock of the mountain looked to have been welded or fused together somehow, all up and around the point where the two of them met.

How had this been done? And more importantly…

Why?

It had to have been Akhoroth, but that made no sense. Wasn’t the former security Chief of the Netherim a slave to the will of the Wyrm in the core?

“What’s this?” I suddenly heard Kazuma ask behind me. For a moment, I thought the samurai was just talking about the odd hole the same as we were before I heard a clattering sound.

I turned around just in time to watch as the Kawamaran man picked something up off of the ground. Something with a shape that was familiar to me. Something that caused my entire body to tense, and my eyes to shoot open wide in sudden panic.

The device in Kazuma’s hands almost looked like a gun.

And he was holding it by the trigger.

“DON’T-” I tried to shout.

Too late.

The trigger depressed with a faint click I heard even from where I was, and from the barrel of the odd device, a fiery beam of red light no thicker than a pencil lanced outward in a continuous stream aimed right at my head.

Luckily, I was expecting something to happen, even if it hadn’t involved a fucking laser.

I ducked, and heard Kazuma yelp at the same time I did so. From below I watched with fear widened eyes and a pounding heart as the beam struck the steel of the wall I’d been standing by and melted it. The stream cut out only seconds later as I heard Kazuma drop the apparent laser gun. In the sudden silence of the room, the apparent weapon clattered onto the floor of the bunker with the sound of plastic on steel.

“Ah…” I heard Azarus say, though I didn’t look at him. Instead, my eyes were still trained on the melted section of steel above my head, no larger than a quarter. It hadn’t penetrated all the way through the wall, but I don’t doubt it could have. “Yeah, that could have done it.”

That broke me out of my trance, and I shot my Dwarven friend a foul look in response. He wasn’t paying any attention to me, though. Instead, he had wandered over to gaze at the melted steel with fascination in his molten gold eyes.

It was Kazuma who helped me to my feet. “Hart, are you okay?!”

I took a deep breath, and nodded at him. “Yeah, I’m…fine. But more importantly…”

The realization of what Kazuma had stumbled on rolled over me in an instant, causing adrenaline to course through my veins once more. This time, it wasn’t fear that crept over me.

It was greed.

Ignoring the low whispers of Azarus and Venix behind me as they examined the melt, I approached the dropped weapon. Now that I had a better look at the thing, it…didn’t really look like a gun at all, honestly. To me, it almost resembled the shape of a cordless electric drill. It was bulky, slate grey, and instead of a drill bit attached to the ‘barrel’ of the thing, there was a clear lens embedded in it.

I stared down at the extraordinary find in my hands and felt my lips stretch apart in glee. I couldn’t help but raise the weapon and point it at a nearby wall and pull the trigger, this time away from anyone in the path of the barrel.

Unfortunately, no blazing beam of red death escaped the ancient firearm this time. Only the same click of the trigger. I copied the sound, clucking my own tongue in disappointment.

Damn. Kazuma must have used up the last of the charge this thing had, with that careless shot.

Still…

Now this was what I was talking about. This might just help my own stalled research project immensely.

But not now. For now, this was just a paperweight.

Later, though…

I was knocked out of my daydreams by the sound of Azarus clearing his throat. I looked up to see my three companions staring at me curiously. “Ya done starin’ at that thing like ya want ta kiss it?” He asked, a tad sarcastically. “What even is it, anyway?”

I cleared my throat embarrassedly, and tucked the find of the century into the pack at the small of my back. I think I was only able to fit it in there with how depleted my stocks of potions and supplies were.

Silver linings, I guess.

“An old weapon with no power left,” I said smoothly. “Forget it. More importantly, I thought you said you found Renauld? I sure as Hell don’t see him in here.”

Azarus eyed me with suspicion for a moment, but dropped it. Instead, he raised his right hand and showed me what was clutched between two fingers.

A small tuft of black fur.

“Found this on the edge of the door out there,” He said. “He’s gotta be this way.”

“And if he’s not in here,” Venix continued slowly.

“Then he must be down there,” Kazuma finished pointedly, staring down the tunnel in front of us. We all followed his gaze.

The tunnel that Akhoroth must have dug himself, for some odd reason, stretched out before us.

Venix broke the silence and seemed to flex his still-lit antennae. The lights at the ends of them bobbed in the air. “Well. Come, then. We must traverse the depths for the Healer.”

We exchanged nods, and as a group, stepped into the mysterious tunnel, lights guiding the way and weapons drawn.

………………………………

Akhoroth must have carved the tunnel large enough for his entire bulk to fit down it, because it was pretty spacious in here. And I have to say, as far as mysterious old tunnels beneath the earth go…

This was one of the least ominous I’d ever been in.

What a thought that was.

But it was true. Despite the source of it and what and who it must lead to, this wasn’t a terribly intimidating tunnel. The hike through it’s entirely straight length was downright relaxing in comparison to the tense environs of the bunker. The almost malicious presence that filled those halls was strangely…absent in here. Even in Traver’s clinic, there was the sense of being watched by something.

Actually, not altogether all that different from the feeling I’d gotten back out in Goryuen proper now that I thought about it. But at a certain point, we must have gotten close enough to the Maw’s actual lair.

Because we started to hear voices.

Two of them, to be precise.

In the stony acoustics of the tunnel, they carried quite far. Not enough to discern the words, but enough that I could make out each speaker.

One was quite clearly Renauld. After spending so much time with the Gnoll, I was very familiar with his half-upbeat, half-sarcastic way of speaking.

The other, though…

That was the sibilant, tortured hissing of the Maw that I’d heard all the way back in the hall of the dead.

The first time we all heard it, we stopped in our tracks and glanced at each other. Partly to make sure that we were all hearing the same thing. The words weren’t discernable, but the fact they existed was.

Renauld…he didn’t sound like was in distress, to me. Hard to tell, though.

We picked up the pace, and that seemed to signal the both of them on the far end of the tunnel. It was coming up soon, I could see.

Ready for anything, the four of us burst through the opening into a large cavern that looked to have been carved from the rock my immense claws. On the far wall, I could see a pile of long-decayed instruments and objects like those we’d seen in the halls of the living quarters. They were all lying in a near bed of half-decayed cloth. Clothes and blankets and curtains, I couldn’t tell what each scrap was. Only that they were woven together into what looked like a nest.

However, that wasn’t the most important thing in the room.

In the center of the cavern was a small, circular steel table, with what seemed to be an equally small LED lamp of some kind sitting upon the surface. Its cool, flickering light seemed to indicate it was old and barely functioning as it cast odd shadows in the cavern, but yet it still worked after who knows how many years. And sitting at it were Renauld in a corroded steel folding chair…

And the Maw, the immensity of the monster coiled beneath it akin to the winding of a snake.

The two of them…I…

I think they’d been having a fairly serious talk, from the frown on Renauld’s face. However, the Gnoll man perked up from his almost dour state as we burst into the cavern, which drew the attention of Akhoroth. I almost shivered at the tortured squeals of his steel plates grinding against each other as he turned to face us.

What the Hell was going on here?

<<Chapter 280 | Table of Contents | Chapter 282>>

Chapter 280 - Fallen Home

Travers barely cast the four of us more than a single disinterested glance as we cleaned ourselves up after the battle at the base of Gorenzan. As Venix reequipped himself with all of the gear he’d been stripped of, I tried to talk to him.

“So, where-”

He cut me off, waving me away. “Somewhere in the actual compound, this time,” Travers said irritably. “It’s good that you found two at once. The next one is firmly in Akhoroth’s territory. You’ll need the help.”

As I saw Azarus mouth the word ‘Akhoroth’, I frowned and nodded firmly. “Alright, when can we-”

Travers cut me off again. “Now,” He said bluntly, pointing toward the door. We turned to look at it, and as if prompted by the disguised Lich, it slid back open. This time, I could make out the familiar corroded walls of the bunker on the other side, lit by familiar red puck lights set into the ceiling. Travers literally shooed us away with one hand. “Go on, get going. The sooner you find this one, the sooner you can find the last. Then you can deal with this mess once and for all.”

I was startled to feel a faint wave of pressure pushing me towards the door with each wag of his hand. I stumbled, and that just let the apparent telekinetic push shove me out the door quicker. To my complete unsurprise, I noticed that the rest of my companions were being herded out the same wave.

I was…a little surprised that Travers had the strength to do the same thing to even Venix.

I caught my feed under me and tried to reason with the Lich. “Look, can’t we just-”

“No,” Travers said bluntly. The door slid shut with finality in the middle of the wide hallway we found ourselves in. In seconds, it had somehow disappeared as well, leaving the four of us to stand around awkwardly.

Kazuma broke the silence. “I don’t think I care for that man.”

Yeah, you and me both.

Azarus, Kazuma, and I exchanged nods, but it was Venix who spoke next. The Antium let out a mildly annoyed sigh, drawing my attention. “Could someone perhaps tell me what exactly is going on?”

Ah.

That’s right. Azarus may have been filled in by Tarus, but Venix was still in the dark when it came to the circumstances here in the ancient Netherim bunker. I took the time to explain everything what was happening down here to him, what we had to do, and what I’d found down here. The whole time, Kazuma and Azarus were wandering around and inspecting our environs.

Venix blinked his fractal eyes at me when I was finished. “You found a child down here? A living one?” Azarus had paused in his exploration to raise an eyebrow at me as well.

A little self-conscious under their stares, I nodded. “Ah…yeah. That guy back there, the Lich I told you about? He’s keeping watch on Aveline for now. But we are going to get her out of here.”

Azarus and Kazuma rejoined us, and I noticed that my Dwarven friend had a frown hidden under his bushy, now slightly metallic beard. “Can ya trust him, Nate? The dead ain’t exactly known fer their magnanimous nature.”

“Hell no,” I said, shaking my head and finally giving voice to my suspicions. Being back around nearly all of my companions…it gave me more confidence in our survival down here. “That guy…I get the impression he really doesn’t like me. He’s definitely no Tlazo, that’s for sure.”

Even then, Tlazo had been an incredibly callous, self-centered person. I was starting to get the impression that the dead, even the cooperative dead, had little regard for the living.

What a shocker.

Kazuma fingered the hilt of his katana restlessly. “Then should we not track down this Lich’s lair and rescue the child?”

Again, I shook my head, to the surprise of the others. “No…I don’t think so. He may not give a crap about us, but I think he does care about Aveline. At least a little. He…kind of implied the only reason he’s still around after…possibly millennia is to keep an eye on her. For now, I think she’s safe with the bag of bones. If he’s going to try and pull a fast one on us, it’s going to be at the last minute, when her safety is assured.”

Venix crossed his arms but nonetheless nodded in agreement. “Very well, Hart. I shall trust your judgment. It has gotten us this far,” I nodded back in appreciation but still paused at his next words. “However…something else the Lich said gave me pause. He mentioned that there is one more person stuck down here that we must rescue. The only person still unaccounted for is the Healer, however.”

To my surprise, Azarus spoke up before I could. “I know what that’s about,” He sighed, reaching up to massage his brow. “The Ol’ Gas Bag filled me on why he was so desperate to pick up an Envoy. Ya turned him down, Nate, and so he went fer the only other person among us that suited him. Me. Apparently, one of the cats was followin’ us, and now he wants me to save ‘em.”

I almost started to laugh at how Azarus referred to the Great Spirit of the Sun, but sobered up when he finished speaking. “Wait. One of the Shurengans? Or…Shurenga herself?”

I...

Hmm. I do recall a few instances on the trek to Gorenzan itself, shortly after leaving the volcano, where it had felt like we were being watched. More than usual, that is. More than that, I suddenly remembered the odd taunting that Shacklock had sometimes done off into the empty air after the fight with the Oni.

Had he known? What was I thinking.

Of course he did.

Venix narrowed his eyes. “The Spirit did say she had ways to move unseen among the island…”

“No, not the ol’ girl herself,” Azaru shook his head. “Furnace Face couldn’t tell which one o’ them exactly that was…doggin’ us, but he said his daughter is still back at the volcano. Whoever was followin’ us was careful ta stay out of sight of their granpappy. But he was real insistent on rescuin’ them. My endowment was kinda predicated on the fact we can get them out. The new transformation Skill,” He elaborated, seeing the lost expressions on our faces at the word ‘endowment’. “It’s what I asked for, to sign up with him. A powerful Skill that would let me fight above my weight class. Ya know. Like you can, Nate.”

Huh.

I’m not so sure about that. If I was being honest, Azarus’s transformation Skill was maybe…a bit stronger than mine.

At least, it looked like that to me.

“Out of curiosity,” I said slowly. “What’s it called?”

Azarus scratched his beard. “What, the Skill? It’s called Vis Solaris Incarnata.”

Why, that sounded downright noble compared to mine. I wasn’t jealous at all.

Not a bit.

I shook it off though. “Alright, enough standing around and chatting. Travers said this entire area was the territory of the Big Bad Wolf down here in the bunker,” I said, internally amused by the confused expression on Kazuma’s face at that term. Azarus and Venix knew me well enough by now to just ignore it, but not him. “So, weapons free, people. We don’t know if that thing could be around the next corner. Let’s get to searching. We have a fox and a cat to find.”

The ringing of steel upon steel answered me, as my friends and companions drew their instruments.

Time to get to work.

…………………………………..

The four of us were careful as we crept down the halls of this section of the bunker. Although the red glare of the puck lights was enough to see by, in these corroded corridors, all of us still called on our own lighting abilities to help clear the way.

Funny enough, I had never seen Venix use one before. I had expected it would be another bar of light like I had seen from other Cultivators. But instead, the tips of his antennae lit up like the hanging bulbs of a ceiling fan. It was useful, sure. The Antium man was never far from the source of his own light.

But it was also funny. I didn’t tell him that, though.

I don’t think he’d care, honestly.

As we explored the section of the bunker Travers had dropped us into, I started to get an inkling as to the purpose of this area. However, I’m not sure if the others did. It was fairly obvious to me, but then again, I had grown up on Earth, an entirely separate culture from anything the Veredenese were used to. What seemed obvious to me, was likely alien to them.

These, I think, were the crew quarters.

A bit small, honestly.

Considering the massive size of the hall I had first encountered Akhoroth in and found Aveline in an offshoot of, I would have expected the accompanying crew quarters to be beyond massive. There had probably been over a hundred thousand dead souls in there.

In comparison, I think there might have been enough room down here for barely a couple hundred people.

All through the halls, we found the trappings of life that I would expect from a culture that just might be descended from Earth. Corroded dining rooms with broken tables and chairs, with what almost looked like dilapidated vending machines along the walls. Recreation rooms holding cabinets and flat screens, little boxes and discs similar to the one Aveline had asked me to recover for her. Small, unusable washrooms filled with broken glass and shattered ceramics, cracked pipes showing through the walls.

And more than a few bedrooms. To my eyes, these were meant to be very utilitarian. Maybe once upon a time, they had been decorated to the owner's personal taste. But time and the corrosion of the curse had reduced them to being downright skeletal. To a one, no matter how much we searched them, we found nothing more than rubble. Eerily, we didn’t find the remains of a single person inside any of the rooms. We were certainly looking, too.

Nothing.

The entire living area for this complex was filled with nothing but rubble and broken, useless devices. I could hazard a guess for some of them…but not everything.

If these people were descended from Earth in some way, it had to come from far, far, far after I had left it. That thought caused an unexpected pang of pain to echo through my rings.

I…had long since accepted that I was never going back to Earth. I actually believe all the old monsters and relics I’d stumbled upon, when they said it was impossible for Precursors to return to their origin. I knew that. I was…okay with it, no matter what I’d left behind.

Too much time had passed, by now, for me to expect anything important to have survived. But...

The implication of this bunker and these people put the concept of time into question again, in a much different way.

When was I, if the Netherim were connected to Earth in some way? Had I instead been flung through time when I was stranded upon Vereden, rather than merely transmigrated? Was this the distant path, and Earth's history was far more mystical than I thought it was. Or was this instead the far future, long after the apex of humanity had been reached? I couldn't know, and frankly it was all just speculation.

All of that merely reaffirmed my iron-clad belief that Earth was lost to me.

And so, this entire expedition hadn’t been about searching for a way back to my home planet. It had been about the search for answers. Both to whatever the hell was truly going on with Precursors, and this planet in general.

I’d gotten some of those answers from Travers, but I still didn’t have the full story. There were still massive, glaring holes in the mystery.

Ha.

Listen to me. I was thinking about my life as if it was a dollar mystery novel from back on Earth.

The reality was a bit more dour, though. More pain, and blood, and death.

But I’ll admit it. I’d come to enjoy this life. As much as the expedition had been for answers, it had also been about the adventure of it. The endless quest for strength and growth that threaded its way through all of Veredenese culture had long since infected me, and now I was one of them.

I had gone native.

This was my home, now.

And I wanted to know more about it.

I was snapped out of my musings by the sound of Kazuma and Venix speaking from behind me, as we searched. Our group had almost naturally fallen into a version of the formation we’d used back out in the jungles of Goryuen. I was out in front, while Azarus had taken up the rear. The two samurai were in the center, and although they were trying to be quiet, they were chatting to each other as they scoured rooms together. Their voices easily carried my way, both from the acoustics of the halls and because of my Perception.

“…did that actually happen?” I heard Kazuma ask Venix quietly.

Venix didn’t answer for a moment. “My…‘trial’, as Hart termed it?” He went quiet for a moment more, as I heard the two of them rifle through the dilapidated remains of a bedroom. “…yes, in a fashion. I was, indeed, an underperforming drone. Number Seventy-Six of Clutch-Pod Four-Thirty-Two. However…I was also a coward. When it was noticed that I was a substandard drone, I was tasked with the felling of a barrow-spire, to procure more weapons-grade Threnalyte for a neighboring colony. I would either succeed in my task, or be exiled. Somewhat understandably…I cowered before the fate set before me and was thus cast from the Hive unto the shores of Vereden. Once here, however…” Now I could hear a faint smile in his voice. “I was found by my Master, and it was he who forged me into who I have become. The rest, you know. Apparently.”

I was a bit surprised at the teasing tone he took with the other samurai, as they chuckled together. I’m not sure I had ever heard the Antium samurai sound so…free.

I suppose the guilt of his Master’s death had weighed heavier on Venix than I’d thought.

“And you, young Lord?” I heard Venix ask Kazuma. “What was your own ‘Trial’? I assume Hart found you first and freed you from the grasp of this curse.”

Kazuma went quiet, then. As I examined what I thought was…probably an infomedia panel of some kind, for a moment it didn’t seem like he was going to answer. However, when I gave up on the screen and exited that room, I heard his answer from a neighboring one. “No, I…I free myself, actually. We met up later. I…my trial was…”

I frowned, concerned for the man despite myself. It sounded like Kazuma was having trouble speaking about his own experiences.

Luckily, it turned out he didn’t need to.

A shout from down the corridor alerted Venix, Kazuma and I to the fact that Azarus had ventured on ahead of us. I exited the room I was in while the two samurai emerged from another, just in time for the dwarf to wave his hands at us from the far end of the hallway.

“This way!” I heard him shout. “I think I found ‘im! I found Renauld!”

My eyes widened, and I exchanged a quick glance with the other two before all three of us burst into a sprint down the corridor.

Hang on, Renauld.

We’re coming.

<<Chapter 279 | Table of Contents | Chapter 281>>

Chapter 279 - Vis Solaris Incarnata

The light was so incredibly bright that it immediately cut through the absolute darkness that lived at the interior base of Gorenzan. I had to shade my eyes in order not to be light blinded, and I noticed that I wasn’t the only one. Kazuma had lowered his blade to flinch from the sudden burning flash. Venix, though, stared forward with a furrowed brow, seemingly unbothered by the sudden star blooming in this cavern.

I guess there were benefits to having chitinous eyes.

However, unlike Venix, the rest of the Antium down here were very much affected by the sudden illumination. The hordes and hordes of undead shells that had been charging at us only moments before were suddenly shirking from the burning light. They shrieked and cried out from the touch of it, completely ignoring us and appearing to cower from the bright, burning red star.

It hung far in the distance of this enormous, mountainous cavern, shining brightly from some distant rock face and almost seeming to be glaring down at our immediate area. With my eyes having adjusted, I was able to see that the shine of that star appeared to be focused on us in a tight beam.

“What the hells is that…?” I heard Kazuma breathe.

I tensed suddenly, noticing something about the source of light agitating the undead were prepared to slaughter only moments ago.

It was getting closer.

“Move!” I shouted, abruptly grabbing Kazuma and dragging him backward. I didn’t need to do the same with Venix, though. The Antium samurai was already on the move, having noticed the same thing I did. Kazuma found his feet underneath him and finally joined me in running away from the horde of undead.

As the three of us raced away from the suddenly much more dangerous area, I hazarded a glance behind my shoulder.

The suddenly blooming star was rapidly falling from the sky, from some distant point in the distance that shortened every second. It pierced through the darkness, the air screaming from its rapid descent as it fell like a comet aimed straight at the pillar of Threnalyte stretching high into the disappearing void of the cavern. As it grew closer to the spire, I was actually able to make out the very tip of it, stretching what looked to be miles into the open air of the hollow mountain. The wickedly sharp, golden-orange tip gleamed in the sudden starlight.

But that ceased to matter shortly.

With a thunderous, shattering crash, the ‘star’ rammed right into the center of the Threnalyte ‘barrow spire’.

Star met amber, and the amber lost.

The entire edifice immediately crumbled from the force of the impact, enormous chunks of golden stone tumbling through the air to crash into the bedrock of the mountain. I stumbled from the succession of small quakes that shook the floor from the shattering of the spire. I didn’t realize I had stopped to watch as the small mountain within the mountain fell to pieces until my companions joined me in watching the demolition. Lakes worth of the strange orange liquid which had been suspended in the spire poured forth, washing past our feet to flood the cavern. With those falling rocks, I noticed that an uncountable number of undead Antium tumbled through the air as well, their screeches and chittering only barely audible over the crashing of stone.

“Well,” Kazuma finally voiced, once the last of the pillar had crumbled to the ground. “It’s a good thing we woke you, Venix. You would have been in the center of that otherwise.”

Venix huffed a small, barely amused breath in response, but nodded anyway. “Yes, perhaps. In some ways…it’s remarkably similar to a ritualized felling. But in others, this…malignancy has missed the point entirely. This liquid, for instance?” He shook his head. “The puppet master here has played their hand. Threnalyte has no liquid form. This merely illuminates that these are not true undead. Merely monsters aping them.”

I spared him a quick glance and a raised eyebrow at that. These weren’t actually undead, then?

Well.

Now I was actually interested in killing all of them. We could get some level Aether from this.

Our short discussion was cut short by a sudden increase in the light, coming from the impact point where the ‘comet’ had touched down. However, this light was…different. Instead of the burning hot glare of a sun, this was purer somehow. Bright and white, some of the ‘undead’ closest to the new crater in the bedrock actually flinched away, and to my surprise, started to smoke.

Out of that craggy depression, something happened that…only somewhat surprised me.

A figure began to rise from it.

And rise.

And rise.

Until standing on the rim was a shining white, humanoid figure, burning with a pure white flame. It…it had to be at least fifteen feet tall at the very least. Whoever or whatever this thing was, it was covered from head to toe in thick, heavy plate mail. Not an ounce of skin showed through, and the metal itself flexed and moved like it was more skin than protection. The white flame of its glow came from a broad, flowing cloak composed of the fire that draped down its back in waves. Upon its left arm it held a massive tower shield of the same shining silver metal that comprised its armor, while its left held a gigantic two-headed hammer. Sitting snugly on their head was a plate helmet from which no features were visible. No eyes, no nose, no ears, and not even a mouth for them to breathe through. Upon the crown were five separate spokes that radiated out medially, as if to represent the sun itself. Sunburst reliefs were prominent on the joints of the figure, and runic scripts in a dialect I wasn’t familiar with were visible carved upon the limbs. However, if I had to guess, the syntax almost looked like…prayer of some kind.

Stout and broad, the proportion of the figure, even as huge as they were, reminded me not so much of Kazuma and I…

But of a dwarf.

That, combined with the weaponry of the figure, gave me a possible inkling as to who this might be, but…

My suspicions became certainty when two firey, burning coals appeared on the helmet where eyes should be, and a booming voice echoed out of the figure.

A familiar one.

“Alrigh’, ya slaverin’ dogs!” The altered voice of Azarus burst forth from the covered mouth of the veritable titan. Within that voice I could feel all the soul-scorching fury of the sun, bolstered by the presence of a familiar Spirit.

A Great one, even.

“COME GET SOME!” Azarus roared into the void, banging his warhammer against his shield. The gong of the impact produced visible shockwaves in his surrounding area, kicking up waves of dust.

At the provocation, the hordes of false undead screeched an answering cry.

And charged him.

As if in answer, the flaming threads of Azarus’s white-hot cloak came apart into innumerable flaming chains. Each and every one of them was tipped with a burning hot dagger pure white flame. And each and every one of them speared forward on rattling, burning chains to skewer one of the monsters.

Hundreds died in an instant.

Despite the almost intimidating majesty of the scene, an annoyed frown crossed my own transformed features. “Leave some for the rest of us, you asshole!” I called out to my oldest friend on Vereden, as I broke out into a charge at the back ranks of the monsters. At the same time, Venix raced ahead of me to crash into them in a whirl of blades, while Kazuma sprinted alongside me.I ignited the burning blade of my staff and aimed the scintillating length at the torso of the first false undead I encountered. My fake annoyance with Azarus, already smiting these creatures by the dozen with every swing of his massive warhammer, died along with the monster as it was cleft in half.

The rest of them…

Well, they just couldn’t keep up with the four of us. What I had thought might turn into a rout with only Venix, Kazuma and I on the field of battle, was instead turning into an absolute slaughter.

For the monsters, that is.

In the midst of all the fighting, I found myself near the titanic form of Azarus as he strode the battlefield like an ancient god. To my slight amusement, I found that I barely even reached the metallic construct’s waist. Even in my transformed state, I had lost the height advantage to a dwarf.

“I’m guessing you got an offer you couldn’t refuse!” I called up to him, as I bisected one monster straight down the middle. Considering the form and markings on this transformed state Azarus had suddenly gained, it seemed obvious where it had come from.

I guess Tarus had found an Envoy he liked more than me.

That suited me just fine.

Azarus barked a laugh that rang out from metallic lungs. “Oh, aye!” He boomed, crushing another beast. “Right pushy, he were! All kinds of terms and conditions. But can’t say I’m hatin’ it.”

Oh, I bet you weren’t.

I have no way of knowing just how long it took for the four of us to thin the entire horde of monsters. But I don’t think it was long, considering just how efficiently we were mowing them down. Soon, they were all gone but for a single, chittering creature.

I held it by its false neck, dangling it above ground as I inspected it with a frown on my scaled, transformed features. As my three other companions, one of whom was also still transformed, came to stand with me to look at the thing, I was simultaneously both grateful for and annoyed by the bright light Azarus cast around him. If nothing else, it illuminated the scores of Monster Cores lying all around us, as the bodies of monsters we’d slain poofed away into Miasma.

It looks like Venix had been right. Time to see what these really were.

I Observed the beast clawing uselessly at my scales.

Name: Hollow Wretch

Level: 132

Age: 10 years

Species: Monster

Abilities: Nightmare Imitation

“As I thought,” Venix said, frowning at the monster. In a precise move that I only saw a glimmer of, his right-most katana lashed out and removed the head of the corpse-like imitation of one of his people. The now-deceased monster wisped away into Miasma, and I accidentally got a whiff of the foul smoke up my sensitive nose. I wrinkled it and shot the Antium man a foul look. He just ignored me. In return, I released my transformation and shrunk back down into my human form. “I have not personally encountered these creatures before, but I have heard tale of them. Wretch’s such as these lurk in the darkened corners of the world and typically stalk the unwary, physically transforming themselves to match the fears of their prey.” He paused for a moment, his frown growing. “However…I’ve never heard of them massing in such numbers.”

“It…must be the curse,” I said aloud, furrowing my brow and momentarily forgetting that two of my companions had yet to be briefed on the situation.

At least, that’s what I thought.

To my surprise, Azarus nodded along. “Ya, it is. From what I can tell, the Hexmistress’s curse adapts itself to each person differently. Fer ol’ Venix here,” He nodded down towards said Antium. “It spawned a bunch o’ those beasties, and had ‘em transform into undead.”

Hexmistress, huh. That…didn’t sound like Ixiah to me.

She was way more about the blood to my understanding.

I raised an eyebrow at the still titanic Dwarf, curious. “I’m guessing Tarus filled you in on what’s happening?”

Azarus nodded at me and then released his own apparent transformation. He shrunk back down to his usual size, while the metallic plate of his skin receded to reveal its normally tanned and hairy nature. However…

Like me, he bore the physical marks of his new transformation.

Azarus’s hair and beard were normally an almost fire-truck red, but now it had a visibly metallic sheen to it that glinted in the golden light still being cast by the Threnalyte. I think it was still hair, though, just metalized to a degree. The same runic markings that had been prominent on his transformed self had translated over to his base state as well, looking to be almost scarified onto his skin. Finally, his golden eyes seemed…purer somehow, cleansed of the faint flecks of brown that used to reside in their depths. They didn’t glow in the dim light like my own did, but the light reflected off of them to reveal a metallic sheen.

I was a bit jealous, honestly. He still looked like a dwarf, unlike my almost Elven state. Just…a bit shiny, now.

I didn’t let that show on my face, as I reached out and lightly punched the dwarf in the shoulder. “The Envoy of Tarus, huh?”

Azarus smirked at me and nodded. “Yup. And he’s got some stuff for me ta do. All part of the deal.”

An unexpected voice cut through our reunion, causing all four of us to jump in place. “Yes, yes, this is all very interesting. But you have better things to be doing than standing around and gabbing.”

All of us pivoted in place to look behind us, weapons suddenly drawn once again. I don’t think any of us had noticed anyone sneaking around.

Certainly not the open doorway that had appeared from nowhere to reveal the inside of a familiar, illusioned infirmary. Standing in the fluorescent light was the form of the Lich I knew as Travers, similarly illusioned to appear like a normal human man. He stood there in the light with his hands on his false hips. “Well?” He prompted in annoyance. “What are you waiting for? Get in. I need to take you lot to the next location.”

I sighed and then assured the still wary forms of Azarus and Venix that this was, nominally, an ally.

With that, we all walked into the clinic

The door shut behind us.

<<Chapter 278 | Table of Contents | Chapter 280>>

Chapter 278 - Forgiveness

Ominous.

I frowned at the exposed Antium man while Kazuma sputtered to my side. The three of us were lit only by the still extant glow from the strange pillar of amber that Venix was carving through. The light didn’t reach far, and just beyond the boundaries of it, only yawning void greeted my eyes.

I took a deep breath, and considered my options. Venix was stronger than both Kazuma and I put together, and I’d already come up short against him in a duel before, no matter what he said about the matter. However, it almost seemed like the samurai had…regressed, mentally. It was as if Lucretia’s curse had stripped him of decades worth of life experience. If I had to guess, he had reverted back to the days before he’d been exiled from his ‘Hive’ to the shores of Vereden.

I had little confidence in our ability to forcibly remove the Antium from the site of his torment. I had to go about this different way.

If I could only get him away from this place…

“Elaborate,” I said eventually.

Venix still wasn’t blinking as he stared at me, giving him even more of an alien appearance. He…normally did, I distantly realized. That had to be another cultural adaptation he’d picked up here among us fleshies. “My orders are to fell spire three-three-four-B. Auxillary Colony Gamma has reported depleted stocks of weapons-grade Threnalyte. As such, Overseer One-One-Four of Eight-Seven-One has ordered a replenishment.”

I held up a hand to stop Kazuma from speaking. The other samurai was nearly vibrating in place to my side. I understood why he would want to protest what Venix was talking about, but I didn’t want him to complicate matters. I had a specific scenario I was trying to build up to. Thankfully, Kazuma listened to my wordless gesture. The Kawamaran man took a deep breath and stepped back from the veritable interrogation. I noticed, though, that he still had an intense gaze fixed on Venix.

“I see,” I said evenly. “A worthy task. However, I am noticing inefficiencies in your work, Seventy-Six of Four-Thirty-Two.”

At that, Venix’s expression changed, if only faintly. His chitinous brow furrowed ever so slightly. “I do not comprehend. I am following regulation to the letter, for the felling of material that has undergone Threnogenesis.”

I firmed my own face, furrowing my brow to match his as I crossed my arms. I hoped to God that in whatever ensorcelled state Venix was in, he wouldn’t notice that I only had the two. “Is that so? I do not believe so, drone. Recite the regulations!”

Venix stiffened then, his stance changing to almost resemble parade rest. His fractalized eyes stared out over my head as he began to speak. “As per regulations, in order to appease the barrow spirits of Threnogized burial spires, a sacrifice is required to fell them. Without the proper ritual sacrifice, the spirits shall escape to wreak havoc upon the workforce of the Hive. As such, an underperforming drone is selected at random from the populace to act as said sacrifice.” He paused. “I am performing the ritualized felling to the specifications I was given. If I have erred, I am ready for correction.”

I blinked at the…dour task that Venix was describing, as I heard Kazuma curse softly from behind me.

Was this…what had driven Venix from his home on Indiqua? My understanding was that Lucretia’s curse drew upon old traumas and past history to torment you. Venix had never spoken of what exactly had caused his exile from the jungle planet, only of what had happened when he’d reached Vereden. Had he been given the task to fell one of these…barrow spires?

How had he escaped that?

Silence stretched between us for a moment before I rallied, coughing briefly into my closed fist. “Ah…you are, in fact, in need of correction number Seventy-Six. You have-” I groped for an excuse, any excuse, before landing on one. “The wrong tool for the task! Yes, that pick is insufficient for the mining of…Threnalyte. Just look at the cuts you made in the barrow spire! Sloppy.”

Slowly, Venix craned his head away from me to stare at the glowing surface of the Threnalyte ‘barrow spire’. For the first time since we’d found him, I saw the Antium man blink at the chiseled cuts he’d made, stretching around the rim of glowing golden stone. Then, he looked down at the oversized pick held loosely in his right hand to simply…stare at it.

There was an almost lost quality to his gaze.

I pounced on that, sensing weakness. “Such a sub-standard tool! Where did you even receive it, Seventy-Six? Was it Overseer One-One-Four? I find that hard to believe. I’ve never known him to be so lax. Isn’t that right, Overseer?” I asked, turning to stare promptingly at Kazuma.

He jumped at being so directly referenced but thankfully understood. “Ah, yes! My fellow… ‘Overseer’ is correct. That instrument is well below standards for this ritual.”

“As such,” I said, facing Venix one more with a stern expression. “You’ll be coming with us, Seventy-Six. We’ll need to requisition a new tool for your use in this…important task. Once it’s been procured, you can return to your duty.”

The Antium samurai finally turned his gaze back to me. I was heartened to see the almost clouded look in his chitinous eyes. Venix was looking more and more confused by the second.

That had to mean we were breaking through the conditioning of the curse.

“I…will comply,” Venix said slowly, standing slack before us.

I nodded sharply, hiding the sudden triumph from showing on my face. “Follow, Seventy-Six,” I said, turning sharply my heel away from the Antium. Meeting Kazuma’s eyes, I discreetly nodded at the pile of Venix’s gear I had set down off to the side. He understood, and scooped it all up as I started to slowly walk away from the spire of ‘Threnalyte’. At first, I was anxious that I didn’t hear the thumping of chitinous feet behind me. But after a moment, heavy footsteps sounded from behind us as I somehow successfully convinced Venix to walk away from his own torment. I met Kazuma’s gaze, a victorious glance exchanged between us. Hopefully, Venix would snap out of it soon, the farther we got away from the spire.

Ha.

Eat shit, Lucretia.

My triumph didn’t get to last for long.

A sudden, sharp cracking noise echoed out from behind the three of us, causing the group to stop.

That…sounded like it was coming from the Threnalyte. Sudden dread made me look over my shoulder, just in time to watch as something…horrible happened.

The dead were coming to life.

Within the frozen amber of the Threnalyte spire, the frozen, tortured forms of the deceased Antium were writhing. To and fro they thrashed, almost as if the inside of the Threnalyte had suddenly turned to liquid. Thousands and thousands of chitinous husks clutched at their antennae and appeared to scream in the golden glow cast by the substance they were suspended in.

Abruptly, every last one of them stilled.

And turned to face us. A chill went down my spine at the regard of so many dead eyes, staring straight at the three of us.

“The barrow spirits…” I heard Venix say, a note of almost regret in his voice. “I have failed. They are awake.”

Slowly, the fists of thousands of dead Antium began to beat against the inside of their golden prison, each chitinous fist somehow landing simultaneously. The sound was akin to the beating of war drums, sounding out across the deep, all encompassing darkness.

Thump…thump…thump…

None of them looked particularly friendly.

A crack opened upon the face of the spire, and from that slight crack poured forth a thick orange liquid. It glowed with an almost eerie golden light, and yet it flowed with the thickness and consistency of blood.

Questing, undead hands erupted from that small crack, and started trying to widen it with clawed fingers.

“Time to go,” I said abruptly, my heartbeat accelerating at the Hellish scene. I spun about and moved to sprint away from the soon-to-be-freed horde of undead Antium. Only, I found that I was alone.

Kazuma and Venix hadn’t budged from their positions, watching the slowly widening crack in the face of the spire.

“What are you doing?!” I shouted at them, my voice echoing out across the darkness. I waved one arm at them frantically. “C’mon!”

They both ignored me. Instead, to my surprise, Kazuma had completely disregarded the massing horde, and had turned to study Venix intently. It was almost as if he cared nothing for the undead at all. To his side, Venix was standing completely limp with his curse-conjured pickaxe in hand, the head of it dragging on the stone floor of the cavern below.

I cursed and wheeled about. I hadn’t wanted to try and take on what looked be nearly an entire Ward Break’s worth of undead Antium. As I raced back to join them, I reached for my staff, still strapped to my back securely through all of the ups and downs I’d gone through down in this bunker. I would need to put these things down fast if I didn’t want us to get overwhelmed. That meant it was time to reach for the advanced stage of The Scintillant Blade once more.

I hoped my Mana could hold out through it.

I held out on calling for the Skill as I skidded to a stop next to them. I would need to wait until the last minute to call for the burning blade if I wanted to maximize run time. I don’t think either Kazuma or the ensorcelled Venix even noticed I was back.

Instead, over the chittering cries we could now hear through the gap in the Threnalyte spire, Kazuma had turned to Venix…

And thrust one of the Antium’s own sheathed swords into his chest. The crossguard of the katana clanked as it thumped into the broad, exposed surface Very much in a daze of confusion and regret born of Lucretia’s curse, Venix looked down at blade in confusion. “What am I…to do…with…?”

A deep conviction settled into the taught shoulders of Kazuma then, and he reached out and grabbed one of Venix’s four chitinous hands. He dragged it upwards, and clasped it over Venix’s own blades, cupped by both of his own. This just seemed to confuse Venix all the more.

Kazuma met Venix’s fractal eyes and spoke.

“I forgive you.”

Venix visibly tensed, then, to his own confusion. It was as if he had no idea what the other samurai was talking about, but still reacted to it nonetheless.

Kazuma wasn’t deterred. Instead, he just kept his eyes trained straight on the Antium as I saw the first undead Antium wiggled his way through the gap in the Threnalyte. I cursed, and seeing that the other two were occupied, drove the butt of my staff into the stone of the bedrock hard enough to embed it. Leaving it standing where it was, I instead drew my bow from its compact canister on my back and grabbed a handful of the near bolt-like arrows.

In seconds, I had sent an arrow enhanced with Grinding Crimson Sunder spiraling across the distance to decapitate the hollow chitinous shell of one of the undead.

I don’t know what Kazuma hoped to accomplish, but I sure as hell hoped he did it quick.

“I was listening outside the tent the other night,” Kazuma said, ignoring the whistling of my arrows as I dealt with the undead for him. “When you spoke of how Gozen of the Twin Fangs died, all those years ago. And of your involvement in his death. I say this now, as the last surviving Lord of the Higanashi Clan, and as Gozen’s great-grandson. Venix, blade of the Shattered Sun…I forgive you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Venix shudder, and to my shock, a measure of confusion vanished from his gaze. But he didn’t look quite free yet.

Kazuma kept speaking. “You were not at fault for Gozen’s death,” He said fiercely. “Just as it is the squire’s duty to serve the Lord, it is the Lord’s duty to serve the squire. I have no doubt that Lord Gozen was incredibly relieved to have saved you from Tatsugan’s claws, even if it meant his own fated end would come. My Grandfather would always tell us tales of his Father, when Aika and I were children. Gozen of the Twin Fangs was a true samurai, noble and pure of purpose. He served his nation, his Clan, and his retinue with honor, until his very last moment. He died a hero's death, and you did nothing wrong. You have nothing to be ashamed of. And as the Lord of the Higanashi Clan, I absolve you of any wrong-doing in the matter.”

I collapsed my bow as the drama played out to my left and stored it away once more. Not because I was out of arrows, no. But because the gap in the face of the Threnalyte barrow spire had widened enough that I couldn’t keep up alone. The undead Antium were pouring forth in twos and threes, now. I activated Vis Maledicta Exactoris, and with my enhanced strength, withdrew my staff from its standing position.

“They’re coming,” I grunted to the samurai.

Instead of answering me…

I heard Venix speak. This time…this time, his voice sounded clear, and I risked a glance over at him while I set my staff into a battle-ready stance.

The sorcerous confusion and regret had completely vanished from him. In its place…was a deep, almost wondering gratitude. I was shocked to see actual tears in Venix’s eyes.

I hadn’t even known Antium could do that.

“Thank you,” I heard Venix say, as I ignited my blade of cascading fire. “I will not forget the gift you have given me…my Lord.”

Kazuma chuckled. “I am not your Lord, Venix. But…I can be your brother.”

I felt it as both samurai stepped up to stand on either side of me, and heard it as five katanas were unsheathed all at once.

Four from one.

The last from the other.

“You ready?” I asked without looking. I didn’t need to.

I knew what I would find.

“Yes,” I heard Venix say in a clear, hungry voice. I’m not sure I’d ever heard the Antium samurai so eager for battle. “Let them come. I have decades of frustrated sorrow to work through.”

From Kazuma though…I heard something I would have expected from Venix himself.

“Thorned shadow strikes swift,

Fury cuts through blood and bone,

Silent death awaits.”

As hundreds and hundreds of chitinous, undead Antium swarmed towards us from the Threnalyte crystal, I heard Venix speak, almost sounding impressed.

“Not bad.”

And then the sun bloomed far off into the distance of the cavern.

<<Chapter 277 | Table of Contents | Chapter 279>>

Chapter 277 - Spire of Hatred

I had visited some pretty hostile environments in my time on Vereden, but nothing compared to the interior base of Mt. Gorenzan. Even though both Kazuma and I had eventually acclimated to the oppressive pressure in here, that still didn’t make it pleasant. The air was so thick, hot, and muggy, that it fed like I was wading through warm mud. The absolute darkness down here was impenetrable, too, to the extent that I…

Well, sometimes it didn’t even feel like we were actually…someplace. To my mind and my senses, this barely felt like a true location. There were no landmarks in here, no walls signifying the border of the mount to find. Kazuma and I had even looked, for a time. For perhaps thirty minutes, we veered away from the ever-present tinking noise of the distant pickaxe and tried to find a wall. We had hoped to find some kind of point of reference down here. There were no landmarks visible in any direction, after all.

Just pure void, surrounding us on all sides.

This place…it felt more like a purgatory than anything else. An in-between zone, thresholding waking and dreaming.

A true liminal space.

We had to give up, though, and eventually just resumed walking towards the ever-present sound of a far-off pick, our path lit only by our respective light abilities. His a handheld stick, and mine a floating orb.

All the while, the hot, heavy breath of the mountain caressed our lonely forms.

I think both Kazuma and I realized just how insidious the danger of this space was. Not only could we get lost down were, it was so, so easy to lose yourself. We needed some kind of distraction. And so, we spoke about anything and everything that came to mind.

However, of his own trial, I asked nothing. Somethings were too private, too raw, to dig into.

I learned a lot about the man, in those hours of dreamlike travel with him. And he about me, as well.

Some frivolous.

“…and so Aika, get this,” Kazuma laughed, his voice echoing out over the darkness. “She actually eats the fish. I couldn’t believe it, honestly. Mother did not appreciate that, let me tell you. The man was half-trained at best. The damn things are supremely toxic, to the point that improperly prepared a single bite will kill you in seconds.”

I chuckled softly. “But she was fine?”

Kazuma waved my concern off. “Oh, more than that. By the time it came for her Awakening, my sister had developed a taste for the poison. Turns out, the System was paying attention. She got offered a sort of toxin-based animal tamer class. Venom Tender, it’s called. She’s doing fairly well these days, even has an apothecary of her own. She’s well known now for including a hint of the toxin in all of her potions, which somehow doesn’t spoil them. Gives them a bit of a kick. Her precious little Bubu happily provides it for her use.” He snorted wryly. “I bet she’ll be surprised when I come back as the leader of a foreign Sect.”

Of course, I reciprocated. I wasn’t a total asshole.

I hummed, crossed my arms, and stared up at the long hollow shaft of Gorenzan above us. “She loved lemons,” I said nostalgically, a small smile on my face. “The color, the smell, the taste. The soap in the house was lemon-scented, she used it in cooking whenever she could, and even the walls were painted lemon yellow.” I laughed aloud. “Hell, even the house itself was painted yellow. Dad didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, Mom could do no wrong. I think in both our minds, the memory of her is lemon-scented. I know my childhood sure was.”

Some things, however…weren’t so frivolous.

“It was grandfather’s death that broke us,” Kazuma said lowly, no longer laughing. “He was the last link we had to the court, and with him died those connections. In the eyes of the nobility, the rest of us were little better than low-born mongrels. Grandmother was a commoner, which meant their daughter was a commoner, which meant I was a commoner. Our titles were stripped from us with the impurity of our blood, and so we had to find work. We survived on the proceeds from selling the compound for a time, but eventually.” He paused for a moment, breath coming heavy before he could force the words out. “Eventually, the burden of it became too much for Mother. She…followed after Grandfather and Grandmother, leaving Father, Aika, and I alone.” He chuckled bitterly. “Hopefully in the beyond, she could be the noble she felt she deserved to be.”

I…

I spoke of something I hadn’t voiced. Not to Grey. Not to Sylvia. Not to Bella or Azarus or anyone.

“I still hate him,” I hissed, a slow, hot breath escaping my lips akin to steam. “Some people say that hatred fades with time, but not for me. It’s been more than a year, and the feeling hasn’t faded a bit. If anything, it’s stronger. Sometimes I lay awake at night, unable to sleep at the burning hot loathing that fills my veins. I think back to all that he did to me, and I wish I could have repaid him a thousand-fold. The moment I pierced his heart with my first-forged dagger is an almost bitter-sweet memory now. I wanted more from that moment. It wasn’t enough.” I paused for a moment, feeling a deep, dark, familiar hatred roll over me. “I almost understand Shacklock. If Magnus had survived…”

I trailed off, but I think Kazuma understood.

The sound of my hatred-laden breath filled the air between us, but Kazuma wasn’t deterred. Instead, he almost looked to be gazing thoughtfully out into the darkness.

“Slavery is a true abomination,” He finally said. “It is one of the few things that Kawamara and Herztal agree upon. Well, at least we thought they agreed upon before the arrival of the Sculpted. The institution has long been a point of contention with Velancia, and how the Herztals treated their own creations has been looked at, shall we say, unfavorably these past years. We are not perfect. But at least we don’t do that. For you, though,” Kazuma turned to face me. “I cannot say I understand what you went through, but…”

I let one final heavy breath through my nose. “I know. I know. It’s not good for me. I think…I think it’s because I don’t have Fade around anymore.”

“Fade?” Kazuma asked curiously.

Ah…

I had forgotten, for a moment, that I wasn’t speaking to someone who knew me closer.

I smiled wryly at the other man. “A Spirit Wolf I found as a pup, only days after leaving Addersfield. He...taking care of him after everything that happened was…good for me, I think. I’m close with him in a way I don’t think I am with…anyone, really. He had to stay behind with another of his kind for some tutelage. I…miss him, though. Fade had a calming effect on me, and I’ve already decided that once all of this,” I said, sweeping wide with my covered prosthetic. “Is done with, I’m heading that way in order to meet up with him. Now that I’m a proper Magi, it’s high time we truly bonded as Familiars to each other. And…I think I want to introduce Aveline to him, too. He’ll probably be good for h-”

I stopped in the middle of my sentence, leaving Kazuma staring at me with a raised eyebrow. I paid him little attention, though, because I’d just realized something.

I had already made up my mind on what I wanted to do with Aveline. Even if only subconsciously. But the moment I said it aloud…

“He’ll be good for her,” I whispered. “Because we’ll be together.”

I had made a promise to Cecily, after all.

Kazuma made an understanding noise in the back of his throat. “Ah. I see. You’ve come to a decision, then?”

I nodded without speaking, the importance of I’d realized settling on my shoulders. This…this would change my life.

But strangely, I wasn’t afraid of it.

The other man reached out and clapped me on one of said shoulders. “Then I congratulate you on your new ward. Perhaps, in time, she can come to be even more.”

I let out a shuddering breath.

And nodded firmly. “Maybe. But for now, I think we’re done.”

Kazuma’s entire demeanor sharpened then, and he settled one hand on the butt of his katana. “Just so,” He inclined his head. “The sound is louder, now. We must be close.”

I returned his nod and drew my daggers. One forward, one back, as usual. We continued further, this time at full readiness. Someone was near, I could almost feel it. One of my companions had to be making that endless tinking noise here in the dark, and it was loud now. Considering the environment, I thought it had to be Azarus.

Turns out…

I was wrong.

Abruptly, our lights actually illuminated something rising out of the darkness. The entire time Kazuma and I had been walking, the cold glow of our abilities hadn’t touched a thing. Now, though, they fell on a massive monolith of some kind of…golden stone. It was almost crystalline, but that wasn’t quite right. Still, though, whatever this was made of, it was dense and nearly opaque. Hard as stone, but not quite, the moment our lights fell upon the spire of strange material, it glowed.

Now our entire immediate area was illuminated in a strange, golden-orange light.

In the distance, outlined by that brilliance, was a tall figure. Much taller than a dwarf, it had a slim, well-defined physique…

Of a deep umber chitin.

Next to me, Kazuma breathed in sharply. “Venix!”

I blinked at that. I…think that was the first time I’d heard Kazuma actually say that name. Used to be, he would just call him the ‘ant’, or the ‘bug’.

To my further surprise, the other man abruptly broke out into a sprint directly toward the distant figure of Venix. I cursed and followed after him, struggling to match the pace of the Cultivator and wary of wasting an ounce of strength by activating a Skill.

With the increased light from the now glowing spire of strange, amber like material, I was able to make out more details in the environment as I drew closer. The grow gradually transitioned into the golden material as well, and upon it, I found some curious, if not alarming items.

Venix’s kit.

All of it.

First, it was his ivory robe with pink cranes in flight, follow by his hat laying carelessly discarded on top of a nearby boulder of the material. Then it was his sandals, and his pack I found nearby, spilling many of the contents across the amber floor.

Then, finally, I found all four of his blades. I had been collecting of the Antium Samurai’s accoutrements as I advanced, but the sight of those katana that Venix so carefully maintained, lying so carelessly discarded, filled my heart with a curious dread. I drew in a shuddering breath and grabbed those as well.

Kazuma had long since reached Venix by now, having left me behind. However, from what I could tell, our lost companion had not stopped in his steady assault against the rock face with a pickaxe. I don’t even know where he had gotten one of those down here. We sure as hell hadn’t brought one along on the journey.

I could only assume the curse had manifested it for his use.

As I reached the two of them, I cast an eye around warily. At first, I saw nothing but the pleading Kazuma and the working form of Venix.

Who was entirely naked. His entire chitinous musculature was on display, illuminated by the glow of the golden amber. I’d never considered it before, but now I was…deeply glad that Antium didn’t appear to have outwardly displayed…sexual characteristics.

I would have been deeply embarrassed for Venix if he hadn’t appeared as a tall, chitinous statue, smooth and hard instead of an exposed man.

But then I took a closer look at the glowing spire of amber stone in front of me.

There were Antium buried within it. Countless, countless bodies of dead Antium, frozen in their exoskeletons. Expressions of pain and horror were fixed upon their face as they stretched and contorted in agony, trapped in amber at the moment of death. The preserved corpses stretched all the way up and out of sight within the monstrously tall spire, far out of my line of sight.

And the base of it was being chipped away. Visibly so. There was a large, deep groove etched into the base of the spire, extending off into either direction and beyond my eyeline. It almost looked like Venix was trying…chop down a tree of some kind, slowly working his way around the circumference of the column, getting ever closer to the center.

But that was…

“Madness…” I murmured, as I drew alongside Kazuma. He had made the same observation I had and was already pleading with the Antium man to stop.

“Venix, please!” Kazuma said desperately. “Think about what you’re doing! If you keep going, this entire thing is going to collapse on top of you! The base won’t support the weight! You’ll be crushed!”

The entirely naked Antium didn’t respond to the words of the other samurai. He just kept chiseling away at the amber before him.

I frowned, considering the situation as I bent and set down Venix’s clothes and armaments.

This was…way beyond my own trial. On an order of magnitude, I would say. Mine had been…distressing, sure, but mostly seemed to be an attempt to entrap me. But this entire edifice, combined with the almost ensorcelled attitude of Venix…

This was torment on another level.

I took a chance, based on a few tight-lipped words I’d heard from Venix over the months. Some of them had even come from when Venix had joined us on a rare drink and partaken himself.

“Drone,” I said sharply, causing Venix to freeze mid-swing. “Turn and identify yourself.”

Slowly, the pickaxe lowered and Venix turned about-face towards Kazuma and I. Shadowed by the glow of the amber, he cut an imposing figure despite his lack of his usual weapons.

I was disquieted by the lack of emotion in those faceted, gem-like, chitinous eyes.

“I am Seventy-Six of Four-Thirty-Two,” Venix said, in a flat, alien voice. I wanted to shiver at the sound of it.

I had never heard Venix sound so…insectile. I suppose he had been masking the depths of his real voice all this time.

For some reason, that disquieted me. But I didn’t let that show on my face, nor did I let it distract me.

“Seventy-Six of Four-Thirty-Two,” I continued. “What is your objective?”

Venix met my eyes, then. Across the distance, I could see my own emerald reflected in those fractals.

“Die for the Hive.”

<<Interlude 14 | Table of Contents | Chapter 278>>

Interlude 14 - Grasp Thy Truth

One foot forward. The next followed.

One foot forward. The next followed.

One foot forward. The next followed.

And on and on and on and on.

Endlessly.

Azarus of House Savoy stared forward into the blackness that stretched on before him. On either side of his stout frame, he was surrounded by the walls of a stone tunnel that seemed…familiar to him, in a distant way. As his booted feet tromped forward, almost as if they weren’t under his control, Azarus wondered how that could be. Surely…surely this was the first time he had ever been here?

But none of that mattered. He had to keep going. He had to reach the end of the tunnel, where he knew she was waiting for him.

He had to reach her before it was too late. He…he would never forgive himself if he didn’t make it in time.

Her life depended on it.

It felt like only moments ago Azarus had been sleeping soundly in the cot at the foot of his loaned forge. He had earned the right to use that forge, as small and dinky as it was. Long, long hours learning at the feet of the old Dwarven masters of the Holds had granted him his own space. He had impressed ancient Jorvik, the Defiant himself, with a very traditional axe wrought from mithril. Azarus had spent hours and hours and hours making bars of the stuff, none of the masters should have been so damn surprised that even a Velancian like him could work it properly.

Too bad he couldn’t keep the axe. But in return, he’d earned the right to his own forge.

A proper workplace, from where he could build a life for him…and for her.

But after a long day forging flippin’ cutlery, he'd been awoken by Torgir barging his way into the comforting heat of the tiny building. Azarus had been startled awake by the racket Tor was making, something out of the ordinary for the normally quiet leatherworker next door.

The other dwarf’s words had shocked all tiredness from his body.

“The Korvoks grabbed Sigrun.”

Azarus had barely stopped long enough to grab his still-untested hammer and shield before dashing out of the forge, Torgir hot on his heels. He hadn’t even bothered to put on a shirt.

There were more important things than the stares of the citygoers.

He had to get to the mines, now.

Azarus had gotten the story from Torgir on the mad dash through the streets of the Hold, lit by eternally blazing braziers on every corner. Sigrun had been asked by her father to accompany a team of inspectors on a jaunt to shaft number thirty-three. Apparently, the crews might have found a new vein of Lunar Basalt of all things. This had been a big deal for the grey beards of the Jarlthing, and since Sigrun’s father was one of those Jarls…

However, once she had reached the vein deep into that old, snaking through and out of the mountain, it turned out the Hold hadn’t been the only Clan to find it.

The Korvoks were waiting for the team.

In all the chaos of the skinners descending upon the inspectors, one of the miners leading them had shamefully fled back through the tunnels. It was only thanks to that terrified coward that anything was even known about the ambush.

Azarus was torn between hating him for leaving miners and functionaries to the not-so-tender, non-existent mercies of the rogue cannibal Clan, and being thankful they had any word of what happened at all. If not for him, it could have been hours or even days before a search team was dispatched for the missing crew.

The Hold guard had naturally been gathering at the mouth of the tunnel when Azarus and Torgir reached it, waving away curious onlookers from venturing into the depths. Sigrun was a Jarls daughter, after all, and too important to go un-searched for like so many other disappearances had been over the years. Azarus knew they probably would have blocked him from accompanying them, with the way Sigrun’s father very publicly disapproved of their courtship.

There was no way he would have been allowed to search for his own damned fiancé.

But with Torgir’s help, Azarus just barged through the blockade. The leatherworker had distracted them so he could sneak by. Once past the Guard, Torgir had stayed behind to delay them if only for a moment, so Azarus could get ahead.

He would always be grateful for that. Azarus hadn’t known Torgir liked him that much.

Only…

The tunnel he had run into didn’t seem to have an end. Azarus must have run down that seemingly infinite shaft for hours, with all the speed that his Awoken legs could grant him. He had cursed himself for a fool, focusing more on his Professions than his Statusial advancement. If he had only gone on more monster-hunting expeditions, maybe he could have broken through the barrier into being a proper Cultivator. Surely with Ki of his own, he could have reached the ambush site where the Korvoks were holding his love.

But he never reached it. Over time, Azarus started to lose strength. He couldn’t keep his mad dash up forever, and had to try and conserve his strength with a swift jog. He might need to fight off the Korvoks, after all. Eventually, even that became too much for him. His job turned into a fast walk, and then…

Even slower.

Now Azarus was barely trudging forward on feet and legs that had little to no strength left in them. The scion of both House Savoy and House Florens had no idea how long he’d been slowly shuffling his way down into the depths of Vereden, but he…he couldn’t stop. He had to save Sigrun.

If he didn’t…

What…what did he have to live for?

Soaked in sweat born from both fear and exertion, Azarus slumped to his knees in the middle of the tunnel. His eyes stared ahead of him, seeing nothing, feeling nothing below his waist. His legs had long since gone numb, and the smith didn’t know if he had injured himself in the grim march to save Sigrun. His feet could have been shredded into so much mangled meat that they were little better than nubs, and he wouldn’t have even been able to tell.

For a moment, he considered falling face-first onto the stone below, to drag himself forward on hands and knees. Surely…

Surely he would reach the ambush eventually.

As if in a dream, Azarus fell face forward onto the hard stone of the tunnel, scraping his cheek on pickaxe hewn floor. Shakily, he raised his right arm and dug it into the rock before him and dragged himself forward.

He inched forward and smiled. He…he could do it.

Just a bit more. He could do more.

And then, Azarus blinked and found himself back where he had been kneeling, only moments ago.

Ah…it…it had all been a hallucination of his exhausted mind. He hadn’t moved ever since he’d fallen to his knees. He…had just been staring out into the darkness that stretched before the whole time.

Despair fell upon him then. He couldn’t do it. There wasn’t an ounce of strength left in him, no matter how hard he struggled. His hands and feet couldn’t move him an inch farther.

It was over.

Because of his failure, Sigrun would be slaughtered by the Korvoks.

Azarus slumped further in his kneeling position, let his head slump against his chest, and wept. All he wanted now, was for the stone to reach out…

And swallow him whole.

He didn’t know how long he knelt there, dwelling upon his own deficiencies and what they’d cost him. However, a curious sensation growing over time, eventually caught his attention.

From the pocket of his pants, he felt a strange warmth. Sluggishly, Azarus raised one limp hand to dig into that small space. Inside, his smithing roughened fingers brushed the surface of a smooth, glassy surface. Clenching the warm object in his hand, he withdrew it. As he did, a light began to chase away the deep, all-encompassing darkness he dwelled in.

Even through the bars of his fingers, warm rays of light shone through. Curious despite himself, because he had no idea what this could possibly be, Azarus opened his hand.

A star bloomed in the dwarven carved tunnel, chasing away the void. Sitting in his hand was a small gemstone that looked to be wrought from frozen flame. In it’s depths he could see oceans of what appeared to be flowing fire, endlessly writhing in whorls and spirals.

Azarus stared down into the sea of flame, enraptured. He had never seen anything like this in his life. He had no idea where it had come from.

It was like it had just…appeared on his person.

As he stared into the firey gem, hypnotized, he heard something. A voice, almost, appearing at the edge of his hearing, speaking as if from an impossible distance.

Male and proud, it beseeched him.

Break…it…

Azarus blinked.

And clenched his fist tightly down on the stone. Even though he…wasn’t (?) yet a Cultivator, he was strong enough to crush a stone.

The gem shattered in the palm of his hand with a sound akin to the breaking of glass, and from his clenched fist poured forth an ocean of flame. All of the fire trapped within it was now free, and yet…

It did not burn him.

No…

Instead, the light and the warmth of the sun in his hand chased away the darkness clouding his mind as well.

Azarus, formerly of House Savoy, blinked long and hard. His lips parted, and he remembered.

This…all of this.

This had happened years ago. Three of them, to be precise.

There had been a tunnel. There had been a raid. There had been Torgir, who he had not seen in a very long time.

And most importantly…

There had been a Sigrun.

But the tunnel had not been endless, and he…

Had been too late.

By the time Azarus had reached the site of the ambush by the Korvok clan, they’d already had their fun and their fill. To the last, each dwarf of the team of inspectors had been skinned and partially devoured. Some of their victims had been strung up their own intestines, to hang from the ceiling of the tunnel, wound around the stalactites above.

Including his Sigrun.

Of the Korvoks, there was no sign of where they went, or even where they came from. That Clan of monsters and demons had always been able to appear and disappear like that, seemingly at will.

Even now. Even now the sight of her defiled corpse was burned into his mind's eye. He saw it every time he dreamt. He saw it every time he blinked.

Azarus knew, with the certainty of stone, that he would never escape that horror, not until the end of his days.

Maybe not even then.

From that tragedy, he lost everything he cared about. The loss of his daughter in such a gruesome manner drove Sigrun’s father, Jarl Garlan, mad. For some reason beyond him, the dwarf blamed Azarus for the ill-fate that had befallen she who they both loved so deeply. He was stripped of his hard-won forge, and stripped of his guest right in the halls of the Mountain Holds. It was barely a day before he was formally exiled by the Jarlthing at Garlan’s request. Even now, he didn’t know the actual reason given for the banishment.

By that point, he hadn’t cared.

Near suicidally depressed, he had trudged his way back to the nearest city to that Hold. That being Vittolia, the stronghold of his paternal House.

The Savoy.

Anguis had welcomed him back with strangely open arms, clucking his tongue in mock sympathy at the tragedy Azarus had endured. From that point on, he was free to do as he wished, and the only thing he cared for was his art. He spent years mindlessly toiling away at a forge much nicer than the one he had won with his own two hands but didn’t care even a fraction as much about.

Unaware of the chains slowly tightening upon him.

Until the day came that his Lord Uncle called in his debt. Azarus had idled the years away, he was told, spending gold frivolously in pursuit of gains both Statusial and Professional. Why, Anguis had even personally financed his Cultivator Ascension ritual and all the required reagents. It was time for him to give back to the House, this time through service.

And so he was shipped off to wait at the hands and feet of his mad cousin, in a mad hamlet, for a mad task.

The sacrificial lamb.

The indignity of it all…it finally awoke him from his years-long sorrow. He hatched a plan with his fellow prisoner, and not long after that…

A curious human slave came into his life.

Only, he wasn’t a true human at all.

Azarus breathed out shakily, nearly swimming through the sea of painless fire that had filled the tunnel.

He had been accompanying said person what felt like only moments ago. He, and all of their traveling companions, had been sucked into some strange door set into the wall of the most ominous mountain he’d ever seen.

Somehow…someway?

It had trapped him in a torturous recreation of that mad dash through the tunnels of the Hold mine, as he raced against fate to try and save his love.

“This is…” Azarus spoke aloud, a scowl growing on his bearded face. “Pretty fucked up, I gotta say.”

He didn’t expect the reply that came, echoing out of the flame itself.

A bit of an understatement, wouldn’t you say?

Azarus shivered. Something about that voice…

Something in it felt like it was speaking to his soul.

“Who goes there?!” He called out in the now illuminated tunnel. It still stretched out into seeming infinity, but he could at least see his hands in front of his face. He used said hands to draw his hammer and shield and held them at the ready.

Who am I, you ask?

The light from the flames brightened, and Azarus could have sworn he saw a brief shape condense in the midst of it.

It almost looked like another dwarf.

I am the light that falls upon the verdant. I am the warmth that chases away the bitter cold. I am the dawn that lifts the hearts of the righteous, and he who delivers judgment upon the wicked.

I…am Tarus, Lord of the Sun. Everburning. Unrelenting.

And I have an offer for you, Azarus of No House.

Azarus blinked and lowered his armaments, staring into the burning eyes of the flaming dwarf across the tunnel. Despite everything…

He was intrigued.

“Alrigh’,” Azarus said slowly.

“Make yer pitch.”

<<Chapter 276 | Table of Contents | Chapter 277>>

Chapter 276 - Mounting Pressure

“I…apologize for that unseemly display, Hart,” Kazuma lowered his head, visibly chagrined.

Said display being the way he had latched onto me for comfort after being awoken here in an ancient Lich’s tomb/infirmary. To my surprise, said Lich had stepped away to ponder the sleeping form of Aveline to give us a semblance of privacy, while I filled the Kawamaran samurai in on what was actually going on down here. I had no doubt Travers could hear every word spoken here in his domain, but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless. If not for me, than at least for Kazuma’s sake.

I shook my head at him. “Don’t worry about it,” I said lowly, sitting on the bed next to him. Rather than turn my head, I instead stared down at my clasped hands. “I get it, I really do. This place…it has a way of getting into your head.”

Logically, childhood fears that you had received actual, for real therapy for shouldn’t affect you so deeply. But something about the nature of Lucretia’s curse down here…

It was like an amplification. A multiplying of old, deep-seated dread that you couldn’t escape. I’d done my best to compartmentalize the feelings my own ‘trial’ had raised in me, but…

But.

Well, I’d deal with that later. Right now, Kazuma had to know what we were up against down here.

The only other human male in my party sat quietly while I filled him in on what Travers had told me. I kept some things out of it, of course. I’m not sure just how relevant to our immediate situation my own circumstances were. However, Kazuma remained silent as I told him about Aveline, and Akhoroth, the curse upon this ancient tomb, how we needed to either rescue or find everyone else and most importantly…

The true nature of Tatsugan.

And how it was up to us to truly slay the Wyrm. Once, and for all.

Kazuma stared over my head once I was finished, looking not at Travers, but at the sleeping form of Aveline. “I see,” He said quietly. To my surprise, the barest impression of a laugh escaped his lips, low and devoid of amusement. “It’s like a tale out of a storybook. We need to slay the beasts in this hole and then rescue the princess deep within, to ride triumphant out into the sunlight. All before my mad ancestor can needlessly sacrifice life, slaying what turns out is little better than a puppet. This is…not what I expected, those months ago, when Shacklock approached me in a dingy dockside bar. Well. Nothing for it, I suppose,” He slid off of the bed and stood up, stretching his back and then sliding his blade back into the tattered cloth of his belt. “There’s no time to waste then, is there?”

I joined him, rising to my full height and feeling my tired bones creak in equally exhausted muscle. It had been many long, long days of battle, marching, and stress to reach this point. But now, I could finally see what I hoped was a light at the end of this tunnel.

Damn, but it had turned out to be an exhausting trip here to Goryuen. Not at all like the simple island adventure I’d been expecting.

“No,” I said louder than his whisper, if only to gain Travers's attention once more. I thought I saw the Lich’s illusioned eyes flicker my way from where he had been standing granite still over Aveline, but I couldn’t be sure. “There isn’t.” I turned fully to face Kazuma then, and extended a hand. “Can I count on you, Kazuma Higanashi? Will you see this through to the end?”

Kazuma turned away from Travers to bodily face me. He stared into my eyes for one long moment, almost seeming like he was looking for something. Whatever it was, he appeared to find it. He nodded firmly and reached out to grasp my outstretched forearm, clamping down with a steel grip. “You can. Let us put an end to this madness, Nathaniel Hart.”

I returned the grasp unflinchingly, and the two of us nodded at each other.

You know, maybe I’d been wrong about Kazuma. I’d been wary of the man ever since we’d picked him up out in the jungles, but I don’t think I needed to be any longer.

As far as I was concerned, no matter his motives or his origins…

He had proven himself to me.

We turned away from each other and walked over to join Travers. He didn’t look up from his vigil as we came to stand shoulder to shoulder before him. “I’ll transit the infirmary closest to where I can sense one of your fellows. Whenever you locate them, the presence of the curse will fade enough that I can transit close enough to your position for a pick-up. Once you have located all of them, only then will I take the lot of you to where the defiled core resides,” He started without a word of greeting. “But first, we have something else to discuss.” Travers turned to face the two of us then, and I tensed at the barest impression of green flame I could see in his illusioned eyes. “The girl will not be coming with you.”

The Lich’s tone brooked absolutely no argument. There was a steel firmness to his words that sent a shiver of caution down my spine. Well.

Either that, or the promise of murder in that gaze.

“I…thought we were meant to save the girl from this place?” Kazuma voiced cautiously, tensing when that undead gaze fell on him.

“And you will,” Travers said darkly. “But everywhere outside of my clinic is too dangerous for her. Find your companions and then deal with the Wyrm, but Aveline will not accompany you on this task. Frankly, I question your intelligence if you thought you’d drag along a helpless little girl on such matters. Once things have been resolved, I will be there with her for you to spirit away from this…moldering relic.”

I stared his into false eyes, and nodded slowly. “That…makes sense. But at least let me tell Aveline that. I…don’t want her upset if she wakes up and finds me gone.”

Travers snorted in disgust then. “That will not be an issue. If I so wish it, then the child will not wake until I will it. She will keep. Go. This room has already been transported as close as I can get to a life sign. This knot will not untangle itself.”

It was already moved? I hadn’t felt a thing.

Abruptly, the curtain that had been drawn back around Aveline’s bed lurched to life, surrounding the bed once more in a white linen wall. In contrast to most curtains I’d seen in my life, I couldn’t see a thing through it at all. The view of both the disguised Lich and the little girl I’d saved vanished from my sight.

Clearly, Travers was done with the two of us for now. I exchanged a glance with Kazuma and wordlessly agreed that it was time to get going. The both of us padded our way across illusioned floors, and stopped before the door, staring at the sliding fixture for a moment.

I took the chance to check my gear, and reached for the last two energy potions I knew I had on me. Our long days on the island had dwindled the potion supplies down to only a scant few remaining pills. I figured that now was probably a good time for us to use them, and intended to offer the other to Kazuma.

However, it was as I was digging through my supply pouch I discovered something that alarmed me.

The gem Shurenga had given me was missing.

I’d been careful with the small stone of frozen fire, meant as an emergency method of contacting Tarus. The Great Spirit of Veredens star had wanted me to become his ‘Envoy’ upon this planet, to essentially act as his agent. I’d politely refused the offer via his tiger-like daughter but had been gifted that stone in case I ever changed my mind. In the few days since that meeting with Shurenga, I’d been very careful with, making sure the gem was well secured in my pack.

But now it was gone.

I outright removed the pack from the small of my back to search more thoroughly, ignoring Kazuma’s confused glance as I did so. But no matter how frantically I rifled through the leather pouch, I couldn’t find it. Eventually, I had to give it up as lost. I had no idea where I’d lost the damn thing, but I wasn’t exactly happy about it. If nothing else, the mere physical presence of that offer was a good bargaining chip, if ever I found myself in great need of something in particular.

No more, though. Damnit.

I removed the two energy pills and handed one to Kazuma, saying not a word about my missing stone. After reattaching the stone and dry-swallowing my own pill, I joined Kazuma in staring at the door for a few moments, we were interrupted from our hesitation by the sound of a cranky voice echoing from across the room.

“Get on with it already!”

Ah…better get out of here before Travers lost whatever patience he had with us. Best not to test the undead.

I reached out and touched the button next to the door, under the assumption that it was the opening mechanism. Turns out I was right.

In opposition to its pristine appearance, the door slid open shakily as it fought against ancient mechanisms. Powered, but still dilapidated.

On the other side of the door was only darkness. Deep, impenetrable darkness. I couldn’t see a damn thing out there. It was obviously a much larger space than the narrow hallway I’d just been in, as well. There was a sense of yawning heaviness that loomed just beyond sight that was impossible to ignore. It was as if Kazuma and I stood on the precipe of a great…maw, the jaws of some impossibly massive beast bent wide to swallow us whole.

But that wasn’t what clued me into the size of the obscured room beyond.

It was the sound.

Echoing out from some distant point wherever we had found ourselves was a sharp, distinct sound. A clinking, clanging, crumbling noise that reached us from somewhere beyond our sight, obscured by the darkness. It was faint, carried from somewhere far from where we were. But…

If I didn’t know any better…

That sounded like a pick against stone, chiseling away against some distant rock wall.

My heart lurched in my chest. I know I was probably jumping the gun to associate the sound with someone so quickly. I might even be stereotyping a bit.

But I immediately thought of Azarus.

My will firmed, and I stepped out into the darkness, both Kazuma and my still active light Spell following me. The little ball of light had been hiding in the corner of the infirmary among the false fluorescent lights of the ceiling, blending in perfectly. I was thankful that these things were pretty much indefinite once they’d been sparked into being. I was really going to need it down here.

What I wasn’t thankful for, was the immediate sensation that fell upon me.

Pressure.

Intense, overwhelming, pressure.

The instant I’d fully stepped beyond the doorframe, it fell on me and Kazuma both. Both of my ears immediately popped as loudly as I’d ever heard them before, and a headache sprang into being right behind my eyes. The world swam around me as I grew incredibly dizzy, swaying on my feet and fighting to maintain balance. The very air around me felt denser somehow, harder to breathe and feeling different as it struggled to enter my lungs. It was hot down here too, wherever I was. Muggy and warm, it felt almost humid.

But more than that was the weight.

It felt like…

Well, like an entire mountain was bearing down on me, intense and overbearing. I felt it in my shoulders as I fought to stay on my feet from the sensation. I swear it felt like my collarbones were only moments away from cracking.

I lost the fight and the pressure and sank to my knees. I dimly noticed that Kazuma had done the same.

Behind us, the light from the illusioned clinic winked out as the door closed behind us. I barely noticed, though. It’s not like I could see well, even with my light Spell hovering near us.

I don’t know how long Kazuma and I lay there on the rocky floor of…wherever the Lich had transported us. But gradually, we started to acclimate to the increased pressure around us. The air became easier to breathe, my dizziness began to fade, and the headache subsided. The weight bearing down on us persisted, but it somehow became more tolerable.

Finally, I was able to speak. “What the hell,” I croaked out into the darkness. “Is going on?”

My own words echoed back to me from the darkness, punctuated by the sound of a distant pick on stone.

Hellhellhell…

Kazuma struggled to his feet, and I accepted a hand up from the samurai. “I…might…have…an idea,” He struggled out, words growing easier for him as he spoke. “I think we’re…at the very bottom of the…mountain. The base. You said it was hollow…right? We’re feeling the weight of…Gorenzan itself bearing down…on us…”

Ah…

That made some sense, I guess. Explained the pressure.

We were more than fifteen miles beneath the surface of Vereden now if Kazuma was right. No freakin’ wonder. Still, I think we could move now, even if it was difficult to fight through the pressure. All we had to do was follow the sound of the pick, and we would find one of our companions. Haltingly, Kazuma and I did so, stumbling as we struggled to fully acclimate to the pressure around us.

Deeper into darkness.

<<Chapter 275 | Table of Contents | Interlude 14>>

Chapter 275 - Squirming Origin

I breathed out through my nose at the Lich’s words. “You and everyone else down here, it seems.”

“Do not compare me to that collection of drudges and beasts,” Travers said sharply, a pulse in the air warning of his Mantle. “Most are little better than spiritual impressions left upon their own corpses. The rest are actively monstrous. There are none others left in this tomb that would even speak to you in this manner, only I. And I have only lingered these millennia because of a promise. The instant you leave these moldering halls with Aveline, I shall crack my own phylactery and be done with this mockery of life.”

I raised my hands in defeat at the tirade I received from the undead doctor. “Okay, okay. I get it.”

Travers eyed me evilly for a moment before nodding sharply. “Good. Then the only thing left is to get you, and the girl, is to get out of this place. Unfortunately, that will be quite a task considering the curse that Lucretia laid upon our home. Especially because of the lynchpin.”

“…is it Akhoroth?”

“Oh?” The Lich attempted to raise a single, bare eyebrow at me. It only resulted in a piece of skin falling from his brow and drifting into dust. “And how did you figure out that name? Nevermind, I don’t care. But no, Harlow isn’t the lynchpin. He’s merely the enforcer, the whip that it uses to torment the dead in these halls.”

I opened my mouth to ask the obvious question, but I was cut off by Travers raising one hand with a put upon sigh. “Yes, yes. You’ll have to know if you’re going to unwind this knot. Harlow, the man who became Akhoroth, who conspired with Lucretia to undermine this sanctuary from within. Many years ago, he was the head of security for this facility. That bitch seduced him with promises of many a kind, chief among them power and herself. I believe the fool was under the belief he would be elevated to the same false Divinity that she and her companions sought. Only, once she had implanted her anchor, she turned upon him and cacklingly forced upon him a monstrous transformation and a task. He was to guard the hellish effigy she had turned her former home into, and torment those she had slain at the same time.” He paused for a moment, staring off into space with an almost vindictive cast to his decayed features. “I can’t say the man didn’t have it coming. Have no sympathy for the wretched creature. I certainly don’t.”

Oookay.

“That’s…horrifying, but what am I actually supposed to do down here, to get out? Can I just go through the entrance again?” I said, raising one hand to stop the spiteful tirade. I paused myself, though, another thought occurring. “Wait. If Lucretia locked this place, how did I even get in here? I thought I got into the other one because I was a Prec-”

Traver’s flaming eyes snapped back my way and interrupted me. “You’ve been to another facility? Where? Was it still active?”

“Ah…” I almost stuttered, from the intense focus he was fixing on me. “It was below a hill around the center of the main continent, just south of the large forest. It…kind of spiraled downwards, if that helps? But no, it was pretty empty and destroyed. There was a barely active computer in there with a map that led me here.”

“Hmm. I see.” Travers rubbed his chin, flaking off more decayed skin to expose the yellowed bone of his jaw. “That sounds like the education and training facility. I’m unsurprised it was hit harder than we were. But none of that matters, I suppose. What does is that you must excise the lynchpin of Lucretia’s curse. Before she left, she implanted a creature of her own design into the Aetheric Fusion Collider, the core of this facility. With it, we powered our home for centuries, but now all of that energy goes towards feeding the beast. You’ll have to rip it out, root and stem, in order to break the curse. That damnable Wyrm…”

My lips part at that last word, as a realization struck me like a bolt of lightning. “Wyrm…?” I breathed.

So many things began to fit neatly together, then.

Akhoroth, Maw of the Wyrm.

Tatsugan, the Oblivion Wyrm.

Masayuki Asahiro’s request on behalf of the Kawamaran throne, to find the source of Tatsugan’s immortality and strength…

I leaned forward suddenly, uncaring about the Lich’s prickly attitude. “That’s the source!” I said excitedly, banging one fist down on Travers desk.

In response, it collapsed from the force of my blow. Both Travers and I watched as the entire ancient, corroded piece of furniture folded in on itself, halfway collapsing into rust and dust.

I blinked as Travers glowered at me, but I didn’t let that stop my enthusiasm. All I needed was confirmation, now. “Do you know what this ‘Wyrm’ is doing with all that power?!”

For the first time, Travers looked taken aback by my questioning. “Not particularly. I’ve examined the creature, on the rare occasions I’ve been able to slip beneath Harlow’s notice. As far as I can tell, nearly all of the power is being projected outside of the facility. I always assumed the traitors were siphoning it off for some purpose. I can occasionally feel it, as the gathered power transits to some destination at the mountains peek.”

I slowly shook my head. “Hah. Ha ha ha… that’s…that’s it, isn’t it? This…‘Aetheric Fusion Collider’ is the source of Tatsugans immortality. His real form is down here in the core, while the dragon on the surface is just a projection…” I paused, suddenly, as something occurred to me. “Shit. Shacklock is going to sacrifice himself for nothing. It doesn’t matter how powerful the Shōmetsu no Kiba is, because what he’ll kill isn’t the real body.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, pretender,” Travers said bluntly, bringing me back to reality. I had started speaking more to myself than to him a few minutes ago and hadn’t even realized it.

With how he had been holding his mantle over my head the entire conversation, I was unapologetic. Still, I took the time to explain the situation on the surface to him, if only to see if he had any further insight into the situation.

Sadly, he had little.

When I was done speaking, Travers sat quietly for a moment. “I see. Lucretia implanted a parasite into our core, in order to create an endlessly returning Behemoth. What we called your ‘Calamities’,” He said, at my curious look. The Lich shook his head. “Typical of the woman, really.”

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the corroded ceiling, causing the ancient seat to creak warning. I ignored it. “What a waste,” I said with a frown, as much to myself as to Travers. “I struggle to call him a good man…but Shacklock doesn’t deserve to die for nothing.”

To my surprise, Travers had something say about that. “I would not worry,” He said, shaking his head dismissively. “With the direct activation of her trap upon this facility, meant to torment potential other Netherim that sought to come to our aid, time is not something you need worry over. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, pretender, but this entire complex is now out of phase with reality. Time flows differently until the trials and tests Lucretia set out for the incautious are completed. I would not be surprised if you exit this spider's web only to find that mere seconds had passed after entering. You may yet be able to save this Shacklock.”

I…well. That was a weight off of my shoulders. I had been worried that Bella and Liora, waiting for us on the barge outside, would have to abandon waiting for us if we took too long. The waters of the caldera were only going to grow more treacherou as time went on. But I didn’t have to worry anymore. I suppose that strange sequence reminiscent of the Concord just after we had been sucked into the bunker by ‘Lucretia’s’ trap had been the curse fully activating, and slowing time within.

Still, the Grandmaster of the Order of Solstice’s Flame still had his Core Collapse to contend with. I’m not sure how thankful he would be for any kind of rescue.

The man wanted his heroic sacrifice.

I frowned at something else Travers said, though. “What trials are you talking about?”

“Ha. Use that brain of yours, fool.” Travers shifted his fleshless jaw at me, almost as if he were smirking. “If you’re up and about enough to have rescued the girl, that must mean you survived an ordeal set out by Lucretia. My investigations over the years have led me to believe they would be personalized to each of the victims, drawing on old fears and insecurities to torment them.”

I stilled as I realized what he was talking about.

So that’s what that had been. The strange corroded closet I’d awoken in just after entering the bunker had been my ‘trial’. Lucretia’s curse had somehow drawn up ancient, half-forgotten memories of childhood bullying in order to torture me. That entire sequence had been deliberately designed to trap me, likely unto my death.

I was starting to hope that this Lucretia had been one of the gods who had died in the War in Heaven. I probably wasn’t that lucky, though. For all I knew, she was Ixiah.

Travers noticed my understanding. “Yes, you know of what I speak. Every person who entered the facility with you is undergoing their own version of it. You’ll need to find and assist them through their own torment, and once they are all freed, tackle the final problem. Harlow will be guarding the core and its occupant, and both need to die before the hex upon my home is lifted. And with it, your freedom, and more importantly Aveline’s, will be guaranteed. You’re in luck, however,” The Lich stood up from his own rotting chair abruptly and started moving away from the remains of his desk. “One of your fellows already freed himself and found this office before you did.”

My eyes widened, and I scrambled to my feet, following after the ancient Lich. I barely even noticed as I passed the illusionary boundary, the infirmary returning to its falsely pristine state.

So there was someone else in here! I thought I’d seen movement behind one of the curtains

“You could have told me that earlier,” I whispered fiercely to the disguised Lich, as we came to a halt before one of the beds. I wanted to shout at him, but I was aware that Aveline was likely still asleep from her Stasis-born exhaustion. 

Travers spared me a single disinterested glance before reaching for the curtain. “There were more important matters at hand. This one would keep for a few minutes more.” He said, the undercurrent of soul speech in his voice hidden once again.

Before I could reply, he abruptly drew back the curtain, allowing me to see which of my companions had triumphed over their own trial before I did.

I…couldn’t help but be a bit disappointed.

Lying in the bed was Kazuma. The Kawamaran samurai appeared to be sleeping fitfully, almost as if he were trapped in a nightmare. To my eyes, he looked a bit worse for wear, with new rips and tears visible in his red and green robes. His katana had been removed from his waist, and Kazuma looked to be hugging the weapon close to his chest in his fitful rest, clutching at it tightly in his unconscious state. I couldn’t help but notice that the man looked a bit…desperate.

While I was taking in Kazuma’s appearance, the Lich was still speaking. “He stumbled in here maybe thirty minutes before you did, barely coherent from whatever trial he experienced. The man was mumbling and nearly sobbing to himself. He didn’t protest when I put him under and laid him in this bed,” He glanced at me from the corner of one fake eye. “You should be thanking him, you know. If he hadn’t stumbled into this office and woke me from my slumber, I wouldn’t have been on the lookout for others and been able to rescue you and the girl. My tomb would have still been in its original location, and I wouldn’t have thought to move it around the facility in search of more. As it is, I can now feel the presence of your five other companions that you’ll need to rescue if you want to lift the curse.”

I barely reacted to the knowledge that Travers could apparently move this entire room around the bunker as he pleased. I was caught up on something else he had said, instead.

“What do you mean,” I said slowly. “Five companions…?”

Myself, Venix, Azarus, Renauld, and Kazuma laying before me. That was four companions. We were the only people present when the trap had been activated, drawing us into these cursed depths.

Had Liora or Bella changed their minds and come up after us?

Fuck.

I just didn't know.

Before Travers could answer, my attention was caught by Kazuma shifting on the bed before me. It looked like he was waking up. Sure enough, I watched as the samurai’s eyes shot open abruptly, revealing their bloodshot nature to the world. They roved around wildly until they settled on the two people standing over his bed.

Unseeing panic bloomed in those blue orbs, and he started to draw the sword he was cradling like a child.

I didn’t even get the chance to react, before one of Traver’s illusioned hands shot out, quick as a snake, and stopped that movement cold.

Fast. Impossibly so.

Strong, too.

“Cease,” Travers growled, a note of his true voice slipping out of him.

I didn’t normally see that kind of movement from Magi, only Cultivators. I’d been so put off by the appearance of the Lich that I hadn’t even thought to question which he had been, in life. But it was equally as possible that he was neither. Those labels were something distinctly modern.

Who knew how personal growth had been achieved by the Netherim?

Kazuma blinked, and recognition dawned in his wild gaze. “H-Hart…?” He said, wild hope in his roughened voice. Before I could even nod, the man abruptly sat up from his bed and lunged my way. Initially, I thought he was about to attack me and tensed in preparation.

But no.

Instead, the Kawamaran man latched onto me tightly in a hug and started to quietly sob into my shoulder.

As I awkwardly returned the embrace with one arm and patted a shoulder with the other, I met Travers eyes over top of Kazuma’s head.

I was surprised at the sympathy I saw in them directed at the distraught samurai, as the Lich waited patiently off to the side. Maybe, though…

Maybe it was just me he had an issue with.

Comforting.

<<Chapter 274 | Table of Contents | Chapter 276>>

Chapter 274 - Veiled Care

Merry Christmas, guys.

.................................

Shockingly, though, Aveline immediately recognized the person who had saved us. The reddened eyes of the surprisingly resilient little girl brightened at the sight of the man I was now eyeing warily. She squirmed her way out of my grip to land on the…non-corroded steel around us?

This place…in a way, it almost reminded me of the lab I had found Aveline in. Only…

It was in pristine condition. Insanely, impeccably so.

This looked like another lab, only as if it had been preserved in time from whatever tragedy had befallen the Netherim within. The shiny steel floor was pristine and spotless, as were the counters holding futuristic equipment that I could only guess at the function of. There were even non-slip, black rubber mats lying on the floor, tracing paths through the entire room. But this wasn’t a lab.

I think this was an infirmary.

An antiseptic smell filled the air, as if this space had only been scoured by bleach in the last hour or so. Unnervingly familiar hospital beds lined the walls of the large rooms, some of them accompanied by an array of equipment, trays, and tools that looked decidedly medical in nature. Clean white linens covered all of the beds, with some of them closed off by curtains.

Movement briefly caught my eye, coming from one of the shrouded beds. At least, I thought it was movement. The shadow had been brief enough that I could have been imagining it.

Was there…someone else in here?

While I furrowed my brow in unease, Aveline had fallen onto her hands and knees, only to scramble to her feet moments later. I groped for her, but she had already sprinted across the distance to the person who had waved us down and saved us from the Maw.

A human man who I didn’t recognize, wearing a lab coat.

Aveline threw her arms around his legs when she reached the man. “Doctor Travers!” She cried. “I-it’s you! You kept your promise! Y-you’re s-s-till here!” Aveline didn’t manage any more than that before she fell into full-on sobbing. She buried her face into his knees, muffling them, but they still rang out through the infirmary.

Doctor Travers. I…could see it, I suppose.

I got a better look at the elderly man, as he tenderly lay one gnarled hand on Aveline’s head. ‘Travers’ was a heavy set man who looked like he was in his late sixties at best, seventies at worst. His head still bore the wispy remnants of what might have once been thick, dark hair, but was now a steel gray. Although faded with age, kindly emerald eyes still gazed down at the child as she sobbed into his knees, his lips curving behind a thick beard and a thin, short mustache.

“I would never leave you alone, little Lina,” ‘Doctor Travers’ said in a kind, and yet incredibly weary voice. The weight of impossible ages seemed to press down on the man then, his shoulders hunching. Still, he stood as strong as he needed to, in order for Aveline to lean upon him.

The Doctor must have felt my regard, then, because those faded emerald eyes flickered up to regard me as I climbed to my feet. There was decidedly less friendliness in that gaze than there was as he comforted Aveline.

Something about his eyes…

They were so flat and hollow. All emotion leaked out of him as he looked at me as if I were little better than an ant. It nearly felt like he was just putting on a show for Aveline, and this was his true state. I started to tense, but then he looked away, dismissing me in favor of the kid. He knelt down himself in order to bodily pick her up without any resistance.

“Let’s get you into a bed, yes?” Travers said soothingly. “The post Stasis exhaustion must have been hitting hard, I’m sure. A nice snack and nap will fix you right up.”

“I-” Aveline started to say, before interrupting herself with a yawn. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Doctor.” Still, she didn’t protest as Travers reached one of the beds and drew back the curtain. Shockingly, a bizarrely recognizable juice box with a cartoon apple on the front of it and a packet of cookies of all things sat on the surface. As soon as Travers set her down on the bed, she fell upon them ravenously, devouring them both as the Doctor and I watched in silence.

Aveline was drowsy by then, but she still maintained enough presence of mind to reach up and grab Travers hand as he prepared to close the curtain on her bed, drawing a thin sheet up over her body as he did so. “Doctor…” She said, exhaustion and childish sadness thick in her voice. “Is mama…I don’t think she…”

Sorrow returned to every inch of Traver’s heavy-set body, then. “Later, child,” He said softly. “For now, rest.”

Although the words were short, Aveline still dozed off halfway through. Travers finished drawing the curtain, hiding her from my sight.

He turned to face me then, the kindness gone from his face once more. The older man eyed me with a hint of disgust in his gaze, cutting off the greeting that was on my lips. He jerked his head in a motion to follow him, away from Aveline’s bed, and toward what seemed to be a partitioned desk and office space of all things in the corner of the room.

I had to suppress a slightly hysterical laugh at the mental image of a general practitioner’s office in the depths of an ancient, abandoned, cursed bunker full of undead. Still, I followed after him.

What else was I going to do?

It happened in an instant. I must have crossed some kind of mystical, invisible barrier as I followed the reticent doctor. But the moment we passed from the line of sight of the rest of the infirmary, the world changed.

The polish and gleam of modernity fell away, and what replaced it was the corrosion and darkness of the rest of the bunker. The walls were no longer pristine, the furniture and fixtures no longer appeared brand new, and most importantly…

The Doctor no longer appeared to be living.

I froze, staring at the man who very much appeared to be undead now. Where before Doctor Travers had looked like an older man past his prime and settling into his twilight years, now he seemed to be well past sunset. He wasn’t an outright skeleton like most of the Walking Dead had been in the hall. Instead, his decomposition was more akin to what Cecily had been like.

He looked like a raisin that had been left to dry for too long, desiccated and abnormally thin. His formerly heavy set frame had collapsed in on itself, sometimes literally in the case of his abdomen, visible behind the bare threads of his decayed lab coat. His eyes, ears, and lips had long ago either fallen off or dissolved into dust with the visible passage of time, and his bare skull stared back at me with eyes full of an emerald fire.

I…

Wait.

I had seen something like that, before. I had known only one undead in my time on Vereden whose eyes had glowed in that color.

His staff was even now strapped to my back.

This man…was a Lich.

And I’m not sure he was a friendly one. At least, not to me.

Doctor Travers laced his decayed fingers together and stared at me over the bridge they made. “Don’t just stand there, pretender,” He said, his voice undercut by both a palpable disdain and the form of soul speech I was starting to think belonged to existences that were more spiritual than physical. “I have matters to discuss with you.”

I stared back at him for a moment, weighing my options. Eventually, I decided that at the very least, he had appeared to care for Aveline. He was unlikely to try and kill me outright. I stepped forward until I was in front of his desk, and lowered myself into the bare metal chair that sat there, its cushion long since decayed away. It creaked and groaned audibly under my weight, but thankfully held up.

Meanwhile, I almost physically felt it as the Lich’s fiery eyes roved my form for some reason, inspecting me. “So. This is the solution the High Admin came to. Desperate times, indeed.”

A bolt of realization stole down my spine then, piercing through my wariness of this ‘man’. My eyes widened and I leaned forward, staring at Travers with a deep hunger in my soul.

“You…” I breathed. “You know what I am. What Precursors are…”

This Lich had the answers I’d been wondering about ever since I’d been dropped onto Vereden. He knew what I was.

Travers snorted, somehow working long decayed lungs to do so and sending a spray of dust to settle onto his desk. “Precursor? Is that what the System ended up calling you? Imitation is more accurate, but I can see where the term came from.”

Wait.

System?

I had noticed just how old Akhoroth had appeared when I’d Observed him, but I’d been too preoccupied with running for my life at the time. It had said the monster was over five thousand years old, far before the time of the Initialization and the System. That was nearly two millennia before the time of the War in Heaven, if I had my dates correct. This Lich had to be from that same period of time as well.

How the hell did he know anything about the System?

I stared at Travers with unblinking eyes. “You’re different. You’re not like the rest of the undead down here. You…you aren’t a product of whatever curse is going on here, are you?”

The Lich’s lips twisted in a mocking manner, almost as if he was sneering at me. “Oh, well done you. Gold star. Would you like a packet of cookies as well? They’re still edible, I assure you, even after all these years. When they say military rations last forever, they truly aren’t joking. Especially enchanted ones,” His firey emerald eyes appeared to roll in their decayed sockets. “Of course, I’m not like the others, fool. I’m the veritable fly in the ointment, the hair that spoils the broth Lucretia tried to brew down here. The arrogant little twit never considered that there were others who had studied the blacker arts and were prepared to linger. For spite, and…other reasons.” His eyes roved past my shoulders, in the direction I knew Aveline was napping.

There was a lot to unpack there. Names, and implications, and literally millennia of context I was desperate for.

“I’ve never heard that name,” I said quietly. “Lucretia. Is she the one who cursed this bunker?”

Travers looked back at me. “It was the name she was born with, but not the one she took for herself in the betrayal. She and her little band of traitors all took assumed names, and began calling themselves ‘Gods’. Practically raved about it, really, during the assault. Patently ridiculous, of course. Even with what they stole, they could not rightfully call themselves true Divinity, although they can ape it.”

Oh.

Well, there was one mystery solved. The Veredenese ‘gods’…the War in Heaven…

It was all a joke. Just…infighting, among a group of people who had apparently ‘stolen’ something.

Honestly, it wasn’t much of a shock to me. I had never forgotten the way Alveron had called the ‘gods’ physical existences, subject to mortal desires and wants. That had never struck me as particularly godly. Frankly, I don’t think the Veredenese even thought of them in the way I would have thought of the divine. There was cultural context to the term ‘god’ that I don’t think ever translated well through Language Adaptation.

But I did notice that Travers still had a concept of what real Divinity should be. That was curious.

While was absorbing that, it was Travers whose gaze suddenly filled with hunger as he stared at me. “Tell me…is she dead? Are they dead? I felt the notification some two millennia past, that they had lost their grip on the System and propagated it outward to the Generim.”

The First Initialization, had to be.

“Have you…been down here all this time?” I asked slowly. “Just…”

“Waiting for the day this tomb of fools would be opened?” Travers finished for me derisively. “Not the whole time. Awareness comes and goes. I sleep, and I wake, and I sleep, and I wake. But now that has come to an end with you, pretender. Now answer the question.”

I suddenly seized under the loosening of what I could only call a Mantle, from this ancient creature. It manifested as a sense of creeping dread, I think literally clawing at my spirit from behind me. I hands and fingers spasmed while various muscles in my body tensed and untensed in rapid succession. “I don’t know!” I blurted out shakily. “I-It depends on which side she was on, in t-their war against each other! One side called themselves Chaos, and the other Order! Chaos won with only a single loss, and Order l-lost all but two members! I don’t know their names!”

I was really wishing I had thought to ask the historical names of the ‘gods’ right about now. I only knew a handful of them, such as Ixiah, the Mad God, and I…think I’d heard the name of the Orcish goddess somewhere, but I couldn’t recall it right now.

The Mantle suddenly loosened on me, and I regained control of my body. Suddenly, I could breathe again, although those breaths came shakily. That had been one of the worst experiences of my life, I think. It had been like my very soul was under attack, directly bypassing the flesh.

I’d never experienced a Mantle so powerful. Grey, or Honoka, or Tlazo…

None of them could compare.

The owner of it sat back with a dissatisfied, rattling hum. It echoed out of him from vocal cords long gone. “It’ll have to do, I suppose,” Travers said, visibly and audibly dissatisfied. “To know that all they worked for together came to dust in the end. I can’t expect a quickling like you to understand actual, unimagined history. The time for questions is over,” He said with finality, as I overcame the shock to my spirit and opened my mouth in protest. “You’ve gotten all you will out of me. I didn’t linger for literal millennia to be some sort of…database for you to plunder, fool. Find your answers elsewhere.”

I ground my teeth in frustration as most of my hopes went up in so much dust. “Then why did you stick around all this time?” I asked harshly.

The Lich bared his brown and rotten teeth at me, in a mockery of a smile.

“Why, for the girl, of course.”

<<Chapter 273 | Table of Contents | Chapter 275>>

Chapter 273 - Last Will

I sprinted as hard as I could through the halls of the waking dead, dodging and weaving through their skeletal forms as they ignored me. Dozens and dozens of them seemed to be rising from their graves every second to lunge past me as I fled as quickly as I could, in my unempowered state. I didn’t dare use Might of the Wyrdwood, considering the ghostly thorns of that Skill might just shred the Unawakened, frightened child held in my arms. Nor could I transform into my full-scaled form. That would probably just terrify Aveline more than she already was.

I could see one emerald eye from said child staring up at me from under the hood of my cloak, filled with a childish alarm. Aveline herself seemed to be struck silent in her terror, stiff and shaking in my arms. I had one hand held tightly down on her head, to spare her from the grisly sights all around us, but that wasn't enough

It didn’t spare her the worst of the sounds.

Behind us, I could hear the sobbing screeches and cries of the Maw as it struggled through the hundreds of dead Netherim throwing themselves at it, trying desperately to slow the creature down.

“RUUUUUUUUUUUN!” It cried over and over, the screams never far behind us despite the efforts of the undead. For all of its apparent pleas for us to flee from it, that still didn’t stop the monster from pursuing us. As if from a great distance, I felt my core wonder about that. But the greater part of me was too occupied with running the hell away to give it any serious thought.

Aveline finally found her voice, despite her great terror. “Mr. Hart…w-what… what’s…”

“Shhh,” I panted out between breaths, sparing a quick strained smile down at her. “Don’t look Aveline. Don’t…don’t look. I’ve…got…you…”

In response, the child buried her face in my shoulder. I could feel her trembling pick up in my arms.

Suddenly, I saw something ahead of us, something that gave me such a lurch of hope that I felt my heartbeat quicken. A door in the distance. A sliding double door, I believe, large enough to fit a semi-truck through. The surface was as corroded and pitted as the rest of the steel interior of the bunker, but just the sight of it was enough to embolden me.

It represented freedom.

I grit my teeth, lowered my head, and pushed myself harder. All the while, Akhoroth plowed through hundreds of dry, brittle skeletons in his apparent reluctant hunt for the living. The cracking and breaking of dry, brittle bones joined into the cacophony of horror that echoed all around us, filling the veritable ossuary.

In what felt like moments, I skidded to a halt in front of our salavation. With wild eyes, I inspected it, searching desperately for a way to get it open. There were no handholds on it, no obvious handles to grasp and swing wide the gates of hope. The only way I could tell it was a door at all was because of the indentations and seams set into it.

Nothing, though. I didn’t know how to get through this.

As my heart sank, for a single, wild, panicked moment, I considered trying to astralize the entire thing in the way I had to the secret door into Caer Drarrow last year. I couldn’t, though. Not because I thought it was beyond me, but because that would definitely knock me out.

And then Aveline would be torn apart by the Maw I could hear rushing ever closer, every second I dawdled here.

I was nearly about to take the risk when I felt something unexpected. A presence had appeared at my back, it’s lifeless feeling betraying the undeath of it’s existence.

To my surprise, a bony hand abruptly shoved itself into the supply pouch I kept at the small of my back. It quickly rifled through the contents and withdrew something, retreating in order to appear to my right. In the dim, strobing red light of the hall, I could see that this wasn’t one of the dry, brittle skeletons that were awakening from their pods.

They were instead desiccated and wearing the tattered remains of a lab coat.

I recognize them.

“You…” I breathed, watching as the long-dead remains of Aveline’s mother reached out with one thin hand to rip off one of the panels to the right of the wall with undead might. She just ignored my stammering. Inside the revealed hole, I could see what appeared to be a small, thin slot, with a blinking red LED set above it. The deceased Dr. Montblanc raised her other hand to reveal what she’d stolen from my pouch.

The very same ID card she had given to me, there in the lab I’d found her daughter. She quickly inserted it into the apparent reader and stared at it intensely.

I did the same, once I understood what was happening.

To my relief, the reader apparently still worked.

The red LED shifted to green, and within the walls to the sides of the door, I heard long neglected machinery groan to life. The massive doors in front of us creaked and began to open, shuddering all the while. I tensed and untensed my muscles as I bounced in place, waiting impatiently for them to slide open, aware all the while that the Maw was closing in on us. There was only so long the weakened Netherim could delay the creature.

The mechanisms opening the door failed before it could open fully, but not before presenting a path forward.

There was a slim gap in between them now, only barely large enough for me to slip through with Aveline in my arms. I spared a quick glance at the animated remains of Cecily Montblanc, only to see her staring back at me, one hand still holding the ID in the reader. Despite her desiccated state, I could read impatience in every skeletal line of her body. Especially in the glowing red orbs that had filled her empty eye sockets. She waved me on insistently toward the gap with her free hand.

I nodded sharply and started shimmying my way through the breach in the doors. To my surprise, I found that these doors were actually fairly thick. Despite the corrosion on the surface of them, it hadn’t penetrated all the way through the nearly fifteen inches of solid steel interior. I slowly maneuvered through them, Aveline clutched tightly to my chest all the while.

Abruptly, I stumbled into open air, finding myself in what looked to be a long, darkened corridor, the only light to be found coming from my still active light Skill as it raced through the gap after me. Groaning sounded out from behind and I turned to watch as the doors slowly started to inch close. In the space that still existed, a long, bony arm abruptly thrust through the gap. Above the desiccated arm, I could just barely make out a faint red glow from a single ethereal eye, set into a bony socket.

Clenched in the fist was the same ID card used to open the door.

I let out a shuddering sigh and once again took the card. Through the crack, the jaw of the long-dead woman shifted slightly.

It…almost looked like it was trying to smile.

“Mama?” I heard a childish voice breathe from my shoulder. To my dismay, I realized I’d loosened the grip I had on Aveline once I’d entered the corridor. She had raised her head to follow my gaze, only to find the remains of Dr. Cecily Montblanc staring back at her.

Somehow, someway, despite the condition of her Mother’s animated corpse…

Aveline recognized her instantly. She reached out from my grasp and lightly touched the tip of her index finger to the desiccated one still sticking through the door.

Abruptly, I saw a massive, iron scaled form loom out of the darkness behind Cecily. In an instant, I saw the monstrous skull of the Maw as it crashed towards the door, bloody tears carving a river down its tortured cheeks.

And then the doors slammed shut, severing the arm of Aveline’s mother at the elbow. They shuddered moments later from a massive impact, but even through the thick steel I could still faintly hear the crunch of bone as something was smashed between the bulk of the exit and Akhoroth.

With a last, resounding thud, the arm dropped away from Aveline’s fingertip to fall onto the floor below.

Aveline screamed.

“MAMA!”

The piercing cry of an agonized little girl resounded up and down the corroded corridors of the bunker, echoing back at us as if to mock her pain.

Mamamamamama…

Aveline started struggling against the grip I had on her, reaching desperately for the door the undead form of her mother had been on the other side of only moments ago. “Let me go!” She cried. “Mama’s in there! She needs my help!”

I shuddered slightly but tightened my grip on her and turned away from the door if only to spare her the sight of her Mother’s severed arm. Aveline only struggled against me for a moment more before she gave up and buried her face back into my shoulder, sobbing once again. I didn’t blame her. I just returned the embrace as tightly as I dared, hoping my presence could ease the sharp pain of her grief. If only in the smallest of ways.

I well knew what it was like to lose a Mother.

No words could really ease that wound. Only time, and only so much.

I don’t know how long we stood there in that darkened, empty corridor. However, eventually, we were knocked out of our embrace by a sound that sent a chill racing down my spine anew.

A voice. A familiar one, at that.

The call of the Maw, somehow seeping its way through the thick steel of the door. It was faint, but I couldn’t mistake it for anything else.

“Ruuuun,” It hissed, just feet away from us and separated only by a long corroded door. “Thiiiis will not hoooold meeee…”

As if to underscore that point, an abrupt smash impacted the other side of the door, followed by a screeching sound. The noise was akin to nails scraping their way across a chalkboard. Both Aveline and I jumped from it, warily watching the door. The surface…seemed intact, but I had no easy way to tell.

I eyed it warily as if it would cave in at any moment. “Then stop chasing us!” I called out.

“Cannoooot!” The Maw cried on the other side. “Cannoooot! Don’t waaaant tooooo! But muuuuust. It hungers. Ruuuuun….noooow...,” Abrupt thrashing sounds echoed from the other side of the door, as if the creature was flailing around in pain and smashing up against the exit. “I’m soooorry! I’m soooory! NO MOOOOORE!”

More scrabbling, and then the smashing against the door resumed. A small dent appeared in the surface of it, growing increasingly larger with every subsequent impact.

I tensed and abruptly spun on my heels. My eyes darted left and right as I rapidly considered the passage we were in. It stretched out in both directions, left and right, but there were no discerning markings about which way led where. The darkness out here was nearly impenetrable it was so deep. The walls were totally blank as well, but I had to make a decision.

Screw it. Right it is.

I barely noticed as the terrified Aveline huddled closer to my chest as I broke out into another run that way, this time down a much more darkened corridor than the massive hall had been.

I don’t think the chase was over. Eventually, the Maw, whatever the hell it was, would break through that door. It was…probably faster than me, judging by how the hundreds and thousands of undead in it's path had barely been able to slow it down. Stronger, too.

But that was fine. I’d built myself off of the corpses of those who were faster and stronger than me.

You might even say it was becoming a specialty.

I just had to find the right place to confront it. Someplace where Aveline wouldn’t be in danger during the fight. I wouldn’t be able to kill this thing if I had a little girl in my arms. I kept my eyes open on the sprint, but I saw nothing. This hall was oddly featureless, but I could tell at least one thing.

I was going down.

It wasn’t the spiral I had encountered in the last bunker, but the slope of the hall meant I could feel it as I descended deeper. Maybe five minutes into my dash, I heard a loud screeching noise coming from behind us, and I knew the door had failed. The Maw was coming for us, now.

As if to confirm that, I heard the distant wailing cry of a beast far in the distance.

I tried not to pay any attention to it, as I felt Aveline start shaking again in fear. I just grit my teeth, lowered my head, and charged on.

C’mon, c’mon. There had to be fucking something down here! If I had to, I would just fight the Maw in the middle of the corridor, but that was too dangerous! Who knew what would happen to Aveline during the fight, especially in such tight environs!

Suddenly, in the distance, I saw something. A faint light was shining through the darkness of the passage in front of me. It wasn’t the disturbing red of the hall from earlier, but rather a sterile, cool white. Visible in front of it was a humanoid form, leaning out from a depression in the wall and waving frantically at us. “This way!” I heard a voice call, though the echo of the seemingly endless passage meant I couldn’t tell who or what was speaking. I couldn’t even tell if it was one of my missing companions.

It didn’t matter.

I pushed myself harder until I had reached the figure and dove through the doorway that had appeared on my left with them. I spun in order to fall on my back, and watched just in time as a sliding door slammed shut behind us. It felt like it was only seconds later that I heard a massive form gallop past the door on dozens of feet.

The Maw had been closer behind us than I'd realized.

I shuddered and sat up to see where I was, and more importantly, who had just saved me and Aveline. But when I turned to look at them…

I didn’t know who this was.

<<Chapter 272 | Table of Contents | Chapter 274>>

Volume 1 available now on Amazon Kindle, KU, and Print!

TODAY IS THE DAY!

By now, Sins of the Forefathers has been stubbed, and the first volume has been removed . This is to comply with the exclusivity requirement of Amazon. Believe me, if it was up to me, I would rather have left the entire story up for everyone's viewing pleasure.

However, in return, I can now publish my work on Amazon!

Volume 1, titled Chained Awakening, should now be available for purchase on Amazon in Kindle, KU, and print versions. I'd just like to take a moment to thank everyone who has chosen to support Sins of the Forefathers through Patreon over the last year and change since launch. This story would not have gotten anywhere near what it has if not for your support and your generous subscriptions

However, beyond that, I would like to ask for a favor. If possible, I would appreciate it if anyone who has read and enjoyed Sins over the last year to head on over to Amazon and rate the book. You don't have to rate it positively if you don't wish to, nor would I ask that of you. All that I request is that you rate it at all, or perhaps even leave a review if you're so inclined. You don't even need to buy the book in order to leave a review, Amazon lets you do so without a purchase. This is often the key to success when it comes to an Amazon release, and so I would be deeply grateful if you could do so.

Once again, thank you for your support. For those who are interested, I'll drop the Amazon link below.

Sincerely,

PreCursive (J.D. Campbell)

AMAZON

Chapter 272 - Gaze of the Dead

TODAY IS THE DAY!

By now, Sins of the Forefathers has been stubbed, and the first volume has been removed . This is to comply with the exclusivity requirement of Amazon. Believe me, if it was up to me, I would rather have left the entire story up for everyone's viewing pleasure.

However, in return, I can now publish my work on Amazon!

Volume 1, titled Chained Awakening, should now be available for purchase on Amazon in Kindle, KU, and print versions. I'd just like to take a moment to thank everyone who has chosen to support Sins of the Forefathers through Patreon over the last year and change since launch. This story would not have gotten anywhere near what it has if not for your support and your generous subscriptions

However, beyond that, I would like to ask for a favor. If possible, I would appreciate it if anyone who has read and enjoyed Sins over the last year to head on over to Amazon and rate the book. You don't have to rate it positively if you don't wish to, nor would I ask that of you. All that I request is that you rate it at all, or perhaps even leave a review if you're so inclined. You don't even need to buy the book in order to leave a rating, Amazon lets you rate without a purchase. This is often the key to success when it comes to an Amazon release, and so I would be deeply grateful if you could do so.

I'd like to ask for your patience, as shortly after this goes live, I'll be making another post intended for all of my Patrons beyond the $10 Tier. This is meant to reach those who sub to a lower tier, as well as those whose sub has lapsed. I hate spamming you guys with multiple emails, but that's just the best way to reach everyone. It'll mostly look the same as this message.

Once again, thank you. For those who are interested, I'll drop the Amazon link below.

Sincerely,

PreCursive (J.D. Campbell)

AMAZON

....................................

Immediately upon stepping out into the hall of the dead with Aveline buried in my shoulder, I could tell that something had changed. The air was…heavier in here, for some reason, hotter and muggier. More of the strobing red lights had died out, casting the room in an even deeper shadow. And most importantly…

The faint, diffuse awareness I’d felt earlier had sharpened. It very much felt like there were countless eyes upon me now, staring from some oblique angle.

I froze, momentarily, staring around at my immediate surroundings as if I were a deer, startled by the stalking of a hunter. No movement greeted my eyes, and yet…

Yet, I was still wary.

Aveline raised her head just enough to look at me. She must have felt my sudden tension. “Mr. Hart…?”

I did my best to relax, even in these circumstances. I smiled down at her. “It’s nothing, Aveline. My own shadow just spooked me. You…should keep your head down. In fact…” I reached up with my free hand and tugged the hood of my cloak around her shoulders down over her slight head, hiding from view. “Try and get some rest, yeah? It’s just going to be a bunch of walking for now.”

Through the darkness of the hood, I could see emerald green eyes blink at me doubtfully. “Okay…but, Mr. Hart?”

I slowly started out of the doorway and into the hall, eyes roving constantly. “Yes?”

“You can call me Lina,” The little girl in my arms said, resting her head back on my shoulder. She almost seemed comforted, with her left ear against my chest. “That’s what my friends do.”

Even though she couldn’t see my face, I still smiled down at her momentarily. “Then you can call me Nathan, okay? Mr. Hart was my father.”

At her tired assent, I kept up the pace, grateful that…Lina had chosen to keep her head down.

I didn’t want someone so young to witness so much death. I couldn’t imagine what that would do to such a young mind.

I must have been walking and navigating through the pods for maybe ten minutes when something changed. It was stark to me because of how intensely I was focusing on my surroundings, hypersensitive to even the stagnant air around me.

A sound echoed out from the hall behind me. It was slight, but in the absolute silence of the hall, it stood out starkly.

A soft clattering, as if dozens of bones had rubbed against each other in an instant.

I stopped immediately. Slowly, so as not to startle the drifting child in my arms, I pivoted on one foot to look behind me. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting. In a place such as this, I’d had a fear lingering in the back of my mind about being overrun by hordes and hordes of the restless dead as I had been in the catacombs beneath Tlatec. Perhaps that fear was finally coming true.

In a sense, I was nearly right.

Maybe a hundred feet behind me on the path I’d been navigating, I saw a stark yellow form sitting up from one of the ruined stasis pods. Tall and bare, it could be no doubt as to what it was. In the same manner, I’d suspected Dr. Montblanc’s remains had shifted, one of the dead humans in this hall had abruptly sat up from its grave.

And turned to face Aveline and me.

Even across the distance, I could tell that it was looking straight at us. Yet…it didn’t move any more than that. It just sat there, staring at the two of us. There was no glow to its eyes to indicate the animation of the wild undead. At the bone-chilling sight, I had tensed, expecting it to come flying our way, leading me need defend Aveline.

But no.

Nothing.

With the odd, dreamlike state of time that seemed to exist in the Netherim bunker, I couldn’t say how long I stood there, locked in a gaze with the eyeless skeleton. Thankfully, Aveline didn’t awake from the child-like nap she’d fallen into on my shoulder.

I had no idea how she was doing that after potentially millennia of sleep already, but I was grateful nonetheless. Eventually, though, I needed to get back underway. My friends wouldn’t find themselves, after all. I narrowed my eyes at the watcher one last time and turned away from it. However, the moment I took one more step, I heard that same clatter again.

This time, I spun in place as quickly and as gently as I dared.

Two more distant watchers had joined the first. One dwarf, and another human.

They just stared at me.

A scowl crossed my face, and I dismissed them. They weren’t doing anything, so I was resolved not to care, no matter how much the sensation of formless eyes on me made my skin crawl. I turned back around and kept walking.

More rattling behind me.

I didn’t look, as much as my instincts screamed at me. I knew what I would find.

I did pick up my pace, though.

The sound of bone on bone became a constant companion to me as I steadfastly marched through the rows and rows of the awakening dead. It was starting to feel like none of the endless victims in this hall had properly moved on, and now they were, hopefully, just curious.

I was just thankful that Aveline was such a heavy sleeper that she never woke up, even though the sound wasn’t deafening.

Finally, ahead of me, I watched as one of them stopped caring about moving beyond my line of sight. A bony yellowed hand reached up and clasped onto the edge of the pod it was lying in. With a clatter, the desiccated human occupant heaved their way to a sitting position and turned their empty sockets my way. I gradually slowed my pace to the point where I stopped right in front of the watcher's pod. Their head tracked me until I once more stood standing eye to veritable eye with the dead. My scowl grew, and my grip on Aveline tightened.

I was sick of this.

And so I voiced my displeasure.

“Why?” I asked simply.

I felt no need to explain myself. The question was fairly obvious.

I don’t know what kind of answer, exactly, that I was expecting. It’s not like any of these unfortunate dead had vocal cords anymore in which to answer me. Perhaps they could have used the odd form of soul speech that I’d experienced a handful of times. I wouldn’t put such a thing past the risen dead.

That wasn’t what happened.

As if from a great distance, I heard the grinding of rusted gears as they screeched against each other. I winced, and almost instinctively raised my free hand to cover Aveline’s ear, covered as it was by my cloak. Puzzlingly, I didn’t need to. The little girl held in my arms didn’t stir at all, despite the great cacophony that reached my own ears. When I lifted the hood slightly, I was momentarily confused to see that she seemed to be resting peacefully. That seemed deeply odd to me, considering just how thunderous the noise was.

I…guess this was meant for me, and me alone.

From that noise, I slowly started to decipher words, composed from creaks, groans, and the tortured shriek of steel instead of the passage of wind.

The…girl…

An almost sneering scowl immediately manifested on my lips, and I tightened my grip on Aveline in my arms, causing her to shift and murmur slightly. Thankfully, she didn’t wake up. “No,” I said bluntly. “This girl does not belong here with you, among the lingering dead. She belongs outside, in the world of the living.”

To my surprise, not only did the skeleton before me incline its head in agreement, but many of the surrounding remains that had risen among us did the same.

Yes…take her…run…

My brow furrowed, thrown off. I had thought these restless dead were reluctant to surrender the single spark of life that still survived in these halls. But no.

They wanted her to escape this damned place just as much as I did.

“From what?” I asked quietly. “Can you…tell me what’s going on down here? Who are the Netherim?”

The dead ignored my second question but still answered.

Trapped…endless…punishment…hex…curse…malediction…

A shiver went down my spine, for multiple reasons. On that last creaked word, the gathered dead had bowed their heads, and yet the sound of their ‘voice’ was far more tortured and sorrowful than it had been previously. It was deeply odd to interpret such anguish in the crashing and gnashing of phantom gears, but it was there.

And also…strangely accepting.

But the other reason my skin crawled was that I could feel something else just on the edge of my perception. There was awareness slowly creeping its way among the suddenly wary dead. More than one of them had started to crane their skulls around within their pods, almost as if they were watching for something.

Unease crept over me, something beyond what I’d already felt.

“For what? What could you have possibly done to deserve endless punishment?”

Deserved…arrogance…run…

A brief flicker of movement, so different from the jerkiness of the skeletons drew my attention. I jerked my head around to see, but I saw nothing. All I caught was a brief flash of bloody rust red before the source slipped away.

Alright, enough of this. Time to take the Netherim’s not so subtle warnings to heart and get the hell out of here. My answers weren’t more important than Aveline’s safety.

Unfortunately…

It was too late.

I was startled by the sound of bones crunching behind me, followed by the grinding voices of the dead rising in a wave. Along with that, they suddenly surged out of their pods all around me with a great cacophony of rattling bone and sprinted my way. Even the skeleton I had been speaking to clambered over the side of its pod and lunged past me.

Not a one of them touched me. Instead, they were interested in something behind me.

I spun in place and beheld a monster.

Not a monster merely in the Veredenese sense, an odd amalgamation of condensed Aether that hungered for more of it. No…

This was a true monster, in every sense of the word.

Among the pods of the dead who were even now piling upon it was what I initially thought was one of the Wyrmkin, those pseudo-Revenants born of Tatsugans mere presence. It was larger and longer than even the Primes of that species I had fought out in the ranges of Goryuen, rising above the capsules and bone to veritably tower over us all. Every second, dozens and dozens of animated skeletons, their empty eye sockets suddenly glowing a fierce, determined blue, were piling up and climbing the creature in order to try and restrain it. But they were no match for the might of the beast, and every second more and more of the long-dead Netherim were being dashed to splintered bone every second. I had to duck in order to avoid a flying shard of razor sharp bone, and when I rose, I could finally see the whole of this…thing in the strobing crimson light.

This…had once been a man.

Pale pink flesh smeared in long dried ochre blood stains covered its entire body, from the crown of its skull to the tip of its tail, visible in the distance and tipped with a spear of jagged bone. It still had scales like the rest of the Wyrmkin, and yet these were not the brilliant blue I had seen on the others. They were, instead, made entirely of iron and steel, the same rusted and corroded kind that could be found composing every surface of the bunker. They looked to have been literally nailed into the tortured flesh of the creature, the ends of those nails sometimes poking up through the steel as if they were flat-topped spines. Not every inch of the creature was armored in this manner, however most notably its limbs were.

It's human limbs.

Dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds, of man-like arms protruded from the undercarriage of the beast instead of legs. Each of them possessed gnarled hands, and each grasped at the steel of the floor in much the way a centipede would, when they were not busy grappling with restless dead assaulting it.

But it was the head that horrified me the most. Once upon a time, it might have been the skull of a human man, but no longer. It had been elongated in a decidedly painful-looking manner, stretched to resemble the near dog-like features of the Wyrmkin. A long, greasy, wiry black beard covered that snout, and through it, I could see dozens upon dozens of yellowed, razor-sharp fangs, each nearly as large as my head. From the crown rose three sets of horns hewn from human bone, each of them growing from the forehead of the monster. They were gnarled, pitted, and yellowed from age and strife, and appeared quite dangerous, from how they scattered dozens of the undead with each toss of it's head

Underneath those horns lay a pair of oh-so-familiar emerald eyes, from which poured an endless stream of bloody tears. They dripped down its tortured cheeks to fall onto the reddened steel below it.

So great was my horror at the sight of the monster that I almost instinctively threw out an Observe.

Name: Akhoroth, Maw of the Wyrm

Age: 5,209 years

Species: Human

I don’t know if it was the Observe that drew the thing’s attention, or if I had just caught its attention in some other way. But my eyes met its, in the midst of the struggle with the undead trying to protect me from this horrifying creature.

To my horror, it spoke.

“RUUUNNNN!” It bellowed, in a tortured, wailing voice that echoed up and down the halls of the dead.

As I felt Aveline start awake in terror and try to raise her head, I stopped the movement by clamping one hand protectively down on her free ear, covered by my cloak.

And took the advice.

I turned on my heel and sprinted away from the clattering of bone and the wailing of the Maw.

Deeper into the hall.

<<Chapter 271 | Table of Contents | Chapter 273>>

Chapter 271 - Montblanc

Deftly, I finished slicing off the last lock of thick blonde hair from the head of the mysterious little girl name ‘Aveline’. Thankfully, the small travel razor that I used for my face was sharp enough for the purpose, and it hadn’t been difficult for me to do this at her request.

I…couldn’t say the same about the styling. I knew jack and shit about actually cutting hair in an aesthetic manner.

I hope she liked straight across because that was what I’d done around mid-back for her. Thankfully, the strange little wisp of a child had yet to voice a word of complaint while I was sheering more hair off her head than I think she weighed, kneeling before the now-empty pod I had found her in. When at last I had finished, there was an actual pile of discarded blonde locks lying carelessly next to her former resting place.

I’m not sure I liked the look in her eyes, so similar to my own, as she stared at it.

“Mr. Hart?” She asked quietly, her young voice echoing in the laboratory. She was still looking at the hair instead of me.

“…yes?”

Finally, her gaze shifted my way, to where I was kneeling near her. “How long…was I in the pod for?”

The question hung in the air.

All I could do was slowly shake my head her way. “I don’t know, Aveline. I…actually don’t know anything about this place. But I’m guessing…it had to have been a very long time.”

Aveline’s thin blonde eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t know?” She asked in confusion. “But you…you’re…” She trailed off, now taking a closer look at me. For the first time, I think she actually registered how heavily armed and armored I was. That, I think, alarmed her more than even my mutations.

Now there was the fear I had been expecting, even if it was slight.

But this was a child, even if she was an odd one. I knew how to deal with her.

I took a deep breath and undid the clasp on my cloak, removing it from my shoulders. At the same time, I removed my staff from its back holster and laid it down on the ground next to me, keeping the cloak in my arms. Next was Terratcus, and my bow, and even my daggers. In moments, I had entirely disarmed myself to lay everything in a pile not far from her cut hair.

With one foot, I shoved the weaponry away until it impacted one of the cabinets in the lab with a thud and a shower of dust. Under Aveline’s suddenly confused stare, I sat down cross-legged in front of her, holding the cloak in my lap. The slight dais and steps of the pod that Aveline sat on meant that she was slightly above me. No longer as wary and frightened as she had been, the little girl looked down on me curiously.

I met her gaze calmly. “What am I is someone who wants to help you, Aveline. I want to take you from…whatever this place truly is, so you can get checked out by a Healer friend of mine. Maybe even a few of them. I don’t know if however long you were in that thing hurt you at all.”

Plus, I was starting to think this place was incredibly dangerous all on its own. It was no place for a little girl.

But I didn’t say that, at least not yet. I didn’t want to frighten the kid out of her mind.

Aveline blinked at me. “I…think I’m fine,” She said uncertainly. “Mama said I might be in here for a long, long, long time, but that one of us should come find me one day. Sta-sis is safe, she said.”

Stasis, eh.

But that wasn’t as important as something else she said.

‘One of us.’

I felt my heartbeat pick up. With my levels in Acting, it wasn’t exactly hard to keep my sudden excitement from showing on my face. Not from an uncertain child.

“If I was able to open the pod…” I said slowly. “Does that mean I’m one of you?”

To my disappointment, Aveline shook her head, sending her butchered hair flying. “No…at least, I don’t think so? But…”

“But?”

“But you have the eyes, Mr. Hart,” Aveline said, suddenly sounding certain. “We’re the only people that have the eyes, mama said so. You’re one of us, you have to be!” She suddenly stood up and scurried over. I was careful not to react as the desperate child laid her cold hands on my cheeks and stared into my eyes. “You’re a Netherim…right?”

Netherim.

At long last, I had a name for the bunker people. That name…

I felt absolutely no connection to it. It didn’t stir a thing in me, no matter how certain Aveline was that I was one of her people.

But…one thing caught my attention…

Slowly, so as not to spook the kid, I reached up till I could hold her hands. I carefully removed them from my rough cheeks to cradle in my much larger ones. Startled, Aveline looked down at them and only looked back up when I spoke again.

“I’ve had eyes like this since I was born-”

“That’s not true!” Aveline suddenly butted in, sounding distressed. “That’s not possible! You only get the Em-er-ald Eyes when you’re ad-justed! Without it, the air in the Garden will kill you from all the Ae-ter in it!”

For some reason, a shiver went down my spine, and not because of the childish mispronunciation.

“…what?” I breathed, a feeling of dread overtaking me.

My eyes…weren’t my own?

“You know! You have to know!” She said desperately, looking to be near tears. “Only the Netherim have the Eyes! The Genirim don’t have them! Only the Children of Lost Terra do! Mama said so!”

The bottom of my stomach fell out at those words.

‘The Children of Lost Terra.’

Not Old Terra, as Rhazal and Tlazo had referred to it as.

Lost.

And this child, right here, was telling me that she was one of those Children.

Just. Like. Me.

At the stunned look that must have existed on my face, the distressed little girl suddenly lunged forward, latching onto me in a desperate hug. She started sobbing into my shoulder as my dazed arms almost automatically reached up and wrapped around her slight form. I stared forward unseeingly at the pod Aveline had rested in for…potentially millennia, both rings of my mind racing to the extent that none of my thoughts were actually coherent.

Netherim, Genirim…

I had hoped that finding someone down here would present me with some answers. But instead…

I only had more questions.

……………………………………

I let Aveline cry her distress out onto my shoulder, doing my best to comfort this strange child whose world had collapsed with the passing of ages. Eventually, she grew quiet, but I don’t believe she had cried herself to sleep. Instead, after a few more minutes in my embrace, she drew back and looked up at me almost pleadingly.

I think the time for questions had passed. I didn’t need to put this little girl to the question anymore, and honestly, I was a little ashamed at what I’d already done. I’d let my eagerness for answers override my empathy, even with the little bit that I’d asked her. Clarification on…well, everything could either come from another source down here in the ‘Netherim’ bunker, or later after I had gotten her out of this decaying hulk.

First, though, there were things to be done.

I set Aveline back down on the steps of the dias, and looked around doubtfully for a moment. “Aveline, you wouldn’t happen to know if there are any…shoes in here for you, would you? It’s…it’s time to go.”

She looked up at me with large, reddened emerald eyes and nodded. “Uh-huh,” She said quietly, pointing over her shoulder around the side of the pod. “There should be a locker with my stuff in it.”

Ah. With the shadows in here, I had barely even noticed the back side of the pod. They were even deeper back there, to the extent it was hidden from my gaze. I gave Aveline one last smile, and walked over there, my light Spell bobbing along with me.

When the glow of it illuminated what was actually back here, I stopped in my tracks, my shoulders tensing. I hadn’t moved far enough for Aveline to lose sight of me, so she tilted her head in curiosity my way, rising slightly from her step. “Mr. Hart? What is it?”

“Nothing!” I said hastily, raising a hand to stop her and plastering smile on me face. “I’ve got it, Aveline! No need to get up. You just…stay right there.”

She blinked at me doubtfully, but complied, sitting back down.

I had to suppress a sigh of relief as I moved further back behind the pod. I didn’t want the kid to see what was back here.

Namely, a corpse.

Not just a stripped bare skeleton, like the ones out in the greater hall. But a properly desiccated corpse, covered in paper-thin skin, most of its flesh and tissue having melted away with the passing of eons. Bare scraps of ligament and rotten clothing covered the remains, the cut of them making me believe this might have once been a woman. It was hard to tell, though, because I…think this unfortunate soul had once been wearing a lab coat, although little had survived of it to this day. She, presumably, was leaning against the back wall of the room, not far from where I could see the small locker Aveline had told me back, set into the base of the dais.

I couldn’t tell what had caused her death. There were no easily identifiable wounds, nor indications of sickness. As far as I could tell, it was like she had just laid down and died.

My light glinted off of something pinned to the left breast of the coat scraps. Slowly, I approached the remains and knelt down, leaning forward to get a better look.

It…seemed to be an ID card of some kind, held in place by an alligator clip. On it was a picture of a beautiful, blond-haired woman perhaps in her thirties with emerald green eyes, wearing a pristine white lab coat and smiling at the camera confidently. Next to that picture was a name, written clearly in English.

I studied it for a moment somberly, before I called out over my shoulder. “Aveline?”

“Yes, Mr. Hart?” Her voice drifted back to me.

“Out of… curiosity, what’s your mama’s name?”

“Um. It’s Cecily. Cecily Montblanc.” She answered, curiosity in her voice. Thankfully, she didn’t get up to investigate. “Why?”

I sighed, closing my eyes briefly in resignation. Still, I made sure my own voice had no trace of the sorrow I felt for her in it. “No reason. I found the locker, so give me a minute.”

I didn’t move, though. Instead, I stared forward into the empty eye-sockets of the long-dead remains of what could only be Aveline’s mother. Spelled out clearly on the ID card were the words ‘Dr. Cecily Clair Montblanc’. Anything else identifiable had long since been erased by the passage of time.

I couldn’t let Aveline either see this or know about it. The girl struck me as particularly intelligent, so she had to have realized that her mother was gone, if only subconsciously. But knowing that and seeing the remains were two entirely separate things.

I wasn’t that cruel. Perhaps…later.

Much later.

Aveline…she really didn’t have anything, did she?

Resolve grew in my heart, sudden and steel firm.

I bowed my head to the long-departed mother. I made sure to keep my voice low as possible with my next words. “I’ll take care of her. I promise you that, Cecily.”

I turned from the unfortunate soul and reached for the ring on the small locker to my right. I had to tug on it harder than expected to open it, causing the door to screech in protest at the movement.

But something else happened that caused my heart to leap into my throat.

Behind me, I heard a slight ruffling noise, followed by a small clatter.

My head whipped around, only to find that I was once again staring into empty eye-sockets.

The head of Cecily’s corpse had turned slightly to the right to stare.

Right. At. Me.

I knelt there in sudden tension for…I don’t know how long, eye to eye with the apparently moving dead woman. The remains didn’t move or shift an inch further, though, nor did the empty sockets light up to signify the reanimation of undeath. I was only broken out of my stupor by the sound of Aveline’s voice.

“Mr. Hart? Are you alright?”

I blinked rapidly, my eyes flickering away from the remains in sudden panic. “Just fine!” I said, my voice cracking slightly in a way it hadn’t since I was a teenager. “Give me a sec! It’s a real mess back here! Not safe at all!”

A familiar glint caught my eye when I looked back, this time oddly coming from the ground. I followed it to find that Cecily’s ID card had been torn from the remains of the coat, to rest in the open, bony palm of her hand.

I grit my teeth.

Okay.

Message received.

I snatched it up before my nerves could fail me and stuffed it deep into my supply pouch. Then, I turned around and rapidly snatched up everything in the old locker. I barely registered the small, child-like shoes or the odd grey discus. There were strips of what might have once been clothes in there, but they had unfortunately degraded to the extent they were little better than scraps. Once I had hold of what remained, I stood up and hurried away from the…resting place of Aveline’s mother, and stepped back into the light of the pod.

Aveline lit up when she saw the strange disc in my arms, and snatched it out of grip to clutch it to her chest. She barely reacted when I slipped the thankfully intact, strangely plastic shoes onto her tiny feet. She only looked up in curiosity when I slung my cloak over her shoulders, wrapping it around herself. “Warm,” She whispered.

I did my best to smile down at her. “Time to go, Aveline. I’ll get you out of here. I just…need to find my friends and take care of something, first. But I swear I’ll look after you. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

Aveline gave me a tiny nod, before looking back down at her…toy, I guess. I hastily gathered up my weapons and gear, strapping them back onto my body. My new charge didn’t protest as I bent down and picked her up, holding her close to my chest. She only buried her face into my left shoulder.

As I turned my back on the pod I’d found her in and strode for the door, my light Spell bobbing along with us, I couldn’t help myself. Once I’d reached the entrance into the lab, I cautiously looked over my shoulder, my eyes deliberately finding the space behind the pod.

It was hard to tell, but…

I think the skull of Dr. Cecily Montblanc had turned back around to face us, as we were leaving.

One last sight of her daughter…before she left this place forever.

I shuddered slightly and turned away.

<<Chapter 270 | Table of Contents | Chapter 271>>

Chapter 270 - Frozen Hazel

For some reason, the mere sight of the child sent a shiver down my spine. Not just because it was extremely unnerving to see her, no. The instant she was revealed to my eyes, I swear I felt the presence of someone standing just behind me. A cold breeze blew out of nowhere to tickle the back of my neck, almost as if a frozen breath had appeared from nowhere to fall upon me. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I wildly spun in place to look behind me.

Nothing.

There was nothing there. The only thing I could see was the room behind me, lit by the strobing red light of the greater hall through the door I had entered. I did my best to calm the heightened breathing from the near panic I’d fallen into and scolded myself.

Get a grip, Nate. There was nothing down here but dust, rust, and my missing companions.

Presumably.

Well…

And the little girl in the pod.

With one last wary eye at my surroundings, I turned back to inspect her and the pod. Turned out, I had been wrong about what these things were. I hadn’t been able to see into the capsule with the glass darkened, but it appeared that these weren’t specifically ‘cryo’ pods.

Instead, they seemed to suspend their occupants in some kind of liquid instead. The entire thing was filled to the absolute brim with a strange, clear substance of some kind. It wasn’t water, I could tell that if only from the viscosity of it. Too thick, for one, and too…

Well, bright.

There was a very slight glow to the fluid that indicated mysticality of some kind. My senses couldn’t tell what form of energy it was through the glass, but I didn’t really know of any kind of liquid with an inherent glow.

Other than particularly potent potions, of course. But... if this was a potion, there sure was an awful lot of it.

Thankfully, the kid inside wasn’t as naked as I believed the rest of the ‘victims’ I suppose I could call them, had appeared to be at the time of death. Whoever this child was, she was wearing what appeared to be a medical gown of some kind, stark white against the deep blue plastic of the cushions behind her. It waved slowly in the circulation of the fluid in the pod, along with the child’s very long, bright blonde hair. That might be the longest hair I had ever seen on a kid, actually. The thin golden strands very much appeared to have grown past her own height, to where I think it might well drag on the ground behind her. The effect appeared almost as if she bore a long, brilliant cape behind her thin body.

Which was odd, considering her apparent age.

I wouldn’t put this child past ten years old, maybe eleven if I was being generous. I hadn’t even known it was possible for kids that young to have hair that long.

Through the pane of thick glass, the child almost appeared as if she was sleeping peacefully. Strapped to her face was one of the silicone medical masks I’d seen on the remains in the greater hall, but I could still her face beneath it. This girl had thin, almost elfin features to my eyes, but thankfully she wasn’t literally an Elf. The tips of her perfectly round, decidedly human ears occasionally showed through her golden hair.

The entire sight of the girl, suspended for who knows how many years, was almost…angelic, in comparison to the dour environs I found her in.

I had followed the continuous beeping in the hope that I would find a surviving member of the bunker people. Someone who could give me some much-needed answers.

Instead…

Instead, I had found someone who needed my help instead.

I had to get this girl out of here. I realized that pretty much the instant I had laid eyes on her, I’d made that decision. Whoever or whatever this girl actually was, I couldn’t just leave her down here. This was a child. What kind of monster would just leave a little girl down here to potentially rest in suspended animation for eternity? I had to assume she was a survivor of whatever had befallen this bunker, somehow protected from the cataclysm that had wiped out the entire population.

She might well be their last light of hope, carried into the future.

That left me in a quandary, however.

Did I get her out now, or come back for her later? Even beyond the trap that had drawn my companions and I into these depths, this place didn’t exactly strike me as safe. Those violet tendrils of corrupted Aether from earlier had been monstrously strong. To the extent I’m not sure Rhazal himself would have disregarded them.

That wasn’t all, though.

Sometimes…

Sometimes I felt like I was being watched, in here. There was the incident only a few moments ago, of course. But more than that, while I had been exploring the veritable hall of the dead outside this lab, I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that I wasn’t exactly…alone.

The space of the hall didn’t feel as empty as it might appear. I didn’t see anything, of course, and I had very much been keeping an eye out. But…

But.

That feeling had passed, once I had entered this lab. In here, it was just me.

And her.

Something about this lab felt...safer than the greater hall, but still.

Was it safe to take this girl out of her protective shell, and bring her with me? Would I only be dooming her to whatever it was that had infested this bunker in the long years since it had fallen? I…might be able to come back for her later, after I had found my friends and dealt with whatever resided at the core of this complex. After all, I hadn’t forgotten the implicit request of Masayuki Ashiwara to deal with whatever was causing the continuous return of Tatsugan, presumably down here. I even wanted to do that.

If I had the ability to effect lasting positive change on the history of an entire nation, I felt I had the duty to at least make the attempt.

But…

Still, something in me said I needed to get her out now. I and my companion's entrance into this bunker had changed or perhaps awoken something down here. There was no telling that this girl would remain safe, or that I would even be able to return to this specific hall once I’d fulfilled my objectives.

All of these thoughts passed through my enhanced mind in an instant. And when they did, I made a snap judgment, made purely off of a gut feeling.

Honestly, it rarely steered me wrong.

I reached out and lay one finger on the green button.

For a moment, nothing happened, not like the immediate change that had occurred with the blue button. I momentarily feared that too much time had passed, and the pod had degraded into a prison instead of a life-saving womb.

The sound of long degraded pumps firing to life somewhere below the floor disabused me of that notion. Creaking, groaning, and the growl of a hidden engine filled the air. Before my eyes, the strange fluid that filled the pod slowly began to empty through a small drain at the bottom of it. The girl inside began to lower with the level of the liquid, until her small, dainty feet touched down onto the grating at the bottom. Once all of the fluid was gone from the pod, she hung in place, suspended by two small prongs that had popped out of the backside of the tube. Still, she didn’t stir from her slumber, dripping the strange fluid. Strangely, it slid off of her form perfectly, including her clothes and hair. It didn’t appear to leave any visible moisture behind when I had been expecting her to be veritably soaking.

I was startled out of my examination by the sound of long-neglected gears grinding to life from the pod. The entire enclose began to lean forward from its slightly reclined posture in fits and starts, until it stood fully upright. Visible sparks flew from the sides of the pod as hidden hinges on the front door tried to open the whole thing vertically, releasing a curious smell into the dusty interior of this lab. I swear, the scent was almost minty. I stepped back to watch so I didn’t get hit by the glass, but I needn’t have bothered.

The mechanism to open the pod failed halfway, leaving the girl trapped inside.

I frowned and stepped forward, bending down to grab the lip of the door. With just a little force, it was surprisingly easy to lift the glass panel until it was all the way open, stretching nearly to the darkened ceiling.

I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

The pegs holding the child upright retreated for some reason, causing the still comatose foundling to bonelessly list forward. Thoughtlessly, I stepped forward to catch her before she could hit the ground, kneeling before the pod to gentle the embrace.

She was so…light. Fragile, really. In the incredibly dim light of the Skill I had left floating in midair, it struck me then that this child’s purity was at incredible odds with the bleak atmosphere of the bunker.

Kneeling there with the child in my arms, I felt her stir in my arms. She was finally waking from the long, long sleep she had been placed under. Before my eyes, she shifted in my arms, and I saw movement under her eyelids. I held my breath as those same lids began to inch open, allowing me to see her eyes for the first time.

I think it was only because I had held my breath that I didn’t gasp.

Because they were green.

Emerald green.

The same shade…as my own.

Somehow, someway…

A perfect match.

Our eyes met, and the two of us inspected each other for a moment. She was…very definitely awake now, and yet the child had yet to make a sound as she stared up at me. I didn’t either, to be fair. I was, in a way, terrified that the girl was terrified of me. I was a fairly…gruesome sight, these days, and I was very aware of that.

Long, inhuman ears ridged with blackened scales jutted from the sides of my head, while similar scales traced the old scar I’d received from my first monster. Weapons, armor, and equipment covered every spare inch of my body, and I was aware that they were somewhat ragged from days of hard marching and combat. I’m sure I stank, too, despite the perpetual shower happening outside the bunker.

Yet…

The child slowly raised one hand to curiously trace the line of black scales on my left cheek, tilting her head at me as she did so.

And spoke.

In.

English.

“Who…are you?” A tired, high-pitched, and yet strangely unafraid little girl’s voice echoed from the child in my arms. She blinked slowly at me. “Did mama send you?”

I barely registered the words said by the fey-like creature in my arms. Instead, I was still struck dumb by what they’d been said in. I hadn’t heard spoken English from another person in…God, I had no idea how long. I don’t think I even spoke it to myself, anymore. Language Adaptation had been steadily teaching me Veredenese Herztalian for some time now. I had to check with my shell-shocked core ring to be sure that the Skill hadn’t just been translating for us.

But no.

That was English, all right.

My mother tongue sounded outright alien to me.

“Mister?” A small voice called out, snapping me from my shock. I blinked and looked down at the child once more. She was still curiously calm, completely at odds with my experiences with children.

But I didn’t know what to say. I realized now that the girl had asked after her mother.

How…how do you tell a little girl that her mother was likely dead, and might have been for possible centuries? Maybe even millennia?

Thankfully, I was saved from having to try by the little girl wincing in my arms, one of her tiny hands reaching up towards her scalp. Momentarily, I thought she might have hit her head on the way out, but no. Instead, she was just inspecting the no doubt incredibly heavy weight of all of that hair. In fact, she looked confused at the sight of just how much she had.

I’m guessing she didn’t have that when she went under.

I finally found my voice. “Is that new for you?” I said in as gentle a voice as I could muster.

With my help, the girl sat up just before the pod she had fallen from. Outside of it, the sheer amount of hair she had looked decidedly unwieldy. The look she gave me from underneath all of it, there in the light case by her former sleeping place, made her look decidedly like a bedraggled kitten.

I couldn’t help but smile slightly, despite the circumstances. I crouched back down to eye level with her. “What’s your name? Mine’s Nathan Hart.”

She gave me a curious look, her eyes lingering on something over my shoulder before she smiled at me.

“Aveline,” The girl said quietly, peering up at me with strangely unafraid eyes through thick locks of golden hair. “My name is Aveline, mister. Can you…can you help me with my hair?”

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