The moment his feet touched the ground, Kaelen charged again, and a dagger of pure shadow materialized around his own blade. The spell-wreathed weapon flashed toward the lizard's neck, slicing through the thick scales as if they were paper. Dark blood gushed out, painting the cavern floor with each stumbling step of the beast. Finally, it collapsed with a ground-shaking thud.
A single hit again, Kaelen thought with a sigh.
A few steps away, Floria dispatched her own Blazing Lizard—a creature a dozen Ranks lower than Kaelen's—with a brutal stab to the eye.
"The Kastal fighters were stronger than I expected," she said, yanking out her blade before scanning the branching tunnels around them.
"Hmm." Kaelen knelt in front of his kill to harvest the beaststone inside.
"I still can't believe that Primalist beat Iann even while under the effect of the ward," Floria continued, glancing back at him. "It's absurd, being able to fight through that much pain."
Kaelen didn't answer and instead focused on methodically slicing open the lizard's chest with his dagger. He remembered the feeling—the cold dread that had crept up his spine when that Primalist had locked his eyes on him. When was the last time he had felt that? Such a suffocating pressure from someone with twenty Ranks lower than him?
"Too bad they stopped the fight between you two before it even really got started," Floria said, her voice laced with annoyance. "It made us look weak."
Kaelen paused his work and shook his head. "No. It's a good thing they did."
Floria frowned. "What? Why is that?"
"We would have looked even worse," Kaelen answered, his hand plunging into the warm viscera of the lizard's corpse. He pulled out the beaststone, a slick, red crystal, without so much as a flinch.
Floria stopped walking, her head tilted in disbelief. "What do you mean? Are you saying you… would have lost?"
Kaelen's mouth twisted. "It's a possibility."
"You're kiddin—" Floria started with wide eyes before cutting herself off when she clearly realized her brother wasn't joking. Her lips pressed into a thin line. "You think he has a Seed? But… the Black Reaper said their king seized all of them to give them to that nation that keeps him in place, no?"
Kaelen simply shrugged and continued to clean the beaststone in his hand. He had to wipe a piece of clinging flesh against his leather trousers. "Maybe."
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Floria let out an exasperated sigh at his noncommittal answer. "Fine. Be that way." Clearly annoyed, the woman turned and strolled into the mouth of a nearby tunnel, leaving her own lizard's corpse untouched.
Lazy as ever, Kaelen thought with a familiar sense of resignation. I'll have to do it for her. Again.
He pushed himself up and walked over to Floria's kill before unsheathing his dagger again. A Seed? Yeah, probably.
But there was something else about that Primalist. No Seed could explain the cold dread that had filled Kaelen. It wasn't that man's fear-inducing ability or rage spell either; Kaelen had faced plenty of those, and they had never affected him this way. Was it the beast hidden within that holder at his neck?
After their skirmish, Kaelen had sent a message through a communication orb, seeking information on the Beastmaster subclass. The reply from the informant of the Black Reapers' headquarters had been startling: it was a Legendary subclass, which could be unlocked when a Primalist contracted a beast whose potential was two Tiers higher than their own. That meant the Kastal combatant had either bonded with a Silver-potential beast while he was Copper… or a Gold-potential one while Iron.
Either possibility was bad news for anyone facing him in the Warfare Rifts. But even that didn't fully explain the intimidating pressure he'd exuded.
"Hey, come see this!"
Floria's voice echoed from the tunnel, pulling Kaelen from his thoughts. He yanked the beaststone from the second lizard, stood, and walked toward his sister, putting the new crystal away in his pouch.
About a minute later he reached Floria, who was standing before a dead end. The tunnel simply stopped, but inches from the solid rock face, the air shimmered and distorted, forming a hazy oval the size of a man. It was a Rift portal with edges crackling with energy.
"Let's go inside," Floria said—her eyes gleamed with clear avarice.
"Without knowing what kind of Rift it is?" Kaelen retorted, rubbing his weary face. He let out a long sigh and reached into his Endless Pouch to retrieve an artifact: a small statue of a cloaked figure holding a magnifying glass.
The moment he placed it on the floor before the portal, aether flowed inside and gleaming words materialized in the air above it.
"It's a Temporary Rift!" Floria exclaimed, a wide smile spreading across her face. "This is our lucky day."
"Not really," Kaelen said flatly. "It's open once a month. That means if we go in now and it doesn't allow us to come out when it's closed, we'll barely make it out in time for the war."
"Who cares? It's a Temporary Rift."
"Our supervising Reaper probably cares," Kaelen answered with a sigh of exasperation. "We can't just disappear for a month."
"Then let's ask him," she urged, her impatience obvious. "I'm sure he'll want us to go inside."
Kaelen picked up the small statue, stowed it in his pouch, and took out a communication orb. He infused a sliver of aether into the crystal, and his thoughts formed as glowing words within:
???: We've found what seemed to be an unexplored Temporary Rift. It opens once a month. We would return just before the start of the war. Requesting permission to enter.
They waited in silence for only a moment before a reply shimmered into existence inside the crystal ball.
???: Permission granted. Bring back everything of value you find to me. We will decide what to do with it next.
Of course everything we find will go to you and only you, Kaelen thought grimly. Just like that last Seed we came across.
The Shadow-potency bonus would have been perfect for him, but the Black Reaper had simply taken it for himself, wanting to fill the open Copper slot in his Well.
"See? I told you he'd say yes," Floria said with a smug grin.
Kaelen took a deep breath, his gaze meeting his sister's. A second later, he grabbed her wrist. "Then let's go."
With a firm tug, he pulled her into the blurry air of the portal.
(UPDATED):
------
Thank you so much for reading!
------
21 25!! advanced chapters on !