Somehow, I ended up at the very front of the expedition. Well, maybe not somehow. There was a very clear reason. The Se-Targa Councillor had summoned me to her side. It was just a little odd to jog faster than the rest of the expeditioners to get to the very front.

  “I’m glad you chose to join us, Celebrity Moreland,” she said.

  Revayne on her other side snorted.

  “How did you—you know what, never mind.” Maybe she had actually called me that once and not somehow preternaturally learned from Khagnio. “I’m glad you called me up, though, Councillor. I had a couple of questions if you had the time.”

  “As did I,” Se-Vigilance said. “But you may go first.”

  I glanced at Revayne, trying to gauge what exactly Se-Vigilance might want from me. Which was silly of me because her face was once more inside her book.

  “You’ve already figured out how you’re going to take care of the issue?” I asked. I lowered my voice. “How you’re going to deal with that man?”

  “Yes. Fear not. I believe I have deciphered the exact method he was using, and now, I can tap into the same process to beat him at his own game.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her. Even Revayne looked up. It took a minute for Se-Vigilance to realize she was being stared at.

  “Ah, yes, I suppose that was rather vague.” The Councillor cleared her throat. “The main idea we need to make use of is the fact that the Nether Vein is embedded with mana cores. You are well aware that mana cores are tremendous stores of magical energy. By tapping into a hivemind of these stores, the Nether Vein is able to achieve its unbelievable feats.”

  “Unbelievable feats?” I asked. I knew the Nether Vein posed a lot of danger, but the way Se-Vigilance was talking, it sounded like this whole mega-dungeon was capable of even greater things. “Like what?”

  “Well, the most pertinent of its capabilities is its spatiotemporal powers. As in, its ability to shorten distances between Nether Vein gates. A caravan journey from Zairgon to Claderov normally takes between twenty-five to thirty days. It has been historically documented that this journey shortens to merely five to seven days when conducted from the gates between Zairgon and Claderov.”

  “Huh. That is a pretty unbelievable feat. But sorry for side-tracking. What were you saying about how we can stop this guy?”

  “The only way to defeat this man is by gaining control over his domain. As such, I will need to access the mana cores in the same way he has.”

  “With the Klevacite? And the Netherthreads? It’s strange to me that you can use the Klevacite to both repel the Netherthreads but also interact with them as you wish.”

  It was Revayne who answered, though she was still reading her book at the same time. “That’s because the Klevacite is actually derived from the mana cores.”

  “Really?”

  “Captain Revayne is correct,” Se-Vigilance said. “Klevacite is formed from an interaction between the ul-metal that forms the Nether Vein and the mana cores within it. A melding of matter and mana and soul.”

  “Soul…?”

  My head turned jerkily to the distant boundary of the Nether Vein I barely saw. To the glimmers far beyond us like tiny stars on the ceilings and walls.

  Were those mana cores more or less souls? If that was the case, then wasn’t it terrible for those souls to be trapped in a form like that? Maybe I was making too many assumptions because this was the first time I was hearing anything about souls in the context of mana and cores.

  “You seem concerned, Augur Moreland,” Se-Vigilance said.

  I shared the thoughts surfacing in my mind. “Isn’t it basically torture to string them all up like that? Did… did the Ascendants who made this whole Nether Vein get all those mana cores from people?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  Revayne cleared her throat.

  “Er, I don’t believe that all the mana cores came from people,” Se-Vigilance amended. “But some? Very likely, yes. But there is little to nothing we can do for them, if that was your intention.”

  “It wasn’t,” I said. “I don’t know much about any of this, regardless of what I’m learning. That doesn’t mean I can stop feeling a little bit horrified.”

  “Understandable.”

  It was also understandable why she wasn’t sharing that knowledge with everyone willy-nilly. Revayne was perfect for that, with how objectively she handled her emotions. But if I was having that sort of reaction, where I was unable to hold back my disapproving disgust at stuffing remnants of people into the walls of the Nether Vein, then what sort of outrage would it incur in others?

  Admittedly, calling mana cores remnants of people was perhaps a stretch. And souls couldn’t be fully tied to mana cores, could they? Lots of people had souls, were alive, but possessed no core of compressed magical energy.

  I decided against spending too much mental energy on something I barely even understood. The point was that Se-Vigilance knew how to take care of the most important obstacle we’d be facing.

  “How exactly are you going to control the mana cores?” I asked.

  “With my feathers, of course.”

  This time, even after a pointed pause, she didn’t elaborate.

  “Right,” I said. “Of course.”

  “Hopefully, I have sated some of your curiosity, Empath Moreland—”

  “I’m really not an empath, trust me.”

  “—so now, I hope you will indulge me in turn. First of all, I will need you to perform some of your key Rituals when it’s time.”

  “Will do.”

  “Next, I believe you are the single, most capable person in this entire expedition. Perhaps even the one who’s key to its success.”

  “Woah, now. You exist, Councillor.”

  She looked down at me, and I couldn’t read the expression in her eyes. “There is no point in sugarcoating it. Even if you might not be the most powerful on paper at any given point in time if we only consider your baseline, you have multiple methods of surpassing your seeming strength and fighting back against foes you have no business standing up to. That alone makes you the standout feature of this little expedition.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Revayne was nodding along vigorously. I scowled. She was supposed to be stronger than me, especially now that she was Opal-ranked. Why in the world was she agreeing with the Councillor?

  “Secondly,” Se-Vigilance went on. “You have ways of uplifting others as well, which makes you even more valuable. None here, not even I, have such an ideal combination of powers that can be both tremendous support and inconceivable personal firepower. As such, you possess an irreplaceable position in our little outfit.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “Because you want me to be the lynchpin?”

  “I am not telling you to be anything. When the time comes, I have full faith you will be what you need to be. I am merely reminding you that I have faith in you, as do a lot of people here. But don’t take that as a burden. If you can, take it as something to uplift you.”

  I licked my lips at that, unsure of how I should even proceed. A little quagmire of emotions was trying to rise up.

  It would be silly of me to hold some sort of grudge and pretend that literally everything I had ever faced in Zairgon was negative. Sure, there had been a lot of discrimination from a lot of sources. Mages who stared and judged, adventurers who got grouchy enough to pick fights, a Scarseeker and evil Scarthralls who saw me and everyone around me as nothing but food.

  And all that was just the tip of the iceberg, wasn’t it? The deep-rooted prejudiced view of Ring Four that nearly all of Zairgon held wasn’t going to go away any time soon.

  Even after everything I had done—and now, a niggling part of me was seriously doubting if I had even done that much—it wasn’t like I had totally turned Ring Four’s fortunes around. People from my neighbourhood still did menial, dead-end jobs that people of Ring Three didn’t want to touch. We were, on average, not at all richer than we had been when I had first arrived.

  From an objective standpoint, something like that wasn’t going to change so easily. Those sorts of developments took generations. I hadn’t even been here for a year.

  Subjectively, though, I was having trouble pushing the doubts away.

  So, despite all the positive reactions I had gotten from all sorts of people, it was difficult to take the Councillor’s words at face value. She wasn’t lying. No doubt about that.

  Were most of the other expeditioners really looking up to me? That seemed insane. If anything, I’d expect at least half of them to nurse some sort of bitter internal envy of the way I had grown, though I now wondered how much of that was cynicism and a reflection of my own experiences in Zairgon.

  All this time, I had tried to stick to one little tenet. Just because Aurier had tried to Sacrifice me didn’t mean I had to let him plummet into the volcano. Just because Aninta had raged against me seemingly taking her job didn’t mean I had to hold a grudge.

  And on the other side of the coin, just because I went on to understand the motivations of Glonek and Zoltan, just because I knew where they had come from, it didn’t mean I had to spare them.

  I… lost track of why I was even thinking about all that. The Nether Vein was still swirling with mad power all around us, the Netherthreads barely held back thanks to the aura of the Klevacite. In the distance, I could hear sounds that sort of suggested there were monsters just waiting to attack. Waiting for the right opportunity.

  Waiting for the moment I’d have to step up. And I would. Regardless of what anyone else felt, regardless of how true what Se-Vigilance said was.

  So why did it matter? Why in the world had she brought it up?

  “Why mention something like that?” I asked. “And now, of all times.”

  Se-Vigilance actually grinned. She almost looked mischievous. A look like that on a Councillor of all people, one who was supposed to be more dignified than anybody, made me blink.

  “I suspect you will need it with your current trajectory,” she said. “Sooner rather than later.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She was all mysterious little smiles now. “You’ll see.”

  I grumbled but let it go. Returning to objectivity, none of that was going to change much, because she was right about one thing. I was going to be what I needed to be no matter what anyone else thought or believed.

  For now, I tried to focus on what was going on ahead and around us. I was honestly a bit surprised that we hadn’t met any monsters yet. It wasn’t an effect of the Klevacite we carried, apparently. Rather, the Councillor was attributing that to their previous expedition’s efforts at clearing up most of the areas nearby.

  That made a lot of the returning adventurers look very, very self-satisfied. Khagnio, whose Netherthread-infested tail and arm were writhing madly, looked like he had just been declared the king of fifteen thousand worlds.

  Nevertheless, we had to remain wary. Which was proven indubitably true less than an hour later when the distant sounds we were hearing grew threateningly loud.

  My ears cringed at the metallic scraping noise, a staccato of rippling shrieks echoing through the cavernous space.

  “How much farther are we from our first destination?” I asked Khagnio, having returned to my original location in the expedition.

  “Distance is hard here.” Even Khagnio was tense now, both his hands, black and normal, holding a dagger each. “But probably less than two hours away from it.”

  The shrieking grew a lot more intense. Our formation solidified into a proper battle stance, with all the combatants forming a ring around the non-combatants. Well, there were no real non-combatants here. Se-Vigilance had been sure to only take people who knew how to fight well.

  But that said, teams like the healers and alchemists weren’t here to join the adventurers on the battlefield frontlines. Everyone had roles to play. Theirs would be support of various shades.

  Just like mine was support too. To start with.

  I carried out the steps of the Ritual of Defiance. One of the reasons I had tried to make personal acquaintances beforehand was because people who knew me personally at least a little bit were more likely to accept my seemingly crazy demands to perform weird Rituals just before a big fight.

  So now, as the battle became imminent, I started the Rituals of Precaution and Defiance. I took a bit of blood from myself, daubing a small fabric with it while promising to safeguard it with my life. At the same time, I stepped to the very edge of the protection offered by the weird torch of Klevacite we had, right up against the storming Netherthreads, and stated the same thing the Scarthralls had the other day.

  “Whatever you may be out there,” I said. “Whatever I face, I will not be defeated by you.”

  [ Ritual

  You have performed 1 [Minor] Ritual of Precaution [1] / 1 [Minor] Ritual of Defiance [2]. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward [1]: Vitality raised by 6 ranks and resistance to afflictions raised by 55% for 1 hour and 50 minutes.

  Reward [2]: When faced with foes one or more rank tiers higher, all Aspects and Attributes are enhanced. Ranks of enhancement depend on the difference between caster and foe’s ranks, with one rank tier of difference equalling 5 ranks of enhancement. ]

  And then I Sacrificed them, the rewards magnifying into even greater potency.

  There were multiple more Rituals I could carry out in ideal circumstances. But with an indeterminable amount of time left, I had gotten out the most important ones.

  I had asked the others to carry out the steps of the Ritual of War, just in case. It was a bit more complicated, though. I wasn’t sure how many of them had followed through on it properly enough to actually have the Ritual go up when it was time.

  Cerea stepped up next to me with a fierce smile. Khagnio clanged his knives together. Ugnash was already in front of us, his armour etched with the Ritual Circle I had thought to draw up before we had set out.

  “Get ready,” Ugnash called. “Here it comes!”

  The Netherthreads parted a second later almost like they had been waiting for his voice. I wasted a few seconds gawking at the shrieking, hulking behemoth barrelling towards us.

  My first thought was that it reminded me of the Rackshift dungeon monsters. A construct of flesh and metal melded together like fantasy cyborgs. Except, this one had a very defined shape—essentially an oversized velociraptor with wings, because why not.

  “A Steel Tyrant.” Khagnio cursed. “That thing’s Onyx-ranked!”

  Khagnio’s reaction immediately confirmed my intuition that the onrushing monster was pretty bad news. But we didn’t have to worry about it for long.

  Se-Vigilance stepped forward. Her feather-swords shone with prismatic light. A cross slash launched blades of energy at the onrushing monster, which was forced to stop in its tracks, though I didn’t see it suffer much damage. The monster only unleashed a terrific shriek that made the entire Nether Vein shiver.

  One that was answered by a storm of more similar but slightly lower-pitched shrieks all around us.

  “Right,” Ugnash said. “Just because the Councillor is handling the big one doesn’t mean we can sit on our asses. Let’s go.”

  The Netherthreads parted all around us, more monsters dive-bombing in from all around.

  Publishing Announcement!