I had no idea if I was going to be topping the amount of energy I had just unleashed anytime soon. My body was boiling alive. The air itself was vaporized, my eyelids forced into slits against the all-consuming brightness. Despite the lack of hearing, my ears thrummed with agony.

  It would have been an extremely potent boost to my ego if I didn’t have a bad feeling I was nearly killing myself with my own abilities.

  At least it was energy. With how much mana I had expended and the general beaten-up state of my body, pushed to limits I had never been forced to reach before, I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to beat back physical strikes like a rain of debris.

  As it was, I just needed to channel some Intake before I got cancer via whatever mad interaction Entropy was having with the rest of my Aspects.

  I didn’t fall. Even after releasing my hold on all my Gravity, the sheer eruption of power had flung me upwards and at an angle away from the blast. I couldn’t even see where I was ending up. Threaded Reinforcement had turned incredibly solid within me, my body rigid like it had iron for blood.

  Some distant part of me that wasn’t scrambled by the crazy blast of powers I had unleashed suddenly recalled that I was supposed to be saving myself. That I was falling and if I didn’t do something, there were a myriad ways I could end up dying.

  I managed to call on Siphon while adding Reflection to the mix. The former slowed my fall and let me down gently, while the latter ensured the Netherthreads wouldn’t pose any issues.

  Not that I saw any of them. Though, truth be told, it was difficult to see much of anything with how fried my eyes were.

  Especially with the blue boxes flooding my line of sight.

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Agility, Vitality, and Thauma Attributes have risen by one Rank.

  Your Flare, Illumination, and Ritual Aspects have risen by two Ranks.

  Your Gravity, Sacrifice and Leadership Aspects have risen by one Rank.

  Agility: Gold VI

  Vitality: Gold V

  Thauma: Silver VII

  Flare: Silver IX

  Illumination: Silver VIII

  Ritual: Silver VII

  Gravity: Gold VI

  Sacrifice: Gold IV

  Leadership: Iron V ]

  I had barely looked through everything the blue screen had stated before something cold and wet wrapped around my legs. My body jolted instinctively on its own, as much as it could in its current state, but then—

  “Calm down,” Revayne’s voice came in from somewhere up ahead. “It’s just me.”

  I was blinking rapidly. Proper sight was slowly returning, but it was still difficult to make anything out. My body wasn’t feeling much like a living body either. Instead, I felt like one of those Easter Island statues, a stiff sculpture that had to be dragged into position.

  Was this the blowback from using so much mana that even Threaded Reinforcement just couldn’t cover it? My mana core was spinning still, but it felt like a ball of razors in my chest.

  I wanted to survey the devastation I had caused as I was dragged towards a significantly larger hole than there had been before the battle against the Bonestrider. I wanted to see if everyone was okay. I wanted to make sure that the monster we had struggled so much against was really gone for good.

  But there wasn’t time.

  Revayne hurried up to me, half-supported by a healer who had made it through the ordeal. “Can you stand?”

  “Uh…” I tried to feel my body and only got a painful tingling from my nerves. Alright. Movement was going to be extra difficult.

  “I’ll take that as a no…”

  At least I could still talk. My hearing was impaired and my eyesight would need some time to recover to full potency. “What’s wrong? How many of us are still alive?”

  “That’s not important.” That was when I finally noticed Revayne wasn’t looking at me, despite approaching my body, despite having drawn me closer herself. “It’s the Councillor we have to worry about.”

  By the time I managed to stand, my senses had recovered enough to properly take in the fallout of my own actions.

  I figured that the appearance of notifications from the Weave suggested that the Bonestrider was dead, though Revayne said not to count on it. Still, I didn’t have to remain wary. I had unleashed so much energy earlier that I had vaporized a good chunk of the Netherthreads. Maybe I had even struck the power they used as a source beneath the metal floor.

  Because I didn’t need to use more Illumination. There were no more of the strands of rapacious dark energy that we needed to counter.

  “You did that, Ross?” Ugnash asked, looking at the sixty-foot-wide pit in front of us, having regained consciousness despite his wounded state.

  The huge hole was edged with molten metal, so we were staying even farther away. Where the pit should have been lost to darkness, there was instead a pyre of molten slag and burning debris far below, like an angry red eye glaring up at us for waking it up.

  Even I couldn’t get close to that thing, and I had created it. The air near it had the tiniest fizzing sensation to it, and I was immediately wary of something like radiation sickness. In fact, despite the distance I had enforced, I still felt like we needed to get away from this whole location as soon as we could.

  “Desperate times, buddy,” I said.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  I wasn’t really paying attention to the hole, though. After finding out—to my great relief—that nobody had gotten caught in that ginormous blast I had unleashed by striking Protostar with Starburst, I had shifted all my attention to the Councillor.

  She was still stuck on the distant metal wall. Her energy was strangely warbling, interacting with the Netherthreads there in strange ways. They sank into her, then got repelled, then slowly edged forward only to get converted into strands of the prismatic energy surrounding Se-Vigilance.

  “The Honoured Councillor has commanded me to tell you to leave,” one of the healers said. “If ever it came to a point where she failed to succeed in time.”

  He was the Se-Targa who had been supporting Revayne. After everything we had gone through, he and all the other surviving healers were completely wiped out.

  As such, my wounds weren’t exactly better. I had taken health potions, of course. Well, I had taken one potion. The reason I had recovered pretty quickly was that I had Sacrificed it. With the state Revayne’s body was in, I had practically forced her to take the rest of them, and I’d have tried to heal her too if I could have.

  But our wounds weren’t about to fix themselves so easily. Revayne was moving stiffly at best, still needing to rely on her ink, though she had been forced to reduce the amount because of a lack of mana. At least my arm wasn’t throbbing any longer, though it still felt odd to move it.

  “We should leave,” Khagnio said. “We’ve stuck around here long enough. We’re all just one more fight away from dying.” He tutted and looked around. “I mean, a good chunk of us are already gone. We can’t keep this up.”

  There were no arguments against that.

  We were on our last legs. Another battle, and we would be eradicated. No question about it. I might have ranked up Thauma, but even miracles had their limits.

  “Maybe we don’t have to wait,” I said. “Maybe we can pull the Councillor out and get the hell out of here.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Cerea asked. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  She wasn’t asking off-handedly. Cerea was shrewd. She had noted that I had conferred with the Councillor more than anyone else in the expedition, except maybe Revayne and some of the Se-Targa.

  “I’ve got… some theories,” I said.

  “Theories?” One of the surviving adventurers scoffed. His arm was in a sling, half his horns sheared entirely off his head. “Most of my party is dead. This Nether Vein isn’t some place where we test theories. You either know shit, you’re either capable of achieving what you set out to do, or you die.”

  Another point that couldn’t be argued against.

  “We don’t have time for crackpot theories,” a Scalekin said. She was one of the alchemists who made it this far. “We’ve gathered enough. We’ve fought enough. It’s time to leave. I don’t know if there’s a way to free the Councillor or not, but if there isn’t, then I’m afraid the healer is right—we’ll need to leave without her.”

  A chorus of agreements followed. Even my party members weren’t saying anything against it. Pits, even Revayne was fine with it. She had lost people too. Honestly, I needed to thank my lucky stars that none of the people I cared the most about here had died.

  Well… I looked back to where Se-Vigilance was still stuck against the Nether Vein’s wall. None save one, I supposed.

  “You should get started on leaving,” I said. Combined with the effect of the pit and the possibility of more dangers coming for us, it really would be best to get a move on. “But I’m not going before exhausting all my options. And I know I’ve got options.”

  It was strange that they seemed to be hanging on my words, even if just a little. Most had been waiting without even realizing it. I supposed, having been the one to take care of the most dangerous threat to the expedition thus far, I did have rank in a sense. Maybe that explained why my Leadership Aspect kept ranking up in these situations.

  “That’s the best compromise we can make,” Revayne said. “Everyone, please get started on retracing our path back to the latest Klevacite camp we passed.”

  The expeditioners immediately got busy. There was no time to wait. We had defeated multiple waves of monsters, but there were only so many we could handle.

  “You don’t have to stick around too,” I told Revayne.

  She just shrugged. “We’ve been here for this long.”

  “One might start to think you don’t want to get married.” I could only imagine what her parents were thinking—waiting to see their daughter married, only to hear of her demise in the Pits-cursed Nether Vein. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “This was actually a condition for my upcoming nuptials, if you must know.”

  I just looked at her oddly instead of replying.

  Revayne being Revayne, she went on unfazed at any potential weirdness. “I was to be allowed to pursue my own intentions. I am not to be tied down by my new responsibilities, at least not if they interfere with what I seek.”

  “That’s… a pretty good deal, actually.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Ross,” Cerea said. She wasn’t looking at me directly. “Good… good luck.”

  “Stop feeling guilty, Cerea,” I said. I smiled. “I’m not dying here.”

  Khagnio was looking dejectedly at the stubby remains of his knives. They had gotten destroyed in the course of the battle. “That’s right. We’re talking about mageling here. With a little bit of help, he took down a Pits-screwing Onyx-ranked monster when he’s not even Opal himself yet.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call that a little help,” I said.

  “What is the point of ranks if someone can blast past them like that?” the Rakshasa adventurer with the broken horns asked while packing his belongings.

  Khagnio sneered. “It’s for mere mortals like you to shut up and be on your way. Godlings aren’t going to be stopped by something as simple as Weave ranks.”

  I let them bicker. My focus needed to be on whatever was going on with Se-Vigilance.

  We got going. My body was still far too stiff. If helping the Councillor involved combat, I’d be shit out of luck.

  As Revayne and I reached the halfway point towards the huge metal wall that had claimed the Councillor’s full consciousness, we heard shrieks echoing in the distance. Everyone froze for a bit. The noise was still pretty far off. But that still confirmed our fears. The Nether Vein’s supply of monsters hadn’t ended yet.

  “Let’s go,” Revayne said, hurrying forward.

  Right. Much as I had said that I wasn’t leaving until I had at least tried to help the Councillor, I wasn’t exactly intent on staying here until the next army of monsters arrived. We needed to figure out what was going on with Se-Vigilance, then get out. Fast.

  “You know what to do, Ross?” Revayne asked.

  I’d have loved to answer with a confident affirmative, but I hadn’t been lying earlier. “I’ll need a little bit of time to connect the dots.”

  “I’ll get you some time. I just don’t know how long that’s going to be.”

  The shrieking was growing closer. It was a kind I hadn’t heard yet, which tempted my mind to wonder just what we were going to face next. But no. I didn’t have time for wandering thoughts.

  So, I focused on what was going on over here.

  I thanked the fact that key details registered at a rapid pace. At several spots, where the wall should have been studded with mana cores, they were instead plugged up with Se-Vigilance’s prismatic feathers. The cores themselves were missing, so I wasn’t sure what had happened to them.

  Then I traced how the Netherthreads were acting. Several had tried attacking me and Revayne, but a little bit of Illumination was enough to repel them.

  That reminded me to try channelling Highlight and see if that revealed anything interesting. As expected, the Netherthreads got edged in a glowing shimmer. They were connecting mana core sockets, the feathers, and most intriguingly, the Councillor’s own mana core. I could somehow see it with Highlight active.

  “I think I know what to do now,” I said. Honestly, it was still wild guesses and theories, but at least I had some proof to work off of. “Just need a bit more time to actually get it working. Be careful, please.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Revayne said as she was slowly armoured in her ink again, a liquid exoskeleton that would allow her to move beyond what she normally should have been capable of.

  I winced. She hadn’t fully recovered and she’d be pushing herself to the limit again. I had to act fast.

  Trying to remain mindful and careful despite the urge for speed, I went about my crackpot idea. Messing directly with the Netherthreads and the mana core slots that the Councillor had taken up might cause consequences I couldn’t see yet. But I didn’t need to interfere.

  I went over to the nearest mana core on the wall, blessing Illumination once more for protecting me against the Netherthreads. Wait. How was I going to pull it out…?

  Placing my hands on the core—it felt strangely chilly but swirling to the touch, like there were cold waves lapping at its surface from within—I focused on Sacrifice. There was no telling if it was going to work. It wasn’t like I had successfully pried the mana core from the Nether Vein’s wall just yet. For all that the Weave was concerned, it still belonged to the Nether Vein.

  I took a deep breath and focused. Mana. This was all about magic. My training had focused on trying to manifest it, on trying to control and manipulate it.

  It was hard to tell how long it took. The shrieking got closer and closer. Not that I was allowing it to distract me from my true purpose. I needed to succeed here. I needed it to work.

  Little spitzes and buzzes slid out of my hands around the mana core I was grasping. I swallowed, trying not to let the sudden elation make me lose my concentration.

  I was doing it, but I needed to see it through.

  There was a strange interaction between the mana I was manifesting and the core filled with magic that obviously wasn’t mine at all. It felt like my mana was forming a cage around the core in a three-dimensional, hexagonal structure, but then the mana making the hexagon and the core kept interchanging. I soon lost track of where my mana started and ended.

  But it clicked then. Sacrifice. The Aspect that had driven so much of my growth, that had helped me survive and come this far, that had almost made me who I was, came to life. Power burgeoned through me.

  White threads burned through the air to alight on the mana core before it started burning it away as it did all offerings.