The passage that Jacob’s and Jack’s parties, as well as the few strangers, were hiding in was also a hub for the dungeon they had delved just earlier that day.

The passage that went into the dungeon wasn’t open to the wilderness of the small realm, but rather, it was an enclosed, fortified building that was located underground.

Rather than wait right outside the flimsy barricade they improvised, they went deeper into the passage, reaching the fortification and hiding there.

Theodore was entirely unconscious, not having opened his eyes in the several hours they had been there, and he was the only individual present with any sort of healing capabilities.

Within the fortified building, there was an infirmary. The infirmary was rather small and poorly equipped, with no employees present. There were only five beds.

On that day, 9 people with rather nasty injuries were present. The five with the worst injuries were placed on the beds—Theodore, who had overused his holy affinity and was now suffering the effects of severe essence poisoning; Jacob, who had numerous contusions, bruises, and two massive, bloody holes in his back and stomach; Karen, who was poisoned and littered with cuts and stabs, having lost a lot of her blood; Phillip, whose helmet was literally stuck to his head because the arrows that had penetrated it couldn’t be removed; and Beatrice, who was burnt, bloody, and mumbling something due to a severe concussion.

Jack had a few bad scrapes, and Jean’s whole body was littered with bruises from stone bullets, but both were free of anything nastier than that.

Then, there were the four strangers who had come with them. Two of them were entirely uninjured—one was a lightly-armored Asian woman whose eyes were permanently stuck wide open as she sat in a corner and hugged her knees, and the other was a medium-height man in a full suit of mid-range heavy armor that he hadn’t removed since they arrived.

The other two, a tan, tall, black-haired man with a crooked, bloody nose and a shorter man with a large cut across his bald head, had already bandaged themselves and were waiting on the side.

Jack and Jean were doing their best to help bandage and treat the severely wounded party while the armored man stood outside, watching for the invaders.

Thankfully, there was a safe with some supplies, and Jacob had the password, so they had no lack of first aid kits and basic healing medicines. Nothing they had on hand would do them any better than natural-quality healing, but that was far superior to leaving their wounds as they were.

Out of everyone present, Jacob’s injuries were the most severe. Despite using both Hundred Wet Hells and Stone Skin, taking numerous strikes from the mace, as well as the point-blank Pressure Jet, had done a number on him,

The second worst was Phillip. His helmet, which had been pelted by arrows, was stuck to his head. The projectiles had penetrated through his expensive helm and embedded themselves into his metallic skull, making it almost impossible to remove the helmet without causing more harm.

They would have to wait for Theodore to wake up, and then Jacob would use his talent to crumble the helmet into pieces. Theodore’s healing ability would be enough to save Phillip after that. Until then, his head had been bathed in disinfectant and low-end healing elixir. They couldn’t use anything stronger than first-aid quality since nobody wanted the man’s bones to fuse with the arrowheads before they could be pulled out.

As for Karen, Theodore, and Beatrice, while they were in a bad situation, all of them would live without intervention. Phillip and Jacob wouldn’t.

Once fully bandaged, Jacob stared at the cold, white ceiling with a painfully dull gaze. An ache danced behind his eyes, and his expression betrayed the look of someone who had fallen into despair.

He had watched Rachel die, standing impotently as he saw her get brutally murdered. He had seen many die. Even at that moment, every person there was covered in guts and blood.

As if that wasn’t enough, he had been forced to confront his shortcomings in the most brutal way possible, not just as a warrior, but as a leader. He had failed his team, and it was only by luck that the rest were still there among the living.

Well… luck and Theodore.

Jacob moved his head to the side to look at the unconscious man. Now that was a leader—a truly dauntless man. With a mere fraction of Jacob's power, Theodore had saved pretty much all of them from certain death.

Indeed, his powers weren’t to blame. Jacob had three affinities and a top-tier talent—if he had worked hard enough, he would have found better ways around his weaknesses.

Now, it was too late to cry about the should-a-would-as. It was over. His incompetence had caught up with him. And from that point onward, that day would haunt him forever.

It was difficult to accept what happened to Rachel. He kept feeling the impulse to turn around and see how she was doing, only to realize that she was not in the room with them. She was dead.

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Their relationship hadn’t been the type that was guaranteed to last forever. It was quite shallow. But losing her like this?

He saw Jean move from the corner of his eye. Her face was like it was cast in steel. The same as Jack. They had lost someone far more important to them than Rachel had been to him. Yet, based on their expressions, one would never guess.

Yet another way he found himself inferior. Yet another way he was weak.

What they needed to do at that moment was to get patched up and hide somewhere, possibly in the dungeon. It was still cleared and if they went inside, it wouldn’t reset.

It was far from a perfect place to hide, but the underground chambers were numerous, and Jacob knew the whole structure like the back of his hand, while their pursuers didn’t. The thought of having to fight those people again made his stomach lurch, but he swallowed his fear.

He had been pathetic enough for that day. It was best now that he swallowed these thoughts and focused.

Things were a lot more likely to get worse before they got any better.

Suddenly, a man’s voice came, startling Jacob out of his reverie. It was Theodore, who was currently screaming as he got up and frightfully looked around the room. The man was suffering from psychosis as a consequence of overusing his essence.

But he was awake. Once they calmed him down, they could finally move on.

***

Before showing her anything from his ring, the first thing Freddy did was tell Sophia his story. Well, he had already told her his story, but now, he filled her in on the details he had left out.

For a long while, she simply didn’t believe him. After all, a one-star killing an elite Lord, even if every damn star in the universe aligned in his favor, was something that just didn’t happen.

But then he showed her the prime in the small glass box—an item that he speculated to be worth likely billions of dollars.

Once her eyebrows finished their makeout session with her hairline, she finally managed to reattach her jaw to the rest of her face. “Do you have any idea how incredible that is?”

“Yes, but—”

“No, no, no!” she interrupted, aggressively waving her finger before his face. “Yeah, I get it,” she spat. “You and I are in agreement that you only managed it because of the circumstances. But holy moly!” She got up to her feet and gripped her hair in two fistfuls. “That is the single most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and believe me, I’ve heard some crazy stuff!”

He chuckled a bit, dropping his head slightly. He was aware that he’d done something incredible that day. But he wasn’t there to brag. He was there to prepare for the storm that was coming for them.

As he looked at the woman before him, he could tell that she had… relaxed a bit. Some of the tension in her body had evaporated, and she acted a bit more comfortably around him again.

“Sophia,” he said. “I think it’s time to show you what I was talking about.”

She calmed down slightly and nodded her head. “Can I presume that that’s the personal ring of that man?” she asked.

Freddy nodded.

Sophia rubbed her palms like a greedy goblin, smiling nefariously like a snake who had stumbled upon a nest of unguarded eggs.

He stared at her for a long moment, squinting his eyes.

“What?” she asked. “Don’t look at me like that.” She grinned wryly at him. “You look pretty damn excited to find out, too.”

He merely shook his head and proceeded to take the first of the three items out of the ring.

It was a small wooden box, and within it was a dried piece of flesh. The wood was smooth and shiny, shimmering under the rays of the false sun like a polished sheet of glass, while the piece of meat just looked like a half-eaten chunk of jerky.

“No clue,” she said straight off the bat, shrugging. “I mean, you could probably eat that… I think…? If you want to risk it, I can be ready with a few heals to save you if it goes poorly,” she offered.

“Tempting,” he said honestly, “but let’s leave that for later,” he said as he pulled the second object out of the ring.

This time, it was a tiny glass vial, small enough that it could be pinched between two fingers. Within it were two small beads that had the texture of oil droplets floating in water.

Sophia scowled at them for a long moment, grinding her teeth as she worked to remember anything, but… “Yeah, no,” she surrendered. “No clue,” she said with a shrug. “Don’t look like something I’d eat, either.”

“You never know,” he said, grinning at her with a wide smile, “Maybe it's worth taking the risk.”

“Maybe,” she said with a quick nod. “But it could also be some sort of cursed medicine that burns your stars away and sets you back in progress.”

“On second thought, I’m gonna hold onto these.”

After putting the box and the small vial away, Freddy anxiously observed the inside of the ring, hesitantly eyeing the final item.

“Is something wrong?” Sophia asked him, and he answered with only a quick glance at her.

This item had been left for last, but frankly, it was one that he was reluctant to take out.

He wasn’t afraid that she’d steal it. Well, not that afraid, but he was worried that she wouldn’t recognize it. Or, perhaps even worse, that she would know and that it would turn out to be useless.

Trapped within a small glass box was a big glowing bead of pure white. Even inside the storage ring, he could feel an intense power radiating off the item. This was something undeniably good. This was something great.

His expectations for it were through the roof. They had been since the moment he first saw it.

“So?” she asked again. “Are you gonna whip it out or what?”

He shot her a blank stare. She responded with a wry grin.

Sighing, he finally focused, and with a pop of air rushing out of the way, he conjured the item on his palm.

Sophia swiped the box from his hand in a literal instant, then screamed, then slammed her mouth shut with her free hand as her wide-open eyes jumped between the object in her hand and Freddy’s face.

Needless to say, she seemed to know what it was.

And it seemed to be something very, very good.