5. Infiltration

Niva let the patrol pass unhindered.

They resembled humans...a little. Their stature was more gorilla-like, and their nose was utterly flat, being no more than two holes in their face. Moreover, yellow teeth, which looked like fangs, populated their mouth. Also, they stank. Badly. Most likely, they had some excuse for their unsanitary state of existence. She didn't care one bit. They should take a darned shower.

It took a while because the band was large, around twenty soldiers, but all the creatures ventured out of sight. She waited an extra minute before retracting her claws that were dug into the ceiling and fell. Rolling with the impact, she silenced her landing and tensed for an ambush.

Nothing. Good.

The scouting parties were relatively weak: most members were in middle-Gron, with only a few outliers reaching the late stage. That said, as she had so cheerfully discovered earlier, there were a lot of them. A lot. She'd taken out the first guards she'd uncovered, but the initial number of twenty warriors had soon turned into forty when backup arrived and then into eighty snarling beasts chasing her down the caverns.

She let out a sigh. Though they lacked raw power, the mammals had a set of nasty tricks up their sleeves. They used some form of blood-based arts, mostly, which allowed them to mutate and transform parts of themselves with ease. They could even disperse themselves into fluid completely to dodge attacks and traverse distance, which should be insanely difficult to achieve for first-realm beings. It spoke for their natural affinity to the element. Luckily, that skill was limited to only the more gifted ones.

So, she thought, looking around, what was her plan?

Initially, she'd set foot in here to find the second floor, but she wasn't sure how easy that would be. Patrols were increasing in the area. And though the apparent reason for it was that they had discovered an intruder —not her, of course. She'd never do something as base as invading someone's home— she doubted it. Tensions were brewing. She could feel it in the air: the stench of blood roiling in anticipation. Something big was about to happen. Better not to get caught in the crossfire.

No, getting a feel for what she was dealing with would be recommended over simply chasing an imaginary goal and finding herself cornered and overrun. Besides, doing so would also allow her to scout for any precious materials or treasures, she thought, peeling out one of the many pink-hued minerals littered on the walls. They'd started appearing after her first hour of travelling deeper into the cavern.

So far, despite seeing large groups of creatures dedicated to mining them, she hadn't seen any vacant areas, meaning they either grew back near instantly (how did minerals even regrow?) or were infinite. She wasn't sure which option sounded more plausible. Even stranger, however, was that she could manipulate the energy inside the stones, which suggested they were made of blood. Somehow. It's a shame she couldn't take her time and harvest them all. They were bound to be helpful.

Shuffling to her right was all the warning she had before she once more hid herself.

A pulse coursed through the vicinity, and she pressed in on herself, closing any pores that might be leaking qi. It flowed through her without rippling, yet she held her breath as one of the creatures peeked around the corner. The thing was around two and a half meters in height, she guessed, which made it a giant compared to the rest of its brethren, most only reaching her shoulders, with a scar running down from its forehead all the way to the chin. After casting a wary eye on the seemingly empty corridors, the warrior set a brisk pace, moving through the tunnels with the certainty of an arrow. This one had a goal in mind.

Should she follow him? It could be risky since she wasn't much of a sneak, but going by his earlier inspection, he wasn't much of a scout either. Unable to think of any downsides, she readjusted the veil she had cast over herself that redirected light and made it so it wouldn't break when she moved. It wasn't much. Still, it beat nothing. For good measure, she also sent her armour back into her spatial ring with a mental command to reduce the amount of noise she'd make. She could always call on it again if her cover got blown.

She tailed him for who knows how long —telling time down here was hard— even coming to some close calls when she and her unaware target had to both stay out of sight from more patrols. However, they eventually stopped in front of an inconspicuous part of the cavern walls. Why is he stopping here? She frowned. Had he discovered her? As slowly as she could, she cycled the energy in her body and readied herself for a decisive counter stroke, but it wasn't needed. He placed a hand on the rocky surface, and the faintest pentagram lit up. The wall opened a sliver, enough for him to pass through sideways before closing immediately.

Bingo.

Niva walked up to the wall after casting a wary look around. A secret hideout for a peculiar individual in a cavern swarmed with enemies? If he wasn't hiding some juicy goods down there, she'd sing Luneil hymns every morning and night for two weeks straight. This would be the first drop in the ocean of materials she needed to advance properly.

She moved her hands where she'd seen the drawing. A Maze Seal. Lucky again. As far as formations used for locks went, they weren't anything too high up on the list. You had to guide the energy through pathways in a specific route to reach the centre, after which it would open and power whatever mechanism they were bound to. In this scenario, it was most likely a contraption used to unlock the door from the inside.

Granted, getting the path wrong once would sound an alarm, and if the owner was really paranoid, they may have linked it to a self-destruction process that would stop the entrance from opening. However, as her father had once shown her, the trick was to cheat. Cheating was always the answer when trying your hands at some type of vault. Instead of leaving everything up to fate and risking it all on a single chance, you could skip the entire affair by looking for the centre first and then retracing your path.

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That said —though many people called it the 'centre'— the desired destination wasn't always in the middle of the construct. Better yet, it seldom was. She ran her senses over the formation, careful not to trip any internal wires. No, usually, it was concealed well, which could prove time—

It was dead in the heart of the formation. Gods. Who did that? She shook her head. Amateurs. Was this some reverse psychology angle or what? That only ever worked if you couldn't just take your time to study the object of interest. Well, truthfully, she supposed you didn't have all the time in the world to waste when trying to crack into a system, but still.

So, she thought, getting her mind back on track, she knew how to get in. The question then became: should she go in? It would be awkward to open the gate and come face to face with the giant or have them notice the door opening somehow. Waiting them out felt like the better move. Then again, there was no guarantee they would return in a timely manner or even come back. What if there was another exit inside?

No, she thought, pressuring her finger tops on the wall. Our Blood goes on the offensive, always, Milia, her teacher from the main branch, had told her countless times. Their family had defensive techniques, true, yet they were nowhere as good as those of a random earth qi cultivator. Instead, her family thrived on brutal exchanges, increased endurance, having superior regenerative properties, and using the leaking wounds of their enemies against them. A wisp of qi filtered into the formation. She traversed the pathway, and the door made not so much as a peep, opening the same width it had for the giant, letting Niva slip through.

Weight shifted behind her as the entrance closed once more. On the sides of a set of winding stairs, lanterns occupied the walls descending into the dungeon, powered by the same stones she had seen outside earlier. She moved toward the door at the bottom and sent her spiritual senses through the crack underneath it to get a feel for what she would be dealing with. She couldn't exactly see as she would with her own two eyes, but she could get the room's layout or figure out where her target was.

In the midpoint of the chamber on the other side was a bright clump of energy in her senses. Most likely the giant. To her surprise, however, there was more. If the giant was a light drawing attention, then the inert object shaped like a sort of hourglass to the giant's right was a sun, commanding her to look its way. What the heck was that? She severely cursed the architect who hadn't deigned to install a window in the door or even a peephole.

The one upside was that she felt a steady pulse of breathing coming from the giant, which suggested he was meditating, so he was unlikely to notice her approach. Niva bundled bubbles of essence and spread them over the hinges, trying to dilute the resulting ripples of sound as she turned the metal doorknob and lightly pushed. The tiniest bit of resistance roiled through her arm. Whoops, guess she had to pull. She slowly cracked the door open, and the sharp scent of iron assaulting her almost made her sneeze. From what she could see through the crack, the room was quite large, around two to three times the size of her bedroom back in the dormitory. Racks populated with books and miscellaneous items lined the circumference, and barrels filled with…weapons? Why in the nine hells were they storing so many weapons down here?

Niva's eyelids closed around her pupils. The miners she had seen before carried a mark on their backs. At first, she'd thought nothing of it, but what if it was a 'slave' mark? If so, a colourful picture was painted: growing tensions, a giant of a warrior dodging patrols, and a swathe of hidden armaments. That had the shape of an uprising. The only problem with that theory was that the warrior now in her vision didn't have a mark. He was seated with his rear toward her, allowing her a clear view.

She paused. Although a vortex of translucent qi danced around him, it was not what made her reconsider. Oh, the warrior was cultivating blood; she'd bet her first ten unborn children on that —though it didn't mean much since she wasn't planning on having children. But it was thick.

The giant was a half step second realm to her senses, which meant he should have no business having a qi this viscous. If she stuck her tongue out, she could almost taste it. She glanced at the miniature fountain she had glimpsed earlier in her senses. Divine, she would call it. Dark ceramic rose from the ground, patterns depicting worshipping servants decorating its base, and the stele and prayers moulded into an unfurling flower, acting as a basin for the stone version of the goddess bathing in blood. The lantern hanging from the ceiling cast the giant and deity in dim light, forming a regal image.

She forced her eyes away from the impressive portrayal. Creeping through, she softly closed the door behind her and considered her next few steps. The warrior wasn't on guard. Which meant she had an easy shot at killing him. Moreover, her previous resolve hadn’t been fake: she was willing to murder her way to hegemony. However, mindless ruthlessness was the mark of a menace. She wasn't necessarily here to kill him, was she?

A memory flashed past her eyes, the cool autumn breeze caressing her as she sat on the edge of a cliff. Riu sat next to her and stroked the hair of his little sister sleeping in his lap.

"Why do you think cultivators were created?" He asked without turning her way.

"You assume much," Niva said. "We weren't created so much as discovered."

A few religious movements thought the gods shaped the first humans from clay. Many people agreed. However, there was still a divide in whether humans and cultivators were the same. Why else would there be such a massive gap between what mortals and practitioners could do?

"This again," Riu sighed, the edges of his black hair scraping the ground. They'd had this argument countless times. "Then, how come the universe allows us to exist?" He stressed the word, his ridicule clear for all to hear.

She rolled her eyes but indulged him. "To protect those we love, I think." What else was there? She shivered when she thought of everything her parents had done for her. There was no way she could ever pay them back for raising her with care and trying their best to indulge her whims even though they didn't have much.

Riu chuckled. "A deep well but narrow in scope. That's so like you."

"Why does that feel like an insult," she sneered. Did he think she'd gotten afraid of picking a fight with him because she kept losing?

"It was praise."

Yeah, right. She'd sock him the moment Senna woke up. He turned to her, lips twitching.

"Then, what do you think?" she challenged, scared he'd seen through and attempting to throw him off his game.

"To alleviate the world of unnecessary suffering," he replied instantly. His aureolin eyes held her gaze. "That is our divine mandate. The purpose of every—"

Hero, she finished the recollection, staring at the creature's back. Niva was no hero or child of the Gods and would never think of herself as one, but she would respect a dead man's wish when it wasn't too much trouble. She'd take the resources and nothing else if she could.

Moving into the corner of the room, she hid in the shelves' shadow, waiting.