:Serenity! There’s an entire group of people attacking the upper camp!: Serenity paused for a moment at Ita’s message. What was she doing at the upper camp? She normally spent her time in the tunnels!

She was probably spending time with Blaze. Serenity might not wholly understand their friendship, which seemed to consist more of spending time together while Blaze was healing than anything else, but he knew it existed. He was happy they’d become friends; as far as he could tell, neither of them really had anyone else.

Well, other than Serenity, of course, but he didn’t really count. He was perhaps a friend to Blaze, but friend wasn’t really the right word to use for Ita. Not when she was his priestess.

:There’s something happening at the inner camp too,: Serenity informed Ita as he moved forward. :Do what you have to do to deal with it; I’ll be there when I can, but you’ll probably finish before I do.:

He couldn’t see anything past the fabric walls, but that was something of a benefit as well; whoever the attackers were, they knew he was here but they wouldn’t know where he was.

Some scattered gunfire told Serenity that the pressure from his aura wasn’t enough to truly disable many of the combatants. It was a little disappointing that people had adapted so quickly but not truly surprising; external pressure made things harder and made sure you knew there was someone more powerful than you nearby, but that was all it did. There were places where people would reflexively submit to greater power to avoid being killed, but this definitely wasn’t the place to expect that.

A quick glance backwards told him that both Samantha and Liam had taken cover as best they could behind some of the equipment stacked at the back of the tent. Serenity waved at them to stay there before he peeked out from behind the fabric.

He couldn’t see anything more from there than from inside the tent.

Serenity grumbled to himself and scurried around the tent as he tried to locate the origin of the gunfire. It struck him as odd that there weren’t more Skills being used, but that was probably just his own bias; they were still less than two years into Skills being available. A gun ought to work just fine against the Tier One and Two people that were most of the population, even in the armed forces.

Yes, the frontrunners were probably Tier Three; Serenity had even heard of a few people who claimed to be Tier Four. If that was true, they had almost certainly crippled themselves to get there; they’d need more Paths to make up the deficiency, and it was usually harder to improve higher-Tier Paths.

When he thought about it, it was possible, even likely, that a lot of soldiers were focusing on enhancing and using the gear they had. This was a completely different Earth from Vengeance’s; the ammunition manufacturers weren’t gone. His assumptions were probably all wrong.

Serenity moved cautiously towards the path to the surface; that seemed the most likely place for the fighting. He found the few guards facing the tunnel, but their target wasn’t more people as he’d expected; instead, it was a gigantic snake.

Serenity blinked and looked again; yes, that was a man-sized snake carcass. There were other snakes, as well; they seemed to be avoiding the corridor, peeking around the corner just long enough to draw a burst of fire before ducking back. Serenity could see where several of them hadn’t hidden quickly enough. It looked like one good burst was enough to handle a snake as long as it hit in a good spot.

Serenity had no clue what sort of snake they were. If this were a dungeon, he’d have called them “giant snakes,” killed them, and moved on. This wasn’t a dungeon and it made no sense that they were deep in the tunnels. It especially made no sense that they were deep in the tunnels when there was an attack of some sort on the surface. They had to be connected.

“There’s a beastmaster here somewhere,” Serenity muttered. He realized he’d said it out loud when one of the four soldiers watching the corridor turned to look at him; the other three must have either missed it or already knew he was there. Even though he hadn’t meant to speak out loud, it was probably a good thing for them to know.

If only A’Atla had an easy way to find people who weren’t registered with it. Well, his parents might have a way. It wasn’t anywhere obvious in Serenity’s screens, but he already knew his were different from his parents’.

“Is that why there are snakes?” The jumpy soldier stated the question more than asked it. “That explains a lot; I wondered how they got them down here. They’re not behaving like snakes, either.”

“They’re behaving more like dungeon monsters,” Serenity agreed. “That’s one of the clues that there’s a beastmaster.” Serenity didn’t mention that they were acting like dungeon monster minions, but that was the second clue. Monsters released by a dungeon break usually weren’t smart, at least not at low Tier.

The third clue was that they didn’t seem to have to fight his aura’s pressure. If they were controlled by a beastmaster, there was a good chance they didn’t even feel it. Serenity released the pressure; it wasn’t doing much good and he had a better use of his aura in mind: he wanted to find the man in control.

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The first people Serenity felt were the soldiers he stood next to. After that, he could feel the people in the camp. Next he felt the snakes at the far end of the hall. Unexpectedly, they weren’t simply overgrown beasts; they were true monsters. Serenity didn’t know how he knew, but he could tell that they were the sort of monster that occasionally formed outside dungeons.

Actually, he could guess how he knew. They had no connection to a dungeon at all and he could tell that. It was a bit strange but he should have expected it. He could sense his followers; shouldn’t he be able to sense when there was no connection at all?

Past them, almost at the edge of his range, Serenity could feel a human. The human had clearly been in dungeons before, but that was the only thing Serenity could tell about him other than the fact that he was not a follower of the Dungeon Deity.

Well, there was one other thing: there was an even larger snake with the human. He was almost certainly the beastmaster. “Found him.”

Serenity looked at the soldiers. “If I head down the hall, will you hold your fire until I’m around the corner? I’d prefer not to be shot in the back.” It would be hard on his clothing; Serenity wasn’t certain if the bullets would penetrate his skin or not. They probably would, because it wasn’t like he had actual scales right now.

The same soldier who turned to look at him initially raised his eyebrows. “Can you keep the snakes away from us if we do? If they rush us, we don’t have any choice but to kill them before they can get to us.”

Serenity smiled. “I can manage that.”

He moved between the soldiers, then pulled out his Crystal Hilt. For a moment, he wished for the armor that was on his parents, but it was serving a better purpose there. Even the protection of the robes he wore as Tom Cooper would be helpful.

Serenity quietly called himself an idiot as he pulled the outer robe out of his Rift and pulled it around himself. He didn’t have time to completely change, but the outer robe would hold the main spell just fine. It only took a moment to tie the belt and evoke the spell he’d stored in a metal button; there was a reason he infused the spells and this was it.

“Armor?” The talkative soldier asked.

“Yeah,” Serenity agreed. “It’s better than nothing; not quite as much as I’d prefer against snakes but I’ll take what I can get right now.”

The soldier nodded. “Makes me grateful we were geared up. It mostly sucks, but when you need it you need it.”

Serenity nodded at that. “Sorry about the weight earlier.”

“We expected it,” the soldier said. “We knew you were in the area, so when we started shooting…” He shrugged. “I’m just glad you didn’t decide to stop us too.”

It was true that he often didn’t take time to figure out what was going on when he separated combatants on the surface. There was no way to really know, after all, so he simply stopped the fighting. Serenity didn’t have much to say to that, so he simply shrugged and headed down the corridor.

He was less than halfway down the corridor when it became even more obvious that these were dangerously smart snakes; the beastmaster was not within sight but two of them charged towards Serenity, clearly using him as cover. It was hard to say if they intended to attack him or just use him as cover to get closer to the soldiers.

Serenity couldn’t completely dismiss the idea that the beastmaster was using the snakes’ eyes and directing them from a distance. It would be better if that were true, but either was possible. As far as he knew, those Skills were usually higher Tier, but so was increased intelligence in a beastlike monster.

Serenity had a moment to wonder exactly where the beastmaster had gotten so many similar monsters as he whipped his manablade across the nose of one snake and into the neck of the other. The second one collapsed; it wasn’t harmless but it was far less dangerous. The first one pulled itself back and seemed to set itself for a strike.

It was probably venomous, then.

Serenity didn’t give it time; getting away from the second snake’s potentially still dangerous head was important and so was dealing with this one. His manablade led as he charged forward.

Serenity ducked under the strike and twisted sideways as he moved; it was not an easy thing to pull off, but he was high enough Tier that the snake didn’t quite follow his movement. The snake had just enough time to start its attack before Serenity’s manablade cut its head in two vertically. The manablade was barely slowed at all as it cut through the snake’s skull; Arcane might not be Serenity’s best Affinity but it was still excellent and he had plenty of mana to force the situation even if he weren’t at least six Tiers higher than the snake.

That snake was no longer a threat to anyone as long as they avoided the venom.

Serenity moved forward. The tunnels were actually favorable terrain for him, especially if the snakes had to come to him; only two could really move forward at a time, and Serenity had just shown he could deal with two. More than that might be a problem, which meant he needed to watch out at the intersection ahead.

Just how much did he want to continue to separate his identities?

Serenity grumbled to himself as he decided to continue pretending to be “Tom Cooper” until he was at least around the bend. It meant his Zonal Evocation Mage Skills were out of the question, since he’d decided “Tom” was a psychic with a magic sword.

A shield would come in handy, but it was too late for that. He didn’t have an appropriate shield.

The telekinesis spell was his best option. Yes, he’d used it as “Serenity,” but it still made the most sense. Even if the control was poor when used quickly and forcefully, he could still shove the snakes backwards with it; if he hurt them, he wouldn’t care.

Now where was that particular mini-wand? He thought he’d hidden it in the pocket in the robe’s sleeve.