Ruth staggered away from the barrier, surprised at the crack in her skill.

[Gathering of Nature] was supposed to be able to withstand anything. Yes, there was the small loophole that occurred if you were able to strike a single spot continuously and overtime, but that was more a loophole based on her than the skill itself.

But here Madness was, leaving a crack in her skill. It had to be a skill he was using. [Gathering of Nature] had faced far worse attacks than a punching Oath, after all.

Madness remained calm and his eleventh punch sent the crack spreading further.

Ruth wasn’t sure what she was going to do. She could bring down the barrier and replace it with another, but that would allow Madness’ team execute whatever command he had given them. That one guy, Fendor, was supposed to use a skill he couldn’t use while the barrier was up.

Since the barrier was designed to keep everything inside, Ruth felt safe to assume it was some kind of high-end transportation skill. As an S-rank, it was likely some form of teleportation.

The last thing she needed was Madness teleporting away from her sight.

Madness struck the barrier once more. Each punch was now sending tremors throughout the entire room as the shield displaced the force of the blow through the ambient mana in the room. Judging by the cracks still growing, Ruth was certain the tremors weren’t confined to just the room.

“This is madness,” she said, attempting to talk some sense into the Oath when whatever else she wanted to say died on her lips.

Of course it was madness, the fool in front of her was the Oath of Madness. What else was she expecting of him?

Madness ignored her, cocked his fist back for his fifteenth blow.

Now Ruth was flustered. She knew she had said that reinforcements were coming but they wouldn’t make it fast enough. The only reinforcement she had were the few men who’d flown her onto the ship on a helicopter.

They were on a massive ship in the middle of nowhere. Reinforcements would take forever to make it here.

“I guess there’s no helping it,” she muttered to herself.

Without hesitation, she manipulated the shield. She funneled her own mana into the barrier, replacing its connection to the ambient mana with a connection to herself. By the very nature of an Oath, their mana was extremely powerful. The only mana stronger than an Oath’s mana was concentrated raw mana, or another Oath’s mana. And even that wasn’t by a very large margin.

So, where the ambient mana would have time and last long holding itself back against the force of an Oath, she had the tendency to last longer.

Madness struck the barrier once more, ever so calm, and the force of the blow spread all over the barrier. The entire process of mana connections the shield went through dulled the force of the blow before it finally settled on Ruth’s connection to it.

Ruth’s knees almost buckled under her. She staggered back, eyes wide in shock at the pain that filled her, and caught herself against the wall.

She’d taken a direct hit from Inevitable once upon a time and he was known to be the Oath with the strongest raw power. But that was that, and this was this.

“Madness sto—”

Madness punched again, cutting her off.

The impact to Ruth was like a loud roar that pierced the chest and reminded a person that they were always going to be prey to something even if they didn’t know what that something was.

Ruth shook her head, trying to displace the disorientation that came with the blow. Inevitability was powerful, but Madness was displaying power and precision. If Inevitable punched the chest, Madness was punching the heart.

She felt both blows in the same exact way. Her very existence worked like a shield, put together and sturdy. What Madness was doing was exactly the weakness of the skill. He was striking a specific spot over and over again with all his strength.

No! Ruth scolded herself.

She would not succumb to a fellow Oath. Not so easily.

She stepped forward, took the next punch like a shield, hunkered down and braced. Then she went to work immediately.

Ruth raised her hand, connected herself to the mana around her, then brought it down.

Madness paused but only momentarily. But it was all the pause Ruth needed.

The barrier around Madness and his men solidified. Became a tangible and visible thing. The cracks healed into nonexistence and Ruth shrunk the barrier, reduced its size.

If she could squeeze it all in, then Madness wouldn’t have the space required to throw a punch with his entire team inside with him.

[Gathering of Nature] had another function that channeled the force of any attack and turned it in any direction she chose. It was only unfortunate that it wasn’t target specific, just directional. So she could turn the force of Madness’ blow inwards, but that was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.

If what he was doing was too powerful, it could kill his team. If that happened, then she was more than certain that she would make a literal enemy of the Oath. She would also lose the respect of other Oaths.

Curtsey amongst Oaths dictated that if you had a problem with an Oath, you took it out on the Oath. You did not attack those around them.

This put her at a handicap she wasn’t sure how to navigate.

She also had other options but those options would put the entire ship in jeopardy. The nonexistent crack came back to life. This time it spread quickly from a single punch and shook Ruth's mana so terribly that this time she felt her knees shake.

I just have to hold out, she told herself, knowing she would most likely face failure.

It was as if the force of Madness’ blow increased with each strike. Ruth wasn’t sure how many of his punches she could take. She was the Oath of Shields, sturdier than any shield she could create. By the very virtue of her existence in the world, she was what all tanks aspired to be.

Unbreakable.

Ruth could take a great deal of damage. Greater than most people knew. And that was without activating her skill designed for that very purpose.

Normally, she never activated the skill. But there was nothing normal about this.

[Skill Aegis of the World is in effect]

Ruth sucked in a deep breath as she felt herself literally get reinforced. The ambient mana in the room channeled itself to her, drawn in from everywhere.

She was slowly being reinforced by the world itself. If only she could be reinforced by raw mana, the skill would make her unstoppable.

Madness punched again and the blow went straight through every single shield she’d pulled together and Ruth felt her mana crack.

Ruth dropped to her knee even as she shared the force of the blow with the world around her.

In front of her, she felt the entire barrier crumble and there was nothing standing between her and her opponent.

Ruth almost paled at the idea of what had just happened. She had reinforced herself with as much of this part of the world's mana as she could handle and Madness had punched through it. The Oath had arguably thrown a punch capable of destroying this part of the world.

What are you?

She stared up at Madness and he stared down at her. His face was as empty of expression as it always was. A blank canvas any deity would be happy to work on.

He had done all this without making any expression. But the beads of sweat on his forehead told Ruth that his actions had also taken a toll on him.

Ruth would’ve laughed if she wasn't still in pain from that last punch.

She’d lied when she’d said the Oaths avoided problems with Madness because War had built up good will with them. The truth was that they didn’t fight Madness because there were no rules to fighting Madness.

Madness obeyed no rules in combat, fighting only by rules he dictated to himself as at the time of the fight. Madness could fight you as honorably as he could fight you dishonorably. And you did not fight a powerful enemy you could not predict.

Staring up at him, Ruth found herself unsure of what would happen next. She could act, make a move, but she was in a bit of a pickle.

It was like the old western draw. No one moved until someone moved. In such a situation, who moved faster was all that mattered not who moved first. With other Oaths, she knew what to expect ,but Madness was an entirely different fighter.

With other Oaths she would not die. With Madness, anything could happen if she was too slow.

“Co-ordinates locked, Boss!” Fendor exclaimed, then held his arms out to his sides.

Madness didn’t flinch, didn’t experience the distraction Ruth needed to activate another skill. His eyes remained fixed on her.

“Take us there,” was all he said.

Ruth felt Fendor’s skill before it activated. The mana tensed and swayed, defying all natural physics to achieve something magical.

Then a black-hole opened behind him, sucking the air in the entire room into it.

Despite that, Ruth didn’t feel drawn in by it, she didn’t have to resist it.

A member of Madness’ team disappeared, drawn into the black hole as if ripped from the world. Then another. The lady that had been giving Ruth mouth since the beginning, Deoti, was the third.

Everything happened quickly. And while Ruth was still thinking of how best to stop Madness without anything too critical going wrong, he lowered himself to her level where she was on her knees.

“You stood between me and protecting my family,” he said. The words were simple. He was simply stating a fact.

Ruth made one more futile attempt. “Your boy will be fine. We have people for such situations.”

Madness didn’t look like he was listening to her.

Behind him Fendor was ripped into the portal.

Madness met her eyes and his eyes were too sharp, too steady.

His final words before being ripped into the portal were simple and unforgettable.

“I will remember that,” he told her.

Then he was ripped from her sight.

The blackhole disappeared, and Ruth was left alone in the room wondering what would happen when Madness returned from trying to save his child.

She pushed herself from her knees so that she sat down on the ground as all her skills deactivated and let out a sigh.

Maybe it was time to try and get in touch with War once she was out of her portal. She wasn’t an Oath anymore but she was still Madness’ wife.

Ruth shook her head at the thought.

Everyone always said that a mother’s love was greater and more unreasonable than a father’s love.

Who knew what would happen if War found out she’d prevented her husband from saving their child.

This was futile.

So with no possible recourse than to report back to the department that handled Oath interactions in the country, Ruth sat there and wondered what Madness planned to do about her once he came back.

It wasn’t that she was scared of him. She merely wanted to be prepared.

…

“Sorry to be the irresponsible adult one more time but do you have a plan?”

Melmarc would’ve chuckled if they weren’t in such a serious situation.

[World of Insight] was telling him that for some reason the [Damned] were a little confused. Though confused wasn’t the word he would used. There were simply searching once more.

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Melmarc looked at the red indicators on the ground and watched them simply scramble about. On more than one occasion they moved right under him and kept on going, they didn’t even bother to attach themselves to him.

That wasn’t right.

“You can see them,” Naymond said after a moment.

Melmarc started, looking back at him. “Uhhh… yes.”

Naymond chuckled painfully. “I can’t sense them.”

Melmarc looked down at them once more as they scrambled around. Then he looked at Naymond’s leg.

His gaze trailed up to Naymond’s face and found the Sage’s attention on his hand. Melmarc looked down at it, unsurprised to find his hand still moving slowly, keeping a white ring of mana active.

He kept the cadence simple, slow enough to keep the ring from getting stronger and brighter, fast enough to keep it active.

“That’s a neat trick,” Naymond said.

Melmarc cocked a brow at Naymond’s battered form, unsure of if he was being serious or not.

“Not a trick,” he said, returning his attention to the door.

There was a red indicator drawing closer. A [Damned] was venturing towards the room, searching. What Melmarc couldn’t understand was why the critters hadn’t attached themselves yet. Why they were simply not there yet?

“So it’s a new skill?” Naymond asked.

Melmarc nodded. “Got it when I got here.”

Naymond made a thoughtful sound, as if considering something. “So that makes ten percent in less than two months. Definitely an S-rank growth potential. Maybe an SS-rank. Impressive.”

Melmarc couldn’t disagree. What was not impressive, however, was that Naymond looked like he could die at any minute, and not from being attacked.

His class was really not designed for combat.

“I see you still haven’t fixed your facial expressions,” Naymond added. “That’s saying something.”

“And what’s it saying?” Melmarc kept his eyes on the one red indicator. It was almost at the door now.

He wondered how it would react to seeing the one he’d killed by stomping his foot into its head until he’d crushed it.

The very thought of what he had done still hadn’t settled in. He knew he was supposed to process it, the violence, but he also knew that now wasn’t the time. It had been vindictive. Yes, it had been necessary. But it wasn’t him.

And why am I still calm about it?

Before entering the portal he would never had done what he’d done… or would he?

“You’re worrying again,” Naymond said. “Want to know a trick to solve that?”

“David sold me out,” Melmarc blurted.

He twirled his hand a little faster. The ring of mana grew a little brighter.

Naymond nodded. Melmarc couldn’t see it, but [World of Insight] helped him feel it. It was a simple nod, the kind you’d give when there was no real response to whatever had been said.

It was also an admission of guilt.

“I figured he would, given the chance.” Naymond looked away, didn’t meet the back of Melmarc’s head or his moving hand. “I just didn’t think he would get the chance so soon. It’s going to turn back now.”

Melmarc stopped himself from looking back in surprise. “What?”

“The monster.”

“They are called Damned,” Melmarc informed him.

That got a pause out of Naymond.

“Did your Interface tell you that or was it your skill?” Naymond asked.

“Skill,” Melmarc confirmed. “And how do you know it’s going to turn back now?”

The [Damned] paused jerkily just before getting to the door, then it turned back.

Melmarc looked back at Naymond. “They also have movement patterns?”

Naymond chuckled. “I see you’ve noticed their fighting pattern. But no, they don’t have movement patterns.”

“So your skill?”

Melmarc wasn’t sure he was getting it. If Naymond knew their fighting pattern and could predict even their movement pattern, then how did he end up in the state he was in?

And how was he chuckling and making decent conversation in the state he was in?

None of that mattered. What mattered was that they had to get out of here. If the [Damned] weren’t aware of them any more, then they had a chance of getting away.

“Don’t stop,” Naymond said, suddenly.

Melmarc’s hand hadn’t even stopped moving. He’d only been thinking about it.

“If you stop now,” Naymond said, “they’ll come flocking towards the bugs and we’ll be swarmed in a matter of moments.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s your skill,” Naymond explained. “The pure mana, it’s confusing whatever connection they have with each other.”

It was also making [World of Insight] difficult to use. Melmarc kept struggling to pull his attention away from the ring. He could only keep track of the [Damned] and critters with his eyes and the red indicators, and he wasn’t sure how much longer the indicators were going to be visible.

His ten minutes were almost up. This was the main reason he was keeping the ring of mana around his hand as low as possible. But his inability to focus [World of Insight] was annoying. But Naymond didn't seem to be having the same issue.

How is he focusing with it?

“Just out of curiosity,” Naymond said. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but can you use any other skill with that thing around your hand?”

Melmarc shook his head.

“Figured. Raw mana tends to act like that.” Naymond looked around. “We’ll need to find a way to deal with them, then.”

Melmarc didn’t understand. “Wouldn’t it be better if we tried to get out of here?”

Naymond shook his head. “We can’t—No, sorry. I can’t. I was considering that for a while now, but I have a high enough awareness of my body to know that if I’m moved I might die.”

That got Melmarc’s entire attention and his hand almost stopped moving. Almost.

He did look back, though.

Naymond gave him a smile. “There’s a tear in my left artery. Not enough to be any kind of issue at all. It’s not even leaking that much blood right now. Maybe none at all. But any wrong move and my body doesn’t have the strength, vitality or endurance stats required to hold it together. It’ll tear and I’ll be confirming the age old philosophical question of if there’s an afterlife.”

“So you’ll die,” Melmarc said flatly. “I’m not a child, you can talk to me about the possibility of you dying while using the actual word.”

Melmarc was definitely not okay with the possibility of someone he knew dying on him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see that.

No. I don’t want to see that.

He was definitely sure of it.

“As long as you keep the raw mana active, we’ll be fine,” Naymond said, trying to sound like it wasn’t a big deal. “I’m doing it again, telling not asking. Sorry about that. How long can you keep it active?”

Melmarc could feel it’s drain on his own mana pool. It wasn’t a quantifiable thing, surprisingly. It was more of quality than quantity.

Now that he was paying attention to it, it was less about it draining his mana. It was draining his mana, just not so heavily, not as heavily as his other skills. But if he was to describe his mana pool as a can of pringles, then while his skills took out handfuls of pringles, [Rings of Saturn] simply took a small crack from a single pringle.

However, each time it took a crack, the taste of the entire can dulled more and more.

Now that he thought about it, it felt as if the skill didn’t require a cool down, instead, his body did. The cool down helped the can of pringles regain its taste, helped his mana regain its quality.

“No idea,” he answered Naymond. “I can hold it active for a long while… I think.”

“That’s good.” Naymond nodded. Then he shook his head. “No, that’s good but bad. I wouldn’t advise it. Very few people have natural access to raw mana as concentrated as that, and there’s a reason for it. You can’t keep it active for very long.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s dangerous. I’m surprised your form got unified when you got the skill. If anything, your form was meant to worsen.”

Melmarc inched closer to the door. “I have a question.”

“Go for it,” Naymond said.

He peeked outside. On the ground was the dead [Damned] without an indicator. The closest [Damned] after it was two rooms away.

“You never answered how you knew the [Damned] was going to turn back if your skill didn’t show you,” Melmarc said. “You did the same thing that time we went to get David Swan. Does [World of Insight] do that at level thirty?”

“What?” Naymond asked, confused. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. It’s just habit, I guess. With David, I knew they were going to run because it’s just what their regular reaction was going to be. You see a cop, you run. In Brooklyn when the low level gangsters see me, they scatter since they know me. Simple detective work.”

Melamrc wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not.

“Take that as lesson thirty-two,” Naymond said. “The fact that you’re with a Gifted doesn’t mean that everything you find slightly improbable is explained away as a skill.”

Melmarc wasn’t exactly sure how to react to that. “I don’t remember getting up to thirty-one lessons from you, though.”

It was all he could say.

“Maybe just three,” he finished.

“Good point,” Naymond agreed. “As for the creature—[Damned]—with [World of Insight] you can see a lot of things. And the thing with seeing a lot of things the way I see them for as long as I’ve been seeing them tells you that everything has a pattern. It’s far more complex in humans and requires a massive amount of brain power to deduce and still be wrong.”

Naymond took a moment to breathe and Melmarc took the moment to check on the [Damned] once more. His hand was also getting heavier, weaker. It was new.

You also haven’t kept a ring of mana active for this long before.

“But these creatures are kind of robotic,” Naymond continued. “Automated, you could say. And I’ve been around enough of them to know how they act, to a certain margin of error.”

And he still got this messed up.

Naymond shrugged. “What can I say. These are early on injuries. With no combat strength, I’m just a normal guy in a portal. All I’ve got going are my skills and my brain.”

Melmarc remembered what he knew of Naymond’s class. Ten points into intelligence the moment they got their class.

He’d deduced an extra effect of [Bless Your Kindness] in mere moments of thinking about it with just three points in intelligence, so he could only imagine what Naymond's brain was truly capable of.

Melmarc’s senses triggered, interrupting his thoughts and alerting him. He didn’t even need to think, his body simply moved.

He stepped out of the room, hand twirling quickly. The ring of mana grew brighter and his hand grew heavier. He didn’t even anticipate anything.

Melmarc stepped out of the room and swung his arm. The ring of mana shot out of his hand in a quick blast and embedded itself in the head of a [Damned] that walked out of a corner.

It spun there for a few more cycles, smoke rising from where it made contact before the [Damned] fell back and hit the ground. The red indicator above the creature's head dulled into grey, then disappeared.

The ring dissipated and Melmarc was alerted to the new movement of the red indicators in the ground and the entire building.

He spun his second hand almost immediately. Raw mana gathered to it, white and deep.

Then Melmarc stepped back into the room.

[You have slain Damned]

[You have gained +54 EP]

[Total EP: 897]

He found Naymond staring at him in surprise.

“That was quick,” Naymond said. “Too quick.”

Melmarc shrugged. “I’ve been around them long enough. I’ve kind of learnt how to kill them.”

“Yes, impressive, Mr. Lockwood.” Naymond made a move and groaned. He terminated the movement. “But that’s not what I was talking about. I meant the skill. It was too quick.”

Melmarc drew a blank. Somehow he had a feeling that ‘I’ve been practicing’ wasn’t going to cut it as a response.

“I didn’t even have time to see your form flicker,” Naymond continued. “It’s almost like…”

Naymond trailed off, thoughtful.

Melmarc would’ve said something about that if his mind wasn’t already too preoccupied by the number of red indicators around them.

Naymond was right.

The ring of mana did have an effect on the critters and the way they reacted with the [Damned]. But why now? He’d used the rings before and hadn’t gotten his reaction.

Melmarc looked around, through the walls he counted four fading indicators.

And there were four.

He was taking this too easily, getting too accustomed to the killing and the lack of real fear. He knew enough to understand that this was what happened when a person spent too much time around anything and survived.

Melmarc had read about Stockholm syndrome once, he always assumed it was some enhanced level of getting accustomed to the scenario the victims had been stuck in. Delano had once said that no matter how unappealing something was, you could always get accustomed to it over time.

“My aunt Fae looks like something I stepped on,” Delano had once said. “Used to scare the living tooth fairy out of me. Then she spent a year at our house and she looks a lot less like something I stepped on.”

Delano had gone on to explain how his aunt still looked like something he’d stepped on but just didn’t give him the same feeling anymore. But that wasn’t the important part.

The important part was that Melmarc hoped he wouldn’t one day make it home only to find out that he wanted to go killing things.

“Thinking too much again,” Naymond said, startling him.

“Thinking about anywhere that’s not here,” Melmarc said. “I don’t like it here.”

“Understatement of the year.” Naymond chuckled. “But I know what you mean. I hate portals, too.”

The red indicators were now at their dimmest and Melmarc wondered what would happen if he used [Knowledge is Power] again.

Would they come flocking straight to him even if he activated [Rings of Saturn] once more?

“Why does my skill confuse them?” he asked, speaking for the sake of speaking.

He’d gone almost two weeks with no one to talk to and was just realizing that he’d missed having someone to talk to.

“Raw mana tends to have that effect on everything,” Naymond answered as if they’d always been talking about the subject. “Raw mana is everywhere. It’s the mana that’s left in the air when all the ambient mana is gone. Think of it like light, then imagine just how much light you need to compress to create an actual tangible thing.”

“You can’t.” At least Melmarc didn’t think light worked that way.

Did it?

Melmarc shook his head. That wasn’t what was confusing him. What he wanted to know was different.

“It didn’t do this before, though,” he said. “They never ran from it or got confused by it. What’s different now?”

“[World of Insight],” Naymond answered easily. “It’s all forms and counter forms.”

Melmarc drew a blank. “What’s a counter form?”

Naymond paused. “Oh. Sorry about that. There’s no such thing as counter forms. It’s just nonsense I say sometimes to sound smart.”

Melmarc wasn’t sure how to react to that. A part of him had a feeling Naymond had said something he wasn't supposed to say and was just lying to cover it up. Now he was wondering just how many times Naymond had said ‘nonsense’ just to sound smart and how much of that nonsense might have been things he wasn't supposed to say and ended up covering it up as nonsense.

But isn’t he smart? Why would he want to sound smart?

“A few days here and your body is still your best communication skill,” Naymond said with a mild chuckle. “Anyway, the reason they are reacting now is because of my skill. Raw mana has been known to dispel active skills because forms have a difficult time taking shape or form in the presence of high raw mana concentrations. You won’t experience anything like that on earth, but there are portals that are just chuck full of high concentrations of raw mana.”

“How do people clear them when they can’t use their skills then?” Melmarc asked.

“They can’t use their active skills,” Naymond corrected. “So they clear them with passive skills. Raw mana works differently with passive skills since the form for passive skills tend to be different from active skills. If an active skill is a brick, passive skill is water. More flexible. That allows it spread itself along raw mana since raw mana tends to act like a magnet to them.”

Melmarc looked down at the ring of mana.

But he didn’t have any passive skills.

No. He actually did, somehow. [Bless Your Kindness] had something of a passive and active aspect. He didn’t control the stat increase only the status buff.

Is that why I get to keep the stats even when it’s active?

If that was the case, what would happen if he got an active skill from the effects of [Bless Your Kindness]? Would he still have it or would the raw mana dispel it the moment he cast it?

“So what’s happening right now,” Naymond continued, “is that the form of [World of Insight] is carrying residues of the raw mana you have in your hand and spreading it around. It’s of the smallest amount, but everything here can sense it spread all over the place, so it’s confusing them.”

“And if I deactivate my skill, it’s all gone?” Melmarc asked. “They come back to their senses?”

Naymond nodded. “Right now, whatever connection they have with these damned things is broken because, and I’m just speculating here, the connection is being drawn to your ring of raw mana.”

As positive as that sounded, Melmarc knew he couldn’t keep up his use of pure mana. At least not forever.

Which meant only one thing. He needed to go out there and kill all the [Damned] before he couldn't hold the skill active any longer.

“You might die if you move?” he asked, wincing from how unaffected by the concept his voice sounded.

“Yep,” Naymond said, unbothered. “That’s why I’m right here.”

“That means that if we can’t move you, we have to get rid of the [Damned].”

“Also correct,” Naymond said. “But that is unimportant.”

Melmarc didn’t think so. Still, he was willing to learn why a [Sage] thought so.

“What’s important?” he asked.

“You finding somewhere safe and waiting it out until actual Delvers paid and trained for this arrive.”

Melmarc wasn’t sure how he wanted to respond to that. He knew what he wanted to say, but the how was the issue. It was bad news and he wasn’t sure how he wanted to pass it along.

“Mr. Hitchcock,” he said, still wondering.

“Yes, Mr. Lockwood?”

He’s a grown man, Melmarc thought. He would probably prefer it if I just ripped the band-aid off.

“We’ve been here for more than eleven days,” he said slowly. “I don’t think any Delver is coming for us.”

He had come to terms with it a day ago, but his mind had still been fighting against the idea.

“At least not anytime soon,” he added. “If we continue to wait for them, you might not make it.”

Naymond looked down at his injuries. “You might be right. If so, then what do you suggest.”

“I might know where I need to go to, if I want to close the portal.”

“And?”

Melmarc’s lips pressed into a thin line. “And I think closing the portal as fast as possible would be best for us.”

There. He said it.

He was officially going to close the portal.

Naymond laughed so hard Melmarc feared he would rupture the artery he said had an issue. But he also noted how dark the laughter was.

Naymond’s wasn't laughing at him, and his next words only served to confuse Melmarc more.

“Your father’s going to kill me.”

Then all the red indicators around them winked out of existence. [Knowledge is Power] had run out, and Melmarc was left blind to his enemies.