Felix turned his attention back to the section of the wall where he knew something was hiding. No more of the stone wall had been destroyed in the fire, so there was still just a small point of teal metal showing through. Felix morphed his staff into a hammer and chisel and got to work removing more of the stone wall around the metal. He found that the teal metal was just a small section. It formed a square just a quarter of a meter to a side, around it was simply more stone. Felix assumed it might be a plate or door so he began digging around the metal so he could get a crowbar behind it.

Unfortunately, it seemed it wasn't a plate at all, but more like a solid cube. It took him a little while to dig it out but his manually enchanting the stone to be softer helped a lot. Once he was done, Felix held a small cube of teal metal in his hands, turning it over, he found a slight seam around the side that was buried the deepest in the wall.

"Is everything alright down there?" A melodic voice called down from above.

Turning his head towards the source, Felix saw Amani standing at the edge of the basement, looking down at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"I saw a fire on the edge of Orselle's zone and thought it might be one of my people. What happened?"

"Oh uh… well… searched the house but didn't find anything. I uh… figured if there was a secret key, magic item or vault hidden in the house, it would survive a fire."

Amani's brow furrowed and she smirked, "Didn't think you were the kind of person to burn down a house just to find something."

Felix just shrugged, "Is this house in your zone?"

Amani jumped down into the basement, a small cloud of leftover ash springing into the air where she landed. She walked over to Felix, "I don't know. There aren't actual lines or anything. It's definitely not in yours though."

"Didn't think you were the kind of person to care."

"I don't." Amani smiled and shrugged, "Whatcha got there?"

Looking back down at the box, Felix answered her by pulling the lid off the box. Inside there was a small leather bound book, slightly bigger than palm sized but otherwise completely non-descript.

"Well that was rather anticlimactic. What about the hatch, have you opened it yet?" Amani nodded her head towards the metal hatch in the corner then shifted her weight as if ready to move towards it.

"Don't. Uh… Yeah, it's nothing…"

Amani frowned, "Doesn't sound like nothing. Look if you just don't like sharing, you can just say so." She fake pouted.

"You're right. It's vast treasure and it's mine. I will fight you for it."

"Woah cowboy," Amani held her hands up as if in surrender, "No need to be so aggressive. I am curious though, what's up with the book? Why was it in a metal box embedded in the wall?"

Felix reached into the metal box and pulled the book out. He stowed the box and it's lid in his inventory then inspected the book.

[D - Special] Bound Book: Slave

[Hidden]

This book is bound to a master and will copy anything that is written into it's master, exactly. The master book must be within range and this book must be supplied with a constant source of mana to function. This book also has the Hidden property and will avoid being found by the majority of detection skills and spells.

Huh. I assume you've already read through it, right? Should have been scanned by now.

Uh…

What?

Shit. You need to go back down to the undercity.

Ok, I'll bite. Why?

Well… Fuck it. Just read.

Bound Book: Slave

Entry 1

If you're reading this, I'm dead. My name was Kaleris, I was Erolan's apprentice and that's why this journal exists.

I was born in Ky'bel unlike a lot of it's residents. Being a new city with a leader who's growing as ridiculously fast as Erolan attracts a lot of immigrants. The lack of laws that most larger cities have attract a certain type of immigrant. Luckily it's not too bad, there are some unsavory people, likely more than most cities, but I grew up here and you learn pretty quickly how to avoid them, if you want to.

I never really thought of myself as particularly special. I was smarter than most, but never top of my class at anything. I really enjoyed learning about biology and medicine, but mostly so I knew where to hit people and how to kill them as efficiently as possible. I used to think of myself as a monster, I used to think I was lucky that I was born into a city like this, given my apathy towards killing, now I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy killing, I don't go out of my way to do it. I just don't really care either way. I need to kill things to get stronger so in that case, I'm going to learn to be pretty damn good at it. Again, something I have to do not want to do. I just don't have the same aversion to killing people as my parents and friends do. I thought that made me a monster.

Don't ask me why, again I didn't think I was special, I never did and I still don't. One day Erolan picked me out of a crowd at our school and decided I was going to be his apprentice. I didn't do anything special, I didn't do anything to stand out, but he picked me. I remember thinking I was the luckiest person ever when he walked up to me.

He was tough but generally nice. He pushed me but he wasn't hard on me and he never forced me to do anything. He always made sure I was comfortable and safe. Life was good. I was quickly progressing in my class and profession, getting much stronger, very quickly. I easily surpassed my old classmates and a few years later, most of my old teachers. Erolan knew his shit and he was an excellent teacher.

Slowly he became more aggressive, got angry a few times. Never anything more than any other person so I never really noticed it. Looking back though, he used to be calm in every situation, he would never show his frustration or anger at all. Slowly that façade eroded. Again, he never got to the point where I felt threatened or intimidated. I just should have recognized the signs, seen the decline earlier. Noticed something.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

But, I didn't. I hadn't noticed anything, until just a few weeks ago. I went to see him outside of the usual time but couldn't find him. I ended up stumbling upon his experiment room, below his house. The bodies in the coffins are a little creepy, but none of it was that surprising. I had seen his true form a few times in the invasions, it wasn't that big of a deal. He brought me down and showed me around, even got a cool new axe out of it because it reacted to me walking by. None of that was a problem. None of that made me worry. It did get me thinking though, if he had a whole room below the third tier, was there something below the second tier? Thinking about it, the second tier was perfectly flat, I just assumed that was a construction or design decision. Well, I asked him about it a few days later. Let's just say, up to that point, I had never seen Erolan not have an answer or not know what to say. This was the first time I had ever seen him flustered.

Long story short, not only is there something below the second layer, the entire city is built on a platform above a kingdom that used to exist here. Erolan either didn't know or wouldn't tell me what the kingdom used to be named. I did some research of my own this past week and I'm pretty sure it was the kingdom of Kroterra, once part of the Dregan empire.

It took another week or so for him to open up a bit more but it seems like he decided to let me in a little. He explained to me what the Devoured really were. I'm not an idiot though, I knew they had once been people, I just didn't know how he transformed them. He assured me he never used it on innocents. He brought me down into the kingdom which is filled with Devoured of a much higher level than I had ever seen before. He called the kingdom his greatest mistake. I feel like I should be disgusted, appalled, but I'm not. I just, I don't feel anything. I don't care. He made a mistake, he regrets it.

What made the Devoured so terrifying as an army, was that a typical army filled with low level troops were easily dealt with by siege mages, by wide area spells. The Devoured though have a ridiculously high resistance to all forms of magic, higher than I have ever seen, along with higher than average physical resistance. The downside was that they were too low level to do much by themselves. To use them effectively, Erolan needed a massive swarm to overwhelm the enemy.

The Devoured in Kroterra, the undercity, all had much higher levels, were far smarter, and much more capable of dealing damage. The prospect that they existed at all was both horrifying and baffling. I asked him why he didn't use them like he had the others. Turns out, he doesn't have full control over them. The undercity is his greatest mistake because he accidentally transformed the entire city.

When he first found the Devourer's set, he didn't really know how to use them properly. One day, he accidentally lost control of them and wiped out the entire kingdom. He didn't control the devouring so he couldn't make sure they were obedient, instead they were uncontrollable monsters. He was so distraught by what had happened that he vowed to find a way to cure them. That's why the kingdom still exists, in the hopes that he can one day find a way of fixing his mistake. It's a monument to his shame. He insisted he hadn't used the souls of Kroterra yet, they were all still safe in his ring, he hadn't touched them yet. He thinks that makes it less bad. I don't really care but… I also don't know anyone that would agree with him.

He was downright giddy when he realized I wasn't horrified by his actions. We got to talking more and he explained how the Devourer's set worked. There were three pieces, the crown, and two rings. Each one was focused on a different portion of what makes a person whole. The crown focused on the mind, the blood ring on the body and the soul ring on the soul. The concept was simple enough, but the really interesting part was what they could do. They were each specially designed spatial pockets to store their respective element. The crown would store the memories of those he Devoured, so he could sort through them at will. The blood ring stored the matter that made up their body and allowed him to create a new body instead his own, it was how he appeared as a human. The soul ring stored their souls, so he could sift through them at will.

Not only did they store them, but they allowed him to harvest them somehow? I don't really understand it but there are two Erolan's, the human one and the original. They grew as completely separate entities. As fascinating and powerful as the Devourer set was, there had to be a bigger drawback to using them. With his confidence bolstered by my acceptance of his past horrors, Erolan has grown bolder. He started a program where he personally picks and trains the best of the best from the city. He calls it their ascension. I know he just plans on Devouring them though. He's started to pick fights he can't win so he needs to grow his army. Lucky for him, there seems to be an endless supply of immigrants and everyone sees Erolan as their god, their great protector. Maybe he was their protector, but not anymore. He's slowly descending into madness, becoming more willing to commit atrocities to accomplish his goals.

I know I said earlier that I didn't feel anything, but now that he's rounding up children, families, anyone he thinks might be useful, there's this pit in my stomach. I think about it and I feel sick. I feel sick because I know I should care about innocent people being dominated and subjugated, their will crushed, turned into slaves, but I don't. Mostly though, I feel sick because I'm scared. How long before Erolan decides it's my turn to "ascend."

It all happened so fast. This journal will remain here as a record of what happened. If you find this, and he's still alive, I'm dead and he's probably completely corrupted. You have been warned, no matter how nice he seems, he's a monster.

Entry 2

The axe he gave me woke up today. It accepted me as it's wielder and offered to soul bond. Lucky thing that, no matter how I modified my body, it was always too heavy to wield without injuring myself. I was about to give up too, now it's as light as a dagger while still being able to swing it with the full force of a massive great axe. It's got some other properties and abilities too but I haven't totally figured them out yet.

Entry 3

It's official, he's going mad. Erolan is openly challenging massive empires that have existed for millennia, enemies he can't beat, and multiple of them at once. I don't know what his plan is but I'm not going to let him take me down with him. I managed to carve out a passage into the kingdom below, I just hope I have enough time to get out when he finally comes for me.

Entry 4

He isn't even bothering with the lies anymore, he's just taking people from their families in the night and devouring them. He managed to get a semblance of control over the high level Devoured below. When he showed me, with a smile, I could see it. He no longer felt shame at what had happened in the past, he was proud of his accomplishments, he took pride in it. Erolan changed. He's not the same person he once was.

Entry 5

Well he did the impossible. He managed to take out the biggest empire in reach and made everyone else wary of him. After the victory I hoped something might change, but in the battle I saw the truth. It's hard to explain but he's slowly descending into madness. His eyes dart around, his head twitches, he screams then reverts to perfect calm in an instant. The only time he seems present, focused, is when he's staring down at a mass of souls he can Devour. He looks upon them with hunger in his eyes, drool on his chin and ragged breathing. He's not even a person anymore, he's just an animal. Tomorrow. I'm going to escape, run away and save myself. I just have a few more things to prepare before I do.

Entry 6

I'm leaving. Hopefully, if you're reading this, I made it out. I left everything I thought he might be able to use to track me. I salvaged a new set of clothes from the empire we took out. I need to take the axe with me though, we're soul bound, if I left it behind he'd just be able to track me down. I said before that there are two Erolan's, the human and the original. I was wrong, there's another. If you're reading this, hopefully Erolan is dead. Who knows, maybe I got strong enough to come back and take him out. If he isn't, run.

Holy shit Grim. The soul ring…

Yeah.

That seems… Ridiculously coincidental.

Yeah either you are that lucky…

Or something else is going on…

We can think about it later.

So how do I kill him.

Theoretically, you destroy a piece or two of the Devourer's set.

Is that even possible?

Not sure.

What if we put it in a vault and seal the entrance?

Even if it was a true pocket dimension, it wouldn't stop him just slow him down. It also wouldn't be that hard for him to open a portal of his own to get to it.

I guess we need to find the seals first, we can figure out how to kill him then. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .