Looking through the portal, Felix saw a completely undisturbed sheet of white covering the ground with a light snow falling from an overcast sky above. Thezan turned to them and handed out some of the general supplies including potions, the winter cloaks and chain. Felix quickly fed the winter cloak to his Reaper’s Mantle when no one was looking which just meant it suddenly disappeared from his back. He then set the Reaper’s Mantle to take it’s form and equipped it which made it look like he had simply equipped the cloak.

He stowed the chain and other supplies in the Kryptos Repository, memorizing their rune patterns so he could retrieve them in the future and identified the potions as he stowed them. Luckily they were small vials so they were portable and actually fit in the band.

[C - Common] Health Potion

[Potion]

Restores 100,000 health points when consumed.

[C - Common] Regeneration Potion

[Potion]

Restores 200,000 health points over ten minutes when consumed.

[C - Common] Energy Potion

[Potion]

Restores 100,000 energy points upon consumption.

“Uh, Thezan… these are little… huge? for me.”

Except the energy one I guess.

Thezan chuckled as he continued to stow the vials in his armor and wrap the chain around his waist, “Yeah, we only ever buy for C grades. They’ll work fine and it makes it less likely the client asks questions when I present them the bill. Not sure they would be as into the idea that I dragged a D grade into this one. Obviously they haven’t met you but…”

“Got it. I take it they’ll work fine anyways?”

Thezan nodded, “Of course.”

“Well thanks for these, hopefully I don’t need them.”

“Yeah… hopefully.”

With all of his supplies stowed he saw everyone else in the party was ready and they stepped through the portal, into the endless sea of snow and towards the ancient ruined Usorium empire.

Felix was the last one through the portal and it immediately closed behind him. He quickly wrapped his Reaper’s Mantle, which was currently in the form of a massive fur cloak, around himself and started to heat up the inside with heat spells.

The snow reached about halfway up his thigh and though it was light and fluffy on the top layer, his ankles were buried in the densely packed snow below that. Felix looked ahead and saw the rest of the party simply trudging through, Elric sitting on Aros’ right shoulder.

Felix had no interest in trudging through the snow because it was annoying and pointless. Instead, he thought about flying then reconsidered and pulled out a handful of Starmetal ingots that were affinized to his soul. He quickly fused them together and morphed them into the shape of a snowboard. He threw it onto the snow in front of him and made sure it didn’t sink in then flew up and stood on it himself. He had to make it a little bigger than was natural because the snow was so fluffy but he quickly found a shape that worked.

As Felix started preparing the spells to propel himself forwards and replenished his own mana pool, he immediately noticed that the aether on this planet was different. It was both much denser and way more fluid than Trenus, the world event and the tutorial.

Telviras’ aether was fluid but much thinner and acted a little odd because of all the enchantments at play. It flowed about somewhat erratically. Here it was like the mana was both denser and less viscous or just more ready to be moved about. He measured and memorized the coordinates at his feet incase he needed mana like this in the future.

Using some simple Force spells to propel him, Felix shot across the snow and caught back up with the party. He wondered why they didn’t have a better way to travel through something like this but he quickly realized, the snow didn’t seem to affect them at all. They had cloaks to keep themselves warm but they didn’t trudge through the snow, they simply walked like it wasn’t even there.

Stupid C grades.

Elric was the first to see Felix shooting around on the snow and had Felix make him a sled for Aros to pull. Thezan quickly took notice and after a short discussion, Felix used more ingots, his snowboard and Elric’s sled to make a much larger sled they could all fit into. Initially Aros was happy to pull them, because his strength would make it so he barely felt it but Felix assured him he could propel them without running out of mana before they arrived.

Felix addressed Thezan as they stepped into the sled, “Why didn’t you buy something like this sled back in the city?”

Thezan shrugged, “No good way to move it. My bag doesn’t open wide enough to fit it. Enchantments also don’t really split up well so we can’t really break one into pieces and reassemble it.”

“Could have had a basic sled though and had Aros pull us?”

“Wouldn’t have been any faster than just walking.”

Right, C grades. Snow, and the throes of time apparently, mean nothing to you…

They all hopped into the sled Felix had made then he propelled them using Force spells over the snow. Thezan directed him and they traveled for hours. The landscape around them never changed once the entire time until they arrived at the edge of the landmass. The endless sea of snow ahead of them suddenly dropped off a cliff into an endless sea of deep blue, white capped rolling waves.

As they slowly approached the city, a pit started to form at the bottom of Felix’s stomach. He assumed they were just nerves so he tried to suppress it but he found, he couldn’t. He could get rid of the physical sensation but the feeling originated from his soul, it was more instinctual. It was so minor though that he simply ignored it and chalked it up to excitement or fear of the unknown.

Thezan had Felix turn to the left and they followed the cliff for a few more hours until they spotted a castle rising up over the horizon. The castle seemed to be located on top of a jagged peak in the cliff face and surrounding it from all sides, were the ruins of houses and shops. Nothing more than a corner or a pile of bricks remained for any given building in the city core itself. It almost seemed like some kind of natural disaster had ripped through the city specifically though, it was hard to tell because most of it was covered in snow.

They followed the cliff face right to the edge of the city then slowed down so Felix could maneuver through the building remains. They occasionally hit things, some of them hidden by the snow, others unavoidable as Felix couldn’t turn on a dime but none of them complained.

They ignored the entire city and headed straight for the castle in the center because it seemed to be almost entirely intact. They were hoping there would be records or clues as to the weapon’s whereabouts somewhere in there.

The castle itself was the only building that didn’t lie in ruins. It seemed to only show minor signs of wear on the outside as far as Felix could tell. It stood at the highest point in the city with no towers or other ornaments outside of the main building itself. The main building was a monolithic structure of stone brickwork and windows that was at least a kilometer wide, though only a few stories tall.

Felix could see that the top of the walls and the castle itself were crowned by a flat parapet making him initially think the outside was simply a wall. The only wrinkle in that theory being that Felix could see the ruins of a wall that once surrounded the entire structure of the castle.

Felix pushed his makeshift sled, and the party sitting within it, right up to the front gates. The front gate had once sat in the middle of a stone wall that surrounded the castle itself but as the city fell to ruin, so did the wall and now, neither were effectively protecting anything. Felix could have pushed the sled through the gate area but Thezan told him to stop it there.

Thezan turned to the group but looked mostly at Felix, “We don’t know what kind of traps or defenses they might still have lying around. At this point, we walk on foot and we move slowly. I’ll look for traps myself, kid, you try and see if you can find anything arcane, anywhere. Be careful and try not to trigger anything.”

They all nodded then carefully walked towards the front gates of the castle wall, following Thezan as he searched the area ahead and around him. Neither Thezan, nor anyone else following him saw or felt anything, including Felix, though no one other than Thezan was looking very hard. They managed to walk, or trudge in Felix’s case, through the snow and all the way to the front doors of the castle.

The front doors seemed to be a massive set of double doors forged from some dark, almost black, metal. They were easily big enough for a large cart to pass through with room on either side and at least 20 meters tall, which almost inclined Felix to call it a gate. Thezan was the first to reach it and by the time Felix caught up a few minutes later, he was still examining it. The others stood around him but far enough that they were out of the way, with Elric on Aros’ shoulder so he didn’t suffocate in the snow.

Felix waited a few minutes with the rest of the party until Thezan finally spoke, “Hey kid, get over here.”

Felix walked over to the gate and looked at it, side by side with Thezan.

“Try to see if you get anything magical from the doors. Are they enchanted, trapped, warded, anything like that.”

Felix nodded even though Thezan wasn’t looking at him and reached out with his mana senses towards the door. He didn’t initially sense anything but he also knew that could just mean the enchantment was currently empty and mana would flow into it if triggered.

Thinking back to how he had mapped out the enchantments on items in his interview, Felix started to reach out into the aether around him. He slowly started to spin all of it around him and as soon as any of it encountered the channels or nodes of an enchantment, they flowed through them.

Channels and enchantments were made of highly mana conductive materials and therefore often provided the path of least resistance. All Felix had to do was pay attention to when the mana was redirected through one of these channels instead of simply spinning around him. This mana stood out amongst the rest of the mana and he immediately spotted an incredibly complex enchantment, or ward, on the door. He focused and spent a few minutes mapping it out before he realized, whatever it had once been, it was almost definitely inert now.

Initially he had thought he was missing something because a large number of chunks seemed to be just missing from the enchantment but he quickly realized that was exactly what had happened. Tiny chunks of the enchantment had been ripped out all over the door resulting in about half of it just not existing.

It looked to him almost like the enchantment on the alchemy table Elric had poured acid on. On the door though, it was more like someone had sprayed acid at the door with a power washer from a few meters away. The missing chunks seemed to be entirely random and made it impossible for Felix to either identify the enchantment or even salvage anything from it.

“It was once enchanted or warded or something… not anymore. Something happened and now the enchantment is… broken.”

“Are you sure?” Thezan turned to him.

“Yes. Over half of it is just… missing.”

Thezan nodded and turned to the group behind him, “Ok. Aros?”

“On it.” Aros said as he cleared a small area of snow and placed Elric in it. He walked up to the door and Felix followed Thezan’s lead in stepping back.

Aros walked up to the door, planted his feet then pushed on the door with both hands. The door didn’t move at all but Aros seemed satisfied with whatever he had done. He pulled both of his hands close to himself and flexed his muscles. Felix wasn’t entirely sure what was happening until just a few moments later, Aros’ exposed arms started to produce smoke that poured out the front of his cloak and disappeared into the air and falling snow around him.

A few moments later, Felix could have sworn his arms had actually ignited themselves as he could see the faint flicker of flames through the edge of his cloak. Aros rolled his shoulders then pressed his arms to the door once again. Now that his arms were outside of the cloak, Felix could see that they actually did seem to be on fire, though the flames were spread across his arms and were under an inch tall at most. They were more like a candle flame than an inferno.

This time, Aros’ finger’s slowly sank into the door until he had something to pull against and he leaned back as he wrenched the door open. Felix had expected whatever was holding the doors shut to break and for them to wildly swing open but instead, Aros ripped the doors off entirely and dropped them to the ground behind him.

Felix watched and saw that the inside of the door also seemed to be visually blank so the enchantment had to have been embedded within the door itself. Aros’ arms returned to normal and Thezan walked right to the edge of the castle then peered in.

Thezan addressed Felix without turning to him, “Kid, I want you checking for enchantments, wards anything arcane you can sense. I should be able to pick up on almost everything but I’m also not the most… attuned to magic.”

“Of course.” Felix nodded and followed closely behind Thezan. He kept the aether in a radius of a couple meters around him slowly spinning as he walked. He tried stretching himself further but found that at that range, even pushing it a small amount strained him so he reverted to just two meters.

I really need to improve my mana control range. I know I could do better than this.

In the first few meters, Felix stopped Thezan almost a dozen times as he sensed enchantments, spells and wards, everywhere. Every wall, floor tile, sconce, pillar, painting and inch of ceiling were covered in enchantments. Around the front doors, they were entirely destroyed, just like the enchantment on the front doors had been, but Felix stopped Thezan so they could examine them anyways. None of the nodes or channels were salvageable so Felix wasn’t learning anything new, but he was seriously starting to wonder about what had destroyed the enchantments in such an odd way.

All of the enchantments Felix sensed were entirely embedded within objects so whatever had destroyed them, had somehow done so without damaging the outside of the object. Felix catalogued as much as he could of the enchantments in the front hall as they walked but it took them a hundred meters or so to find anything intact enough to function. Luckily, the first enchantment they encountered that functioned was a sconce that was enchanted to use aether to produce light.

Felix hadn’t seen any of the nodes it used before so he filed them away in his mind to test out later. After the sconce, Thezan started to sense traps all over and had the party step in specific ways, avoiding certain tiles, leaping over a certain area and even crouching down. Felix listened to everything he asked and did his best to follow but was having a hard time not getting distracted.

Every trap or trigger Thezan sensed was a collection of nodes and spell work Felix had never seen before. He didn’t spot a single node he could immediately identify, even when cross referencing the enchanting index at Inscripticae. He wasn’t sure if that was because these were novel or simply equivalent to other nodes, either way he memorized them all.

As Thezan had them walk in the most convoluted ways to avoid triggering the traps around them, Felix couldn’t help but think there had to be a better way. There was no way the inhabitants of the castle itself had done what they were doing. Asking Thezan about it, he agreed but also said he had no idea what that would be. Thezan theorized It was possible it had something to do with race or there was a master switch to turn them off but he had no way of identifying it.

Felix was started to get annoyed at his inability to identify anything so, he had Thezan stop so he could run some experiments. After assuring Thezan he wouldn’t do anything drastic they all stopped in a safe spot and Felix started to replicate the most common enchantments he had found throughout the hall.

He started by recreating them in the air in front of him, as if they were spells, then supplying them mana. He protected himself with a mana shield just in case and assumed they had been pointing into the hall so he oriented them away from himself and the party.

Felix started with an enchantment he had found mirrored on both sides of the wall just a few meters back. He ended up having to supply almost a half a million points of mana for the spell to finally cast and do something. Once it did cast, it created a massive eruption of fire that would have incinerated them, had they triggered it.

The party immediately looked over at Felix when he filled the hall behind them with flames but he assured them everything was fine. He dissected the spell as much as he could, removing components and replacing them until he had identified almost everything. It wasn’t the most complicated enchantment Felix had ever seen and he knew Ezaldor would scoff at how imprecise it was.

It was also possibly the least efficient enchantment he had ever messed with but it did look elegant. Somehow, the entire thing seemed to fit together really well. The nodes, channels and every shape of the enchantment looked like they were built to work together. Nothing was adapted or retrofit.

In the end, he ended up with just a single collection of nodes he couldn’t identify so he filed those away. Repeating the process with every other complete enchantment he had found, he ended up with a large collection of traps that would have guaranteed their demise and consumed absurd quantities of mana.

He also found that same collection of nodes, completely identical, in each of the enchantments he dissected. Unfortunately, even isolating the nodes, the most he could identify about them was that together, they functioned as a conditional component. Once triggered, if the condition was met, the trap would trigger.

Even though he had isolated the component, he had no way to know what the condition was without a handful of hours of dissecting the pattern and identifying each individual node. He presented his findings to Thezan who was far more excited than he was.

Thezan smiled at Felix excitedly, his eyes wide, “So you can figure out the key then? So we don’t have to keep looking for all the traps?”

Felix winced a little, “Yes but not quickly. It would need at least 5 hours maybe way more.”

Thezan nodded and turned to the group, “That’s totally fine. We can wait 5 hours.”

Felix frowned, “Really? You don’t want to just… keep going?”

Thezan chuckled, “5 hours is nothing. Kid if you said it would take you 50 hours I would have said great, do it. Anyone have a problem with waiting for 8 hours or so?”

They all just shrugged, Rathos pulling out her book and sitting against the wall, the other’s finding their own comfortable positions.

Thezan looked back at Felix and smiled, “See?”

I guess time is less meaningful when you have lived and will live for thousands of yea- epochs.

Felix shrugged and went back to experimenting. With all the tools at his disposal from working at Inscripticae, even if he had only been there for a couple days, it was actually possible for Felix to identify the nodes. Before working at Inscripticae, it would have been impossible. Now, Felix took each node that seemed to have no outward effect and one by one, he attached them to a variety of other nodes. Some of his testing nodes would produce a light of a different color based on their input, others would supply a specific input.

He found a few of the nodes were measurement nodes, one was a conditional trigger node and the rest were a combination of calculation and mana smoothing and normalization nodes. He removed the measurement nodes one by one and replaced them with basic nodes that just supplied mana. The trigger node he replaced with the light output node and slowly, he mapped out the range of values the calculation would produce based on it’s inputs.

He had essentially mapped out a mathematical function so all that he had left to do was figure out what the measurement nodes were measuring. He attached a light output node to them and found that no matter what he pointed them at, they had wildly different readings. With the entire trigger assembled, he found nothing that seemed to trigger it to bypass the trap. Everything he pointed it at would have resulted in the trap triggering.

He could have realistically just run around the castle pointing it at everything until something triggered it but that would require them to continue searching every inch for traps. He also could have reached out and manually triggered the condition with his mana control but unfortunately, his mana control range wasn’t enough to cover the entire hallway so they could have still triggered something.

Instead, he resolved himself to figure out what the measurement nodes were actually measuring. He walked all the way back through the hall and out the front door holding the three measurement nodes connected to light outputs and trying to figure out what triggered them.

As he pointed them at everything in sight, he started to mindlessly trace things, watching the light as it brightened, darkened and changed colors. The first time he noticed any of them do anything consistently was when he pointed them at a functioning sconce. He noticed that every one of the sconces he pointed at, as long as they functioned, resulted in a very similar output. He ran with that and tried to measure the same amount of light but quickly decided light wasn’t what the nodes were measuring. The next time he noticed consistent behavior was when he pointed it at himself.

That was a weird result and he messed around with things until he realized, he still unconsciously had the heating spell on under his cloak. As soon as he disabled it, the output was random again. He had figured it out.

Somehow, the nodes were collectively measuring mana. He tested his theory with different attunements and energy levels and ultimately confirmed it. Just 6 hours after starting, Felix pointed the entire triggering mechanism at a wall then rapidly switched through attunements and energy levels.

He found the correct attunement and finally triggered the mechanism that would disable all the traps they had encountered so far. He found that luckily, the state of the mana didn’t matter, but the energy level and attunement it was looking for were incredibly precise.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a node that would produce that exact energy level or attunement so the best he could do was recreate and hold onto it. He couldn’t make solid balls of it and give them out because the attunement and energy levels would degrade and shift as the balls moved. He had to essentially hold the mana himself and keep it constant, unchanging.

Ding You have gained 3 levels in [D -Arcane] Mana Engineer (247 => 250)

He walked back through the hall from the front door, not bothering with any of Thezan’s acrobatic movements and yet, all the traps in the corridor remained dormant. Thezan saw him approach and almost said something to stop him, but held himself back.

Thezan sighed slightly in relief, “I thought you had forgotten.”

Felix winced, “That would have been… bad.”

Thezan chuckled, “You figured it out? What’s the trick?”

Felix nodded, “Sort of. It’s very specific mana. I’m sure the real key was some spell node or enchantment that everyone wore on a bracelet, ring, necklace or something like that. The enchantment probably produced a tiny amount of the specific mana at all times. I have no way to find the enchantment though.”

Thezan looked a little dejected but mostly confused, “Oh… so?”

Felix smirked a little, “I can however, just make the mana myself and hold onto it.”

“And that means none of the traps will trigger?”

Felix shrugged, “Seems like it. I’ll let you know if I sense one that isn’t disabled with this.”

“Yeah, be careful. If what you’re saying is true, they could have totally had different levels of access. So some rooms will require a different key.”

“If so, I should be able to find the key given a few minutes.”

“Really? That’s awesome. Alright, I’m still gonna search for traps but if you give me the go ahead that the traps I find are disabled, we’ll go through anyways.”

“Sounds good.”

Having found the key to disabling the traps only increased their speed by a bit because they didn’t have to vault around the hall. Thezan was still scrutinizing everything as he searched for traps. The hall that extended out from the massive front doors seemed to stretch for a few hundred meters before splitting off in two directions. They didn’t see any doors along the hall though they all suspected some had just been hidden. For now, they didn’t bother searching for them and instead mapped out the open areas of the castle.

They continued down that first hall to a fork that split into three halls to the left, right and through a large set of double doors in front of them. They headed to the left first and started to actually find visible doors throughout the castle. They ignored all of the doors though and continued to map out the main hallway of the castle until they looped back around to the fork they had turned left at. The hall seemed to just loop around the castle with dozens of doors and rooms laid out along that hall.

Arriving back at the fork where they had started the loop, Thezan had them look at the large double doors, examining them himself for traps along with Felix for enchantments. Felix found the enchantment to be some kind of trap with the same bypass mechanism as the others except that this one was tuned differently.

He quickly mapped it out then cast it in the air as a spell and found the attunement and energy level that acted as the key. Now that he knew what he was looking for, it was trivial to get through, for him at least. He knew that for most people, this would be nearly impossible to crack since they couldn’t just flip through mana attunements and energy levels, map out enchantments and cast them as spells.

Once Felix had the key, he confirmed with his mana control that the enchantment would be bypassed by simply feeding that individual section of the enchantment with mana. He assured Thezan it was disarmed then they pushed the doors open. They didn’t need Aros to open this one either, it simply swung open without issue.

Past the doors lay a large open garden space that was clearly not meant for the deep winter this area was currently experiencing. Instead of a lush garden like the walls, benches, stonework pathways and gardening supplies suggested there would be, there was a deep layer of fluffy snow. The snow in the garden was much lighter than it was outside and when they opened the doors, a layer of the snow was blown back up into the air.

The garden itself was like an extension of the hallway they had entered from just wider and open to the sky above. On either side of the garden hallway, the walls were made mostly of large windows that made the contents of the rooms entirely visible. On the right, there seemed to be a large library that was one half sitting area and one half book shelves. Across from the library on the left side, there was a dining room or feast hall, given how big the table was.

At the end of the garden area in front of them, lay another set of large double doors. The garden also stretched to the right and left to wrap around the library and dining room, all along the closest windowed wall of the ballroom. They headed straight for the ballroom door and opened them, after making sure the enchantments were disabled, to reveal a massive ballroom, easily the largest room in the castle.

The ballroom was very bright due to the walls of windows facing the garden and the sea and this was the first room Felix had found where the sconces were timed to dim themselves. On top of the windows, the ceiling in this room was transparent and stretched all the way up to the top of the building and would have revealed the sky above, were it not covered in snow at the moment.

They searched the room for traps but didn’t actually find any. They were leaving hidden rooms for later so they didn’t search very thoroughly and instead, they headed back out to the circular hallway and started searching every room in the castle.

They found bedrooms, servant’s quarters, kitchens, sitting rooms, bathing rooms, storage, closets, and a variety of lab like rooms. The lab rooms were distinguishable only because they had some desks, clamps and other discarded tools lying around. Nothing had any value anymore and there were no plans, remnants or signs of what they may have been working on, left behind.

One of the lab room’s enchantments was destroyed in a similar fashion to the door except the effect was much more contained. It only seemed to have affected some of the enchantments in a very small radius, but Felix took note of that fact nonetheless. Whatever was destroying enchantments had been in this room at some point, though either only briefly or only while it was young or small, depending on what it was.

As they searched the rooms, Felix had identified 3 more mana keys. A couple of them seemed to be redundant because the doors actually checked for two of them, but he memorized them anyways. The circular hallway became a staircase as they headed towards the back wall and descended then reascended on the other side of the building, completing its symmetry.

The rooms against the back wall of the castle, the ones they had to descend to reach, resulted in the most mana keys. Each one of the dozen or so rooms had it’s own unique key that Felix identified then did his best to memorize. The issue was that they were so precise, up until now Felix had just been holding every key they identified in front of him. Now, he had more keys than he could hold and if his memory was slightly off, he wouldn’t be able to get through the traps. The bypass mechanism had the same issue of being far too precise.

To get around this, Felix finally pulled out some of the blank slabs they had bought and his new general purpose quill, that looked like a pen. He used mana to trace out the section of the enchantment that detected the keys and wrote each one out on a slab, testing them after he was done to ensure they were nearly identical. He stowed those so he could later test his keys or tune them to the exact right values if needed.

The rooms themselves along the back wall of the castle seemed to be large bedrooms, each one with a glass wall that overlooked the ocean behind the castle. They didn’t find anything of value in the rooms, just furniture that had broken down and scraps of cloth for the most part. They circled all the way back around to the front of the building and Thezan along with Rathos, much to Felix’s surprise, started examining the walls, floors and ceilings for any hidden rooms.

Felix had already examined the halls and he didn’t feel the need to do so again so he simply followed along with Elric and Aros. As he waited for them to potentially find something, he tuned into Nova and immediately felt a wave of fear, something he had never expected to feel from Nova, not after they first learned how to fight.

He had expected Nova to be ravenous, as their race suggested, and be begging Felix to let them take a bite out of everything. Instead, they were paralyzed in fear and when Felix questioned them, they simply berated him with images of the Demitium chunk and his Pocket Home.

Felix got the message and had no interest in torturing his familiar so he asked Thezan if he could head outside for a moment and he agreed. They waited in an untrapped room while Felix, their key bearer, ran outside and quickly opened the portal to his Pocket Home. As soon as the portal opened, Nova sensed it somehow and dove through then hid themselves behind the Demitium chunk.

Well, hopefully… hopefully they aren’t right to be scared… what the hell are they sensing though?

Felix closed the portal and rejoined the party then addressed Thezan, “Hey, Thezan…”

Thezan looked over his shoulder, “Yeah?”

Felix fidgeted with a small ball of mana next to his head, “Maybe we should be… a little more careful.”

Thezan raised his eyebrow, “This coming from the kid who walked through twenty deadly traps just to test that he had the right key just a few hours ago?”

Felix winced, “Yeah… I just had to let my familiar sit back because they were… scared.”

“Yeah I’ve been feeling it too, animal instincts skill, something isn’t right here.” Elric chimed in.

“Me too, I thought it was just the weapon but… maybe it’s something else?” Aros added.

They looked at Rathos to see if she had felt it as well but she just shrugged, “Don’t look at me, I don’t have instincts like yours. I like the danger.”

Thezan sighed, “Of course you do. If you guys want to leave now, we don’t have to continue. I’m not gonna force us to finish this. Even if it’s just a gut instinct.”

“I think we can keep going, just… maybe we should… let’s just be careful.” Felix said.

Both Aros and Elric nodded, neither of them having anything insightful to add so the group continued, a little slower and little more carefully than they had before. Felix couldn’t speak for the rest of the party but the slight pit in his stomach, the one that had slowly formed as they approached the city, was starting to grow and make itself more known. He wasn’t sure if it was there for the same reason Nova had been so afraid, but whatever it was, it was getting worse.

He managed to distract himself by trying to get into a few hidden rooms that Rathos had found but ultimately, he had to just disable the enchantments so Aros could freely rip them open. The mechanism for opening them was embedded too far into the wall so Felix’s mana senses couldn’t reach them. Instead, he simply disabled the detection part of the enchantment by holding the mana still and keeping it from passing through the enchantment in the door. While he manually disabled it, Aros ripped a hole right through the door and they were able to enter.

He pointed out the enchantment to Aros once they entered the room and he disabled them by simply punching a hole in the wall. The first hidden room they found was completely empty. They had no way of knowing what its use once was other than the fact that the enchantment would have destroyed anything inside in a blazing inferno.

They continued searching through the castle finding a number of hidden rooms that were similarly empty, all of the ones they found in fact. By the time they had searched everything, they were started to get a little worried that someone had already been here and looted the place before them.

They headed through the library and Felix scanned every book remaining on the shelves. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be anything of value left behind. Only about 20% of the books remained judging from how much shelf space there was and all of them were novels, fictional stories, and other books holding useless information. Checking the dining room, they found a large table and a hidden passage that led to the kitchen but otherwise, there was no dishware, utensils, crates or barrels, just empty space and debris.

The last room they checked for hidden passages was the ball room. It was the biggest and most central chamber which made it the most likely to be hiding a secret laboratory. The entire party suspected what they were looking for was hidden underground, considering the entirety of the castle’s floorplan was already accounted for. They started with the floor but even with Felix, Elric and Aros all looking alongside Thezan and Rathos, they didn’t find anything amiss. Nothing to indicate a hidden room, passage or a secret of any kind.

The worst case scenario was that there was nothing in the castle at all, either there never had been anything or it was already taken by looters. After that would be if the secret their employer had heard rumors about was hidden behind a portal. In that case, it was entirely possible they wouldn’t find it at all.

Looking over the rest of the room, just to be certain, Rathos spotted something on one of the windows that overlooked the ocean. It looked the same to everyone else except for Felix. Though he had kept the aether around him spinning, he clearly hadn’t been scrutinizing everything. He had walked around the room in a grid like fashion so he covered everything but he clearly wasn’t paying enough attention because upon looking at the window again, he realized she was right.

He hadn’t initially seen it because the window she had pointed out, was a masterwork of enchantment and spellwork. The window itself looked just like all of the other windows in the room, there was nothing visually differentiating this window from the rest. As Felix re-examined the window though, he realized there was an enchantment embedded in the cames and frame of the window. It was confined to such a thin space between the panes of glass that he had mistaken the mana flowing through it easily as just being a property of the window came material.

Upon examining it closer though, he managed to spot the enchantment that had somehow been designed to fit within the shape of the window. The nodes were either compressed and shrunk down where possible or fit into the joints and frame where it wasn’t. The channel work alone to fit everything together and make sure none of it interfered with itself or was affected by the channel length was mind blowing to Felix.

With all the projects he had seen at Inscripticae so far, and just about every other enchantment he had worked on, the enchantments and the items were designed together. Or in the case of his armor and some of the weapons he had enchanted, the enchantment was designed for the item but the extent of that was laying it out. On this window, the enchantment had to be laid out, nodes and channels carefully modified and planned, the entire thing was engineered to a ridiculous degree and Felix couldn’t help but marvel at it.

He didn’t want to waste any more of the party’s time than was necessary though so he carefully mapped out the enchantment then moved the design around mentally until it was less confined. He relocated everything so he could properly examine the enchantment without being limited by the confines of the window cames. He isolated what he could and eventually found the same bypass mechanism that was in all the other traps and doors except, this one acted as a trigger instead of a bypass.

Felix recreated it with mana and cast the spell then isolated the frequencies required to open the door. This one required a specific quantity alongside the usual attunement and energy level but once Felix found it, the window suddenly disappeared. In it’s place, fit perfectly within the window’s frame, lay a passage to a large open corridor.

Ding You have gained a level in [D -Arcane] Mana Engineer (250 => 251)

The portal was so seamlessly fit within the window that it looked like an open doorway, rather than a portal. If it weren’t for the ocean and falling snow they could see through the windows directly next to it, they might have assumed it was just a doorway.

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Thezan smiled and nodded at Felix as he passed him to start searching for traps. Rathos was next with some sort of skill to find hidden rooms and secrets herself, followed by Felix then Elric and Aros behind him.

They descended a stone staircase for almost a kilometer before finally landing in a massive open cavern with stone pillars randomly arranged throughout the room. Each of the pillars seemed to give off their own glow using some kind of natural chemical luminescence, as Felix sensed nothing supplying them mana. There were a number of branching hallways off of the main cavern that seemed to be randomly placed along the wall.

They stuck close together as they explored the cavern, Thezan, Rathos and Felix keeping their skills and senses peeled for traps. Neither Thezan nor Rathos sensed anything and Felix was completely overwhelmed. Everywhere around him there was a hum of magic and enchantments. He could feel the remnants of spells, magical constructs, enchantments, rituals and wards everywhere.

On top of that, the ambient anima was almost vibrating. It was stunted and jittering in a way Felix had never felt before. Distracting him from all of that, was the pit in his stomach that had suddenly morphed itself into an actual feeling. His best description of it was a combination of dread, anxiety and relief.

He would have said the combination of feelings he felt were opposites of each-other before but now that he felt them, he knew that wasn’t the case. The dread and anxiety were simple but the relief was like he had fallen back to a stressful time he was very familiar with. Like he had spent a long time in a situation that had filled him with dread and anxiety, the relief was him returning to that situation, something he knew well. He did his best to suppress the feelings because they made no sense but all he could really do was suppress his physical response to them. The feelings themselves seemed to be instinctual, coming from his soul, so he couldn’t stop them.

They carefully wandered around the main section of the cavern but didn’t find anything indicating traps, danger, monsters or even magic that still existed. Everything Felix felt was like a memory held by the aether and the occasional remnant of an enchantment. None of them were complete and the most he found was a fraction of a node on a pillar.

Thezan eventually turned to the group after they had finished fruitlessly explored the main cavern area, “Aros, Elric, Rathos you guys take this hallway and clear them clockwise. The kid and I will take this one and move counter clockwise. Be careful and if you find anything, wait for us in this room and we can explore together.”

They nodded and grouped up then walked off into the cave Thezan had pointed out then Felix followed Thezan into the cave next to it.

Felix addressed Thezan as they walked, “What if there are traps or something? Shouldn’t we stick together so we’re more likely to detect them.”

Thezan didn’t bother turning to look at Felix as he answered him, “Yes, we should. Honestly though, we should be high enough level that it doesn’t matter.”

“Why take this job at all then? If you’re so much higher level?”

“Two reasons. I’ve worked with this contract broker for a couple epochs now, I trust them. Second reason, the client is paying a stupid amount of money. They’re worried something might come up and they want a higher level group to be able to handle anything that does come up, cleanly.”

“That’s why you were more inclined to take on someone who’s on the low end of the D grade?”

“Exactly. You’re skills are top notch by the way so that’s not an issue, but I wouldn’t take you somewhere we expected a high level fight. Can’t guarantee I’d be able to keep you safe.”

“So you knew the odds of us having to fight here were low.”

“And if we did have to fight, we don’t expect anything to be higher than level 1000 at most. We should be able to handle it and keep you completely safe. The only creatures we expected to find were Drakelings which the city was semi famous for. They’re super weak though so no need to worry about them.”

“How much is a stupid amount of money? I don’t exactly know the value of money just yet.”

“It’s not too complicated, general rule of thumb is that adventuring tends to pay a little better than anything else because of the danger. A normal C grade adventuring group is worth a few thousand C creds per adventure, varying based on the danger, length, skill set and so on. We tend to only take jobs if the total reward is around 500k C.”

“So you guys are a little more elite then?”

“Yeah, kind of. It has to do more with skill set than anything else. I only work with clients I trust or through referrals. They know we’re worth it and I can trust them not to give us shit contracts.”

“So this job?”

“1 A cred.”

“Holy shit. That’s… 2 million times…”

“Yeah.”

“Who the hell would pay that much for a C grade team?”

“It’s probably a god or demigod. Their perception of the value of money tends to be warped.”

“Wouldn’t they have their own people like… followers to do that? Couldn’t they hire a much higher level party with that too?”

“I forgot you’re an integrated. Gods in the multiverse don’t exactly work like that… but, you aren’t entirely wrong. They still would have likely paid them. There are lots of reasons to use adventurers instead of followers though. They might just not have any followers equipped for something like this. But yeah, they totally could have. No idea why they wanted us, I’m not complaining though.”

Mental note to read up on gods in the library.

“So the broker won’t tell you who the client is?”

“They asked to stay anonymous, not an uncommon request. They also asked us not to talk about the job with anyone else, unless necessary.”

“So I probably shouldn’t have talked to the librarian then?”

Thezan shrugged, “I would consider that necessary so don’t worry about it. Plus, the broker already told us it was fine to do research, don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to as well.”

They looked around at what appeared to be a workshop except that it was completely empty. They were only able to guess at the room’s function based on the desks that lay against the walls.

Thezan turned to Felix, “You don’t sense anything in here, do you?”

“Nope, more of the same.”

“Alright, next cave then.”

The next hall appeared to be a massive storeroom judging from the empty crates and sealed metal rooms but it had obviously been cleared out at some point because there was nothing left. The next hall they checked was almost a quarter of the way around the main chamber and was spaced the furthest from any of the other halls off the main cavern. As they approached the hall, the instinctual feeling Felix had been experienced grew sharply.

Up to now it had steadily grown such that he didn’t really noticed it growing until he paid attention to it. As they walked into the hall though, the feel mounted until it was almost suffocating. He had Thezan stop so he could calm himself.

Thezan reached back and held Felix up by the shoulder, “You ok?”

“Yeah… I just… need a minute.” Felix said through deep breaths.

Thezan nodded, “I feel it too now… I felt it before but now… it’s different here.”

Felix gasped for air, “Yeah. Something… is… in there.”

Thezan sighed, “Or was, judging from how empty every other room was.”

Felix frowned and barely managed to look up at Thezan, “You think this feeling… is from something that… used… to be in there?”

“I think it’s unlikely whatever it was was left behind. Especially if…”

Felix looked towards Thezan but he seemed to have decided against continuing his sentence. Felix eventually managed to recover his breath, forcefully calm himself then nodded to Thezan. They both agreed to immediately turn around if they found anything that concerned them but Thezan seemed convinced they could take a peek.

The hall was almost a kilometer long, far longer than any of the others and terminated at a massive circular room. As Thezan had expected, the room was entirely empty. The walls were completely smooth while the floor and ceiling were perfectly flat and almost a hundred meters apart. At a hundred meters across, the room was more or less proportional but Felix was surprised to find no spatial enchantments in the room, at least none he could sense.

The room was entirely naturally carved, despite how gigantic it was. The only other thing he felt was that the aether was far worse in this room than anywhere else. In the main cavern, the aether had been disjointed and jittery. Here, it was even more so, it was broken even.

The aether usually swirled around and flowed with an invisible current. On Telviras, the current was fast and turbulent. In this room, it suddenly stopped, started, switched direction, tensed and compressed itself then exploded back outwards entirely at random.

Felix was about to mention it to Thezan but when he looked for him, he saw him staring intently at the ground in the middle of the room. Felix waited for a few minutes because he looked more intense than ever then heard him sigh. Thezan turned around and walked right past Felix out into the hall.

“Rathos!”

Felix took the opportunity to glance at the floor where Thezan had been looking and saw a small metal coin in the center of the floor. Thezan walked back into the room and walked right back over to stand over the coin. Rathos walked in about a minute later and walked right up to Thezan, looking down where he pointed.

Thezan sighed, “Rathos, you know what this means…”

She shrugged, “Yeah… Ravens.”

“We have to go talk to them.”

“Yeah.” Rathos didn’t seem nearly as concerned as Thezan did, judging from her light tone.

“You ok with that?”

“Thez, I’m not the one that has an issue with them.”

“I’m not the one that used to be one.”

Rathos shrugged, “You gonna bring the kid?”

“I kind of have to don’t I?”

“No, but you should. Kid is kind of a miracle find, isn’t he?”

“He’s right behind you, you know?”

“Of course I know. I’m not blind.”

“Why do you have to take me?” Felix cut in.

“You’re the most capable person to detect remnants of the Usorium empire. Also, you seem to be the most sensitive to whatever this is and you can probably figure out who has it, considering they likely have a key.” Thezan offered.

Felix frowned, “They likely have a key? Why’s that?”

“It’s just how they work kid.” Rathos said.

Felix gestured back towards the door, “Are the others coming?”

“Nah. It’s not dangerous… I just don’t really… like them. Smaller group is better for this.” Thezan sighed.

Felix frowned, “Are they gonna be ok with that?”

Thezan shrugged, “They still get paid for a work they don’t have to do… they’ll be fine.”

Rathos looked over at Thezan, “We’ll likely need to buy it back.”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to Dogran.” Thezan looked towards Felix and explained, “The broker. He’ll contact the client and get us access to the funds we need.”

Thezan and Rathos looked at each-other for a brief moment, Rathos gave him a slight nod and he sighed in response. They both walked out of the room and Felix took another quick glance at the coin. It seemed to be made of gold and had the symbol of a dead animal carcass on the face.

Felix followed the pair back out into the main cavern where they met up with Aros and Elric.

Thezan addressed the whole group once they had reassembled, “Looks like what we’re looking for isn’t in here. Let’s clear out the rest of the caves and see if they left anything behind.”

“Ravens?” Aros asked.

Thezan reluctantly nodded.

“Should we even bother to keep looking?” Aros asked the group.

“They’ve missed things before.” Rathos shrugged.

“We’re already here.” Elric offered.

They split back into their respective groups and continued searching. The room next to the one with the coin appeared to be some kind of dungeon or zoo. The majority of the cages were smaller than Felix would have expected for a humanoid creature and they were laid out in groups that were separated from each-other. The groups of cages were laid out in their own cubbies that were located at the ends of the winding and branching halls.

On the stone wall inside of just about every cage they came across, Felix saw holes and some of them had their bars chewed down until the cages were connected.

Felix turned to the more experienced adventurer in the room, “Any idea what would make holes in the wall like that? Or what the cages might be for?”

Thezan shrugged, “No idea. Best guess is Drakelings since the city was kind of known for them… They wouldn’t be able to dig holes like that though…”

“Ventilation?” Felix offered.

“Without grates?”

“Maybe they were enchanted?” Felix shrugged.

“Do you sense anything like that?”

“No, nothing.”

“You have a Light spell, right?”

“Yup.”

“Wanna shine it in one and maybe we can figure out how they were made?”

“Sure.”

Felix quickly assembled a simple directional Light spell and cast it towards one of the cages. As soon as he did, the ground started rumbling and they heard a series of distant screeches. Felix immediately killed the light but judging from Thezan’s reaction, the damage was done.

Thezan grabbed Felix by the arm ran back out through the winding tunnels towards the main corridor. During Felix’s first heartbeat since Thezan grabbed him, the screeches got to the point where they drowned out all other sound and they would need to yell to hear each-other. In the second heartbeat, right as Felix was turning himself to follow Thezan and keep his feet beneath him, he caught a glimpse of something shoving it’s way out of one of the holes.

The creature appeared to be some kind of lizard at first with a small but proportionally long, crocodile like snout. In the next heartbeat, Felix took a couple steps forwards and heard the rumbling all around them reach a crescendo as the walls began to crack, adding to the symphony of dread.

They made it another two steps in the next heartbeat as a large chunk of the wall to their left exploded outwards. Behind it, there was a swarm of small lizard like creatures. They had long snouts and two back legs. Their only front limbs were wings and their scales were either tiny or non existent.

Felix would have actually found them cute had they not been clearly diseased in some way. All of the ones he saw at a quick glance had chunks of missing flesh, gaping wounds and some even had chunks of their skulls and other bones completely exposed. On top of it all, their eyes were completely black which gave their wide ravenous look a menacing touch.

Felix didn’t dare take the moment required to identify them just yet, not when he heard the cave crumbling around him, countless claws scraping along the stone and a cacophony of wings smacking the air. With Thezan pulling him along, he simply ran and did his best to keep up and stay on his feet.

Guided by the arm, Felix looked back just in time to use the force spell inscribed into his boots to dodge a falling chunk of the cave. The creatures seemed to be even further enraged by his actions though as they impossibly seemed to get louder and rush towards him even more fervently. As soon as he landed, Thezan yanked him to the side and away from another chunk of falling stone.

They continued to run but the creatures were pouring in from everywhere, including the cave walls in front of them. With every step, the swarm closed in. The growing swarm along with the falling debris, Felix wasn’t sure if they were going to make it at all. The slowly strobing glow that the pillars emitted in the main chamber, their only source of light, was slowly being suffocated from all around them.

Thezan used his other arm to pull out his sword and started swinging it through the swarm to try and make some room. As soon as his blade flicked out of the mass of creatures, Felix thought the blade had broken but realized it was just covered in shadow that poured off of it with some kind of skill. With the creatures pouring in from all sides, Felix quickly risked a glance at one as they ran through the path Thezan carved.

[D - Cursed] Drakeling (Lvl 751)

They’re… cursed?

He didn’t have time to think about it though as Thezan yanked Felix’s arm as hard as he could and pulled him through the swarm and debris. Claws and teeth scraped through Felix’s armor and tore through his flesh while the stone debris battered and bruised him. Even though it had caused him to lose over half of his health, he felt immense gratitude to Thezan for pulling him free.

He didn’t have time to voice his gratitude though as the swarm of Drakelings poured out of the cave they had been searching. Now that they had a large open chamber in front of them, Felix felt safe enough to look back. As soon as he did, his false sense of security assuring him they had gotten through the worst of it, shattered.

He saw the swarm pouring out of the small cave opening but at the same time, the entire wall around it started to crumble. The swarm poured in around every chunk of stone that fell and suddenly there were cursed Drakelings and flying debris forming a massive wave that flew in their direction.

Thezan pulled something out of a spatial storage that looked like a metal disc to Felix. He fiddled with it for a few seconds and Felix felt a surge of mana then, nothing. After a few seconds he groaned and put it away again. To their right, Felix saw the other three pop out of their cave and immediately sprint towards the staircase.

They were both coming in from different angles but they should arrive at the same time and meet each-other there if nothing went wrong. As soon as Felix had that thought, he heard the loudest crack yet from his left and immediately flicked his head over just in time to see one of the massive pillars shatter.

The cave it was holding up, the ceiling above them began to crumble and suddenly debris was falling from above as well. The cracks spread through the ceiling far faster than they were running, almost as if the cave had already been right on the verge of collapsing. As he had come to expect at this point, the crumbling ceiling revealed an even larger mass of cursed Drakelings.

The pillar to Felix’s immediate left was just the beginning. It seemed that with every step they took, another pillar shattered. At first they crumbled but then they started exploding outwards, shooting debris in every direction. Looking around, there were Drakelings and stone flying everywhere and Felix started to lose sight of their exit and the rest of the party. Luckily, Thezan was paying attention and reached back grabbing Felix and dragging him along in the right direction.

Thezan had actually been right in front of him but he was now covered in shadow and with gravel flying everywhere, it was almost impossible for Felix to spot him while running and dodging at the same time. Felix was getting hit from every side and the scrapes and bruises he had sustained from being ripped out of the cave were starting to shoot pain through his body.

He had Grim keep an eye on his health so he didn’t accidentally kill himself then dulled his pain and overloaded his cells with energy. He just hoped his buffed regeneration would be able to keep up. Worst case he could down a potion but that would be hard to do while running full tilt and dodging incoming projectiles from every direction.

Felix’s health was still steadily dropping, despite his regeneration, as he was pelted and scratched from every direction. He was growing more worried that he would need to do something as his health dropped just below 30% from a particularly nasty scratch but luckily, they just broke through the front of the wave.

No longer pushing through a wall of black, surrounded by debris and Drakelings on every side, they ran even faster than before across the rapidly shrinking open expanse. Felix thought about making himself faster with spells but once again, he hesitated and decided against it, just incase it enraged and sped the swarm up even further. While he was confident Thezan and the rest of Shade’s Wrath could run faster than they were, the swarm was also an uncoordinated mass.

He was worried about what might happen if he gave them a target they could all hunt down and head towards. The Drakelings were currently pouring towards them more out of necessity because of the empty cave ahead. If they were actively rushing towards him, he wasn’t sure he could outrun their levels.

Felix followed Thezan as they veered off to the right and towards the rest of the group now that they had room to move and were slightly outpacing the calamity behind them. Now that they had gotten closer, Felix saw Elric sitting on Aros’ shoulder that was, along with the rest of his body, on fire. The same skill or effect he had used on his arms to get through the front door, was now spread across his entire body except this time, it wasn’t a candle flame at all.

Rathos yelled out as they approached, “What the hell are these things?”

Thezan yelled back, “No idea. Seems like they were in the walls the entire time.”

Elric cut in from Aros’ shoulder, “Well fuck, that went to shit real quick.”

Rathos smiled wildly, “Just like old times.”

“Yeah, not in a good way.” Thezan grumbled then continued, “Felix, can you cut the portal once we jump through?”

“Definitely.” Felix called back.

“Alright then that’s the plan. We make it to stairs and seal the cave off behind us.” Thezan looked to the others to make sure everyone was on board.

“You already try an escape portal? This seems like a damn good time to use one.” Aros yelled out.

“Yeah, didn’t work.” Thezan shook his head slightly as he ran ahead a bit, leading the group.

“Stairs it is then.” Elric yelled as he lobbed vials and bottles into the swarm behind them.

Felix risked a glance back and saw multicolored explosions of gas explode against the wave only to be swallowed up just a moment later. He was pretty sure Elric’s concoctions were killing them they just weren’t doing enough to make a visible dent in the swarm. Elric continued to lob a stream of alchemical mixtures into the wave though, undeterred by it’s apparent lack of effect.

A handful of Drakelings managed to break free and reach them. Aros caught any that flew into his reach and simply crushed them, against each-other, into the floor, in his fist and against his forehead. If one was a little further off, Elric pulled his bow out of nowhere, fired an arrow that put it down then the bow vanished again, all in a matter of moments.

Thezan flicked his sword faster than Felix could follow and Rathos simply threw daggers that she seemed to have an endless supply of and that she pulled out of nowhere. Felix decided to risk it since they were gaining distance from the main wave and constructed a series of Fire Balls. Constructing the spells was harder than he expected, almost as if the mana was fighting him as he struggled to pull them into shape. He ended up giving up on two of them so he could focus his attention on the other two.

Finally completed, two red beads flew over his shoulders and exploded against the wave. Felix was pretty sure he didn’t actually manage to kill anything given his lack of experience and the Drakeling’s levels.

Elric looked at him in shock, “Wait, you can cast spells?”

Felix yelled back, “Yeah, it’s not easy. Normally I could have fired four at once.”

“Huh.” Thezan quickly glanced at him and frowned.

“All my mana’s been wigging out, been stuck with energy and just plain skills.” Elric said as he pulled out, drew his bow and downed another Drakeling with an arrow all in less than a second.

Rathos nodded, “Same. Can’t use my spectral daggers, they just fall apart.”

Felix looked at Aros but he just shrugged, “I don’t use mana.”

As they closed the last couple hundred meters to the stairway, the cracks in the cave started to stretch and spread into the ceiling above them and the wall around the staircase. Thezan rocketed up dozens of steps at once followed by Felix who was shoved through after him. By the time the rest of them were on the stairs, the wall around them started to crumble, albeit slower and less suddenly than the rest of the cave had.

Thezan got a hundred meters ahead of Felix and reached the now blank wall ahead of them a few seconds before Felix did.

Thezan turned back towards the swarm frantically, “Looks like our escape is gone.”

“Well shit.” Rathos said from right over Felix’s shoulder as she looked at the blank wall.

Aros and Elric just backed down the steps a few meters and did their best to deal with the Drakeling’s that squirmed in.

“Looks like it’s the same as our skills, mana’s fucked” Thezan gave his best guess.

“You ever encounter something like this?” Rathos looked over her shoulder, her voice ironically filled with excitement.

“Nope. First time for me.” Thezan said through a sigh.

“Do we seriously have no way out of this fucking hole?” Elric yelled back.

Felix focused in on the blank wall and immediately felt the portal spell form embedded behind the stone. It had some mana in it but it was slowly leaking out down and to the left. He followed the mana as it poured out and found a break in it’s mana source within the wall. There were multiple redundant mana sources in the wall, all of them were broken somewhere though.

“Mana was cut off. I can power it but I need a minute or so.” Felix offered. He was confident he could fight back against whatever was screwing with the mana, he just wasn’t sure how long it would take him.

“Seriously?” Thezan asked more to make sure Felix was certain than out of disbelief.

“Yes?”

Thezan sighed, “We can try to hold them off, fucking get to it. Any idea how long?”

“No idea, but I’ll work as fast as I can.”

Thezan just nodded once then kicked off the wall and shot back behind Felix. Rathos followed him and they joined up with Aros and Elric to hold off the swarm pushing up the stairway.

Felix wasted no time and got to work. He already knew where the spell form was embedded in the wall, all he had to do was fill it with mana and hold back the leaks. Felix pulled out the first of the batteries he had bought and started funneling mana from it, into the portal spell form in the wall.

The instant he pulled it out, the screeching behind him got noticeable louder and the mana in the battery, tried to break itself free. Felix held onto it and fought back but had to direct most of his focus to the stream of mana between the battery and the spell form. Without something holding it together, it was pushing itself outwards and away. He directed it but as if it had a will of it’s own, it fought back.

Felix managed to keep it mostly steady but he wasn’t pulling out of the battery nearly as fast as he could have under normal circumstances. As he strained against the invisible forces fighting for control over his mana, the portal spell form filled but it only got worse. Not only was mana being pushed towards the leaky inputs, but the mana within the spell form itself was also fighting back.

All Felix had ever experienced indicated that mana was like water or electricity, it took the path of least resistance. In this case, it struggled to push itself and darted around at random. Instead of following the spell form and creating a nice flow so the spell could cast, it was like a puddle in a storm, being blown away.

Felix split his focus between the spell form itself and the mana flowing into it. He had no idea how the rest of the party were faring behind him but it didn’t matter. Either they held the swarm off long enough or they didn’t. All Felix had to worry about was securing their escape as quickly as possible.

Until now, had never had to actively fight against something and Felix had never felt like he urgently needed to improve his mana control. Not in the same way. In the past he had to improve until he could cast more spells or more complex spells but never had he had to improve so he could fight back. It was a weird feeling like he had lost something he used to be capable of instead of him trying to reach a goal.

The feeling was completely different and made him feel a little disgusted with himself that he hadn’t been practicing as hard as he could have. With this portal spell form, if there wasn’t an inscribed spell within the wall, he would have no hope of raw casting the spell in the air. It was only remotely possible because of the channels and the inlay that formed a predetermined path for the mana to travel.

All Felix had to do was keep it moving the way it naturally wanted to. He had his eyes closed and teeth clenched as he strained his will against the mana. He ended up leaking some of it but as he strained and pushed, he got better. As the mana filled the spell form, it got easier.

He swapped his empty battery for another and continued all over again, pulling the mana out of the battery and channeling it with half of his will into the spell form. The other half, holding the mana in the spell form, away from the leaks and flowing around the channels smoothly.

This portal took a lot less mana than he was expecting and by the time he had drained about half of the second battery, he felt something click. He opened his eyes just in time to see the ground rushing towards him as he was shoved through the portal. As he fell, he focused solely on holding onto the portal spell form and keeping it active.

He immediately rolled over so he could see the portal and watched as Elric leapt through followed by Aros who had a handful of Drakelings latched onto him. Felix confirmed that Thezan and Rathos were next to him then he reached out with his mana control and ripped the mana out of the portal just to be safe. It was about to fall apart itself anyway as Felix had let go, no longer imposing his will on the mana but, that could have taken multiple seconds during which more Drakelings would pour through.

Aros ripped off and crushed Drakelings one by one until all that as left was a pile of mush then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. As he exhaled, the flames that covered his body died down and disappeared, his muscles relaxed and he went back to looking like a normal, albeit large, human man.

“Well that was fun.” Rathos said as she stretched her back.

“Well done kid.” Thezan reached down and placed a hand on Felix’s shoulder.

Felix looked up at Thezan, “What would you guys have done if I wasn’t there?”

“Probably would have had to sit on the stairs and wait for the whole cave to collapse.” Aros shrugged.

“Then we would wait for the swarm to calm down and fight our way through them.” Rathos said with more enthusiasm than he expected.

“There had to be a way out, ventilation or otherwise. Those Drakelings didn’t survive off eating stone all this time.” Elric added in.

“Worst case we dig a tunnel of our own and seal it off behind us. Maybe we dig far enough to get away from the weird mana fuckery. What was up with that by the way, any idea?” Thezan crouched down so he was at eye level with Felix.

Felix looked down at his hands as he shook his head, “No idea. It was like I was constantly fighting someone or… something, for control of the mana. Normally I shape spells and maybe I can’t hold them all but that’s just because I can’t pay attention to and hold all of it at once. This was like every little bit of mana was fighting against me. It wanted to do something else but it wasn’t uniform. It just fought back for the sake of fighting back. At least… that’s what it felt like…”

“Huh. Maybe it has to do with whatever we were sent here to retrieve.” Thezan looked to the rest of the group.

“Especially if just it’s remnant was that hard to deal with.” Elric nodded.

“Or it was the swarm itself. Did you see how they were… zombie like?” Rathos dropped, cross legged onto the floor and held onto her ankles with her hands. To Felix, she looked like an excited child sitting down for story time.

Aros crossed his arms and leaned against one of the windows, “They definitely weren’t undead.”

“Yeah but they were cursed.” Rathos tilted her head all the way back to look at Aros.

Thezan rose to his feet, “Weird. Think we should head out so nothing else has a chance to go wrong?”

Felix nodded then rose to his feet then started pumping mana into his robes so they started healing themselves. Felix followed Thezan to the other end of the ballroom but stopped and turned when he heard Aros behind him.

“Shit.”

Looking back at Aros they saw what he saw. Through the windows behind them, a swarm of black flying creatures swarmed upwards from nowhere. The view of the ocean was quickly blocked as the loose smattering of Drakelings slowly grew denser and approached a solid mass. Aros ran towards them and just barely managed to avoid the shards of glass pouring through the window as the Drakeling swarm chased after them.

They all turned towards the door together but before they even opened it, they heard the familiar sound of stone crumbling. Through the windows that pointed to the garden, they saw a sinkhole open up in the ground and a column of cursed Drakelings pour through the snow.

Thezan turned from the door and pointed at the right wall, “Aros!”

“On it.”

Aros ran towards the solid wall, his body igniting as he ran. He sped up right until he reached the wall and swung both fists forwards at once, ripping a hole right through it. Felix heard a massive cracking sound and was impressed with how strong Aros was until he looked to the right and realized it wasn’t Aros that had made that sound at all.

The entire floor of the ballroom starting from the side facing the cliff face was starting to crumble and fall off into the ocean. The wall remained, suspended by the castle around it but the floor beneath that was slowly falling away.

Felix sprinted, just behind Thezan, towards the hole Aros had opened. To their left, the Drakeling swarm that had shot out of the sinkhole started pouring through the windows. On the right, the Drakeling swarm that had come from nowhere was also pouring in but the floor was also crumbling away.

Thezan grabbed Felix’s arm like he had before but this time he actually physically dragged Felix through the hole in the wall because he wasn’t fast enough to keep up. They poured out right on top of the staircase and looking to the right, the castle and bedrooms were already starting to crumble away and fall down the cliff.

Thezan continued to drag Felix through the hall, left and away from the crumbling floor. He was initially worried about the traps as he didn’t have the keys ready but they seemed to be just as dysfunctional as the portal out had been.

They ran up the stairs and started down the hall. Felix was being smacked against the stairs then the floor and walls but, he was still eternally grateful Thezan dragged him. To keep himself from dying he quickly downed the regeneration potion Thezan had given him earlier. It was a challenge to get it down his throat without spilling but, it was doable.

He didn’t have time to examine it’s effects but he immediately felt it going to work stitching his body back together and accelerating the effects of his skin’s troll cell layer. It lasted for ten minutes and was complete overkill for him which meant it should be able to completely heal him from nothing in just a couple minutes. It should last until they had made it out though which meant he should be able to stay completely topped up until then.

Aros and Elric were a hundred meters or so ahead of Rathos who was just in front of Thezan as they ran. Just as Aros turned the corner ahead of them, the floor between the two groups crumbled and a column of Drakelings poured through so quickly, they smacked themselves against the ceiling.

The swarm quickly spread out in every direction and Thezan immediately spun around, careful not to swing Felix’s body into a wall, and rushed away from the Drakelings. Rathos was already ahead of him and she opened one of the doors then beckoned them inside. Thezan threw Felix inside then ran in just before Rathos closed the door.

Felix rolled himself over and got to his feet, his bruises already healing over from the regeneration potion he had downed earlier.

“Sorry about dragging and… well tossing you around.” Thezan looked guiltily towards Felix.

Felix shook his head as he adjusted his robes, “Seriously, don’t worry about me. I appreciate you keeping me from dying.”

“So what the hell do we do now? The hall is a circle and they’ve filled it. In about 2 minutes, the floor beneath us is gonna start crumbling away. Without Aros, we don’t have a good way to open a wall up either.” Rathos leaned against the wall next to the door she had just closed, ready in case something happened.

“I’ve got bombs but we would have to leave the room.” Thezan paced across the middle of the room.

“Me too.” Rathos crossed her arms.

“I guess I can try to distract them. Get them to follow me then you can escort Felix out of here.” Thezan suggested.

“That could work. Then you meet up with us outside the castle?” Rathos nodded.

“Exactly. Back where we first landed on this planet?” Thezan stopped pacing and looked towards Rathos.

“Sounds good to me. How are you gonna pull them to you?” Rathos started flipping a dagger into the air and catching it.

“You saw how they got all crazy every time Felix used a spell right?” Thezan started pacing again, this time invigorated with the prospect of an idea.

“Yup.” Rathos tossed the dagger into the air.

“My armor should still work despite the weird mana, it’s just an enchantment.” Thezan started nodding as he walked.

Felix frowned because everything he knew was telling him that was not the case.

“Isn’t that brand new? You haven’t tested the effect in battle yet?” Rathos caught the dagger then tossed it right back into the air, this time without any spin.

“No but as long as it does something, it should attract them, right?” Thezan pivoted on one foot by kicking off the wall.

“I guess.” Rathos threw another dagger and hit the one that was already in the air. Instead of tumbling uncontrollably, the original dagger was bounced back into the air and she caught the second one as it bounced back into her hand.

“What does it do?” Felix was sitting against the wall and up to this point, had mostly been listening as he didn’t have anything substantial to offer.

“It’s supposed to make him stealthier. Something complicated with calculating the environment then eating light in a natural way so it doesn’t look like a big dark hole.” Rathos bounced the dagger back up, keeping it in the air with her other dagger.

“Right now all that matters is that it uses mana and is a big complicated enchantment. Should make me the perfect target.” Thezan looked to Felix while he adjusted his armor.

“And you’ll be fine getting away from the swarm afterwards?” Felix confirmed.

“Oh yeah. Don’t worry about me.” Thezan smirked a little.

“If it wasn’t for you, Aros, Elric, Thezan and I could probably just walk out of here.” Rathos finally caught the dagger she had kept suspended, “So, we got a plan?”

Thezan nodded, “Let’s do it. Wait half a minute or until you don’t detect anything outside the door, got it?”

Rathos nodded and Thezan took a breath. He looked down at his armor then started cycling mana through it. Felix immediately felt Thezan’s mana pour through the incredibly intricate enchantment embedded within his armor and quickly ramp up until suddenly, the light in the room from the gems on the walls vanished.

Then just a moment later, they came back along with a brand new light. Felix expected to see Thezan gone but instead he was standing exactly where he had started. On his left arm, there was now a stream of rainbow colored light pouring out into the room. The light shifted and pulsed along with the mana that Felix could see leaking out of the armor.

“Well shit.” Thezan said through gritted teeth.

“I take it-” Felix started.

“No, it’s not supposed to do that.” Thezan cut him off.

Felix had no idea why it had happened but he could tell what was happening. Part of the enchantment had somehow burst and now the mana was leaking out of the armor. The mana was largely attuned as light mana so some of it naturally transformed into light.

They all turned their heads towards the door as they heard loud clawing on the other side. Felix shot to his feet and ran over to the door. He grabbed hold of the excess mana in Thezan’s armor and ripped it free then dragged it over and shoved it through the door.

The screeching immediately intensified right across the door but the scratching thankfully stopped.

Thezan sighed, “I’ll swap sets, just give me a minute.”

Felix stopped him, “Can I look at it? I might be able to patch it up.”

Thezan looked at him very seriously, “You have 30 seconds.”

Felix nodded and hopped over then immediately started examining the armor. He used the tiniest droplet of mana he could and moved it through the channels in the armor to map out the area around the burst. He was just hoping that if he used a tiny amount of mana, it wouldn’t attract the swarm.

He only mapped the area directly around the failure to see if he could repair it in some way and he was pretty sure he could at least patch it. Though visually there was no damage to the armor, to Felix’s vision, with Reaper’s Senses, he saw the mana channels were completely separated. It looked like the armor had been cut or there was a gash in it.

Felix looked Thezan in the eye, “I can patch it if you give me a minute or so.”

Thezan looked at Felix for a few seconds, “Fine, do it.”

Felix nodded then pulled some soft inlay material and Starmetal out of his soul space. He quickly morphed the two together and made a plate of sorts with matching channels on the inside. He formed the inlay into small spikes that would dig into the armor and hopefully connect to the channels underneath. He carefully placed it over Thezan’s arm then pushed it into his armor.

Felix made sure the connections were in place and had to reseat it a few times before he went to fasten it with some rope. Thezan stopped him though, thanked him then pulled some leather straps out of his own spatial storage and fastened it himself.

Felix didn’t have time to map much of the armor and he was mostly focused on the break itself at the time. Now that he had time to look over it though, he quickly examined the area he had mapped in his memory and was very confused.

It seemed to Felix like the person that enchanted the armor had combined a bunch of separate enchantments without having any idea how to properly connect them together. Some parts were expertly connected but others just… weren’t.

Felix’s best guess was that either someone had started it then someone else had finished it. Alternatively it was possible someone had had help with part of it or had found templates to copy for some parts but not others. Either way, the entire thing was an ambitious mess from Felix’s first glance. He didn’t say any of that though, he didn’t have enough experience and renown to back up his claims.

He did start remapping some sections in the back of his mind though, almost like he was fidgeting with something without directly focusing on it.

Thezan shook his arm a little then briefly tested the enchantment by running mana through it, “Thanks Felix.”

“Of course.” Felix nodded

“Alright. It seems like I shouldn’t actually trust my armor any more. We’ll fall back to it if we can’t come up with a new plan.” Thezan looked to the other two in the room, “Any bright ideas?”

“If we had Aros or Elric we might be able to fight our way out.” Rathos held a dagger standing on the tip of her finger, completely stationary like it was being held by an invisible force.

“You two can’t fight these things?” Felix looked at them incredulously.

Thezan shrugged, “Could. She just means they’re more… focused on area of effect. We are much better at dealing with targets one on one. It would take way too long for us to fight through that swarm.”

“We could just run through?” Rathos smiled with a wicked smile that made Felix a little uncomfortable.

“What if we go with a distraction just… a different one?” Felix offered.

“You make some spells or something on the tablets then we throw them out and hope they last long enough that we can run through?” Thezan had clearly already thought of it, “Only issue is can you make the spell tablets last long enough?”

“I can make little balls of force so nothing can actually reach them. Have them use mana to push anything and everything away.” Felix suggested.

“How long will they last against the swarm pushing in on them from every direction?” Thezan crossed his arms.

“Not that long… Actually…” Felix’s eyes rolled upwards as he thought through the spell formation in his head. It took him a little bit to come up with something that would fit on the tablet and not waste a ton of mana but he was pretty sure he had a decent idea.

He explained what the tablets would do to Thezan who admitted it had a chance of working.

“Worst case, we run out of here and I’ll carry you, try to shield you from the swarm.” Thezan nodded as he thought things through in his head, “How long is it gonna take you?”

Felix shrugged then pulled out a spell tablet and his quill then started inscribing the spell he had come up with onto the tablet. He didn’t have a good way of testing it because any mana expenditure was sure to attract the swarm so he tried to think through everything and just hoped they would work. He ended up making about 20 of them, with the last 18 taking just as long as the first two had.

Ding You have gained a level in [D -Arcane] Mana Engineer (251 => 252)

“Ok second problem. The second we open that door, we need the other side to be clear or we need the distractions to be really loud.” Thezan said standing next to the door.

“I can clear it… I think…” Felix walked up to the door and started designing a simple spell that was just a lot of force pushing away in every direction. He put it together as fast as he could which inevitably attracted the attention of the swarm outside. It only took him a few seconds to put the spell together once he had designed it but that was more than long enough for the clawing at the door to start.

Felix moved the spell just outside of the door and pushed mana recklessly into the spell then cast it. He heard a loud boom from the other side of the door and the clawing completely stopped. Felix picked up the tablets and started filling them with mana and handing them off to Thezan.

Thezan opened the door just a crack then wide open once he saw the opening Felix had made in the swarm. He started throwing the tablets out the door and they immediately darted through the air and down the hall. Felix continued to hand tablets to Thezan and he threw them in random directions to try and thin out the swarm.

All the Drakelings that had been pushed against the wall across from the door had recovered but instead of looking at them, they mostly seemed to follow after the flying tablets. Thezan walked out and beckoned the other two to follow him as they walked down the hall towards the front door.

Looking over his shoulder, Felix saw the collapsing of the castle was still a couple dozen meters from the room they were in but was actively creeping towards them. Thezan and Rathos both dealt with Drakelings that strayed from the swarm. There weren’t many but when Thezan held his hand behind him and Felix filled the tablets with mana, a small group of them would come rushing around the corner towards them. They always flew after the tablets once they were thrown but Thezan and Rathos made sure none of them had a chance to even try and bite or claw them.

They made it to the door and threw out all the rest of the tablets through the halls so the swarm didn’t follow them. They didn’t bother pulling out the sled just yet because they needed mana or someone to push it. Instead, they trekked through the snow at a light jog to try and gain enough distance that they wouldn’t be detected.

They threw a few more tablets along the way to see if the swarm could detect them and by the time they had made it a few kilometers away, Thezan decided they were far enough.

“Where are the other two?” Felix looked around at the snow covered expanse around them.

“First landed on the planet. That wasn’t just a random spot, it’s our usual meeting point when everything goes to shit.” Thezan pointed ahead of them and slightly to the left.

“Which happens often.” Rathos leaned in to whisper into Felix’s ear.

“Used to… Used to happen often.” Thezan corrected, clearly having heard Rathos.

Rathos just waved him off.

Felix pulled out the sled and they all got in then immediately turned around to see what the loud ominous sound behind them was. Looking back, the castle and the city in front of it that had once sat on the edge of the cliff had finally crumbled and fallen into the ocean beyond. The swarm of Drakelings flew up into the air and circled around the area as it happened which from this distance, just looked like a massive cloud of black.

They looked at each-other and shrugged then Felix cast some force spells and used his map to guide them towards the meeting location. They arrived a short while later but had to wait a couple hours longer for Aros and Elric to come running through the snow to them.

They just nodded to each-other when they arrived and Thezan rose to his feet, “Let’s try this again, shall we?”

He pulled a familiar disc out of his spatial storage then tossed it onto the snow. The disc hummed with mana in Felix’s mana senses then suddenly a portal appeared above it. Unfortunately, the spell was System Fuckery so Felix couldn’t memorize and copy it. He felt the mana useless spinning around then suddenly disappear in an unnatural way. They walked through one by one into a familiar room then the portal winked out.

Felix leaned over to Thezan, “Does the portal disc thing just… sit there forever?”

“They self destruct after being used.” Thezan walked up to the door and it simply opened then he turned and walked down the hall to the left.

The rest of the party followed after him in no particular order and then filed into the vehicle they had arrived in. Thezan drove them back to the guild where they scattered into the main sitting area of the familiar mansion like apartment.

Thezan turned and addressed the group, “Alright we’ll sleep here for another night then checkout tomorrow. Elric, make sure you get everything packed up before then this time.”

Elric just saluted Thezan then walked over to his alchemy desks.

The others wandered off leaving Thezan and Felix standing in the sitting room.

Felix looked up at Thezan, “So what now?”

“Now I see if I can get a meeting with Dogran. I’ll let him know about the Ravens and see if they want us to keep chasing this thing. It might take a while for him to contact the client then there’s the Ravens… just sit tight. I’ll come find you when we head out.”

Felix nodded once, “Any idea how long?”

Thezan shrugged, “A term or two if I had to guess.”

“Oh… ok then. What will you do in the meantime?”

“Go home. Relax with my family.” Thezan shrugged.

“Oh… that makes sense. You guys just check into a room just to prepare for a job then?” Felix asked as he looked around.

“Sort of. We used pay for a room at all times for the team to use but recently it’s gotten too expensive.” Thezan nodded and placed his hands on his hips.

“The price increased?” Felix frowned because he already knew how much they were getting paid.

“Yeah. It’s based on demand and the last 5 Epochs or so the adventurer’s guild has been super busy, way more adventurers and jobs than normal. It’s just not worth it anymore. Anything more than prepping for a mission and I can’t justify the cost. Even if our client is paying us a stupid amount of creds.”

“It’s busier than usual?” Felix frowned.

“Way busier. No idea why but yeah, like I said, there have been way more contracts and way more adventurers.”

“Has this happened before?” Felix looked up at Thezan with his confusion displayed loudly on his face.

Thezan just shrugged, “Not that I’ve ever seen or heard of.”

“Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”

Thezan shook his head, “No. Could be any number of reasons and no point in worrying about it, right?”

“I guess.”

“Anyway. You did a great job today kid. I’ll leave your pay with the guild once I get it but just be aware, the client may only give us part of it now and the rest when we actually find the thing they’re looking for. It may take a while.”

“Alright, thanks.” Felix turned and took a step then decided he was better off saying something and turned back around. He took a spell tablet out of his inventory and quickly drew out a diagram as he spoke, “I know I’m not very high level and I’m only just learning how to enchant things… You’re armor’s enchantments are… kind of a mess.”

Thezan raised an eyebrow and cocked his head, “What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s a mess. Here, I’m not great at it and I know multiple people who can do way better this, but even this is better than whatever is currently in or on your armor.” Felix handed him the tablet.

He had inscribed the enchantment around Thezan’s arm with the most basic of changes. Just simple things like altering the channels slightly to have the enchantments connect together less crudely. He didn’t spend enough time to alter anything dramatically and he didn’t have the experience to properly fix it, but he knew enough to make minor changes.

Thezan took the tablet and nodded, “I’ll look into it.”

Felix nodded then walked to the door and left. He descended the elevator that still amazed him with how seamless it was then flew off back to Inscripticae. Though he had plans to do a handful of other things, he wanted to check in with Aldahn and Fralyna first. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .