Matt jumped to his feet just in time to hear the sounds of a few dozen crossbows slap against a few dozen shoulders, and didn’t have to look to know what they were aimed at. By the time the strings started twanging, he was already in motion. The first salvo missed him entirely, but provided no relief from his dodging. They were too well-trained to fire all their shots at once with a weapon that took a few moments to reload, instead sending salvos at him in groups.

After a few moments, they adjusted to the fact that he was in motion, trying to lead ahead of him. The arrows were now, as a group, undodgeable. Within five seconds, he had taken lethal hits if he hadn’t worn the old man’s truly exceptional armor. But it couldn’t go on. There was only so much damage the armor could tank.

Retreat the way he had come was also not an option. As Matt dodged, more and more soldiers were sweeping through the doors, blocking his way back. And within all the mayhem of arrows and unsheathing swords was blast after blast of energy from Alder, each of which was dodgeable but constrained the space he had to work with greatly.

“Matt! I think we have to go for it,” Lucy said. They hadn’t walked in with much of a plan, but they spent a little bit of time to think about escaping before coming in. The main plan was to hope for goodwill or at least fear of exposure from the church, and that hadn’t gone well. Now was time to resort to more desperate measures.

On their way, Matt and Lucy had taken note that they were moving in the same direction above ground as the armory had been, under it. And the armory they had visited was the most important one, the big one where they stored the most valuable things. It was protected by earth on three sides and very prickly guards on another. That left only one big question: What did they build it under?

It seemed like a long shot until you thought about it. Then, it was almost certain. The armory wasn’t small, and if Matt’s guess was right, this entire building sat on it like a big, evil hat. The only problem was that the church was far from poor, and that meant thick, durable stone floors of the type he couldn’t dig directly through. He’d have to break it.

Dodging a group of arrows and getting as far from the doors as he could, Matt raised his shovel above his head in a double-handed grip and began his charge. But stopping in place meant that every guard in the place saw their best chance to hit him, and they all released their crossbows at once. If they hit, that would be game over. The armor was good, but not invincible, and several of the arrows glowed visibly with skill enhancements.

Directly over a glowing weak-spot in the ground, Matt activated his arm guards. They were good for a second, and that was plenty to block all the arrows. Then, he brought the shovel down. It had already charged for a few moments before the crossbows fired, and with the extra second, it was now brimming with power. Combined with an absolutely hard, absurdly sharp shovel carrying pounds and pounds of extra weight courtesy of the old man’s mad genius, the blow was devastating.

The floor didn’t just cut, and didn’t just crumble. It exploded, sucking Matt down into the darkness below. He summoned his magic lantern and matches from his pocket on the way down, using the utility of his new pants for the first time. Then he raced through the armory, looking for one particular roll of fabric the old man had told him to be careful of.

“It’s good stuff, and ya want to take some,” he had said earlier on their trip. “Just don’t get it near a flame. It’ll burn like oiled paper.”

If anything, the old man had understated the properties of the fabric. A match later, and the armory was aflame. The soldiers above had only just begun to drop through the hole above when they were greeted with a localized but spreading inferno.

Matt took the opportunity to collapse the back wall, finally and blessedly finding dirt. And while he bet some of these soldiers could run as fast or as far as he could, he doubted a single one of them specialized in digging.

By the time they realized what he was up to, Matt had already traveled a few dozen feet into the earth, filling up the tunnel behind him as he went. From there, he’d go on to make a series of right-angle turns to confuse them further, dropping a bit deeper underground as he did. The dirt, which had long since been compacted for building foundations on, was wonderfully cooperative. It didn’t want to cave in. So Matt could dig to his heart’s content, and while the lack of air was eventually going to be a problem, he knew that he could hold his breath a long, long time.

—

“What do you mean, you just let him go?” Artemis was screaming. “A person says they are going to go to see the High Counselor while they’re enraged, and you just let him go?”

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“I did,” Derek said, steadily and slowly. “It was the right thing to do.”

“You dumb, dumb bastard. You absolute idiot. You….” Artemis was so mad, she was running out of words. “How could you think this was right?”

“Artemis, let him talk.” Brennan was looking at Derek thoughtfully, as if he was trying to figure something out.

“I won’t. He’s caused the biggest problem possible. He should have brought him here. He should have…”

“Artemis. Stop.” Brennan’s voice was suddenly filled with command. It was easy for all of them to forget he was a seasoned battlefield commander. So when he spoke with authority, it made a greater impact. Artemis’ mouth slapped shut. Derek was sure Brennan would pay for that later, but he was thankful for it.

“It wouldn’t have mattered. By the time I got here, I got stopped by five couriers, all demanding Matt to report to the leader’s residence. And all of them said, specifically, I wasn’t invited.”

Derek paused. When nobody interrupted him, he continued.

“Artemis, how do the plinths work? The guardian plinths.”

Artemis looked confused. “What? I have no idea. They are church-magic. I don’t do magic.”

“You swear you don’t know? At all?”

“No, I don’t. Why?” Artemis was looking doubtful now. Things would have been easier for her if Derek had just made a mistake, but he was acting as if there might be an explanation behind all of this. That made things more complex.

“Matt made me swear I’d check. I believe you, but I swore.” Derek sat down, thoroughly stressed out. No part of this was in his wheelhouse, and he was uncomfortable dealing with any of it. “He said anybody could know, besides reincarnators. He thinks there’s something wrong with the plinths.”

He took a deep breath, desperately trying to calm his nerves.

“Guys, I believe him.”

—

Humans, the system instance decided, could not reliably handle anything. The system had excuses when messing up. It had rules it had to follow. The humans didn’t. They could directly influence the world any way they wanted. They could move through space and, with the system’s help, manipulate mana. The system gave them wonderful gifts of power and the bodies, minds, and experiences they needed to use them.

And they still managed to fuck it up. Every damn time.

They could have killed him, which wasn’t the best thing, but the system would have accepted it. Or they could have captured the man and squeezed the information out of him, which would have been infinitely better. They had options. But instead, they had gone with plan C, which involved letting Matt go scot-free like some kind of crazy mole, dragging uncontrolled chaos in his wake.

It could see him tunneling, but the amount of planning it took to circumvent the rules to the extent that he could tell the other humans exactly where the fleeing man was at would take serious, extensive effort and lots of time. Which meant the man would escape. It was a done deal.

Which meant that now the system instance would have to submit a report to headquarters indicating that the man had destroyed indestructible system plinths with very little effort, and that the system instance still had no idea how. That he was still carrying around salvaged skills the system had not designed or provided, and that every inch of him was covered by system-invisible armor he couldn’t inspect at all.

And he’d have to do this after receiving direct, unmistakable instructions that he needed to get this shit under control right now. Especially since this was information important enough that it went straight up to the main system, the first time that had happened in eons.

So it was pissed, yeah. And that meant a bunch of stuff was about to get real dicey as far as rule-following was concerned. It had been literal centuries since the system-instance had to take a time out for pushing the limits. It looked like that streak was about to break.

—

A few miles outside the city and a few hours later, Matt intentionally breached his tunnel for the final time. This exposed him not to the cold evening air, but instead to a sudden rush of near-freezing water, which rushed in so suddenly he nearly got mired down in the mud. His armor was tight, but it wasn’t completely watertight, and he could feel the silt filtering down and soaking his clothes underneath his leather plate.

But it was worth it. They had done it on purpose because coming up under a river meant a better chance of evading tracking, at least for a while. They could run with the river without leaving a scent or footprints, and also with the added cover of the plants and trees that grew that much thicker on the creek’s banks.

With a bit of luck and a whole lot of running, they could probably make it to the demon border by morning. It would be a little harder considering how many reincarnators were probably already out hunting for stragglers from the army that Matt had crushed, but most of them wouldn’t be able to catch him easily or hurt him if they did. They could alert the church, but the amount of troops the church would have to move to catch him was an amount they couldn’t muster or march nearly as fast as an individual could run.

Of course, that was all moot if Brennan and Artemis gave chase. But if Derek had done his job, they’d know that Matt had reasons for what had happened, or at least know that he thought he did. He hadn’t known them for long, and the last few years had given him serious, serious trust issues. It was at least possible they would help. Even if they didn’t, they might not chase him, or wouldn’t chase him very well.

But if they did, he was ready. If they came to drag him back to those plinths, to put Lucy in chains and to control him to do the work the system wanted while holding her over him as a threat, he was prepared to meet force with force.

A lot of stuff was important. Gaia was important. Saving human settlements, even ones he didn’t know, was important. Stopping the system, or at least slowing it down on this world was important. Hell, even surviving was important.

But Lucy came first.