Even as Jack raced down increasingly dim hallways in what truly was a grand manor, he couldn't help but castigate himself for having played the fool.

Knowing the risks within this city that he did, after having interrogated the mentalist Usling, pulling free so many dark secrets that the man had desperately hoped would allow him to see the light of day.

But they hadn't.

Not even when Jack found himself in possession of everything the man had within his modest pouch of holding. Including an exquisitely incriminating journal, with records of so many illicit affairs a certain agent of darkness had used to keep multiple tabs on. Because a brilliant deadly gift for reading and manipulating the minds of others with the twisted silvery strands of one's own psyche did not necessarily translate into a photographic memory.

In real life, even the villains had to take notes.

Just as Jack had taken notes during that perilous interview, even as his spine had tingled with growing awareness of the increasingly restless dead he had sensed all around them. And perhaps the possibility of a third shadowy rook as well, still hidden, who could have been drawing a bead with a 1000 lb draw crossbow, or even a rifle aimed squarely at Jack's all too vulnerable back.

But there had been nothing.

Nothing save the desperate wails of a man who thought he had at least brought his life, but all he had earned was the horror of seeing death coming as food for a host of undead Jack had retreated from with the cool confidence and poise of a lion disdaining jackals... letting the jackals do what he had sworn not to.

And Usling's dying screams had followed Jack. Followed him into memories carefully locked away. A foolish reflex, when he should have been doing everything he could to keep tabs on the one mentalist who was directly involving himself with the fate of this duchy.

And the reassuring murmurs he had given to himself, that he'd be a fool to dare peril before he had strengthened himself sufficiently, had been pure, unadulterated cowardice.

As he realized when he found himself thrust into peril, Drake's life suddenly in his hands, level 10 minimum recommended quest level or no.

So, after actually surviving a duel that could so easily have left him dead, why had he not immediately followed up on Lord Hecklebart, the vindictive monster behind so many dark machinations within this city?

He took a deep breath, pushing back the anxiety roiling in his gut. He had saved a fellow soul daring the Path of Peril from a nightmarish eternity of disfigurement and blindness, in the precious window his absurdly boosted Lesser Healing spell combined with his artifact and a wound his victim's soul had yet to accept as his new truth had allowed him to see just how far he could push his Rank 1 spell. He didn't need flashes of ancient memory to know that he had already gone far beyond what should have been possible at his rank. Regenerating entire organs from scratch, and healing with such precision that his beneficiary could now see as well as he ever could, with a roguish face still as charming as ever, even carrying the faintest of scars.

Barring a level-up, it had been Aroust's only hope. And what chance in hell was there of anyone caring enough to carry a blind warrior through countless delves until he reached that point, assuming if he even could, contributing nothing to party kills?

Jack gave a pitying shake of his head, despite the tension he felt at that moment. He'd happily take the adept tier lessons he had learned, and break however many rules he could, if it helped save the lives of his friends, or those that could have been his friends, in another place and time.

But his noble deed would do nothing to save him now. Because right now, his enemy's lawyer had somehow gained access to the inner sanctum of his friend's private gala. And if Jack's intuition was right...

He prayed it wasn't.

"Drake! Are hostile barristers normally allowed at these gatherings?"

"Hell no!" Drake snapped. "There's no way he should have been given access or permission to enter these grounds!" The look Drake sent Jack was filled with regret. "Jack, if that writ is legitimate..."

Drake gave a frustrated shake of his head. "But it doesn't matter. It doesn't make sense! He should never have been permitted within a hundred yards of you, or this chateau. You wouldn't believe how many rogue scions are effectively exiled to their properties, so as to avoid writs of censure or summons from the Lord's Council. And everyone accepts this, as no council member would want any less protection for himself or his own family, should he one day step afoul of the politics that plague that hall. It's a check and balance of a sort, my friend, so that no barrister, or the jackals that send them scurrying our way, can impinge upon the rights and privileges of our class, any more than they already do!"

Jack clenched his jaw, heart pounding from more than exertion.

Because he could think of only one way that barrister had managed to slip like a rat into these proceedings, effectively silence Drake before he could say a single word against his master, before his beady little eyes had immediately focused on Jack.

His asking for confirmation earlier had been a pretext.

He had instantly known who Jack was.

"Drake, I think we might have a serious problem." Jack's fist clenched as he whispered words and summoning forth that which earned a hiss from his friend as they down a flight of stairs and along yet another rug-lined hallway paneled in mahogany and memory.

Windowless corridors now lit only by brilliant magelights, nearly as bright as day.

Drake's eyes widened. "Jack, are you sure you don't have a class?" He then flashed a relieved smile, pointing at a grand set of polished cherry-wood doors, just ahead. "There! There's father's study. But who the hell is that?"

Because standing at attention before the door was a fully armored pair of knights with glaives in hand, gazing coldly at them both.

"Private council meeting is in session. Both of you are to leave the area at once!" The man declared in a rough, gravelly voice, coal black eyes glaring at them from his open faced helm.

Drake paled. "Who the hell do you think you are, giving orders in my family—"

The floor tiles cracked when the spiked shaft of the man's weapon hit the ground.

The larger one flashed a cold smile. "Best leave, little lordling. Because if you dare approach any further, I'm well within my rights to strike you dead. And believe me, there's nothing I'd like to do more."

Drake's eyes bulged, he gazed at the pair of smirking guards in frank disbelief. "That you would dare even say such! I will see you both—"

"There they are!" declared the wheezing, high-pitched voice of the barrister from before.

Jack's heart surged with alarm to hear the clanking of steel tread boots just behind them, finding that the man, to his horror, had two more fully armored council guards with him.

The lawyer licked his pale lips exultantly, pointing one finger Jack's way. "There! There's Master Mercator's prize! The boy actually ran down here, thinking he could weasel free of his doom. Ha! Now we don't even need a pretext, this far from the party. Seize and bind him, now!"

The pair of guards by the barrister's side stepped forward with cold smiles. "Stupid fool actually raced right where we want him. Hands where we can see them, criminal!"

"Voco Apis," Jack whispered, glaring at his friend who seemed to be in shock as the four armed warriors tried to box them in.

"Drake! Now!"

"But, no, no! These are council guardians! They're breaking every law and treaty, being down here! This is.."

Jake frowned at his clearly shell-shocked friend. "It's a coup! We act now, brother. Now shout!"

The barrister snarled, meek demeanor fading to reveal a very ugly looking rat indeed. "Capture both those boys! My master will be in possession of this chateau soon enough, and we can hold young Lord Drake under charges of assault, trespassing, and threatening to kill the soon-to-be-elected prime minister."

The guards filled the air with cold laughter. "Afraid your house has fallen, boys," sneered the closest armsman, now brandishing his wicked looking glaive, the five foot hardwood shaft capped by eighteen inches of razor sharp, slightly curved steel promising a savage, brutal death none but a master swordsman could hope to avoid.

So Jack didn't bother with swords at all.

"Suctugm glacies! Lapis Armis!"

The lawyer's eyes widened at Jack's sudden three foot wide crimson shield, now fully kitted in armor pulsating with blood runes.

"Stop hesitating, fools! If the house guard thinks to question the orders we fed them, things will get messy. Especially if they refuse to follow council edicts! So chop down their legs, and we'll drag them out in chains! Our master will have everything we need, soon enough."

The closest guard smirked. "Gonna be fun, cutting noble flesh—"

"Sublimato!" Jack roared.

Cutting off the sneering guard's words with agonized screams as the steel covered killer crashed to the ground in a pile of his own rapidly corroding armor, hit dead on by Jack's near shield-sized orb of corrosion. Liquid death that instantly sloughed off the corrupt guardian's screaming face as his shrieks cut off with a dying gurgle, his throat dissolving near instantly.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Because unlike the duel in front of countless witnesses, he wasn't holding back.

Fist's clenched with hotblooded fury at the depths of villainy and betrayal happening within his friend's innermost sanctum, there was only one response he could give.

"Sublimato!" Jack roared, sending another foe crashing to the ground in a pile of corroded armor and his own melting flesh.

Of course, that was when further reinforcements burst from a door to Jack's left that he stumbled back from, answering the shrieking barrister's calls as the little man glared at Jack with fearless hate, even as his fine leather boots hissed and sizzled where universal solvent had sprayed upon the fabric.

With a quick shout, the fresh enemy soldiers were charging Jack and Drake in unison with the guardsmen that had been guarding the door, all of them well-trained soldiers eager to cut down any threat, no less deadly for their jaded corruption.

Jack felt a single panicked lurch in his gut as he sensed death coming from both his front and his rear, before Drake's powerful baritone voice rang through the air.

"Bedova!" Drake roared. Jack heard the guardsman behind him crash to the ground with startled cries. Even the well-trained pair of mercenaries Jack now found himself facing hissed and fell back, much to his relief. They had been attempting to hook Jack's shield with glaives that should have instantly wrenched his shield off-line and left him open for a killing blow, if it had been anything less than the arcane masterwork spell that it was. And they had almost succeeded, the pair of them, as the barrister behind them screamed at them to spare Jack's life, if possible.

But the look in their eyes now made it clear no further mercy would be shown. Their hate-filled glares made it clear that if Jack didn't seize the moment, he was as good as dead.

"Sublimato!" Jack roared, only for his eyes to widen with horror at the sight of the smirking barrister holding a wand of his own, for all that he was now gasping for breath and covered in sweat, as if it had taken everything he had, deflecting Jack's spell and utterly obliterating one of the walls. But deflect it he had.

"You'll pay for that, you insolent, brat, oh yes you will! I, Barrister Polja swear you'll rule the day you dared to cross wands with—"

But Jack was already charging forward with shield raised high, desperate to stay out of the barrister's line-of-sight and close with the powerfully built warriors before they could fully bring their glaives to bear.

Only to be sent tumbling to the ground when the closest sneering guard shifted his balance and hip-tossed Jack using his body and the shaft of his weapon. In full command of his body and prowess, no matter that he had seemed dazed, just a split-second before. Even if Jack had closed the distance fast enough to prevent that wicked looking blade from being used to cleave right through his head.

"Fool!" The guardsman sneered with all the contempt of an experienced soldier for a half-trained amateur about to be cut down. Only furrowing his brow at the last second, catching sight of Jack's deadly smile.

As if he found being slammed to the ground no impediment at all to his actual strategy. And that, in fact, it was somehow to his advantage, even as his scowling foes quickly maneuvered their polearms to deliver deadly spearing thrusts.

Using up precious seconds to reposition themselves and their weapons, when they should have been fleeing for their lives.

"Ignis Ventus Sanuis!" Jack roared with his shield raised high, taking full advantage of his unorthodox positioning and angle to pour forth a howling firestorm of death, for all that he was flat on his back. He might have no knowledge of ethereal magics or polymporphy, but in a single mana-draining heartbeat, he had successfully transformed the pair of mercenaries and the sneering lawyer right behind them, into a furiously burning pyre. Unfortunately, that held true for the ceiling as well.

But most definitely not the dissolvent-covered floor.

He could only hope that his hunch was right, and that magical flame alone would catalyze the magical corrosive that had reduced the first pair of steel clad warriors to pools of rust and liquefied flesh, Jack's positioning assuring that not a lick of magical flame would caress that deadly liquid.

His foes didn't even have time to scream as the metal of their armor turned white hot and began to melt, their bodies charring to the bone with a brilliant phosphorescent flare... and Jack immediately cut off the flow of mana and shielded his eyes as the backwash of heat hit him, rateful for the fire resistance his increasing affinity with flame had given him.

Because he knew he wasn't done yet.

Not by far.

"Jack!" screamed a panicked Jake.

But much to Jack's heartfelt relief, the pair of men Drake had stunned were unable to do anything but groan.

"The hallway!"

Jack winced. His friend was right, and the air was getting decidedly smokey, and Jack could only hope that his friend hadn't seared his lungs with the heat backwash, the hallways ceiling now a blazing inferno. He was just glad that only the ceiling directly above where he had launched his cone of flame had been obliterated, and that the remaining flame was blazing at a far more sedate and reasonable pace.

If he was lucky, he now had time to do what needed doing.

"Zephyrus. Awaken." Jack whispered, pleased to see his little crimson air spirit companion perk back to full wakefulness as he stumbled to a panicked-looking Drake's side.

"Jack, the house!"

"I know. Stand next to me."

"But Jack..." his friend's coughing abated, tearing eyes widening. "I can breathe! The air!"

Jack smirked. "Hold that thought."

"Aqual Effusorium!" And over a dizzying minute of forcefully holding the lesser version of his water spell that cost him nearly nothing to maintain, but was still a strain when he was so close to mana depletion, the formerly blazing hallway quickly turned to soaked wooden paneling with far too many ruined portraits and charred wooden panels. But the structural beams were thankfully undamaged, and the mansion was no longer at risk of erupting in flame.

Drake breathed a sigh of relief, before his worried eyes took on his father's study door. He hissed in alarm, his tight grip clenching Jack's wrista. "We have to get inside, now!"

"I know," Jack said, his intent eyes meeting Drake's own. "But you have to give me a minute to restore at least some of my mana." He raised his hand at his friend's protest. "It's important. Believe me. If Hecklebart is what I think he is..."

Drake's jaw clenched. "Jack!"

Jack shook his head. "If you want to run in there half cocked and be Hecklebart's eternal puppet, then go ahead. Me? I'm going to be ready."

Drake glared at him furiously for a long moment before shaking his head. "Fine!" He closed his eyes, cursing under his breath. "They must have heard it. Why the hell aren't they coming out?"

Jack smirked. "That alone tells us that we have to be ready. Nice shouting, by the way."

Drake flashed a strained smile. "Nice almost obliterating my house."

Jack winced. "Yeah, that's my third tier spell that costs me a ton to cast. I'm just glad that my hunch about dissolution orbs and magical flame turned out to be correct. Because the liquid is totally inert to..." He flashed a tight grin. "Windfire just hit Apprentice rank 2."

Drake was gazing at Jack in disbelief. "Wait... you have no class, and you have access to a Tier 3 elemental spell?"

Jack shrugged. "Maybe?" He then glared down at the two now groaning guards, before looking back at his friend. "You know what has to happen now, right?"

His friend's gaze tightened. "I do," he said, loosening the smallsword still belted to his waist. But Jack grabbed his wrist, slowly shaking his head.

"Please turn around, Drake," he said, pulling out his prized sword from storage.

His friend's eyes widened at the masterwork weapon. "Jack? What are you..."

Jack flashed a sad smile. "You're a scion of a ruling house. Royalty, at least in this duchy. I'm sure there are all sorts of things you can and can't do, oaths you have sworn to, and oaths your enemies would one day love to trip you up with. But if all you did was defend yourself with a shout, and turn away from criminals leaving the scene, you can be blamed for nothing," Jack said, his exquisitely sharp and near indestructible blade now fully unsheathed.

He held Drake's eyes with his own.

"Please turn around and cover your ears."

Paling, his friend did just that, even as Jack forced himself to face the pair of groaning, fully armored guardsmen, Jack now holding his blade in a careful two-handed grip, not daring to half-sword the weapon, even with the blood-armor gauntlets he was now wearing. Because he knew exactly how deadly his blade was. He had helped forge it with the power of his blood runes, after all.

And the soldiers were able to sense it as well.

Certainly the groaning one was able to gasp, feeling the razor sharp point of a sword blade kiss the gap between helm and breastplate.

"No, what are you doing? Quarter, quart!—"

Coup de Grace successfully performed on Helpless Guardsman!

"Louj, what happened? Louj! No, wait, please... you don't have to do this!"

You have successfully rammed the point of your Pristine Blade into the eye socket of Helpless Guardsmen!

Your target has perished.

Experience earned!

You now have maximum potency for a Level 0 character.

All additional potency will be transferred to skill mastery until a class is chosen.

"Jack?"

"One second."

You have successfully transferred 2 fully intact corpses, 1 pool of Caustic Sludge, 2 pools of melted flesh, and 3 charred hunks of carbon to Soul Pouch. You detect no additional strain to your storage capacity. Caustic Sludge causes zero damage to pouch integrity. It's almost like your pouch was designed for this!

"Alright, you can open your eyes," Jack said, deliberately ignoring interface messages he really didn't want to look too closely at.

Drake did just that, blinking as he took in the fire-blackened hallway, stone tiles pitted by substances stronger than any mundane acid, the floor now as dry as a bone. "

Jack... the bodies."

Jack winked. "What bodies would that be, friend Drake? Were we perhaps pranked by friends from the academy who ran off when their tomfoolery actually started a small fire, and we'll all be laughing over the escapade in the wine room some night soon?"

Drake blinked at the sheer outrageousness of the statement before chuckling softly. "Classmates dressed for a farce, who ran off when my shout got out of hand. It's almost — Jack!"

But Jack had already turned, glaring down the far corridor which Jack could only wonder where it led. Because yet another pair of council guardsmen were racing their way. "Master Sanwalt! We heard noise, is all — halt, in the name of the Council!" roared the hot-eyed pair. And considering that there were now absolutely no bodies, no trace of foul play save for burn marks and pitted stone, Jack could think of only one reason for their hostility.

He smiled coldly at Drake, pointing the opposite way. "Oh look, could that be Julie and Felix?"

Drake smirked and glanced that way while Jack glared at the guards.

"Sublimato. Sublimato!" And the corridor was filled only momentarily with the shrieks and gurgles of melting men and pitting steel as two streams of globes nearly the diameter of Jack's shield slammed in to the pair of all too mortal men who had never dared alter the stories of their lives with the potency of Shadow and darkest dream. All they had was training, skill, and steel that corroded all too easily, even as their faces were flooded with corrosives hitting repeatedly with such force that only skulls remained in their warped and pitted helmets by the time they crashed to the ground.

Drake, tight smile in place, turned back around, pointedly not gazing at anything but Jack. "No, Shieldbrother, I see no trace of our friends. All I see is the door before me. Let's open it, shall we?"

And with a nod, Jack did just that.

"Um, Jack?"

"Yes?"

"You just tore off the door handle like it was clay."

"Yup. It was locked and sealed, so I had to use Artisanal Manipulation."

His friend blinked. "I didn't realize father had... Jack, our locks are indestructible."

Jack smirked. "Not if you know the rune in use, and I do," he said, before kicking open the door, the lock giving like clay as Jack and his friend sprang inside.

Drake's bemused grin turned to a desperate cry as he caught sight of the scene of horror unfolding before him.

"Father!"