Administrator Command, Zenos repeated in his thoughts. How did an NPC wield the power of the arkitects?

It was the following day and he sat alone on a hill overlooking the birch-wood valley. Barren trees towered like bone-white skeletons over a pale-yellow quilt of leaves. What automatons Zenos had left remained idle and there were no leaf piles to mark the remains from his last massacre. Those pieces that laid among the birch roots gleamed bronze whenever the cold sun shined.

Zenos wore his gray coat. His arms were folded over his knees as he watched branches rustle in a breeze. I don’t know if I’ll get a satisfying answer by thinking about it, he concluded. But, Mad’s description of two lights in the black ocean… reminds me of that thing.

He remembered the creature in the cavern: The Black Forest. He thought of its glowing eyes and crooked posture, its resemblance to Mad, and how it stunned him. Something else happened in that cave, but the memory escaped him. It stayed on the tip of his tongue, like it was hidden in the shadow of a flag.

Zenos ran his hands over his head. “Ah, forget it,” he said exasperated as he ruffled his hair. “I’ll stay focused on what’s in front of me.”

He stood and reached through the holographic screen of his inventory. “I don’t have enough power now,” he said. “Mad’s entire raid failed, and without an arkitect’s power, he would have died too. The dungeon ruler…. If one strike instantly killed a bronze adventurer and another fatally wounded a silver one, then that means I need to be stronger; much, much stronger.

“If I had the full extent of my magic, one Obliteration Beam would be enough. If I had magic at all, it would easily tip the scale…. Well, I already have a big advantage.”

Zenos drew his sword.

“The remaining automatons should still give experience.” He stepped down the hill, held the sword close to his side. “I’ll take as much as I can get.”

Light shined in his eyes.

[At-Will Ability: True Eyes of the Emperor Activated.]

“Attack me,” he ordered.

[Compulsion failed x9.]

Zenos was currently level 25. He was confident enough in his [Longsword of the Novice] that he didn’t remove his coat. The nine automatons that turned toward him—all that remained of the group that once wandered there—would be eliminated without a single injury. He wouldn’t break a sweat.

The first automaton swung for his face. Zenos ducked beneath its arm and struck its gimble with a decisive slash. [You have dealt 1,000 critical lethal damage to the waist,] the system reported.

The automaton crumbled to the forest floor, defeated by a single strike.

[One level up is waiting for you.]

I can handle this, he thought and imagined the twenty-foot tall dungeon ruler towering among the aggravated automatons. I can handle the dungeon break too. I have to.

He clutched his sword and charged into the valley.

An hour later and the last of the automatons collapsed against a birch trunk. A mortal injury had been hewed in its chest, but it wasn’t dead. The neck shuddered and it appeared to reach for the hem of Zenos’ coat. Then its HP reached zero and its hand dropped against the leaves. Its neck sagged; its head hung lifeless against its breast.

“And that’s the last one,” Zenos said, stowed his sword in his inventory.

He knelt down, pried away the automaton’s broken chest armor, and tore the amethyst gem from its mithril housing. [Core Gem] the system indicated after he’d taken in his hand.

“Core gem?” he muttered.

Mad mentioned something about that yesterday.

“Zenos!”

A chill electrified his spine and he turned his head. Mad was about ten feet behind him, his walking stick slung over his shoulder.

“Must you always sneak up on me?” Zenos asked. He stood with the gem fresh between his fingers.

Mad chuckled. He had an infectious smile that made the day before seem like a dream. The story that he told about his party—his family—and his friends, the adventurer’s of Adheim Island, felt so far away. It may have been a year ago, Zenos thought as Mad approached, but he thinks about that raid every day. To be able to smile after that… just what kind of man is he?

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“I didn’t mean to surprise you,” Mad said. “I can’t help that I walk softly.”

Forget walking softly! Zenos frowned. There are leaves everywhere and I didn’t hear you crinkle one!

“Is that your last gem?” Mad asked, pointed at Zenos’ hand.

“Oh,” Zenos said and raised the gem. It sparkled in the light. “It must be.”

Mad plucked it from his fingers. “Then that’s twenty,” he said.

“I might have some more.” Zenos gestured to the broken automatons.

“That’s fine,” Mad said. “I should have cleaned out this valley a long time ago.”

Zenos walked toward the husk of another automaton. “These are core gems, aren’t they?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mad said. His smile faltered and there was a distant look in his eyes. Zenos caught it when he glanced over his shoulder.

“The core gem that powers the dungeon ruler,” he continued. “The dungeon’s various monsters, and these machines bear slight differences, but—”

“But they’re the same,” Zenos said, pried off a chest panel and revealed the gem inside.

“Sort of,” he said.

“Well, are they or not?” Zenos tugged the gem and ripped it from its tangle of delicate mithril wires.

“Do you mind taking a walk with me?” Mad asked.

Zenos stood, tossed the gem in the palm of his hand. “Is this your way of saying you’ll explain when we’re there?”

Mad smiled.

He helped Zenos retrieve the remaining core gems and they left together, up the trail that led from the valley and into the hills. They went to the hot springs, but they didn’t stop there. They crossed the warm-water creek and walked on a path crowded by bushes and ferns.

Zenos could tell no one had walked there in some time. Wherever Mad led him, it took them beyond the local hills and around the mountain, to its western face. Before a tall cliff, colored brown and yellow with moss dried by the winter sun, was a clearing among the trees. Small collections of stones were piled there, separate but disorganized. Zenos immediately thought of the leaves the automatons gathered.

“When I couldn’t find families to receive the bodies, well…” Mad’s voice waned.

“You buried them here?”

“I buried many of them here,” he said. “As it happens, those that accept suicide missions are usually the sort that don’t have families in the first place.”

It was late in the day; the sun was setting. The sky was painted in its fanciful colors and the evening light fell bright on the stone-pile graves. Green grass thrived in their long shadows.

“Why did you move them so far from the dungeon?” Zenos asked as he stepped carefully through the graveyard.

“The sun sets in the west,” Mad said.

Zenos peered at a stone pile beneath him. Dense moss one the east face of the rocks, where it was shielded from the wind and sun. “So, why did you bring me here?” he asked, looked up from the stone marker.

Mad removed a gem from his coat pocket and sunlight was caught in its prism. A bright purple glare shined over the graves. “These core gems are extremely valuable,” Mad said. “They have many uses, such as for spells, or in the forging of weapons. You could consider recovering them an adventurer’s primary job.”

“Is that why you wanted them?” Zenos asked.

Mad smiled and clutched the gem in his hand. “What’s inside would be useful for fighting the dungeon ruler,” he said and placed one foot forward. “But that’s not why I wanted the gems.” He wound up his arm and chucked the crystal at the cliff wall. It shattered in brilliant purple shards.

Zenos folded his arms, watched as the purple liquid dripped down the cliff face. It evaporated in moments, but the dead moss it touched, that which turned brown in the sun, became green again. Tiny purple flowered bloomed among their clumps.

“The gems we find from monsters are different from the core gem that powers a dungeon ruler,” made said. “And the ones that power the automatons are different from them all. When these ones break, there’s a spark I can feel with the Sight.”

“What does that mean?” Zenos asked.

Mad threw the next gem and it shattered on the wall. “Real core gems don’t break easily. These are cut from glass.”

“Imitations?”

Mad nodded. “A necromancer bound spirits to these false gems.”

Zenos frowned.

“I didn’t think about it until I moved Khelero to this clearing,” he continued. “The way the automatons piled leaves around the each other was… very familiar to me.”

“Is that sort of thing allowed?” Zenos asked.

“A slave binding can get a necromancer sent to the inquisition,” Mad said. “But these automatons are older than them. They’re from a time before Atilonia, and maybe even the guild. I don’t know why these spirits were trapped, but I felt pity for them.

“It must be like a nightmare, don’t you think?”

Zenos approached Mad, stopped before him with his hand on his side. “If the automatons had spirits in them, you should have told me,” he said.

“You needed practical training,” Mad said. “I can’t always protect you.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“You might have hesitated.”

“But you hesitated,” Zenos said.

Mad said nothing and deflected his eyes. He held his arms tight to his sides.

“You did,” Zenos continued. “The reason you gave me that quest was because you couldn’t bear to kill them yourself.”

“No, you’re right,” Mad said. “They were abominations. I should have freed them immediately.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Again, Mad said nothing. He glanced at Zenos and smiled faintly. It was a look of embarrassment.

Zenos understood. “Hand me a gem,” he said.

Mad relaxed and placed a gem in his hand.

Zenos wound back his arm and threw it into the cliff.

“I once met my most loyal comrade on the battlefield,” he said. “He tried to kill me.”

“Your comrade?” Mad asked.

Zenos nodded. “That was before we understood each other,” he said. “But there came a moment of clarity, when he saw himself in me, and from that moment he set down his weapon. He could no longer fight.”

“Do you think that’s empathy?” Mad asked.

“Or sympathy,” Zenos said. “It’s hard to eat something that has a face; it’s hard to kill something that you understand.”

“Even so,” Mad said and threw a gem at the wall. “I should have done it.”

“It’s not wrong to feel lonely,” Zenos replied.

There was a gem wound in Mad’s hand, but he stopped mid throw. His arm trembled and the gem fell to the grass.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

Their conversation fell away and they threw the rest of their gems in silence. When stars appeared in the sky, Mad lit an anima thread and they headed to the trail. They left the graves and a cliff of purple flowers behind.