The relief as Aeolian Vitality started to heal his wounds nearly caused Ander to topple over. Ander’s entire body had been clenched against the agony and he was able to finally relax for a moment. He used the skill’s active effect, and the pain quickly disappeared. In just a few minutes, both his leg and his arm were back to proper condition. With his brain able to function again, he looked at his last set of notifications again. Divine Vitality transformed into Aeolian Vitality because of the influence of Way of the Wind. That was interesting. It wasn’t anything bad either, simply giving more benefits. Was this normal? He had no clue. He doubted very many people had multiple legendary skills to test what happened. Oddly enough, Way of the Wind did not seem changed at all, only the new skill. Ander decided that it was a good idea to have a look at his soul.

When Ander turned his sight inward, he saw that his soul was covered entirely with patterns representing skills. Any gap between them was far too small to accept a new skill, even a simple one. This worried Ander, while Way of the Wind and Aeolian Vitality made for a pretty good powerset, he had very little utility and since it seemed he would be going solo for the time, utility was king. Still, he decided to put that thought off for the time until he looked things over a bit more. Way of the wind seemed entirely unchanged. Fortunately for Ander, the damage to his soul had been mostly confined to Walker of Memories. The new skill, Minds of the Void, was still sporting damage, but was more fixed than not. Ander examined the piece of wind spirit that was still in the process of fully fusing to his soul. It was only half connected, and still a completely distinct entity, which told Ander he needed to fight more, to expedite the fusion.

Then he turned to Aeolian Vitality, where a golden bead sat slightly touching the surface of his soul. The bead looked off however, not carrying the luminescent shine that Ander expected. Instead it looked more like something very black, but reflecting gold off the surface. There was a feel of divinity, but it was a pale shadow compared to what Ander had felt in the vision. Part of him was glad for that. He had dove right in head first without considering the consequences of getting another Legendary skill this way, much less one from a god. And he couldn’t fool himself. The golden thread screamed divinity the moment he laid eyes on it.

But Ander was still worried. He didn’t know what had replaced the divine power, but he had a guess, and he had no clue what fusing a piece of the void to his soul would do to him long term. Not that he had much of a choice now. He knew from the story Gadreel had told Ansiel, that getting rid of a Legendary skill, or even the piece of soul that powered it, was no easy feat and could easily leave him crippled. It was a fool's errand, which meant he would have to live with the consequences of what he had just done.

Why hadn’t he just let himself die? Cormal would have been happy to do him in. And then Ander would have been reborn in a new egg with all of Cormal’s notes and maps. It would have been easy, and he wouldn’t have harmed his soul, which was arguably the far more important thing in this scenario.

Ander sighed and went to the notification about having no more space to add more skills. It gave two potential options to move forward, which was to level up or to gain a class. The first was easy enough. He had already noticed minute expansion of his soul with every level. But for that to work, he would have to get to level 50 before getting a new skill. Unless there was more expansion with each level, then it could be sooner. The second option was what intrigued Ander however. No mention was made before this at any time that classes were a thing in this world. It had only ever been skills. And spells, but those were just skills by a different name as far as Ander could tell.

A class might change everything, and Ander wanted to know more. First he tried focusing on the term in the notification, but there was no luck. Which really left him only one option. Minds of the Void. But Ander had stayed in one place too long already, and he wasn’t in the mood to be found by monsters or Crimson Stars members.

Ander got to his feet. He was tired, and very hungry. He supposed he could do as he had back in the ravine and find a monster den to appropriate. He could then eat whatever had been living there, and would have a relatively safe spot to go through his spoils. Ander was pretty sure he could remember his route through the caves, which meant he would be able to orient himself on the maps.

With that in mind, Ander set off to find the nearest den of edible monsters.

. . .

Ander settled down against his bear fur and enjoyed fried lizard. It turned out that the monsters he found were of the same kind he had thrown that recruiter to. It tasted like chicken too, which was great as he knew how to season chicken. It was still a shock and delight that he had found food in the Aetherworks Foundry. Most of it was beer, seasonings, and baking ingredients, but there were a few things edible on their own. Besides the beer that is. With that, and a magical hot plate Ander got from the foundry, Ander was able to make himself a close approximation to beer battered chicken tenders. Lizard tenders. Ander stopped thinking about that, and focused on the fact that it had turned out surprisingly good for a camp setup.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

After he had his fill, he pulled out the table that had all of the Crimson Stars maps, and started going through them. Ander grinned, finding them to be exactly what he had been looking for. Maps of the cave system, maps of the elven ruins, called the Deepweave in these documents. It was perfect. It turned out that they had chased him into Dusk Ranger territory, at least technically. From what Ander could tell, the actual controlled area was far less than the area each of these groups claimed to hold. There simply weren’t enough people to hold all the tunnels.

But this did pose a problem. He had to get to Crimson Stars territory for his information to be any good, or steal more information. He wasn’t quite ready to have the whole pit against him right off the bat. Crimson Stars were enough on their own. While he did have a number of good maps, none of them detailed this side of the cave system in particular detail, which made his only real way out the way he had come, unless he wanted to risk getting lost. Ander really wished he had a mapping skill, something for a minimap or something like that, but with no more space left in his soul, he couldn’t. More than that, none of the mobs in the caves were close to his level; he had to delve into the deep ruins to find those. Which brought him back to his first problem. Ander vowed the moment he had the opportunity he would snag a legendary mapping skill.

With that Ander went to sleep for the night, and packed up the moment he woke. He would simply have to risk the sinkhole. He knew what cave he had to enter, and which routes he had to follow to avoid patrols. He simply had to get there. Ander made his way back along his path, to find the entrance to this section of caves guarded by no less than 30 Crimson Stars Members. When Ander felt with his wind sense, he could tell that there were dozens more around the adjacent caves, several caves in either direction.

Tactical retreat.

Ander had to come up with a new plan. A quick round of identifies had put most of the people in the group at levels 15 - 18, but there were a few over 20, with the leader being 25. Ander could punch above his weight, but with a level 25 holding him down, no chance. They had brought a whole raid group to deal with him. But that did make him wonder why they thought he would come out here? That made him quite nervous.

Ander sat on a rock and considered. The best option would be to sneak out with no-one the wiser. But Ander had never been the sneaky type, and that was coming back to haunt him. He was surprised he wasn’t seen when he peeked at the enemy’s numbers. But that could actually work well for him. The enemy didn’t know the passages very well. With a few hours, Ander might be able to find some places where he could turn them around and either escape or attack from the rear. He might also be able to lead them into some monster dens, but he had little hope that the monsters in this area would put up much of a fight. There was a level 25 in that group after all.

Still, if the monsters delayed them, it might be worth it. It wouldn’t be worth it to drag the monsters out to them, which had been his first idea. Their defenses would be sufficient for a horde of level 10 monsters. Maybe he could cause a cave-in? But that would be hard, these caves were supernaturally sturdy, and Ander had no clue how to cause a cave-in that didn’t take him out with his enemies. He would look for places where rocks might be easily dislodged, and that should slow them down. But again, he was back to slowing them down. And he had five groups to deal with. Fat chance he would lure them all in here without them sending a message to the boss. If Cormal got involved, Ander would have to run away, no questions asked.

After thinking for a while, Ander came to the conclusion that all he could do was to explore for a bit, and see what he had to work with. Ander wandered down tunnel after tunnel, building a mental map of the surrounding area. He found several good places where he could easily double back, as well as a difficult to spot vertical shaft in the floor. He only saw it with his wind sense, and would have fallen if he had been anyone else. But what Ander was really happy with was the large cavern he found, filled with large stalactite columns. If he had to fight, it would be there. The big deal was that he needed to get all five groups in the caves at once. That was well over a hundred leveled individuals, with at least one capable of matching him over at least a short period. And he needed them excited enough to come in without sending a messenger for Cormal.

But Ander had a thought on that. He summoned a file that had been on the war room’s table and looked through it. Ander grinned, knowing he had exactly what he needed.

. . .

His disguise was not difficult to put together. He had managed to scrounge together a set of black clothes, including an enveloping cloak. But the golden key he had found was the real focus of the whole costume. Really it was brass, but it was large and gaudy, and from a distance Ander was sure it would be mistaken for the golden key the Crimson Stars were after. The file folder had told of a door, made of adamantine, that they had no capacity to open. Even though it was in the elven settlement it was obviously dwarven work. This was because they had drawn adamantine throughout the surrounding stone, and then warded it against damage. And when they said surrounding stone, they meant around the entire perimeter of the room the door guarded.

This was not the first such room they had encountered, and every one had given fabulous rewards. Problem was, it seemed that the key was held by a shadowy figure. This figure was extremely fast, immune to nearly all types of damage, and could fight if cornered. So far, no-one had cornered it and lived. Of course that had happened all of two times, so Ander hoped that their greed would overcome their sense of self preservation. Ander hung the key from his belt where it would be obvious. The real clincher in all this was that Cormal had offered a reward to the person who presented him the key. And it was a hefty reward too. Which meant that there shouldn’t be one person willing to stay behind.