"The path of Heavenly Cultivation works in mysterious ways, but the easiest way to channel it will be though your ancestors. As I am always around you, I can be your medium and though me you can call onto your ancestors and command the underworld! Try it now!" Karl said with confidence. It was actually quite easy. Countless television advertisements had showed him how to scam people and some country bumpkin without an ounce of mass media exposure could not hope to defeat him.

"What? Like my grandmother?!" Riven was eagerly hanging on Karl's every word, like a child who was about to receive a present.

"Eh . .why not." Karl agreed and decided to let Riven improvise a bit.

"Come grandmother! Let's soar the Heavens together!" Riven shouted a little bit too loud for Karl's taste, as the walls there, although stone, were not soundproof.

All the saints! He was glad that he let the teenager pick his line. How was he supposed to guide him into such a nonsense with a straight face?

  Despite his mixed feelings, Karl fulfilled his role and summoned a skeleton next to Riven. Its shining blue eyes looking at its supposed Lord. To make the spectacle more believable, he made the skeleton kneel in front of Riven, as if waiting for his commands.

"Success!" Karl encouraged the youth a little, but based on his expression, he should have rather tried to cool his temper.

"No grandma! You do not need to kneel before me!" Riven stared at the skeleton who stood up immediately after his command in a daze. "But this is bad! Have I trapped the soul of my grandma or something?"

Clearly, even Riven had been cautioned about the dangers of demonic cultivation by someone.

"She is fine. This is just a manifestation of her multidimensional spirit where none of what happens translates back into her higher dimension, invalidating the effects of her soul asynchronicity. " Karl masterfully countered.

Riven just stared at him, unable to tell him that he was wrong, because he obviously had no clue what Karl had just said.

  Karl had no clue as well. He had just mixed together a fraud physicist with an online channel of a successful clairvoyant, he had only forgotten to put in the word quantum. It was used repeatedly every time the fraud physicist was stuck in his ecstatic monologue and nearly frothed foam from his mouth.

"You have talent, the connection is stable, but you need to say the commands aloud and I have to be present as a medium. If you want your power to be stronger, you need to feed the underworld with the souls of people of stage two and higher." Karl happily info dumped his scheme onto his clueless disciple. It was a nice plan. He would be leveling him while thinking he was leveling himself.

He was a genius evil dungeon!

He pitied the naive boy a little bit, but only until he remembered Joan and the water barrel.

"So, you say that grandma has to kill people? Is this really not a demonic cultivation path?" Riven said warily, not entirely dumb.

"No, demonic paths use the souls you kill. This way you are sending them back to the dead, not using them in any way. You can think of it as the favor of the underworld when you feed them with stage two souls and above. The power does not come from enslaving the souls." Karl explained using one of the very few pieces of information he actually remembered.

"Stage two beasts will suffice?" Riven asked and caught Karl of guard, as he had never killed a stage two beast.

"Usually they do, it depends on the quality of your connection with the underworld. We need to try it out to know for certain." Karl improvised and decided to conclude their session.

"I have shown you the basics, with time you will be able to draw on your connection to summon multiple powerful entities into this world. Now I need to rest, I have already overexerted myself." Karl tried to sound tired, but was still clueless how to influence the tone of this thoughts.

"Thank you master! Rest well!" Riven did the know-how position again, clearly thrilled by his new ability.

  While pretending to be unconscious, resting, Karl observed the room of the rural Young Lord. It was not too spacious nor luxurious. Obviously the space in a fort was costly and every piece of luxury compromised its security. Remembering the meeting, the local Lord was quite fortunate to live in a fort and not a villa or an estate. The fort was probably very old and outlived its purpose, yet at this point in time, its walls would come handy again if the worries of the two Lords and the city official came true.

  He could not believe that he was still stuck outside of the city despite his many attempts to infiltrate it. However, it might not be a bad strategy to gain information. He had already found out some important intel about The Immortal from Riven and more would probably follow as he interacted more with the fort's occupants.

  However, there was some discrepancy he had on his mind. He still remembered his first encounter with Elder Gon in the Thunder God Sect and his speed was definitely not how Riven had described The Immortal. The increase of physical fitness should have been only about two times, despite that he was nearly unable to see Elder Gon's movements.

"Can it be the Mojo? Isn't wind green?" Karl whispered and thought that he had probably found the answer. It would be quite an unpleasant answer. If his hypothesis was right, then Mojo was extremely important with tremendous impact on fighting ability. Was it the reason why the Gon family was prominently in control of the city? Because of their good attribute that gave them incredible fighting ability?

  It could have also been a Wind Domain, but he had too little information about a Domain. He would try to keep himself at the edge of the fighting and get some experience points. It would take some time to reach level three in his system, but it could be done. The worst scenario was that the system trend would continue and he would need to acquire ten thousand level three souls or higher to reach level four.

"The system is out of its mind, the ten times scaling is ridiculous!" Karl complained, he knew that on level tree he would certainly need to use his structures to get further. For the time being his battle plan was clear. He would gather intel while his Young Lord would get him to level three, he would see what to do next.

"About nine hundred kills will take a while." Karl thought carefully, but he had time. All the time in the world.

* * * *

"You are a future Lord of this house, I cannot have you getting killed by some silly monster. You will stay put until the first units are armed and trained!" Lord Riven of Orlov was scolding the Young Lord who had tried to sneak out of the fort in a search of an adventure in the woods bordering the region. Even here, hunt was both fun and a matter of prestige, especially when the hunter brought back a trophy of a dangerous spirit beast. It was hard to hold back young Riven who had too much free time on his hands, young blood boiling in his veins and was a rare dual cultivator who would soon shatter the Heavens with his power.

At least so he had thought.

"I can take care of myself farther, I am not stupid to go too far!" He tried to dodge his father's attention with excuses.

"I will not keep you here but you will not make a step in the direction of the border!" Lord Riven persuaded further and when his son did not react, he decided to give him a suggestion while lowering his voice.

"Why don't you visit that girl of yours? It is much safer to stay put until our forces are in order." He attempted to wink at his son, but it induced only horror in his eyes.

"Father! Are you really ordering me to fuck now? I could not see this one coming." Young Lord Riven stared at his father breathlessly and Karl had to hold back his laughter.

There was a while of silence before the old Lord uttered with absolute seriousness.

"Fuck or manure! Now!"

Silence ensued.

  The Young Lord was really worried about his father's mental health. Becoming a Border Lord had clearly put a tremendous pressure on the old Lord of Orlov.

Tremendous pressure.

"Alright, I will be in the fields." The teenager lifted his arms in defeat and went in the direction of his horse. It would be for the best if he avoided his father for a while, in case he tried to give him an even more ridiculous order.

"And I thought you would choose manure." Karl could not help himself but jab into the Young Lord.

"Very funny, I did not know that Elders had a great sense of humor." Riven's face distorted.

"Wait, now that I think about it. Were you watching the last time?" Something had finally clicked in the youngster's brain.

"From the depth of the water barrel? No, just the first half." Karl answered with his thoughts dryly. He thought that he had finally managed to convey a hint of a feeling through his thoughts.

"Oh, sorry about that. I will place you somewhere more appropriate this time." Riven gulped trying to brush the matter quickly aside.

"That would be strongly appreciated."

  They used the same horse as before and this time Riven was even able to dismount and walk half the way to the barn before he was received with a warm welcome.

"You are here, You Majesty!" The same farm girl came and was squirming shyly in front of Riven with both hands behind her back and her eyes looking at the ground. Karl did not know who was she trying to fool, he had seen with his own eyes that he was a nymphomaniac demon when in action.

"Pretentious nympho bitch." He uttered and remembered too late that Riven had probably heard him, as he was not trying to be subtle at all.

"Don't call me that, it is really over the top." The Young Lord asked and his eyes looked directly up where Karl was resting in his hair.

"Ups." Karl had some work to do on his thought control, but judging from the mild reaction, the teenager probably even agreed with him.

"Yes, Your Majesty. " Her head still slightly down, her blue eyes shot up and hungrily stared at the Lord. "I do not have much time, I have to help out mother with the lunch."

"Do not bother with that, we will be going on a trip!" The Young Lord Riven had naturally a lot of time after his father had banned him from doing anything stupid.

"But I really can't, father will shout at me again!" She appeared to be torn between the two options, sporting an expression of a tortured animal.

"I will buy you something nice in the city." Riven used a trump card and the girl melted under the blissful weight of love, money, influence and gifts.

"But we should be quick!" She peeped and they both mounted the waiting horse.

  Riven felt the warm body pressing against his and thought about making the journey much more romantic than he had originally planned. But as his heart began to beat faster, he remembered something important.

"Oh! I have promised to the Elder not to expose him to that." He looked around for a while and then after shrugging his shoulders, he took off his silver circlet and threw it into the barn, where it landed next to a pitch fork.

"No! THE CITY!" Karl shouted angrily, but it was too late. He was already accompanied just by the old cow, the empty head of his master no longer under him.

Obviously, the Young Lord thought that no villager was dumb enough to steal his circlet as they very well knew who it belonged to.

  The Lord temporarily gone, Karl hung peacefully next to the pitch fork and enjoyed the lovely rural afternoon. It was a tremendous help that he was unable to smell anything, as he remembered that the stench of animals was not something pleasant.

"A blissful afternoon to enjoy without the need to do anything." Thinking about it, he was really lucky. Although he was just a stone stuck to a silly steel circlet, he had a tremendous advantage over normal people. He did not have to work! He always thought that work was an insidious invention of a devil who despite being unable to step onto the Earth, he sent work in his stead. To add a diabolical scheme to the evil, people were told they needed to work and were forced to want to work or even beg for it! The devil was truly a terrifying entity.

"Just hanging here and chilling, it is marvelous." He did admit that he felt kind of naked with his core this exposed, a feeling that probably stemmed from his new identity. Yet he did not find it unpleasant, watching the farmers toil from his little window during a pleasant, warm day, feeling a little bit tense because. . .

"Have I turned into a voyeur? Impossible! No, they are just farmers and they are clothed and everything!" His thoughts in the rural idyll took a strange turn, when he heard a disturbance that disrupted his farmland paradise he had been enjoying for a considerable while.

"Joan, where are you? Lazying around again! I need your help inside!" A voice of a woman sounded not far from the barn and Karl instinctively tried to cower or hide.

"No, work! The devil is everywhere!" Karl shouted in his mind, enjoying the fact that no one could hear him again.

"Where is that girl again!" A head peeked inside the barn and a piercing stare locked with the circlet hanging there, particularly focused at its black gem.

"What?! I am in danger! That is the crazy superstitious women that threw me into the well!" Karl started to take the situation more seriously as the women stared directly at him for a while. Had she recognized the black gem or not?

"No, she cannot. I am a circlet now, not a sword!" Karl was nearly sweating when the women stepped closer and her eyes widened, madness inside them.

"What is this sorcery? It cannot be! This is sorcery! The barn! It is cursed! Our barn has been possessed by an evil spirit!" The women haphazardly ran out of the barn, nearly tumbling over the cow nearby and continued to ran towards the house.

"Thanks The Lord that the barn does not fit into the well." Karl sighed and continued to wait for Riven, no longer disturbed from his afternoon nap.

Thankfully, local people probably knew the women's issues better than he did and no one came to bother and investigate the supposedly cursed barn.

  It was already nighttime when Riven was carrying Karl back to the fort on the top of his head. Karl had to admit that the boy was not as stupid as he had thought. He had stealthily released his lover in front of the barn and rode off before the angry father of Joan could manage to catch him with his pitchfork and surely intended to use the perfect excuse in front of his father that he had commanded him to do it. Karl hoped that Riven would not be learning the ways of the world too quickly, or he might see through his scam.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"You are really a fox, Young. . .. "

"Let's go squash some rats." Riven said and steered his horse directly to the border instead of the fort.

  Karl had no idea where the Young Lord had left his brain this time, and he had just wanted to praise his wits! He had to know that his father's worry was not just some superficial act. It was really dangerous deeper in the forest. He had not met any dangerous animals back then, but it was logical that all the fauna had left during the clash between the cultists and the sect.

What if he were to crack during one of the boy's stupid adventures?

"Riven, calm down. It is night! What you are about to do is completely stupid." He tried to persuade Riven, but his reaction was not what he had expected.

"What? Do you think that I am useless too? I can handle a few beasts!" He received a fiery answer and based on his experience, it was clear that something must have happened in the city.

"Who said that?" He asked, but there was only silence from his bearer.

Was it connected to the girl or not?

"If you want to became truly powerful and wipe your ass with anyone who have wronged you, anyone, even The Immortal, the first thing you need to learn is to calm down your emotions and listen to what I am telling you. You will become more powerful than anyone residing in that stinky hole of a city, we just need to calmly, gradually work for ti. Do you understand?" He began his psychological operation, but there was no response from the youth. Based on his understanding of the brain, at this moment Riven's brain had been flooded with adrenaline and dozens of other bothersome substances that made his behavior as dependable as a heroine addict. He needed to slowly, methodically talk him out of it while all the chemicals were being burned out from his system.

"Do you see that city? That is how a shitehole looks like! I have seen cities hundred times bigger, with methods of transportation, power and luxury the bumpkins over there are unable to even imagine, much less comprehend! You cannot be stopped at the beginning of your journey just because you made a silly blunder." He kept his steady pressure while expecting the constant exertion to improve the chemical situation inside of the Young Lord's brain.

"Lord Riven, now stop your horse and let's make a plan to kick their ass! "

It took some time, but then finally, Riven had stopped the horse that was clearly happy as well that his Lord regained some level of sanity.

"There was this. .. this damned fucker!" Riven began to explain and Karl was clear that the young man was not ready to talk about the experience, nor do anything else.

"I know what we will do. You need to get up first thing in the morning and I will start to teach you seriously. Here in the forest, on beasts. However I need you fresh tomorrow, so go to bed now to be ready for the next day. It will be taxing." He was curious himself how the training would look like, but he needed the Young Lord calm and collected before anything else.

"Alright, alright Elder. We will start to train for real tomorrow."

Karl did not know if he should be happy that he had managed to persuade his restless Lord, or to cry in a corner, because he had no idea what he was going to do the next day.

* * * *

  The shadows of the trees by the road were still long with the sun having no strength at all when the hooves of their horse were threading the same path as yesterday. The Young Lord Riven of Orlov was more than eager to train under the guidance of his mentor who sat calmly on the top of his head. He looked very calm, because as a black gem, he was unable to pace back and forth, freaking out about what he was going to do.

"Alright, let's sum it up. We first need to know if you are attuned to the underworld enough to use even the souls of beasts. We need to find one and kill it. If everything goes as I expect, we will then simply need to hunt spirit beasts in the second stage until the connection is solid enough."

"And then what?" The youngster was clearly not satisfied with the gradual progress. He wanted to be strong immediately, but knew himself that was not possible.

"That will come later. If I tell you too much knowledge from the higher realm, it will only put you in danger. Remember that there exist methods to pry onto the secrets of the mind. Do not worry, everything will come in due time." Naturally, Karl had skipped the little detail that they will need over nine hundred souls of the second stage for him to level up and he did not even dare to think about the next step that probably involved ten thousand stage tree souls.

  They decided not to use the old road to the Thunder God Sect, in case there was someone still lurking on the road. They left their horse in care of the farmer the land of whom bordered the forest and continued on foot. At first, the forest was not dense, but it quickly changed and it was clear that leaving the horse behind was the right choice.

"I hope we won't get lost." Karl remarked, because he would certainly lose his way if not for the Young Lord leading the way.

"Do not worry, this is my territory. I have been wandering though these wood since a long time ago." Riven said confidently.

"You make it sound like it was at the dawn of civilization. " Karl kept looking around, because he was unsure of his bearer's fighting skills. "Turn back if we encounter a stage tree spirit beast, we need power, not heroism."

"Of course, do you think I am stupid?" Karl heard the response and had to strongly restrain himself not to think about anything for a while.

  Instead, he thought about the ecosystem of the world. In a cultivation world, even some beast could cultivate and he presumed that here it was the same. However, it was quite strange how it worked, because based on the widely accepted system, that would mean that the rabbits were running around the forest, searching for their Idols. That could not be right. He wanted to ask, but this was obviously the kind of information he should know as a wise Elder. He settled with the explanation that some Mojos were obvious and easy to level up in a natural environment and some were not. That would also explain why some of the beasts were ordinary even if old, but others leveled through the stages of cultivation.

"I see a rabbit." Suddenly, the Young Lord whispered and crouched.

"What stage is it?" Karl asked eagerly, wanting to finally move up his experience points counter, after what seemed like ages of stagnation.

"How would I know? He does not have it written on his ears!" Riven responded and shattered one of the mechanics Karl hoped was natural in the cultivation world. Were there no spirit waves, or Mojo waves or something? Was there really nothing like that or was his Lord just useless?

  It looked like he was not destined to be the protagonist who inspected everything, knew about anything that moved and deduced miraculous methods based on his wealth of information. He would be the clueless protagonist who did not know a thing.

"Lame." He thought aloud due to his frustration.

"Do it yourself if you are so smart, you are surprisingly unhelpful in some areas." He received an immediate answer that he could not refute. Karl wanted to give the youngster a piece of his mind, but then remained silent, because his picture of a wise elder was already shaky enough. He did not need to add any more cracks to it.

  The next second, an arrow stuck the rabbit on the first try and Riven smirked, admiring his own marksmanship. He walked closer to the animal and threw it over his shoulder.

"Lame you say? With the first shot." He walked back while boasting about his skills.

"I was thinking about something else. What do you think? That I am thinking only about you all the time?" Karl brushed Riven aside, irritated by his intrusiveness. "By the way, what are you going to do with that now?"

"The dead rabbit? Bring it to the farmer naturally." Riven shrugged his shoulders as it was a matter of course.

"You mean we will be running back and forth with every single animal you kill? We will be here until the world ends!" Karl wanted to scream with frustration, partially because only he knew about the insane number of kills they needed to make.

"And what else do you want to do? Leave it there? It is a waste! I mostly hunt with others, but I can't now as some of them might spy on me." Riven bit his lip, clearly unsatisfied as well that he would be running back and forth like a courier.

"Your own people selling you out?" Karl had thought that he had more loyalty instilled in his men.

"With enough gold? Why not. And where gold is not enough, blackmail always works." Riven stated like it was a common knowledge and Karl understood that he was a Lord after all. He had to have some level of exposure to his father's politics.

"If we go further, it will no longer be your territory, thus it won't be a waste right? Just the way of nature." Karl knew that they would get really nowhere, running with every single carcass back and forth.

"You have told me to be cautious." Riven pointed out inconveniently. The Young Lord was smart exactly at the wrong moments every time.

"Cautious does not seem to cut it." Karl snapped back, how could a few rabbit corpses be more important than their future?

"Fine, we will go deeper where the people do not hunt for food." Riven flung the rabbit into the woods, irritated by the complications and headed again in the direction away of the border. This time with much faster pace.

  They walked for some time, making their way through the green sea of the forest. It was closer to the forests of mild climate, not at all a jungle that Karl would hate to traverse. There was too many spiders and other critters in a jungle environment. He searched his memory for the data that had been revealed at the meeting by the colonel. They should be far away from the region where beasts of level three and higher had been spotted, that much he could remember, but the situation of the second tier beasts was too chaotic. He decided to tenderly poke into Riven if he remembered more than him, but when he saw his determined face and remembered his shaky track record, he knew that silence was the best course of action.

They would manage somehow.

  Riven walked on and on. At some point Karl noticed that he began panting a lot, not lessening his pace that bordered with a sprint. He should have talked with the youth more, he was obviously under too much pressure after the yesterday's incident, too eager to take vengeance on whoever wronged him. However, before he could find suitable words, Riven himself addressed him.

"We won't be able to run away from those. We need to make a stand somewhere and quick." Riven blurted out in between his rugged breaths.

"Who?!" Karl was stupefied, how could he not notice anything? It was not surprising, he had been a city dweller while the youth had lived near the forests all his life.

"Blackpaws, about six of them." Riven added and the information from the meeting immediately flooded Karl's brain.

  Blackpaw Wolves. Wild wolves that had attributes related to hunt tended to level up easily into the second stage and found each other using specific howls that enabled them to group into a pack. Their Alpha tended to be only the second stage, because higher stage wolves were too aggressive and did not need the group to hunt anymore, turning solitary. The size of the pack varied greatly, but large packs did not have enough food near human territories and tended to avoid large settlements, exterminating smaller villages with no protection.

The colonel recommended that a squad of experienced and well-equipped soldiers was enough to deal with the threat. With less personnel, the chance of casualties was high.

"How large is a squad?" Karl mused and immediately received an answer.

"Five." He felt like a bucket of cold water was poured over his head. The Young Lord was definitely not stronger than two such soldiers, at most three.

"Stop and take a breath, we will make a stand. I will use some tricks to help you." He would need to spin some story later, but he felt unwilling to let the youth die.

He had invested too much effort into him to let him die. Yeah, that was it. The wolves were just bad for business and needed to go.

"If you are a fraud, pulling my leg, I will haunt you from the afterlife." Riven said coldly and stopped while gripping his sword tightly. He sliced a nearby stick and grabbed it with his free hand. Dual wielding his sword and the stick, he waited for the wolves to show up.

"What about the bow?" Karl asked with some hope.

"Useless. They are too quick and it can only wound them at most. Unless I hit their eyes, but that is almost impossible with their reflexes. What tricks can you do, Elder?"

"Let's say that temporarily, there will be a lot more Grandmas." Karl knew that his bearer would die if he held back.

"I am counting on you." Riven said while blood began rushing into his head. His heart thumped like crazy, as the black paws of the wolves drew closer and closer until he was completely encircled by them. Seven hungry beasts staring at him with hunger.

"Shouldn't we have our backs against a tree?" Karl said uneasily while looking at the sparkling white teeth of the Blackpaw Wolves.

"Confidence, not caution against these. Gradma, let's soar though the high heavens once more!" Riven roared and unexpectedly threw himself against the nearest beast. It jumped back immediately, dodging the aggressive move and the wolf behind Riven's back leaped forward to bite him from his blind spot. However, the Young Lord knew well the classic tactics of wolves and turned immediately with his sword drawing a wide circle, just barely missing the attacking wolf that used its good reflexes to jump back at the last second.

"It was about time, they will try to tire me out." Riven shouted in distress, feeling the pressure from the encirclement. He calmed down a little when he saw multiple places around him stir with activity. The dead leaves moved and lifted, white skeletons with their eyes shining with blue light emerging all around him. When Riven reached the count of ten, he stopped counting and sighed with relief. He was no longer outnumbered.

"We will be the ones tiring them out, for the dead know no respite." Karl said a badass line, but knew that the situation was still serious. He knew how fragile his skeletons could be.and the wolves were not a simple stage one wolves. For the time, he summoned fifteen skeletons that were harassing the pack from behind, totally disrupting their strategy, turning the whole fight into a chaotic brawl.

"Those skeletons are too fragile, they will be all gone in a minute." Riven uttered while exchanging blows with one of the wolves that had one of his ears bitten though, probably from the infighting between the wolves. None of them wanted to commit to any of their strikes as Karl kept encouraging him to stall for time.

"That is not how this works, I can call on countless of those. Trust me and stall for time." Karl insisted. It was true that the wolves were superior to his skeletons in every way, but he had fifteen of them. Wolves kept making mistakes and were punished for them when the skeletons hurled themselves at the beasts in suicidal attacks. His low level minions had only an upkeep cost, but no summoning cost and he planned to exploit it to the limit.

  The brawl continued and the damage piled up on both sides. Riven had his stick arm badly wounded and was now propped against a tree, a tactic that he previously refused to employ, probably because he did not know about the nature of Karl's helpers.

Suddenly, the eyes of one of the wolves turned completely red and it charged at Riven with incredible speed.

"Bloodthirst! I hope it is the only one!" Riven jumped aside trying to dodge the charge that was unnaturally quick and brutal. Karl had managed to throw a pair of skeletons at the wolf, but he simply brushed them aside like an adult pushing back kids, not caring for the wounds they caused on its body.

"This won't do, something tougher!" Karl did not need to summon his stats, because he had already done his research when the combat started. His choice was clear.

Karl Gulden

Level 2 Dungeon Core

Mana Regeneration - 100/s

Spells- [Dig], [Build]

Summons- [Skeleton(Mold) 5/s], [Forest Guardian(Tree) 50/s], [Wolf(Fur) 50/s], [Sapling Sentinel(Life) 5/s], [Mechatron Remnant(Magnetism) 50/s]

[Experience 89/1000]

  A swarm of roots erupted from the ground and a tall tree grew up on the spot in a matter of seconds. Its humanoid shape lifted one of its legs and tried to kick the unnaturally enraged wolf, but the beast dodged with ease and bit into the wooden leg vigorously. That was its last mistake, as the roots around the leg moved to restrain one of its paws and a huge fist smashed the wolf's back from above, shattering the beast's spine.

  The wolf howled in pain and died under more attacks from the terrifying wooden entity. It was already the third casualty and it was enough to send all the rest of the wolves running away from the strange enemies that did not seem to follow any logic.

"What is that?!" Riven looked with wide eyes at the Forest Guardian, not daring to get close to it. "It is not grandma, right?"

"Indeed, what is that?" Karl muttered, but he had in mind the last entry in his status screen. That felt clearly out of place. "I should rather not touch something that fishy, not yet."

"Remember this place well Lord Riven, we will definitely return here in the future. As far as this goes." He would point at the Forest Guardian, but had no hands.

"You've been pulling my leg all the while right? There is no grandma and no Elder." Riven said bluntly out of the blue. Karl would have been surprised some time ago, but he was not anymore. He had seen the signs and understood that although Riven was impulsive and young, even acting silly at times, he was definitely no fool.

"What do you want to do about it? Is it really the right moment to tell me? It would be much safer to confront me at the fort." He did not mind the confrontation, an irrational feeling that came out of nowhere. The intense fight made him less afraid for some reason and he was confident that Riven was not his opponent. Definitely not in his current state.

"For me? Sure. For all the people there and my father after seeing your monstrosity over there? Not so much." He pointed at the tree entity that had clearly impressed him a little too much.

"Based on the character of your minions, even if I killed this though looking guy, you can just summon a new one and then another one. You are almost unlimited in the terms of reconstruction of your minions, right? How many skeletons the wolves killed? Thirty? Forty? Or even fifty? It made them no good. I might be able to take you by surprise and shatter that black gem that houses you, but how can I know that there is no other vessel? You can come for revenge the next day. " The Young Lord Riven of Orlov straightened his back and took the circlet off his head, staring directly into the black gem.

"No, we will end this here and now like two men. And if your secret is really too heavy for me to bear, only I will carry it to my grave. No one else." Riven said decisively while looking directly at the steel circlet that he held in his outstretched hand.

  Karl Gulden stared at the boy and could not deny he was impressed. No, this was no longer a boy, this was a young man. All his instincts shouted at him to kill him. He was a liability. A person that knew his secret. He was too dangerous and should be taken care of. Then, he would be able to restart his adventure again, this time a little bit smarter, a little bit stronger.

But for some reason, he could not do it.

"What is this, I have killed a child for fuck's sake and I am unable to get rid of this snotty brat?!" A part of him was angry at himself, but when he tried to give the order, another part of him strongly opposed. All the time he had watched people around him getting killed with indifference. Wu Gon, the peasant thief, the whole sect, Zhan Gon with his unfortunate oath, the little girl and now his humanity suddenly decided to make a stand?

Ridiculous!

However, even as ridiculous as it would seem, it was the truth.

"Riven brat, I have no words. You've completely got me." Karl would began to laugh if he could.

"Well, what will it be, Elder? Or should I call you by your real name?" Riven still stared at him, motionless, determination stemming from his every move.

  The Forest Guardian stood just next to Riven and yet, he was unable to give the kill command. The dungeon part in him knew that it was a weakness, a flaw to be eradicated, but the human remnant inside him refused to do it, as it would signify the definite end of the person he once was.

"My name is Karl, Karl Gulden. Always was and always will be. " He worded the second part more for himself than the noble holding him. He made the decision, even though it was not grounded in logic, nor in his newly found instincts. "I have a feeling that I will bitterly regret this later."

"You won't." Riven smiled with his typical silly smile.

"You seem too sure about that."

"Besides, you have promised me to make me stronger than The Immortal, remember?" Riven's smile even widened.

"Oh, come on! That would take ages to accomplish!" Karl already regretted his decision.

"Wait, what? Was that not a lie? Can you actually do it?" Riven's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"It might not be impossible." Karl mused, calculating how the whole incident changed his situation.

"Then count me in." Riven put the circlet back on the top of his head and cleaned his sword before sheathing it back into his scabbard.

"I do not know what your story is, but as you have said, we will show them all, because Riven and Karl are opened for business!" The Young Lord patted the arm of the Forest Guardian fearlessly and Karl felt that he had just joined a gang of young delinquents.

"I am too old for this!" He complained, but could only move on, as the world never spun the other way.