Lyria and I stopped a little before reaching camp. We used handfuls of dirt to rub the blood off our bodies and clothing. It kind of worked in the same way rubbing yourself with sandpaper would. Except all the blood we managed to scrub off was replaced by dirt, which was only a slight improvement.

Lyria stood up after she was done. “How do I look?”

I studied her. Her short red hair was clumped and matted with dirt and blood she couldn’t get out. Her normally smooth skin was covered in small cuts and bruises beneath a layer of grime. The padded clothing she had on beneath her armor was stained all over.

“You look terrible,” I said.

Lyria folded her arms. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re about as charming as a toothache?”

I smiled, pulling off my helmet and rubbing more dirt in my hair. “I’m honest. That’s all. You normally look great. Right now? Not so much.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t look so good, either. I think if you take much more damage, your clothes are going to completely fall apart on you. Except for your boots and cloak, that is.”

“It’s nice, right?” I said, lifting my cloak and appreciating how pristine it was. If something stained or tore the fabric of my cloak or boots, the damage was gradually repaired after a little time. Stains vanished like water drying on a hot day, and tears knitted themselves together within minutes.

I wondered what would happen if I blew up the entire cloak. Would it regenerate from thin air? Or did there need to be at least one molecule of cloak left to regenerate?

Then again, I didn’t plan to figure that one out. First of all, I wasn’t about to destroy my cloak. Even if I got an upgrade, I was sure I could sell this one for some decent money. And if I ever took enough damage to atomize my cloak while wearing it, I doubted I’d be around to find out if the cloak regenerated.

I pulled one of our many water flasks from my inventory and took a long gulp, then offered it to Lyria. She thanked me, draining the rest of it. “There. Another empty flask for your potion shit.”

I laughed. “If we were finding any ingredients down here, that might actually be exciting.” I frowned at the flask, put it in my slip space, and then pulled out another water flask.

“You’re still thirsty?” Lyria asked.

“No… I have an idea.” My Elemental Projection skill only worked on weapons, but you could use just about anything as a weapon, so long as you could wield it. That probably meant…

I drew mana through the flask, and into my body. To my delight, a cool stream of water sprayed out of my open palm like a garden hose, blasting Lyria square in the nose.

She sputtered, turning her head away and raising her hands.

I laughed. “Come on. You need this. Don’t fight it.”

“At least stop spraying it so hard,” she complained.

I aimed my hand upward so the water would rain down on her, more like a shower.

Lyria gave me a grateful nod, then started to rub the dirt out of her hair with the falling water. After a minute of hard scrubbing and about a quarter of my mana, I cut off the stream.

Lyria was dripping wet but looked somewhat clean now.

I aimed upward and showered myself next, stopping when I had about a quarter of my mana left.

Feeling clean and somewhat refreshed, we took our soaked selves back to camp.

To our surprise, everybody was awake and grinning as we approached.

“Ah,” Ramzi said in his deep voice. His teeth looked sparkling white against his dark skin. “It seems they are very enthusiastic lovers.”

“What?” I asked.

Zahra and Sylara were sharing a knowing smile.

I looked at Lyria and then myself. As far as the others could tell, we both snuck off while they were sleeping. Now, we were returning and covered in what looked like copious amounts of sweat.

I sighed.

#

I walked near the front of the group with Thorn. The deeper we went, the more often I had to watch my step to avoid thick roots and duck to avoid moss.

After everybody was done giving us shit about the way we returned to camp together, we agreed we should travel deeper down the passage and find out what was at the end. Our new friends were eager for any experience they could gain and seemed to think they were borderline invincible so long as I was by their side.

I sensed a coming clash between ourselves and the three Irons I could see on my map, and knew any extra levels, skill tiers, or knowledge about my abilities would be welcome. Lyria also needed more time to master her Soulbound grasp of the Shield corestone.

Ramzi, Sylara, Zahra, and Lyria were a little ways behind us. They had gotten on the topic of cooking, and the four of them were having a light-hearted debate about which region of Eros had the best meatballs.

I had to admit the meatballs in this place were good, but I didn’t quite understand the obsession.

“I know you all want to get stronger down here,” I said to Thorn after we had walked a little. “But do you have any particular goals inside Beastden?”

Thorn shook his head. “We were hoping to find some stragglers and get what experience we could. Being escaped slaves means we can’t join the adventurer’s guild, so we can’t count on their help.”

“They won’t take you?” I asked, mildly surprised. So far, the adventurer’s guild had seemed almost desperate for recruits. Other than practically asking you to sign away your soul, they didn’t even vet recruits for skill or ability. I would’ve imagined them being the type of organization to provide shelter for people like Thorn, even if it was only to bolster their numbers.

“Oh, they’d take us,” Thorn said. “And they’d register our names. Our masters would see it, figure out where we were, and come collect us.”

“Your masters could take you after you’ve signed on with the guild?”

“The guild operates in almost every city and every town across Eros. They start trying to disrupt the order of things, and Ithariel would smash them up faster than they could blink. Besides, the guild wouldn’t even send out collectors for us until we breached our contract and didn’t complete the required number of commissions. By that point, our masters would already have spent our lives to line their pockets.”

I frowned. “I can’t believe Ithariel just stands by while things like this happen. Couldn’t he step in to do something about it?”

Thorn chuckled darkly. “Ithariel wants order, no? That means letting the slavers keep their slaves because the north runs on slavery. If he took the slaves away, then sekmeti like Zahra and Ramzi would go straight back to open war with the kiergard. Fighting the sekmeti would mean he’d lose the sekmeti slave soldiers and the kiergard in his army because they’d be too busy killing each other. And if he tried to take away the right to enslave humans like me and Sylara? That would hardly do, either. Throwing humans in chains for failing to pay debts, being born in the wrong place, or pissing off the wrong noble keeps half the cities within the Inner Rings running, my friend.” He spread his muscular arms wide, flashing a sad smile. “You’re looking at the gears of the economy in all its glory.”

I looked down, forehead scrunched in thought. My first reaction was anger. In the vision I gained from the briarwraith, I remembered my feeling toward Ithariel being one of grudging respect. I hadn’t necessarily liked the man, I don’t think, but I had respected him. I thought we all had, to some degree.

So why was he letting things happen like this? Was immortality simply driving him mad? Or were there factors I didn’t understand?

“Was it always like this?” I asked. “Back when there were more gods, I mean.”

“Good luck finding out,” Thorn said. “Most of the written history from the time of The Nine was lost a few hundred years back. What’s left is mostly stashed in noble libraries or hoarded by Ithariel himself, most likely.”

I had a guess about why that would be, but I was curious what Thorn thought. “Why would Ithariel want to hide the histories?” I asked.

“Ask anyone who matters, and he didn’t hide a thing. He’s just the only god who cared enough about us to stay. Our noble guardian.” Thorn’s tone told me exactly what he thought of that. “How come you don’t already know this?” he asked suddenly. “You from the Outer Rings, or something? You don’t look like you are…”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s complicated, but I’m very new to this area and all the politics. Thanks for the information.” I was hoping to close the conversation with that, but Thorn was giving me a curious look.

“Suppose it makes sense,” he said. “I met one other human from the Outer Rings before. He trained with the beastmen in the far West, supposedly. Just like you, the man fought like a fucking monster. He was an Iron, and he kept cutting down everybody they put against him in the arena. Eventually, they retired him because he was killing the Irons they put him against so fast and so hard that they couldn’t even get healers in to salvage their investment. The crowds loved it, of course. But slavers hate wasting Irons. They’d rather recycle them. Let them get chopped to an inch from death, then heal them up and do it all over again. Course, if you’re a Wood, they don’t waste healers on you,” Thron shrugged. “But that’s the trick, you see? Get strong enough, and they can’t contain you anymore. The caged beast can eventually shatter its own chains if it grows powerful enough. That’s what he did.” There was a glint of pride in Thorn’s eyes.

“And that’s what you four are hoping to accomplish?”

“Me and Sylara,” he said. “Course, if we can slip from dungeon to dungeon and stay out of sight for the rest of our lives, we’ll take that, too. But if either of us ever hits Silver, then good luck to those bastards. They’ll never take us back. If they catch us at Iron, then we’ll fight our way out from the inside.” He shrugged. “Or we’ll die in a place like this trying. Better to die on our own terms than to the sound of cheers, eh?”

I nodded, then let Thorn walk ahead as he seemed to want to travel in silence for a time.

It suited me. The conversation was grim and opened doors I didn’t particularly enjoy thinking about. While the opportunity to grow in power here on Eros was intoxicating and the sense of adventure was alluring, I was beginning to understand just how fractured and broken this place was.

There were real problems, and it was all the more reason for me to keep advancing. Better to put my hand on the wheel than be ground beneath its weight.

With that in mind, I decided to work on my abilities.

The first time I slept on my cursed bed, I had been woken early and didn’t get the Full Night’s Sleep benefits of increased mana regen. Now that I had it, I realized my mana was ticking up faster than usual. It wasn’t as fast as when I meditated with Peace, but the automatic regeneration would likely refill me from empty to full in about half an hour, even if I didn’t meditate, which was incredible. From what I gathered, most people couldn’t recover their mana that quickly, even if they were actively meditating.

I imagined it would also be enough regeneration to make a slight difference in combat if the fight dragged on. It could be a huge advantage in a battle that would otherwise be an even match.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Right now, it meant that I had a completely full tank, even though I used a bunch of mana to hose down myself and Lyria just about half an hour ago.

I checked my map and confirmed we had a bit of walking to do before reaching the next red dot. I also saw the two Irons and their strangely colored companion still working their way back from a separate tunnel. I couldn’t say for sure, but I imagined we had a few hours before they would make their way down our passage.

I also checked my bed’s hunger level.

[Hunger 8%]

Ever since we had entered the dungeon, its hunger seemed to be increasing at a much slower rate. My guess was that it was somehow feeding on the latent dark mana in the air. Either that, or reaching full satiety slowed down the growth of hunger. I knew when I got hungry, it sometimes went from, “I’m a little hungry” to “I’m going to die if I don’t immediately eat” in about twelve seconds.

Maybe my little cursed bedroll had the same problem.

I tuned out the sounds of the others behind me talking and focused inward. I had Forge Echo at Tier 3, and I would love to bump another skill to Tier 3 if I could. I decided there were a few possible ways to approach the skill grind. One would be to focus all my efforts on a single skill, like Elemental Projection. The other option was to rotate my efforts through as many skills as possible.

Rotating through my skills had the obvious advantage of getting me more familiar with all of my skills. I had already looked back and noticed a few points in various fights where I hadn’t thought quickly enough to use the ideal skill at the ideal time. I simply didn’t have the muscle memory trained, yet. Getting more uses of each ability under my belt would help with that.

The last thing to consider was the others in our group. If I openly practiced all five of my active abilities, it might be obvious that I was using two class corestones. Or would it? Nobody really knew about my Devour Mana skill except Lyria. They thought my Healing Potions were doing all the healing that wasn’t coming from Ramzi. And the idea of a Mana Shield ability being included with my Elemental Projection and Forge Echo wasn’t that crazy, right?

My passives were also going to be borderline impossible to detect. Elemental Body just reduced the damage I took from elemental attacks, which nobody would notice. I could even attribute that to my cloak, which roughly did the same thing, if anyone got suspicious. Mana Leech was the same. The fact that I absorbed a portion of mana from attacks directed at me wasn’t going to be noticeable to anyone. My Mana Sense ability wasn’t noticeable to anyone but me, either.

The only passive people could really see was Chain, but that one was far less obvious. Chain only worked for “offensive” and “active” skills. In other words, it wasn’t like I was going to randomly fire a second arrow from my Silver Scream bow. And the limitation on conjuration skills meant it didn’t seem to work with my Elemental Spike ability, either. For now, the main benefit was occasionally duplicating my Elemental Projection ability, which was arguably a liability more often than it was a benefit.

Down the line, I hoped to get something more like a mage bolt that would really benefit from randomly getting doubled, but I supposed I couldn’t bet on it. If I didn’t, Chain would just be the first passive I would replace when I got my sixth passive skill since I only had five active and five passive skill slots to use at a time.

I decided I was probably safe to practice my abilities, so long as I didn’t let anybody discover my Devour Mana ability. Considering I could just remember to chug a Healing Potion when I used Devour Mana, I doubted that would be too difficult.

Without much more thought, I decided I would go with the rotation approach and got to work.

I imagined I could start by killing three birds with one stone. After all, I was an efficiency nerd, and the idea of maximizing my training speed was inherently satisfying to me on a very deep level. With some more time to think, I would love to work out a kind of training rotation where I practiced all of my skills in a single, fluid, and highly efficient pattern. In a dream world, I’d even get a training room for my personal space. I could set it up like a gauntlet that was designed to let me practice all of my abilities.

It was probably sad, but my will to live increased from that thought alone.

For now, some cave training would have to do. I gripped a Viperlilly Vial, used Elemental Projection to discreetly drag a thin line of poison on top of my forearm, then waited.

Viperlilly Poison resisted by [Voidgaze (?) (Gold)?].

It was worth a try. Unlike my rot potion, the Viperlilly Potion was purely a poison attack, it seemed. It didn’t have a combination of elemental effects to still damage me through my helmet’s resistance. I thought I could still work on my accomplishment for surviving attempted poisonings, but I didn’t think I’d be pushing my Elemental Body passive to higher tiers if the element wasn’t causing any damage.

Working on the accomplishment could wait for slightly less imminently deadly situations.

I wished I knew if I needed to actually push the limits of a skill to increase its tier, or if I simply had to use it. For example, would dribbling a few drops of poison from my fingertip provide the same experience as spraying a huge jet and willing it to bend at 90 degrees in mid-air?

I had no clue.

But I couldn’t exactly spray jets of poison in the cramped tunnels, so I would do what I could for now. If I didn’t seem to be progressing this way, I would just adapt and try to find methods to push my limits when I had the opportunity.

With more than a little hesitance, I touched a Dragon’s Tail potion vial. It was an element, after all, and I didn’t think my helmet helped me resist fire. So it should trigger my Elemental Body skill and also give me something to heal with Devour Mana.

I just wasn’t looking forward to the pain part…

I looked down at my arm and drizzled a little Dragon’s Tail potion on my bare skin. The liquid immediately caught fire. It took about two seconds before the pain was excruciating.

I swatted at it, running my palm up and down, but the liquid only spread to my other hand, burning it, too.

I dropped to the ground, rolling around in the dirt as I flooded myself with mana, healing the damage even as it came with Devour Mana.

The fire still wouldn’t go out. On impulse, I created a Mana Shield in the shape of my arm and pressed it down over my skin, hoping to smother the flames from lack of oxygen.

The cooling magic wrapped around me, feeling just like glass. The flames were snuffed out in seconds, letting me repeat the process on my hand.

Once I healed all the damage and calmed down, I realized I was sitting on the ground, panting and wide-eyed. Everybody was staring at me incredulously.

“Brynn…” Lyria said. “Did you just light yourself on fire?”

“I’m fine,” I said quickly, hopping up to my feet. “I figured out how to put the flames out… less dramatically. Watch this,” I said, raising a fingertip to try again.

Lyria caught me by the wrist and met my eyes. “Not right now, maybe?” she said. Her eye contact lingered, and I caught her meaning. She was worried about me weakening myself at the wrong moment, possibly before the three Irons caught up with us. Or maybe she just thought it was a weird look to keep lighting myself on fire in front of our new friends.

I knew she couldn’t see the map like I could, so I figured her fear was rational. To me, a little risk right now was completely fine. I could see exactly when we were about to reach a threat, after all. But I had more abilities I could work on without causing a scene and stressing Lyria. I also agreed that it probably looked a bit deranged to light yourself on fire, no matter how valid your excuse might be.

I nodded my head. “Yeah, no problem. I’ll work on that one another time.”

“Is this normal for him?” Zahra asked as we started walking again.

“Unfortunately,” Lyria said. “If you give him any downtime, he starts experimenting with his abilities. And things like this happen from time to time.”

I knelt down and picked up a smooth, round stone, studying it as a thought occurred to me.

Elemental Projection had worked on a water flask, even though it only loosely fit the definition of a “weapon.” That probably meant Forge Echo would operate by the same principle. And a rock was arguably even more of a weapon than a water flask. Okay. It wasn’t much of an argument. A rock was definitely more of a weapon.

With a grin, I formed an image of the smooth stone in my mind, which was simple enough. I created an Echo of it.

A ghostly little blue version of the rock landed in front of me, trailing wisps of smokey blue magic. I waved to it, then mentally asked if it minded rolling ahead to scout.

Even though the rock should’ve been capable of floating in mid-air, this one seemed to prefer staying on the ground and acting as if it had to obey the laws of physics. It was even rolling to move around instead of just drifting like a true ghost rock.

Did my Echo somehow want to be more like the object I formed it out of? That was a strange thought. When I made weapons, it acted as if it was being wielded like a real weapon would. Now when I echoed a rock, it was rolling around like a rock would.

The rock gave a small hop of acknowledgment to my thought, then quickly rolled deeper down the passage, slipping between Thorn’s legs on its way to scout ahead.

Interesting. I wondered just how intelligent it was and how far it could travel.

“What was that?” Thorn asked.

“A scout rock?” I said.

“Hm,” he said gruffly, turning around and continuing onward.

I felt the rock moving quickly. My sense of it was vague, though. I couldn’t see through it or anything convenient like that, but wondered if I would ever unlock the ability to do so with more advanced skill tiers. I could sense the increased strain of maintaining the Echo as it got farther and farther from me, but holding the image of such a simple, small shape was far less difficult and much less taxing on my mana. Without having to direct it manually, I only had to keep part of my brain focused on the image of the simple, round rock. The image tried harder to slip out of my brain as the rock got farther away, but I managed to keep hold of it with some effort.

Once I had a good hold on the image, I practiced splitting my focus as I worked on Mana Shields. It was a very satisfying ability to use. It felt like I was creating windows of mana from thin air. The simplest method was to raise a square or rectangle of mana, which seemed to be the shape it preferred to take.

I had noticed that with all of my abilities to varying degrees. It made me think of a worn trail where many people had passed. Over time, the passage of feet would clear away debris and plant growth, meaning more and more people would choose the exact path and wear it even deeper. My abilities seemed to have a “natural” preferred way to operate, too. But if I was willing to push them, I could create entirely new pathways.

I hadn’t yet discovered just how far I could push those new pathways, though. Were the possibilities infinite? Or were there barriers I hadn’t yet encountered?

The splitting potential paths of my Forge Echo at Tier 3 implied there must be some kind of barriers to what was possible. After all, giving me the option to evolve a skill in this way would be redundant if I could have simply made it so on my own with a little willpower.

The preference of Mana Shield was to create a thin, brittle square of mana like a pane of glass. If I was in a hurry, I could already do this almost instantly. But with a few seconds, I could weave the mana in a pattern like Lyria did, reinforcing it and making it much more durable. The weave method also made the shield leak less mana as I kept it active.

Things like moving the shield or making it change shape took more mana instantly and also cost more mana over time.

Every little change was like a tax, accumulating and making the ability more and more expensive to maintain.

It was interesting and also good to know. Before, I had been using it almost purely during life-and-death situations and didn’t have time to discover the nuances.

A few minutes later, my pebble rolled back.

“The scout returns,” Ramzi said happily.

I grinned and knelt down to get a better look at the glowing pebble. “Hey, Little Guy. Can you give me one hop if you saw a nightmaw. Give me two hops if it’s something else.”

The pebble hopped twice.

Everybody exchanged a slightly worried look.

“One hop for big, two hops for small?”

The pebble hopped once.

“Wait,” I said. “Big compared to you? Because, no offense, you’re pretty small. Or big compared to us? One hop for big compared to you, two for big compared to us?”

The pebble gave an uncertain vibration, then rolled forward and back a little, like it was nervous.

“Okay, too complicated. Don’t worry about it,” I said.

Zahra leaned closer to Lyria. “Is he communicating with the rock?”

Lyria nodded, lips pursed and held to the side. “Yeah. I think that’s what’s happening.”

“The rock is a loyal friend,” Ramzi said loudly. “We should thank him. Or her?”

“I doubt the magic rock wants or needs our thanks,” Thorn said, voice dry.

I stood up. “Well… I guess we’re about to find out what else is in this dungeon besides nightmaws. Is anybody else excited?”

“No…” Lyria said.

“Just me, then?” I asked.

The pebble gave a few hops.

“Pebble gets it!” I said, pointing. “He’s excited.”

“Ah,” Ramzi said, nodding seriously. “So it is a ‘he’.”

Lyria rolled her eyes and started walking.

I stuck my fist out toward the pebble, and it launched itself up, fist-bumping me. Or head-butting me. I guess I wasn’t sure which.

Either way, I was excited to see what was ahead. A small, slightly crazy part of me even hoped it would pose a bigger challenge than the nightmaws.

I felt like I was humming with power and wanted a chance to test my limits. Then again, I guessed I wouldn’t even mind if I got to dominate a lesser enemy for once. Practice was practice, after all.