Carlos frowned as he turned his attention to the ambient mana. Now that he thought about it, its level had been rising steadily the whole time. They had just now entered a level ten area, and he had started absorbing it. …In fact, he had started actively absorbing it by reflex. That might be bad. If their captors noticed ambient mana entering the box at extreme rates, they might get suspicious.

On the other hand, it might already be too late to prevent that, and this could be a clue to what fate awaited them. These people had taken them from their beds, carried them out of Dramos while eluding pursuit (at least, he assumed Lorvan and Ordens had attempted pursuit), and quickly traveled deep into the Wilds. They had already reached a level ten area. If they kept going at this rate…

Carlos blanched. If they didn't stop, they'd reach a level eleven area before he could finish advancing to level ten. They might even get to a level twelve area before that advancement. If they kept going like that, the level gap between him and his surroundings would grow, and somewhere in the Wilds the level peak they might be heading towards was a mana wellspring. A place that Lorvan had warned them would dissolve their souls at their current level.

His heart started pounding in his chest, and he stopped considering the odds of detection. Carlos grabbed with desperate fervor to absorb all the level ten mana he could reach, and he sensed Amber doing the same. The center of the box actually dropped back to level nine briefly, but more level ten mana kept flowing in and the level nine zone they were generating gradually shrank until it vanished. His soul started resisting his efforts at pushing even more in, and he hesitated. Lorvan had warned of damaging their souls if they tried to absorb too much too quickly.

Amber shuddered, and her voice shook. "They're… they're taking us toward a wellspring, aren't they?"

"It's the only reason I can think of to carry us this deep into the Wilds. Someone wants us gone." Carlos tried to slow down his rapid breathing. Pumping his muscles full of oxygen and adrenaline wasn't going to help in this situation. He consciously took a deep breath and held it for three seconds before letting it out. "Ok. If they're going to react to our high absorption rate, they've surely already noticed it by now. We might as well assume that they won't, because it's too late to avoid that risk. If Lorvan rescues us, great. If not… I think our best chance is to develop so fast they'll have to go closer to the wellspring than planned to finish us off, and hope something powered up by it stops them. After that, maybe we can find a way to break parts of this box so someone can find us."

Amber's ragged breathing oddly didn't echo in their metal cage, its sound blocked from reaching any surface it could have bounced off of. "What if… if we don't advance fast enough…? I- I don't want to die!" She almost sobbed, and Carlos noticed she'd used a different word from what normally got translated to English as "die". A word that meant to die permanently, without respawning.

Carlos reached over and drew her into a hug. She shook in his arms, and cried on his shoulder. He awkwardly patted her on the back, in a gesture he hoped was comforting, and let her cry. He could feel how fast her heart was beating. The close contact made him painfully aware that she was wearing only light bed clothes, and he blushed but tried not to react otherwise, glad that the total darkness hid his blush as completely as it had concealed how she was dressed from his sight. Gradually, Amber's tears slowed, and her shaking stopped.

When he heard and felt her sniffle and take a somewhat deeper breath, he finally spoke, keeping his tone mild and gentle. "I'm sure you know that panic won't help. Do you think you're ready to think and figure out a way out of this?"

Amber took a deep breath, and slowly returned to sitting upright on her own. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And… thank you."

"For what?"

"For… whatever that just was." Amber took another deep breath. "If I'd broken down like that in Erlen, I'd never hear the end of the mocking."

"Where I grew up, that was just what you're supposed to do to support a close friend who needs reassurance and comfort." Carlos shrugged. "One of the social attitudes I'm going to miss from Earth, I suppose."

Amber muttered briefly, and suddenly light bloomed from her finger. "Their own wards against anyone finding us are blinding them to anything we might do with our mana, and I'm tired of not being able to see. Now, what can we do that might be useful?"

Carlos had realized what she was doing just in time to look away so he wasn't temporarily blinded, and he looked around as his eyes adjusted to the light. The box looked like plain steel, completely bare and unadorned, in exactly the shape he'd sensed earlier. Even after his eyes got used to the light, he studiously avoided looking at Amber, self conscious about how scanty her clothes were.

He thought back, reviewing everything he'd learned in this world that might possibly be relevant. "I remember two things Lorvan mentioned. First, absorbing faster can be done but damages your soul. Second, that being in a dungeon's more orderly ambient mana lets you safely absorb faster."

Amber nodded, the motion vaguely registering in Carlos's peripheral vision. "Right. …Oh, I think I see where you're heading. Good idea!"

Carlos nodded. "Our debuggers should be able to repair the damage, I think. Can we repair faster than we get damaged?"

"Uh. What?"

Carlos blinked, and looked at Amber without thinking. She was staring at him with wide eyes, and the trails of dried tears still stained her face. Her shirt was loose and hints of skin tone were faintly visible through it, and her midriff and legs were bare. Carlos blushed and looked away again. "The problem with absorbing too fast is that it erodes our soul structures, right? With our debuggers' ability to alter our soul structures, we can repair the erosion."

Amber shook her head. "…I'll leave that one to you. Let me know how it goes."

"Alright, and you can do your idea." Carlos closed his eyes and leaned forward to wrap his arms around his raised knees. Shifting the pressure on his bottom helped a bit with the discomfort from sitting on hard steel for hours.

Now then, absorbing at speeds that would normally be dangerous, and using the debugger to compensate. As much as the time pressure urged him to jump in full swing, the potential down side if this went wrong warranted caution. He urged the whirlpool of absorption in his soul to speed up just a tiny bit, for just a second. He got the impression from his introspector that if his soul had any nerves in it that experiment would have been painful. There were slight cracks scattered across the surfaces of all his soul structures. …And they were widening and spreading. The cracks were weak points that were more vulnerable to erosion by the incoming mana, reducing the maximum safe absorption rate substantially.

Stolen story; please report.

Carlos hastily slowed down his absorption, and focused on patching up those cracks, starting with the ones on the debugger. Surfaces came back together, cracks were filled in and smoothed over, and soon enough he couldn't tell the cracks had ever existed. The first one or two were mended a tiny bit sloppily the first time, though, and he couldn't shake the suspicion that it might have been a symptom of the debugger being damaged rather than his inexperience at mending cracks.

Accepting the damage and then repairing afterwards seemed not viable, but could he repair it while it was happening, effectively preventing it? He tried that, and gave up on it after just a few seconds. The repair efforts got in the way of the absorption, and trying to absorb even faster to compensate made the problem worse by requiring more repair work in a vicious feedback loop.

Well, so much for that idea. Carlos turned his attention outwards again, focusing his mana sense towards Amber. She was busily threading tendrils of mana into a woven mesh permeating the air around her, putting their knowledge of dungeon mana manipulation to use. Instead of trying to produce a physical effect, however, she was starting to manage the flowing of the mana itself. She broke up spots of turbulence, urged the mana to calm itself, and pushed and pulled its movements, arranging its currents into an increasingly organized and consistent spiral. It was reminiscent of how the hostile dungeon had arranged the mana flows in its core room. It was also working; Amber's absorption rate was already noticeably faster than before.

Carlos started weaving his own mesh into his surroundings, and Amber wordlessly expanded her inflowing spiral of ambient mana so both of them were in its center. He nodded in thanks, and joined his efforts to hers, working together to build a shared construct. It was a pre-processor of sorts for the incoming mana, making the mana more ready to merge with their soul structures in a smooth and orderly fashion, and they kept tweaking and improving it further, their absorption rate increasing higher and higher.

Carlos lost track of time again, absorbed in seeking out more spots to optimize. Further improvements were getting progressively more minor and difficult, when he surprised himself by yawning. He blinked and shook himself, and took a moment to double check that the sleep spell was still neutralized. His stomach gurgled, making him realize he was rather hungry too. Amber laughed, and yawned too.

Carlos lay back down again, and deliberately yawned. "We've been at this for a while. Feels like we missed at least a meal or two. Think it might be night?"

"Yeah, I think so." Amber leaned back, supporting her torso with her hands planted on the metal below her. "I think we can keep this going while sleeping, too. Couldn't set it up in our sleep, we're not that good, but maintain it? Sure!"

"Yeah. It's a practiced reflex at this point. Well, uh, goodnight I guess?" Carlos relaxed and let sleep come.

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Esmorana hovered in the sky several miles north of Dramos, her eyes closed and arms outstretched in front of her. She slowly rotated, and a whisper-light line of wind stretching from her to almost ten miles distant steadily swept across an enormous wedge of land. The wind briefly touched each creature it passed over, feeling its shape, then moved on. She sighed. Once again, no people were in the area she'd checked. She turned and flew east a while, and began scanning another ten-mile wedge.

She tried not to think about how unlikely it was that she would find her quarry. If they had gone into the Wilds, they could be anywhere in a truly vast region. She was stretching her limits of how far she could sense as much as she could, but searching an area that large in a single day was beyond her. Even so, she could search that area faster than even Colonel Lorvan, the royal guardsman, so she was giving it her best effort. Any chance at locating their missing lords must not be passed up.

Ressara had found no new trail of the kidnappers, even though Ordens had carried her all the way around the city walls remarkably swiftly. It was possible they were still in Dramos, and Stelras had the city guard all but turning the city upside down looking for them just in case, but they all agreed it was most likely the kidnappers had left already under cover of some disguise or concealment. All the gate guards reported no suspicious departures, and she didn't think any of them were brave and stupid enough to hold to a bribe for silence in the face of the magnitude of fuss the mayor was making, but that meant little. Messengers were on their way to each nearby city or town just in case the kidnappers were traveling by roads, but Esmorana thought that was unlikely. Hence her search in the Wilds, alone because no one could match her mobility.

Honestly, she thought it was probably going to take a divination powered by the Crown to find Carlos and Amber, and by the time that would happen it could easily be too late. She'd bet her best dresses this was revenge from High House Tostral for that brat Jamar's humiliation when she'd confronted them, and when noble houses invested the kind of resources in revenge that this must have taken, they could do some exceedingly nasty things. Though, some of the things involved in this misadventure seemed like they should be beyond the means of even an ancient high house. Who could possibly mess with royal guard equipment to prevent calling for aid like that?

Esmorana finished another wedge scan, and looked at the fading light of the evening as she flew to the next one. She would have to stop soon. Even aside from getting tired and sleepy after the full day, she was running low on mana. Maybe there'd be some news in the morning. She could hope, at least.

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Hilber jogged along with the rest of the Black Blades as they kept going north. He couldn't help periodically glancing at the metal box containing their captives several yards to his left. "How the hell are they absorbing that fast?" He only realized he'd spoken aloud when his companion Broti chuckled at him.

Broti shrugged. "Nobles, right?"

"Well, yeah. But that has got to be active absorption. How are they doing that while asleep?"

Broti shrugged again. "Wouldn't be the first time I've encountered someone with a soul structure just for making active absorption easier. It's normally a stupid idea, doesn't even make anything faster, just easier, and eventually it stops being useful, but some people are just lazy like that." He shook his head. "It'll be annoying for us, but just going a few more levels deep into the Wilds isn't that big a deal."

Hilber frowned as he considered that, but kept up the pace. "…I'm not so sure. I know nobles are supposed to have high absorption speed, but these two are insane! Who the hell are they?!"

Broti slapped the back of Hilber's head lightly. "Even as a dope with mana sense, you should know better than to ask that. We're the Black Blades, we do what we're hired for and we don't get nosy about the customer's business! Now keep your eyes forward and your mind on the job."

"Yes, sir."

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The next morning, Stelras felt bone deep weariness as he walked away from the teleportation building. Colonel Lorvan had still been there, waiting for a royal who wasn't coming. He'd conceded there was no point keeping the House Carlos plate there, at least. Not that it seemed likely to matter anymore. Maybe it was time to accept that House Carlos had been strangled in its infancy. His duties would not allow him to do that yet, though. He had to at least go through the motions until Lorvan or a higher ranked Crown official declared Carlos a lost cause.

So he conscientiously carried the official steel plate with its precious adamantine inlay into the city treasury, going through all the locks and wards and heavy doors, and finally presented his mana signature to the small safe that held their most valuable treasures, and simultaneously entered the code for its combination lock. He opened the safe's door, tossed the plate in, closed it, and started walking away, back to the drudgery of his responsibilities.

[Hello, Mayor Stelras. My name is Purple.]