Kene used a quick solar spell to dry me off, then looked at the orb once I summoned it, turning it over.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Looks like a recording orb natural treasure,” Kene said. “Recording crystals were based on these, actually. They’re able to record your thoughts, or even visual or audio recordings, but over time, they’ll slowly erase everything. They also scan to a specific person, so if I was to use it, then you were, it would scan you and erase everything I’d put in there, deleting it forever.”

“Interesting,” I commented, rolling the orb between my hands. “Mind if I keep it?”

“Sure,” Kene agreed. “It’s not extremely powerful, and I don’t think it will sell at auction. It has its uses for sure, but most of what you need can be done with normal, store bought crystals.”

It was still interesting to me, so I put an anchor in it, then slipped it into the vaults again.

We set off flying again after that, and while we did make a few stops to pick up some more natural mana sources – our stock had been severely depleted, between Dusk using them to ascend, and me handing over a bunch to get the assassin off my back – we didn’t find much else of interest.

We did make a brief stop to collect a single one of the destiny plants that was just growing along the stream. A large caterpillar had made the plant into its home, and I felt bad for the poor thing, so Dusk added it into her realm, joining the collection of forest estragon.

We raided another small nexus for more mana sources, and picked up a strange glowing piece of glass that Kene identified as having something to do with lightning, but he wasn’t sure what.

That went onto the pile with the various interesting items we’d accumulated, and we stopped to take the night before flying back to the main camp.

It was a huge bustle of activity, with everyone coming back for the auction, and it took us a while to find anyone I knew, even with me using Crow’s Shade Messenger to help send them messages and coordinate.

First we met with Liz and Travis.

Travis had gotten… A lot stronger.

Like…

A lot.

He wasn’t a match for the strength of the dragonblood serpent or the drakes, but he was solidly stronger than the mud elemental eel had been.

He must have been burning through pills and treasures like mad, though, because a quick flash of my Analyze Life revealed that his whole body was filled to the brim with mana toxin, his kidneys and liver working overtime to purge it.

“Got you a gift, Liz,” I said, tossing her the weightwater gem, and she grinned.

“Same here,” she said, tossing me a strange blue orb that warped space and time around it slightly, causing echoes to dance across the surface of the orb. It was first gate, clearly something meant to increase the mana in those gates.

“Thanks!” I said. She glanced over Kene, and an eyebrow raised.

“You seem just about ready to ascend,” she said, and they nodded.

“After the auction. Your lunar gate feels the same.”

“Yep,” Liz agreed. “This gem will actually be perfect to push me over the edge, I think I will after the auction as well.”

“Very nice,” they complimented, lacing their fingers with mine. The four of us spent a while discussing plans, and eventually the topic of the trial that we’d stumbled into, guarded by the drakes, came up.

“Oh?” she asked, eyebrows raising. “Two drakes, and you couldn’t take them on? Mister I-killed-a-war-root-as-a-second-gate?”

“Hey!” I said, crossing my arms. “I’ve learned since then.”

“Course you have,” she said, smirking. “But sure, I think it’s a good idea for us to come. It will let me exercise my new power.”

We chatted a while longer, listening to Travis and Liz’s recounting of how they’d fought off a fire-lion, and also found a large anthill of ants the size of dogs.

“Myrmekes?” Kene asked. “They guard all sorts of treasures!”

“Yeah, well, they’re all second to fourth gate, and spit acid,” Liz said. “We barely got away.”

“You weren’t using pheromones, were you?” Kene asked.

“Nope,” Liz said. “What’s that?”

Kene turned to me, looking excited.

“We have bluepetal, it can mimic all sorts of scents, including pheromones. Let’s try!”

“Sure!” I agreed. It sounded fun, and worst case, I was confident we could escape.

“You’re mad,” Liz said, but she did seem faintly amused by the whole thing.

After a while, they split off to get their stuff investigated, and we headed to find Octavian. When we found him, I was surprised to see that he’d advanced to third gate, alongside Arceli and Roh both. Not only that, but he had a large salamander sitting on his shoulder, covered in roots that bloomed into bright pink flowers.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

He must have found a petalroot salamander after all. I felt a small pang of regret for not helping, but that was just how life was sometimes.

“Oh, hey,” he said, smiling as they approached. “How are you all?”

“Good, you?” Kene said. After a bit of small talk, we got down to it, removing the tooth with fire magic in it and extending it to Arceli.

“Here,” I told the terragon. Her eyes widened, and she wiggled her butt before hopping onto the tooth, turning around and running away.

“Wait, no!” Octavian said, darting after her. They wrestled for a moment, and I had to suppress a grin. It was like watching someone chase after a cat that had stolen something she wasn’t supposed to.

When Octavian returned, flushed and tussling the braid in his hair, he shook his head.

“We can’t take this,” he said. “This is an arcanist tier treasure to enhance the power of a breath weapon and supporting spells!”

“Take it,” Kene said. “We can’t use it.”

“Exactly!” I followed up. “Besides, if you really wanna help out, you can help us with a trial or in the tower.”

“I don’t know,” Octavian hedged. “It’s still too much, and it’s not like I wouldn’t get a reward from a trial site anyways. Do you know how much this could go for at auction? Tons of people have bonded with an estragon here, and thus have breath weapons of one variety or another.”

“Oh just take it,” I said, shoving it back at him. He scowled, but took it, then grinned.

“Fine,” he said, in a tone that was suspiciously agreeable. I immediately squinted.

“What?” Kene asked nervously.

“Nothing, nothing,” Octavian said, a mysterious smile on his freckled face, bright blue eyes mischievous. “Don’t worry about it.”

That just made me squint even harder, but Ovtavian just cast a couple of spells using will-o-wisp mana before claiming that he had to go take a shift on guard.

“He’s up to something,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Kene agreed.

After that, we wandered to the portal, looking for the assassin, and found her sitting on a rock.

“Finally arrived?” she griped. “Let’s see it, then.”

I pulled the ‘crystal’ that was just a piece of glass from my pocket, and Kene tightened his grip around my hand. I paused, slipping it back in, and activated all of my sensory spells.

I had a lot of sensory spells, and when all of them were on full blitz, there wasn’t a lot that could hide from me. A knowledge mage might be able to do better, but I’d pit myself up against any other non-knowledge mage.

And what my senses told me was that this wasn’t the assassin.

Oh, she looked like the assassin, but she didn’t smell like her. It was close, the faint sense of mental mana influencing me, but once I spotted the mental mana, the entire thing collapsed.

Nobody was there at all, just a construct of mana, complex and using a dozen different aspects. One was solar, which was presumably how Kene had noticed.

I unwound my senses and flared them out across the entire camp, looking for her. When I really cut loose with my senses, enhanced by my monocle, I was able to swamp over almost the entire camp, save for the healers tents, which were at the very edge.

When I couldn’t find her, I swore.

“Guess you saw through the ploy, huh?” the construct said.

“Yes,” I said tightly. “I gave you money, and –”

“You don’t get it!” the woman said fiercely. “I can’t fail. You don’t want to know what will happen if I do. Besides, the paycheck was three hundred thousand silver! I could buy a house with that kind of money! Normal contracts are a tenth of that.”

I felt a spike of disgust run through me. Killing people for some silver?

People had to do what they had to do in order to survive. I wasn’t going to look down on someone stealing food, or begging for change, or even robbing a store out of desperation.

This was a cruel, callous disregard for human life.

But as the disgust ran through me… so did pity. She must have strong issues, to have arrived in this sort of life. Maybe she had been pushed, maybe she’d chosen it, but either way, a healthy person didn’t make the willing choice to kill people for money.

Maybe that was why she had a sacrifice legacy.

“You need help,” I said.

“No!” she barked harshly. “I am fine.”

I kept my face a mask, but noted that seemed to be a sore spot for her.

“We know that you’re going to try again,” Kene said. “We’ll be ready for you.”

“That just means I have to pick a better time,” she said. “It will be glorious. Either I’ll kill you both, mold your power into mine, and grow stronger, or you’ll kill me, and I’ll die in a blaze of glory.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head.

“What?” she said, thrown off.

“I can’t give you that,” I said. “I won’t kill you.”

“Then die!” she said, cutting off the connection.

I raised an eyebrow. The bit at the end had felt a bit too theatrical, like it was an act she was putting on in order to get us to buy into it.

Dusk whistled, saying we just needed to be prepared, and Kene nodded, then looked at me.

“Do you really plan to not kill her?”

“I really don’t,” I said. “The delegation from Delitone has some way to contain people, so I’ll talk to them about it after the auction, then force her out of the portal and turn her over to the watches. Once she’s in jail, she should be able to get the help she needs. You saw her. She knows that she’s not right, but she refuses to admit it. Maybe she won’t ever, but the mentalists that visit prison can help her, if she’s willing to accept it.”

“That’s… yeah, you’re right. She does need help, not death. But speaking of Delitone, we should get in line,” Kene said, and I agreed.

After a long while, we arrived at the item identifier, and I could sense the web of knowledge mana in the air as they all organized the auction.

“How can I help you?” the appraiser asked.

I put down everything we’d gathered.

First, she touched the weird, mental jelly I’d picked up.

“Royal mind jelly, used to raise a mindwasp queen,” the appraiser said. “Two doses worth. Put both up for auction?”

Kene and I glanced at one another and shrugged

“I’ll keep one,” I said as Kene started pushing forwards all of the other items forwards too.

“Morphic clay. It can shift into a variety of shapes while keeping the strength of ceramics. Useful for any telluric mage with good mana control.”

“Mineral striation stone, used to fuse two magical minerals into a single new one.”

“Fulgurite glass, an ascension material to empower any lightning spell.”

“Alter Truffle. Mana sources… These have low value. Do you want to sell them all, or keep some?"

“We’ll keep five of each mana type,” I said. “For first through fourth gate. But there’s no need for duplicates.”

We didn’t actually have five full mana sources for every single type, let alone all the way out to fourth gate, but this would at least give us a good spread of potential resources, and help with future staff construction.

“Understood. Mana source, mana source, mana source, mana source…”

With everything logged, she waved to the doorway.

“Please, enter. You have four hundred and thirty one points to use at auction, and it begins in thirty minutes.”

It was only when we stepped in that Kene smacked themself on the forehead.

“We didn’t ask Octavian. Do you wanna ask him? Kamal? Aput? I don’t think all of them would be a good idea, since the trial’s got to have a way to account for a group. After all, there’s a reason it’s suggested to bring a group of five plus their familiars into the tower. I’ll trust your judgment here, I don’t know any of them as well as you.”

Dusk chided Kene, saying that I was the familiar, and Kene grinned.

“Sure, you’re right. I just doubt the sage saw it that way…”