The ruined palace and its outskirts grew closer by the hour as we continued traveling. It took two more hours for me to be able to make out the finer details of the buildings in the distance, and also helped me understand just how massive the building we were heading towards truly was. The ruined palace still had spires and walls that stretched towards the sky like fingers of steel clawing towards the heavens. Or, instead of reaching towards the heavens, perhaps they were reaching towards something… else.

After all, with every step we took, I could feel my connection with the ocean of souls getting stronger. The taste of spatial manipulation grew ever thicker. Something was still happening at the palace.

As we walked, I couldn’t help but think about what my connection to the ocean of souls meant here. While it was imperfect, I had managed to grow my attunement in this world by using knockoff versions of the ocean of souls. I spent time with those who had just passed away, or with women who were about to give birth, in order to simulate life and death, two critical components of the ocean of souls. I spent time swimming in the city’s river to improve my connection with the ocean. I occasionally tried to observe the souls of various plants and animals as they returned to and from the ocean, in order to get a better grasp on what souls were and how they worked. I had spent a great deal of time working on my attunement in this world.

However, none of these were perfectly connected to my attunement.

Now, I knew for the first time that what I was feeling wasn’t just some shoddy, half-built knockoff. It was my attunement’s source. Its origin. I knew that nobody else in recent time had built an attunement around the ocean of souls, because it wasn’t something understood very well by the people of this dimension. So I had no idea whether there was any sort of possible evolution for my attunement that I could find here. I had gotten stuck on Expert-grade for my attunement for a long time, and I wasn’t quite sure how to move forward.

I wondered if maybe there was a way to advance it further, if I just headed further inside. If so, we would have a critical clue for how to proceed further in future worlds.

Just as I felt my hopes for the future start to flare up, Felix frowned and stopped moving.

“Stop,” he said. “I feel that something’s wrong, even if I can’t quite pinpoint what it is.”

I immediately froze and started scanning our surroundings, activating my soul-sight to see if I could spot something amiss.

“I don’t see any souls,” I said.

Sallia nodded. “However, even so, I also get the feeling that something is wrong. Let’s back up a bit and think,” she said.

The four of us quickly started backing away. Even if I didn’t see anything, I trusted my friends.

A few moments later, Sallia finally spotted something. “Part of the ground is bothering me,” she said, pointing to a small pockmark in the landscape. “Do you see that? It doesn’t look like it was naturally formed.”

I frowned, and then took a closer look at what Sallia was looking at.

The ground was filled with very slight depressions. Almost as if they were pockmarks. They were very shallow, but there was no living plant life at all within the pockmark. Even though there wasn’t much plant life on the rest of the surface, either, there was usually at least a bit of stray plant life laying around. For there to just be nothing was… unusual.

Inside of the little pockmark in the landscape, there was a small chunk of white stone at the bottom. It looked charred, as if it had just come out of an oven, and it glowed a faint green and white color in the darkness.

Sallia frowned.

“I don’t know what this thing is,” she said.

Anise nodded. “It has a lot of spellcasting… erm… manifestation? essence in it,” she said, her words pausing slightly as she tried to wrap her head around the term ‘manifestation essence.’ Ever since we had told Anise about the Market, she had been trying to integrate herself more into our conversations, and I could tell that she was starting to get used to our terminology.

To be honest, it was a relief to have told Anise about the Market. Sallia and I didn’t have to edge our way around talking about keywords and attunements anymore, and we also didn’t have to worry about messing up and referring to a Market term in the presence of Anise - after all, she knew everything now, so there was nothing to hide from her. Of course, we still needed to keep an eye on our words once we returned to Silver City: but at least when it was just the four of us, we could talk openly about everything.

“Does it feel like it has any other kinds of essence mixed into it?” asked Anise, turning towards Sallia and I. “I can’t feel any… Alteration essence, but Miria is the most sensitive towards it, right?”

I nodded. “I don’t feel any alteration, but I’m having a harder time finding the manifestation essence, too.”

Sallia shrugged. “I don’t feel any absorption essence, and I can also just barely make out the manifestation essence.”

“I can’t feel any binding essence inside of it, but that might just be because I don’t know what to look for,” said Felix as he pulled out his {Craftsman’s Monocle} and put it on. “After all, I’ve never encountered binding essence before.” Then, Felix frowned. “However, the way the rock is constructed kind of reminds me of magic wands. Do you see the way there are magic symbols etched into the outside of the rock in blue granite? It’s a bit faint and hard to make out, but even without getting closer, I think you guys should be able to spot it…” Felix looked increasingly fascinated as he looked closer and closer at the rock. “I wish… darn.” Felix sighed. “Even though my monocle helps me learn how to copy magic items I analyze, I just don’t know enough to even know where to start.”

I squinted, and after focusing on the rock, I was also able to barely make out a few blue scribbles etched into the outside of the rock. However, I had ability to pick out the magic symbols on the outside of the rock. It was too hard for me to see.

I felt a small pang of jealousy as I looked at Felix’s {Craftsman’s} monocle, as well as his Grade 7 natural perception once he had finished using Sallia’s noodle bowl. Even though my eyesight was average now, compared to Sallia’s seventh rune and Felix’s incredibly high Perception I still felt as if I was half-blind compared to the rest of the group sometimes.

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“So is it some sort of wand?” asked Sallia, distracting me from my low Perception. “Hmm… the weirdest thing is that there’s actually manifestation essence inside of the rock, even though it’s hard to spot. I know that wands can’t hold or use any sort of magical essence of their own - instead, they’re entirely powered by their user. One of the big magical mysteries of the old days is how magic artifacts and superstructures like the giant cities beneath the earth can repair and maintain themselves without any input of new energy. Maybe these rocks are similar?”

“If that’s the case, we should be extra careful,” I said, glancing at the little pockmark in the landscape. The more I looked at it, the more it resembled a tiny crater. “I get the feeling that the little white rock isn’t an item we can use, so much as a trap of some sort. Otherwise, I feel like the plant life wouldn’t be missing, and it wouldn’t just be laying out here.”

Felix paused, and then nodded. “Do you want to try hitting it with something from a range? We could try poking it with something and see if it reacts. I doubt I could learn anything just from watching a magic item activate from afar, but… maybe it could work?” Felix grins a bit. “I can’t sense any magic reserves from magical items like the underground cities, but I can at least feel an essence reserve here. It’s a slim chance, but with my monocle, maybe I could figure something out.”

I glanced at Sallia, who grinned. “That could work. If we ever manage to get magical item creation working, I imagine we would be rolling in Achievement. I would be surprised if we didn’t get at least ten thousand Achievement from it - and we could get a lot more, depending on how much of a role we personally play in spreading the rediscovery of magic items.”

“Is ten thousand Achievement a lot?” asked Anise, looking curious.

“Well, it’s a fair bit more than we currently have to work with,” I said, absently pulling up my Status screen and checking my 14,818 Achievement. “For context, I’m doing pretty well in this life so far, and I have 14,818 Achievement. I don’t quite remember how much I got from our last world, since it has been over three decades and my memory is a little patchy. But it should have been around 15,000, I think?” I said. “Ten thousand wouldn’t quite double the amount of Achievement I have so far, but it would be close. And the purchases I had in mind for when we return to the Market cost around 24,000 Achievement all together.”

Sallia nodded. “I’m sitting at around the same amount. Ten thousand isn’t a crazy amount of Achievement, but it’s excellent if we can get 10,000 Achievement from doing one thing. And although my purchasing needs for next life aren’t quite so extensive as Miria’s right now, more Achievement is always a good thing..”

“Hmm. Is that so?” asked Anise, looking thoughtful.

While she was thinking, Felix squinted more and more carefully at the rock filled with manifestation essence. Then, he glanced at Anise.

“Would you be willing to help me watch what happens? It would be pretty amazing to be a super-witch who rediscovers how magic items work?”

Anise’s eye violently twitched. “I was only twenty! Give me a break!” She said, twitching. “All three of you were grown-ups before you were even born in this world, but don’t tell me none of you have your own embarrassing stories from the past.”

“As a super witch, you should work to become immune to embarrassment!” I said.

Anise buried her head into her hands, and I tried not to laugh.

“All right, let’s back up a little more and set off the rock,” said Felix. “Since this little pockmark in the landscape is limited in size, I imagine that we’ll be safe if we’re outside of it, but… just in case, Sallia, make sure to materialize your armor. And Miria, maybe tuck your arms and legs more into your dress and stand in front? Your dress is probably the best piece of armor we have access to right now. And let’s get as far away as we can without sacrificing our accuracy.”

We quickly rearranged ourselves, making sure that if we had miscalculated how dangerous this thing was, we would be as safe as possible.

Then, Felix tossed a small clod of dirt at the magic rock.

The clod of dirt bumped into the magic rock, and I felt a bunch of manifestation essence suddenly contract inside of the rock.

Then, the rock glowed white, almost as if it were about to turn into molten slag. A moment later, it started to float in midair, before it detonated.

A ball of fire and heat suddenly rinsed the surrounding area, turning much of the pink plant life into charcoal as the wave of pure heat incinerated them. The ball of fire grew wider and wider, seeming as if it were going to wash away everything… and then stopped slightly past the edges of the pockmark in the landscape. The fire didn’t seem to disturb the dirt much: it had been moved around a little bit, but whatever spell the explosive rock was using, it was almost entirely concentrated on generating heat instead of force.

A few moments later, the flames disappeared, and the rock dropped back to the dirt. It wasn’t quite empty of manifestation essence, but it was less than halfway full now. I could also feel the manifestation essence much more clearly now. Previously, I had only been able to sense the rock once it started activating, likely due to my average Perception. However, even though it was a good thing that I could observe the rock more carefully now, I also felt uneasy.

If the rock was easier to detect the less manifestation essence it had, it was obvious that it had some sort of shielding mechanism on it. If that was the case, we needed to be especially careful as we moved towards the city, or we might find ourselves caught in a fireball and return to the Market early.

“Did you figure anything out?” asked Anise.

“Well, not much,” said Felix. “I know that, at least for a second, the item was behaving just like a wand. It was channeling magic through one, specific spell, which was literally engraved into it. However, I have no idea how the rock is storing power. I also don’t know how it’s disguising the manifestation essence inside of it,” said Felix, frowning. A moment later, he hesitated, and tried tossing another clod of dirt at the explosive rock.

And the item ignited once again, once again setting the area on fire, before burning itself to a crisp.

Leaving us with no materials to research.

“Damn. I thought that would work,” said Felix, grimacing. “I was really hoping to get a better look at that rock. If I could just get a glimpse of how it stored power…” Felix sighed longingly, before shaking his head. “Oh well. I guess if it was that easy, someone would have discovered how to make magic items long ago.”

I sighed as well. If Felix figured out how to make magic items, we would have accomplished our biggest goal here. While I still wanted to figure out more about the Multiverse and my attunement, right now, we needed Achievement far more. And the amount of Achievement we could get for rediscovering how to make magic items was just far too tempting, and anything else we got would basically just be icing on the cake.

“Let’s keep going,” I said, giving the mysterious craters in our surroundings a more wary look. “We need to keep an eye out for mechanical and magical traps as well, but most importantly, we need to actually get into some of the facilities. If that adventuring team stopped after only making it past the first few layers of defenses, I imagine there’s a lot of good stuff in here. We just need to get enough to make our trip worth it, and then go back before we get greedy and die.”

Sallia and Anise swallowed nervously, looking at the burned chunks of plant matter and ashes of the magic rock, before they nodded. Felix grinned.

“Then let’s keep moving,” he said cheerily. “I’ll take the lead this time, but Sallia, would you be prepared to rescue me if something goes horribly wrong? I have pretty good eyesight right now, and I don’t need to burn any essence to keep my senses excellent.”

Sallia nodded, and our group shifted positions to better accommodate our new lineup. Then, we continued walking towards the facilities that were now only a few hours away.