Hardly thirty minutes had gone by before we ended up at some restaurant. Alexandra ordered me some food, took a phone call, and then returned. I couldn’t see what she was thinking under her sunglasses, but she didn’t appear to be disturbed.

“Why pancakes?” I asked, taking small bites in between.

“Aren’t you exhausted?” She replied with her own question. “Hell, if you aren’t hungry after that you aren’t human.”

I could only nod in confirmation since my body felt hollow after the fight. Towards the end, I had to bluff my way out of the situation but it worked out. Resisting the urge to pass out on the spot, I pinched my eyes closed and continued on.

“What are we going to do about the fight?”

My face was recorded as well as my abilities, there was no way I wouldn’t be getting a visit from Emerian investigators who specialized in gifted-related crimes.

“It’s being handled,” Alexandra said, but her tone made her seem a little pissed.

“Is there a catch?”

“There’s always a catch,” She asserted.

We were in agreement on that. Anything relating to ruins or gifted had a string attached to it.

“What is it?” I inquired with a strained smile.

My entire body seemed to be calling out for me to close my eyes and rest, but I was hesitant. There was another problem at hand that required my attention.

“For starters, there is no hiding the fight that just happened, so I gave up on that before we even got here. The story we’re going with is that we were attacked by New Era.”

“That’s true though.”

“I’m not done. It’s fine for me, but you’re a freelancer without guild protection. It means that if they’re determined, the government can put any number of shackles on you in the form of crimes.”

“That’s bullshit if I ever heard any,” I muttered sourly.

Looking back at it, I walked out of the interrogation without cooperating much so they’d probably be eager to get back at me. Considering that, I still felt no regret toward leaving when I did.

‘Then again–’ since she seemed to be calm, I guess she had a solution in mind.

“We’ll say that you’re a guild affiliate of mine. As long as I tell them we’re in a temporary partnership, they can’t take any overt actions against you.”

“If it's just borrowing your name, I can live with that.”

“As for the fight, they’ll frame it as a targeted attack on my guild by New Era or something. Whatever makes us look like the good guys and New Era the bad guys. In exchange, we have to clear a very special ruin for them.” She tapped her fingers against the table, annoyed at the very thought of whatever ruin we needed to clear.

“What is it?”

“‘The Hell Gate’ is what they usually call it. In exchange for making us look good and foregoing criminal charges, we need to retrieve an item known as a hell stone.”

“And that is?”

I didn’t show an obvious reaction, but I could only think about how bad my compatibility with a ruin called the Hell Gate would be.

“It’s a really difficult thing to get is what it is. You see, the ruin we need to clear is a class-five, but get this– The moment you take the hell stone it goes up a level. Doesn’t that just sound fun?” She laughed at the absurdity of it.

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‘It gives new meaning to all hell breaking loose,’ I thought inwardly.

“I’ll be helping you with that, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll need as much help as I can get, unfortunately… It’s gonna be difficult, Casper.”

“When are things easy?” I asked her, chuckling to myself, before stopping as I recalled something, “Oh yeah, weren’t you going to raid some New Era hideouts?”

I felt my fatigue get pushed back as my mind focused on one thing.

“It’s still in progress. We have a few definite locations, but before we pinpoint more, we can’t risk scaring the rest of them off.”

“If you can guarantee that I won’t be held responsible for anything then all I need is the location of one hideout and I can get you the information you needed.”

“You mean it?” Alexandra showed consideration to my proposal.

I nodded before putting my head down.

“I promise,” I mumbled as my vision became darker.

Even as I was falling asleep, all I could think of was how much I wanted to hurt New Era.

…

Sleep didn’t come easy. Images and flashes of violence were interlaced with moments of brief peace. It left much to be desired and it made me wonder when was the last time I actually slept well. I couldn’t say how long I had been in the proving grounds, but it was enough to make me realize the times I slept involved being knocked unconscious.

I raised my head and looked around the now-empty restaurant. I rubbed my eyes as I went to look for Alexandra. It was dark outside, so she must’ve let me sleep longer than I should have.

‘What?’ I tried to open the door but it didn’t budge.

The last vestiges of drowsiness disappeared and peeked outside, but all I found on the abandoned streets were flickering street lights.

‘Is it an artifact?’ I wondered as I turned around only to see some sort of apparition.

“Soon,” The vaguely human figure whispered softly to me.

Its abnormally thin body was covered in iron armor full of crooked edges and deep scratch marks. Beneath its helmet, which was riddled with signs of battle, I could hear it inhaling deeply as if taking in my general presence.

“Such a– delicious scent.” It groaned while caressing its shoulders with eerily long fingers which seemed to extend well past normal length. “I will soon have it for myself.”

It let out ear-grating laughter as it began to point at me.

“We’ll see,” I replied, undaunted by the strange creature.

It sunk into the floor and I was left alone to clear my mind.

…

“So that’s him?” I heard someone speaking as I opened my eyes.

A man in a suit stood near Alexandra who sent me a telling look. I took it to mean she didn’t want me to speak.

“How does that concern you exactly?” She asked. “Just get to the point.”

“Well, your friend there is quite a trending topic. Funnily enough, he was in a viral video a couple of months ago, the ruin incident brought him back to the spotlight, and now this New Era fight? Well, the name ‘Casper Clay’ is being floated around a lot.”

“I told you, he’s partnered with my guild under a temporary contract.”

“Right,” The suited man was skeptical but chose not to press for anything. “As long as you manage to get the hell stone within two months, no one is going to bat an eye. If you don’t, well–” He stared in my direction with clear interest. “In addition to penalizing your guild, we’ll have to investigate Mr.Clay.”

His threat didn’t sit well with me. I stood up but when I was about to approach him, Alexandra quickly raised her hand to stop me.

“Two months is a lot to ask for, but we’ll get it done.”

“I know that you will, Alexandra. You rarely disappoint,” He said, ignoring my gaze as he left.

Once we were alone, Alexandra spat on the ground, not caring that we were still inside.

“So it’s settled?” I asked.

“Nothing is settled until we get that hellstone.”

“Just what is so special about it?”

Besides the ominous name, there was no obvious tell toward its nature.

“If you mess with it enough, you can get a lot of heat and energy out of it as far as I know. They could be powering something or making some sort of weapon. Either way, they wouldn’t tell me.”

It was one of those things where prying would only leave you worse off than when you started, so I gave up on finding more. Only, the demons of hell were pretty pissed off when I became a dread sorcerer. I contemplated telling Alexandra, but there was no obvious way to tell someone that you made the creatures of hell feel disgusted by your presence? If she didn’t think I was crazy she’d have to at least feel I was a threat and would opt to keep me out.

We talked about the situation for a few more hours before she sent me off.

“What a wild day,” I mumbled from inside of the taxi.

I closed my eyes, but this time I couldn’t sleep easily.