Zoe was honestly quite disappointed that she didn’t get to see the explosion.

She was, however, very thankful when the three of them touched down on the riverbank at the bottom of the canyon. She had no desire to repeat the first incident with Lily’s flying sword — really, she was still pretty mad about that when she thought of it.

In any case, the noon sun was high overhead, and it was hot. Dusty, too — Zoe was amazed that the shallow, glistening water at the bottom hadn’t evaporated entirely. It couldn’t be more than a foot deep at the very deepest.

There were a lot of rocks around — ranging from large boulders to small pebbles scattered around the riverbanks. She didn’t think it was as big as the Grand Canyon back on Earth, but she had also never been there.

Either way, striated rock walls rose up on both side, blocking out much of the sky. Not that it stopped the burning of the sun, though.

There were plants, if you looked — not-quite-cactuses, scraggly shrubs, and something that looked like a dead vine. In fact, all of them looked dead — but a quick activation of {Manasight} revealed that they were all full of hearty, flowing, green life mana.

Zoe wondered how they survived — and also why none of them were close to the water. As soon as she realized the second bit, she couldn’t get it out of her head. After all, everything needed water. She would have expected that the river would be a sort of oasis for plant and animal life, but the banks were the most barren, lifeless part.

Is that actually normal for this kind of ecosystem for some reason, or is the water toxic or something?

As Andric began to approach, an empty flask now in hand, she activated {Manasight}.

The water was black. While there was a little bit of rich blue mana — water, probably — it was completely drowned out to her magic sense by an oozing, slick, oily black. It was similar to the black in her own channels, only more… revolting.

And Andric was now bending down.

“Back! Get back!” Waving her arms and running forward, Zoe practically dragged the surprised Alchemist back up the bank. He didn’t resist, thankfully — he just seemed confused.

“What’s wrong?” Lily asked as she got up from the sandy orange boulder she had taken as a seat.

“Something bad is in the water,” Zoe explained. “Look at all the plants.”

The other two looked around and Andric sucked in his teeth. Lily just looked confused. “What do you mean? Are they poisonous or something?”

“No, they’re all edible, actually,” Andric said. “But look at how none of them are anywhere near the water. It should be an ideal resource for them, but everything alive is as far away as it can get.”

“Oh shit,” Lily hissed, “I never would have noticed that.”

“I’m fucking glad she did,” Andric said. “I always purify it anyway, but I should have noticed that too.” He shook his head and then glanced back at Zoe. “Anything else?”

Zoe looked around. She didn’t see anything — the water was crystal clear. You could see straight through to the sandy bottom. Nothing on the canyon walls jumped out at her either. She activated {Manasight} again.

The water turned back to crude oil in her vision, but this time she studied the rocks and walls. Nothing but dull, faint earth mana. There were a few points spots in the wall here and there, however, where brilliant white mana shown like tiny stars.

“Two things,” she finally said, “both from looking at the mana. The river is full of this slimy, hideous black mana, and then there are these little points of really bright white scattered in the rocks.” She glanced at Andric and then Lily. “Any idea what those might mean?”

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Andric shrugged, and Lily whistled. “I only have {Mana Sense}, so I couldn’t tell you. And besides, from what I’ve heard, abilities like that are different for everyone. Hell, no people even agree on what visible mana effects look like to the naked eye.”

“I’d wager that the bright lights are mana crystals or some other magical deposit,” Andric chipped in. “As for the river, well, obviously there’s some kind of dangerous magic in it, but it could be anything.”

“I have a similar color in my own mana channels,” Zoe admitted. “It’s not as oily looking, but other than that it feels the same.”

“Demonic mana?”

She opened her mouth and then froze. No, I don’t think so. Thinking back to the cultist lair, she remembered that the monster that had eaten her only had crimson. And also, her own {Mana Manipulation} blasts had been crimson as well. No, it has to be something else. But what was it? The fact that something similar to the icky stuff killing the plants was in her own spirit gave Zoe pause.

“No, it’s not,” she finally said. “Demonic mana is pure crimson for me.”

“Weird,” Lily said. “You should probably get that checked out at some point.

Andric nodded. “Well, I’ll go ahead and sample some of the water, once we stop. Speaking of which, we should really get going.”

And with that, the Alchemist stowed his waterskin back into nothingness and set off upstream down the riverbank. The other two followed him, and Zoe hurriedly caught up. “So what’s the plan?”

“We get away from the crash first. They’re probably already sending someone out to investigate, and we don’t want them to find us here. Then, we find a good hiding spot not too much further and wait until nightfall.”

“And then?”

“We see what kind of camp they have. I might sneak in, but we’ll see.”

Zoe nodded to herself. “And we’re doing this because they’re after the same guy we’re after.”

“Correct.”

They continued on for several minutes in silence, and Zoe decided to practice a little bit of Meditation}. The base skill was extremely easy to use now — in fact, she suspected she could pretty much have it on all the time, except for in combat.

The mana gains had also increased significantly. However, she wasn’t quite sure how to push it harder — how to make it level. Although, perhaps ‘pushing it harder’ wasn’t exactly the right way to think about meditating. But in any case, her mana was climbing back up rapidly, so she couldn’t say it wasn’t worth it.

“By the way,” she said after a quarter of an hour, finally breaking the silence — “who actually is this guy anyway?” She paused, and Andric glanced at her questioningly. “I mean, I know he’s also a worldwalker, and that he murdered one of your sect’s juniors after an auction, but that’s about it. The pirates — didn’t they call him the ‘merchant king’ or something like that?”

Coming up from behind them and butting herself between them, Lily was the one to answer. “Yes, that’s a title he goes by. It’s ridiculously pretentious.”

“But not inaccurate,” Andric grumbled.

“Yes, well, he has pretty much zero combat ability,” Lily sneered. “Unlike most worldwalkers, he decided to accrue power through economics and trade rather than killing.”

“You make him sound almost respectable,” Zoe commented.

“He’s not,” Andric said simply.

“He’s a roach and a coward,” Lily sneered. “He’s absolutely ruthless too, but he presents himself as all honest and apologetic.”

“He uses ‘sorry’ way too much and he never means it.”

“And believe me, he’s hurt far more people than I bet the entire den of pirates have. He once bought up over three quarters of the grain of the whole peninsula, let most of it rot in deliberately poorly managed silos, and then hiked the price of what was left during a famine.”

“He let most of it rot so that it wouldn’t look like he was hoarding enough to feed everyone,” Andric supplied.

“And guess what caused the famine in the first place?”

“Let me guess,” Zoe said, “he did.”

“Yep. Undercut everyone else on bids for farmland and then did nothing with it. And then afterwards, he sold the land back at a higher price.”

“Actually, he still rents over half of it,” Andric said.

Zoe shook her head. “You don’t like him.”

“No shit.”

“It’s honestly worse than just gutting people the old fashioned way,” Lily said. “anyway, anyone who knows what’s going on either hates him or loves him. And they only love him because they benefit.”

Zoe frowned. “So how has he survived? I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but you and pretty much every other awakened I’ve met have seemed pretty murder-happy. You said he can’t actually fight.”

“He doesn’t need to. He gets others to do it — by pay, by blackmail, by favors and alliances…”

“He is very intelligent,” Andric said. For the first time in the conversation, Zoe heard a hint of admiration. “And yes, sometimes that doesn’t always work out. Money and information only go so far. But instead of fighting —”

“— He runs away,” Lily interjected. “He is rather high level, but all of his abilities seem to be focused on defense, evasion, concealment, scrying… that sort of thing.”

“And the two of you are going to kill him.”

The other two both nodded vigorously at Zoe. “Yes.”

“With your help, of course.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. Of course.