Apparently, even though I hadn’t done much other than play taxi, the System considered my contribution as having been considerable.

[Myth(ical) Mediator Lv. 25 -> Myth(ical) Mediator Lv. 27]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Traceless Communion]

I still couldn’t tell how gaining Levels was supposed to work. What did and did not count. How did all this fit together? Two Levels, at my current power level, for two portals and a bit of running back and forth seemed like a lot. And as far as I could tell, the System didn’t really award much for “cheesing” difficult tasks.

There was no set reward for killing an enemy, it was based on the effort put in … or so I’d thought.

Perhaps it was some kind of delayed reward for all the efforts that had gone into this? Flitting all over Europe, visiting all the capital cities, finding spots that I could easily direct others to, and walking all over those areas to make sure I’d have somewhere to teleport to even if things got crowded … that had barely earned me much of anything because it hadn’t been particularly difficult.

Helping end Abhartach, however, had retroactively transformed those efforts from “potential waste of time” to “prescient preparation with tangible results.” And that shift might have been the source for the Levels. But I still didn’t know for sure.

Even so, I liked the Levels, and they were useful.

Traceless Communion

If you are in a position to convey information to someone else, you may do so without being noticed or overheard, and the target may give a short reply. Available every 30 seconds to 1 hour, depending on importance of information

Basically, I could shout information across the battlefield without actually shouting, or risking the bad guy overhearing. That would have been beyond useful five minutes ago, well, half an hour ago when I’d run off to fetch Arthur, but I had it now.

I also boosted [Arcane Core], all my spells ran off this Skill so that choice gave me a wide scope of improvement.

Your mana pool is deepened, you may select a single spell whose casting speed will be quintupled and cost reduced by a quarter. Chosen spell can be reselected once a week.

As for the improvement itself, it was pretty basic. Even more mana to “throw around,” especially once I knew suitably destructive spells, and I could focus on a given spell to be able to use it even more quickly.

Once I knew it, I’d pick Fionn’s storm spell, which I’d recently learned was called [Century Storm], because that was absolutely insane and surprisingly flexible, but for now, I stuck with [Lesser Telekinetic Push]. It could deflect enemies to a degree whenever [Polite Rebuke] was off cooldown and even be used to launch attacks, though it was relatively weak compared to the strength I’d seen the others throw around.

Even Mia had been able to help with that fight, I’d just played taxi. I could block a few attacks with [Diplomatic Immunity], then deflect one more with [Polite Rebuke], and that was about the full extent of my combat power.

Then again, I specialized in “soft power.” The kind that might not be overly helpful when someone was actively trying to punch me in the face and was in a position to do so, but could be overwhelming when I was sufficiently removed from the fight. Now if only the world weren’t stuffed to the gills with monsters, suffering from a dire lack of safe areas … but that wasn’t my problem to solve, not directly.

No, my job was support, diplomacy, and playing advocatus diaboli if there were any flaws in plans. On the off chance that I was the only one to notice them, at any rate. Considering who was around me, that happened rarely enough. But it did happen.

Like now.

“We might have won this fight, but I think the real takeaway is that there could be a whole lot more buried. We should probably start searching. Maybe we’ll even find Merlin in his tree …” I trailed off when I noticed Arthur glaring at me.

“How do you know what happened to Merlin?” he growled as he stalked over here. He looked just about ready to rip my head off.

Uh-oh. I mean, Dietrich would probably protect me, and potentially even win, but this was still a really bad situation …

“It’s the myth … your myth. Merlin is said to have been sealed in a tree by Nimue and remains there to this …” I trailed off as I looked at Arthur, really looked. He wasn’t furious, near as I could tell, just, well, I wouldn’t go quite as far as calling it desperate, but it had gotten to the point where [Innate Etiquette] was telling me the entire concept of regular etiquette had gone out the window.

I swallowed.

“It’s said that Merlin remains there to this day. I brought him up as an example of other Ancient’s that should still be around, just sealed.”

“And where. Is. This. Tree?” he slowly ground out, clearly holding himself back with great difficulty, though I could see the fact that he was upset even more clearly. He’d grown up under Merlin’s watchful eyes in many versions of his myth, guided from childhood, and while I didn’t know what had truly happened, chances were the sorcerer was at partially a surrogate parent of some kind. A surrogate parent who’d vanished and subsequently, everything had gone to shit.

He wasn’t anywhere near my personal space just yet, but Arthur was practically a larger-than-life presence, even now. It didn’t matter how far we were apart physically, it still felt like he was still way too close, too … present. It was like I was standing in front of a raging bull, or maybe a ticked-off lion. Uncomfortable, and borderline terrifying, but despite that, I resisted the almost overwhelming urge to back up, to retreat, to flee.

“We don’t know,” Dietrich announced, stepping between me and the former British monarch. “But we can find out.”

“Thank you,” I said, and took a couple of steps to the side so that I could once again look Arthur in the face. I was grateful for the help, but hiding behind Dietrich’s broad back felt plain wrong. Also, it was wrong; I couldn’t endlessly hide behind him when confronted.

And then, I continued.

“How about we head somewhere that isn’t a warzone, start figuring out how to best find the tree, maybe figure out who else is likely still around?” I suggested.

“Either way, we shouldn’t have this discussion here,” Fionn interjected. “Our camp is well set up, and I’m sure accommodations will be made available to you soon.”

Arthur’s anger seemed to vanish in an instant, wiped away like … something. Grease in a cleaning product commercial, maybe.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Point was, it seemed like the situation had been defused to the point where it wasn’t going to blow up anytime soon.

Arthur spun on his heels and turned in the direction of Dublin, then stopped after a few steps.

“I don’t suppose there is a transport available?” he asked, then threw an uncomfortable look towards where the main army contingent was. “Something that isn’t a helicopter?”

There, was, in fact, an alternative, a troop transport truck. It seemed like there was not a single ancient who liked choppers. Even Dietrich had looked highly uncomfortable on the ride here from the portal, now that I thought about it.

And on the way back, once the truck was driving on a proper road and no longer shaking like the inside of a rattle wielded by a toddler on a sugar high, we started talking.

“So, how do we locate the master mage?” Fionn asked. “I already tried scrying for his location and found nothing. We could start searching for records of forestry departments or ancient trees that became local landmarks.”

“Would it be possible for you to mark Camelot’s location on modern maps, your majesty?” I asked Arthur.

“Maybe,” he said. “But modern maps look very different than what I’m used to, I don’t think they even have the right shape for the British Isles.”

Well, that was probably because the maps of his days had been absolute crap, but I wasn’t going to tell him that to his face. So I just shrugged instead.

“I have a Skill for finding treasure. Did Merlin have anything on him that I might be able to track?” Dietrich threw in, derailing the burgeoning argument.

“He left in a simple cloak, with basic supplies from the kitchen and armory,” Arthur sighed.

“Which brings us back to the records and local guides,” Fionn announced. “A tree which is over a thousand years old should be findable.”

“Can’t you scry for something like that?” I asked.

“I did,” he said. “But there were no obvious candidates. We’ll have to ask around.”

“Something for tomorrow,” Goll grumbled. “Everyone is tired, filthy, and in no state to properly study anything.”

The dour-faced man was one of Fionn’s comrades and rarely spoke, though when he did, it was worth listening to.

“How about we come up with other treasures we could search for?” Fionn suggested. “Personally, I can think of three magical spears lost in Ireland alone.”

“One is Gae Bolg, I’m guessing?” I asked. The spear of Cu Chullain was an incredibly lethal weapon that might have been able to stop Abhartach in his tracks. “What are the other two?”

“Gae Buidhe and Gae Dearg,” Fionn said. “They belonged to Diarmuid, and leave wounds that cannot be healed.”

In other words, another pair of weapons that would have trivialized the fight we’d just finished with such incredible difficulty. Well, they’d finished. I’d stuck to coming up with ideas and playing taxi.

Dietrich sighed deeply next to me. “In hindsight, I should have searched for the treasure of the Niebelungs the first chance I got.”

“Is it still cursed?” I asked. “We should be careful, depending on which …”

I stopped talking, facepalmed, and sighed while slowly dragging my hand down my face. Then, I looked straight at Dietrich.

“Siegfried got his treasure from a dwarven kingdom, correct?”

I’d been about to say “depending on which version of the myth is correct,” which was beyond stupid since I could just, you know, ask. If the treasure hoard had been won from the dragon Fafnir, as it had happened in the Norse version of the myth, then it was cursed, Andvari’s ring in particular. If the treasure had been won from a dwarven kingdom, on the other hand, then, well, it was fine.

Stained with literal rivers, no, oceans of blood, but free of curses.

Dietrich shrugged. “I believe so. But I only met the man once, during a duel, we didn’t exactly have long conversations.”

“Oh, who won?” Mia asked.

“I did,” Dietrich laughed, before tapping on the hilt of Mimung, the magical sword that never left his side. “But only after I was able to borrow this beauty. Siegfried was a great fighter, most people with invulnerability and inhuman strength would probably have relied on them and spent less time training, but, well, I’m better.”

The “hidden” message was obvious: overly relying on magic and superpowers over skills was bound to end badly the moment someone figured out a way around one’s preternatural abilities.

“So, if we find the treasures, let’s just leave any rings there until we can check them for enchantments, and be done with it,” I suggested.

“Or I can just check them for enchantments and throw out anything I don’t recognize,” Fionn threw in.

“If we’re hunting for treasure, there’s a lance I’m missing,” Arthur added. “It’s called Rhongomyniad.”

Yeah, I wasn’t even going to try to pronounce that without first gaining some degree of mastery over the Welsh language, which I was pretty sure was the language the name stemmed from.

“What about other works of Wayland?” Mia asked, gesturing to Mimung. “I know that’s his greatest creation, but couldn’t he make a knife that can cut all the way through a table in a single evening?”

Dietrich nodded.

“What about …” I trailed off and pulled out my phone, making a few Google searches before continuing. “… Hrungnir’s whetstone. He was a giant who fought Thor, using a giant whetstone as a weapon, but that whetstone was destroyed in the battle. One of those fragments then continued on to injure the god. But the rest should still be lying on the ground somewhere, right?”

We kept going, coming up with a list of cool stuff, even looping in Charlemagne via my cellphone. He only had a single suggestion: the Ring of Solomon, otherwise known as the Seal of Solomon, a magical artifact capable of controlling seventy-two immensely powerful beings. Be they ancient pagan deities or demons of the highest caliber, they were strong. And all one needed to harness that strength was that ring.

Dietrich used his [Nose for Treasure] Skill on each of these relics, as well as a whole lot more we came up with later, and one thing became apparent. Well, two things. No, three things.

One, all the Ancients had gotten so many Skills upfront that they didn’t really use them all optimally.

Two, not using the Skill before had been a big mistake.

And three, nothing divine could be found. No item belonging to a god, no item given by a god, no item that only existed because of a god in general.

So no whetstone, no magic ring, not even the Silver Hand of Nuada which Fionn had suggested, a prosthetic for the Irish king of the gods that had become superfluous when he’d regained his original limb.

And Merlin couldn’t be found either, most likely since he wasn’t a piece of treasure.

But we’d be able to pick up the various Irish spears tomorrow, and go dredging up the treasures of the Niebelungs from various riverbeds.

Tomorrow. I had no desire to go running all over Ireland, let alone Europe, and no one else looked like they were in the mood either.

The truck let us out on the outskirts of Dublin, into an area that was half military base, half boy scout encampment. The Fianna’s home base, into which Fionn vanished for a minute before coming out clutching a bottle of whiskey and with a whole bunch of glasses floating along behind him, which he passed out and filled. I barely got anything, which was how I liked it, at least considering the current gravity of the situation. I wanted a clear head.

“Thank you for your help, everyone,” Fionn announced, raising his glass.

“Here’s to cheating, stealing, and drinking.

“If you cheat, may you cheat death.

“If you steal, may you steal a maiden’s heart.

“And if you drink, may you drink with friends.

“Slainte agus saol agat.”

Then, he tipped back his glass, the rest of the Fianna following suit almost simultaneously, while everyone else was somewhat slower.

That had been a nice toast, the part I’d understood at least. German toasts were … kinda meh.

There was the one where everyone shouted “Prost” and clinked glasses together, something that had sprung from a medieval tradition of smashing tankards against each other so the beer spilled out and mixed to make poisonings harder.

Or the hundreds of little idiotic phrases I’d heard while at university. The only one I knew of any witt was “delirium, delarium, full like an aquarium.”

Or maybe I had mostly been exposed to the lesser end of the spectrum.

Either way, Fionn’s toast had been downright poetic.

But the little interplay in the camp didn’t last very long, it had gotten late.

We did end up staying the night in Dublin, in a swanky hotel, paid for by the government. I was out of portal uses for the day and given a choice between either getting on a plane and then taking a helicopter from Munich airport or just waiting ten hours in a luxury hotel, the decision was obvious.

I eventually bade everyone goodnight and went to bed, finding complimentary pajamas that I strongly suspected were made of silk neatly folded on the blanket. Ooh, I’d be keeping those if at all possible.

***

My night in the hotel was an absolute, uh … nightmare? The pajamas were nice, the bed was nicer, but I spent the entire time tossing and turning. Blood, crushing weight and being buried, fire, and demonic visages.

I never even made it into proper, well, what I’d consider sleep, no idea how it was considered scientifically, I was stuck in a seemingly endless series of flashing images, shifting from one to the next, until I woke … then I’d go back to sleep only to wake once more a short while later.

That wasn’t the first time it had happened, I occasionally found myself in this situation after doing something particularly intense right before bed, or drinking, not that I’d drunk enough to blame the alcohol tonight. But that didn’t mean I was happy waking up bleary-eyed and grouchy.

Why had I even been dreaming of demons? Abhartach had been a va- … it hadn’t been about him, had it? He’d been over and done with, the problem I’d been grappling with had been an entirely different one. And suddenly, I knew how to find Merlin.