“What kind of a problem?” asked Sadie, her tone intense. “What’s going on?”

“The Immortals.”

“What about them?” Elijah asked before Sadie could cut in.

“They’re taking over,” Atticus responded with a shake of his head. “They’re multiplying. I don’t know how, but every day, there seems to be more of them out there. And they’re not shy about imposing their will on other people, either. The only reason we’re not completely under their sway is because we paid their price for protection.”

“What was the price?” Sadie asked.

Atticus looked away, then sighed before answering, “Equipment. The best we had. My people, they don’t have the best materials to work with here. It’s not as if anyone’s set up a mine, after all. But they’re good at what they do, and they’ve managed to create some High Simple-Grade items. Those have all gone to the Immortals.”

Elijah narrowed his eyes. His first impulse was to berate Atticus for giving in to the Immortals’ extortive demands. However, on second thought, he understood it. His consortium’s power was more economic than martial, and as such, he couldn’t respond properly to such a blatant threat. He could have fought, and his people probably would have joined him. That would have gotten a lot of people killed, though.

“The real issue is that people can’t even leave when they want,” Atticus went on. “They’ve got access to the Branch blocked.”

“How?” asked Dat. “Before, there were only a dozen of them.”

“And we took one of them out,” Elijah said, remembering the woman he’d fed to a beast in the jungle. There was no way she could have survived that, even with whatever immortality skill she’d been subjected to. “We know they’re patrolling the wilderness, too.”

Indeed, they’d encountered a few other groups lately, and they’d all reported running into Immortals. In some cases, the black-clad and unkillable fighters had been repelled, but in others, their targets had been forced to flee.

“They have more people than that,” Atticus stated. “A lot more. According to everything I’ve seen, at least a hundred. Maybe as many as two.”

“That’s…that’s too many. How did they –”

Dat cut Elijah off, saying, “They’re recruiting. I need to go check this out. Give me an hour.”

“What are you going to do?” Elijah asked.

“Investigate,” Dat said. “This is what I do, bro.”

Elijah was about to offer to help when Sadie said, “Don’t worry about him. He knows what’s he’s doing.”

“I really do,” Dat agreed.

Elijah sighed. “Fine. Be careful,” he said.

Then, Dat disappeared – literally. One second, he was there, and the next, he was gone. Elijah could still feel a vague disturbance in the ambient ethera, but he only noticed it because he was looking for it. If he hadn’t been, his senses – including One with Nature – would have been largely useless, and Dat would have been entirely undetectable.

“That’s…impressive,” Elijah said.

Sadie responded, “It’s a new skill. He got it at level seventy-five.”

“When did that happen? Getting to that level, I mean,” Elijah asked her.

She shrugged. “Back in the junkyard,” she said. “We’ve all leveled significantly over the past few weeks. Not enough to catch up to you, but we’re getting closer.”

“Any other new abilities I should know about?” he asked, looking at her, then Kurik.

“I got a few new tricks up my sleeve,” the dwarf said. “New ways of buildin’ traps and such. Should be a lot more efficient, assumin’ I can get my mind around it. It requires a lot more input on my end. Not like those spells you all fling around. This is based on skill and technique, almost like a crafter.”

“Interesting. And you, Sadie?” asked Elijah.

“I got an enhancement called Verdict,” she said. “I’m not sure how it works, though. The description is a little vague, and I haven’t had a chance to try it out. It’s supposed to enhance my attacks, though.”

“That should help,” Elijah said. Inwardly, though, he couldn’t help but wonder if his companions were destined to catch him. To comfort himself, he looked at the Planetary Power Rankings:

Planetary Power Rankings (Earth)

1. Elijah Hart – Level 96

2. Oscar Ramirez – Level 89

3. Sadie Song – Level 86

4. Hu Shui – Level 79

5. Davu Adebowale– Level 78

6. Anupriya Pandey – Level 77

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7. Benedict Emerson – Level 77

8. Niko Song – Level 76

9. Ram Khandu – Level 76

10. Dat Bao – Level 75

11. …

12. …

13. …

14. …

He let out a small sigh of relief. He still had a sizable lead, which had actually grown even larger since coming to the Trial of Primacy. It shouldn’t have been surprising. After all, he knew that Oscar Ramirez was fighting alone – if hunting with his pack of dogs could be considered alone – which had to be less efficient than what Elijah had been doing with Sadie, Dat, and Kurik. Still, the fact that the man had maintained the second spot was impressive.

Idly, he wondered about some of the other names on the list. Were they in the Trial of Primacy, too? One member of the top ten – Niko Song, Sadie’s brother – was still back on Earth, but what about the others? The Trial of Primacy represented a great opportunity, but there was also a good chance that those people had other responsibilities that kept them from coming. There was every possibility that, as the most powerful people around, they were dealing with one crisis or another.

Elijah shook his head. There was no way to know what was going on with everyone else. It was better if he just focused on his own issues. So, as he waited for Dat to return, he settled into a secluded corner and focused on his Mind cultivation. The looping strategy seemed to be doing something, but he felt that he was missing a key ingredient.

He intended to figure it out, though.

* * *

Dat slipped out of the building and into the alley between it and its neighbor. He could have left through the front door, and because of Ghost Cloak, he would have remained entirely undetected. Even Elijah, whose senses were far better than anyone else’s Dat had ever encountered, couldn’t see him. It was an incredible ability, but like many of Dat’s skills and spells, it left him feeling a little uneasy.

He was a Witch Hunter with an Angel Core, and he strove to be one of the good guys. And yet, he knew the truth – his powers came with a steep cost. In reality, aside from distinctly different motives and a shift in focus, there wasn’t much difference between the powers of a Witch – or one of the other Witch-adjacent classes – and a Witch Hunter. The price of his abilities, many of which were hexes and curses, was much the same.

He could feel that cost as Ghost Cloak hugged his body, sending a jolt of frigid cold through his Soul. He tried to ignore the feeling of resentment that came with it, instead focusing on his mission.

Ghosts weren’t real, he told himself. He hadn’t truly enslaved a spirit to fuel his spell. It was just another flavor of ethera that he didn’t quite understand.

Dat didn’t truly believe that, but his choices had been made. His class had been selected, and the living needed him to do what had to be done. He couldn’t let himself get lost in questions of morality when it came to the ghosts and spirits he used to fuel his most powerful spells.

Pushing those concerns out of his mind, he strode forward. When he’d first gotten Stealth, he’d needed to remain cognizant of his stature. It wasn’t perfect, after all, and if he stood in broad daylight, he would be seen. Ghost Cloak was different, though. Better. It rendered him entirely invisible, regardless of environmental concerns. So, even though he wanted to flit from shadow to shadow, he forced himself to walk normally, if only to test its efficacy.

Sure enough, no one even glanced in his direction as he covered the ground between Atticus’ Consortium and the Branch of the World Tree. Along the way, he saw that the once-thriving square was nearly deserted, save for a few pedestrians hurrying from one place to the next.

And then there was the clump of black-clad Immortals camped out near the Branch itself. Some were sitting beneath a brightly colored tent, while others patrolled the area. Distressingly, Dat recognized a few of them. Singling one out, he used Hex of Scrying on one that looked the least attentive. When the spell hit, the man slapped the side of his neck, muttering, “Damn bugs.”

Immediately, Dat saw a swirl of spirits buzzing around the man. He knew from experience that no one else could see them, but still, he winced at the flashing display of ephemeral shapes. They looked a bit like people, though their faces were featureless, and their forms lacked detail.

A second later, as Hex of Scrying took hold, he received a notification:

Name: Dexter Fallon

Level: 52

Archetype: Warrior

Class: Fencer (corrupted)

Highest Attribute: Strength

Then, a chorus of whispers gripped Dat’s senses. The voices were breathy and high-pitched as it said, “This creature has been corrupted by a fel bargain.”

“Demons?” Dat asked inside his own head. He’d used Hex of Scrying often enough to know that the voice belonged to the spirits he’d summoned to inspect his target. Still, the fact that they could talk sent a shiver up his spine every time he heard their multitudinous voices.

“Worse. Humans who know not the forces with which they meddle,” the voices responded. “They have given their souls to another in exchange for power.”

“What kind of power?”

“Immortality.”

Dat’s jaw flexed in anger. He’d seen others make a similar choice back in Hong Kong. He’d watched as they embraced demons and undead, taking classes that pushed them into evil. One and all, those people had turned on their former allies. Some claimed that their actions were justified – necromancy and demon worship were more than frowned upon – but others simply wanted more fuel for their own rise to power. And in most cases, it worked, too. Some of those had gathered an incredible amount of strength in a short amount of time, which was one of the reasons Dat and the Songs hadn’t managed to push back the undead threat spilling out of the Primal Realm.

“How can we get around it?” was his next unspoken question.

“You cannot, save to slay the progenitor. Beware the heavily scarred.”

Then, the spirit disappeared from his mind.

“Did you feel that?” asked Dexter Fallon, looking around. Dat could only see the man’s eyes, but they were wide with fear.

“What’re you talking about?” asked another Immortal.

“It felt like a cold breeze,” Dexter said. “Like I was back home in the middle of winter.”

“It’s like a thousand degrees out here. You getting sick?” the other asked. “I know they said we’re immune to that kind of thing, but I don’t know…maybe it was just your imagination.”

“Yeah,” said Dexter. “Maybe. You really think we ought to have done this? It feels…wrong.”

“Feelings don’t matter, Fallon. Just results. You think I wanted to take that asshole’s deal? No. But I want to get back to my family, and with everything that happened, this was the only way. I know it’s the same for you, too.”

Dat remained there for a few more minutes until he’d gotten a basic idea of what had happened. It seemed that the leader of the Immortals – whoever he was – had been recruiting new underlings. How he’d convinced them to take his deal – which sounded pretty bad, even if Dat didn’t know the details – and now, his army had grown. They were still outnumbered by quite a lot, but that could easily change. After all, there was still more than eight months left in the Trial. A lot could happen in that time.

Once Dat had learned all he was going to learn – Hex of Scrying had a significant cooldown – he headed back to the Consortium, where he found Sadie waiting for him. The others had gone to do their own thing.

When she asked him what he’d discovered, he said, “I think we need to gather everyone. This is serious.”