Not for the first time today a frown played with Valdan’s lips.

Where the hell are you, Aiden?

He had searched the entire cave, its worthless crisscrossing labyrinth and annoyingly dark parts. And he’d done it twice.

At this point, Nella and Ventel had already started playing devil’s advocate. And they were playing it well. It was like having two demons on your shoulders instead of an angel and a demon.

“I don’t think they came this way,” Ventel was saying. He sat tiredly on one of the only two boulders large enough to be sat on comfortably.

“There were two jepats,” Nella said with very little conviction. “Dan said he found them on our way here.”

Valdan had seen two jepats but he hadn’t given them too much thought. He’d known that Aiden would be at the cave so he hadn’t cared to give them any real examination. Even informing Nella of the jepats had been nothing but an off-hand comment. Something he’d simply fit into a conversation.

Right now, Valdan was growing more worried. Aiden and the princess weren’t out there somewhere having any kind of fun or adventuring on a different path. He was sure of it.

Very little was known to him about Princess Elaswit except for what the knights knew in general. And what the knights knew in general were few and far between. She was strong, brute force being her normal way to solving problems. She did what she could to de-escalate any situation but that was usually because it was the right thing to do and not because it was what she wanted to do.

If put behind a large boulder with Scrambling Spiders on the other side of it—a sufficient amount—she was more inclined to charge them with sword swinging than go around them. A disrespectful or annoying companion was more likely to be sent out of the party than convinced as to why they shouldn’t be annoying or disrespectful.

Again, she would engage them with words, but only because giving a person a chance was the right thing to do, not because she felt it was the better option.

This piece of information mostly came from the knights who accompanied her on the few expeditions she went on. Princess Elaswit Brandis was more like her father than her mother. The older knights, those who had fought alongside the king before he’d ascended the throne said the king had been that way back then. Only when he’d taken the crown had he started suffering himself under the weight of diplomacy.

Before the crown had weighed down on Brandis’ head, he had been a prince who led by example and not words. He married before he became a king and had learnt much in the way of veiled meanings and manipulative actions from his wife. It wasn’t that he had been a brute of brawn and no brain. Intelligence of the mind was something he had also possessed. But he used it sparingly, rarely. And he’d always needed to think, to pause, before implementing it.

The queen had only taught him to the point that his use of words and his intelligence first now came more naturally.

Still, with all the knowledge, Valdan couldn’t say a single thing about the princess with even half his confidence. But Aiden was a man he knew.

And by the gods, he would stake his title as a [Knight], not as a [Knight of the Crown]—he wasn’t willing to go that far—that Aiden was within this cave.

We just have to find out which part of the cave.

Valdan turned, a little frustrated. “Did we miss anything?”

“No.” Nella ran two frustrated hands through her hair. “We’ve investigated every inch of this cave multiple times. There isn’t a part of this cave we don’t know or haven’t been to.”

Valdan’s frustration grew. Ventel and Nella had led him through the entire cave twice already. At some point, he had started getting the gnawing feeling that they just kept missing Aiden and the princess. It was possible in a cave this maze like.

“There’s still the wall,” Ventel offered.

Valdan paused.

The wall?

He was currently standing in a miniature meadow with a high open ceiling from which sunlight streamed in beautifully to dance beautifully on a small pond at the center. The effect was a sparkling of light as if the water was made of finely polished fragments of mirrors.

The grass was perfectly green, healthy. And the air made you want to breathe more just so that you could remind your lungs of what clean air smelt like.

Personally, he hated this part of the cave. It was too out of place.

Then there was the wall. It wasn’t the first time Ventel was pointing it out. But it would be the first time Valdan would be paying it any attention. He wanted to be sure about the easier part of the cave before giving any attention to the cryptic aspect of it.

I guess we’ve gotten nothing else.

With that thought, he turned and walked up to the wall in question. It was a deep grey with shades of black rising all the way to the open ceiling. At the bottom it was covered in shrubbery, thick and green, as high as his knees. From beneath it stretched a single line of cracks that spread out into multiple cracks. It would’ve stood out as odd if this entire part of the cave didn’t already stand out as odd.

It left him confused as to why it was so big a deal. Was there maybe some hollow space behind it they had noticed somehow? Had they tried to break it only to find it extremely sturdy?

Valdan rapped his knuckle against it. If there was something hollow behind it, he couldn’t tell from the action.

“So what about the wall makes it so special?” he asked, studying it.

Nella shrugged. “Place your palm on it.”

Valdan did so.

The wall was cold to the touch, not unnecessarily so. Acceptably so. It was also—

[You do not meet the requirements to use this feature]

Valdan’s brows furrowed in confusion. His eyes narrowed at the notification his interface was showing him.

What feature?

He took his hand off the wall tentatively. Then he put it back.

[You do not meet the requirements to use this feature]

Looking at the others, he found their attention on him. They were far from surprised at his confusion.

“Do we know what the requirement is?” he asked.

The both of them shook their heads.

“One of our party members thinks it’s probably a skill,” Ventel said. “But it could really be anything, from a title to a class to even possessing an artifact.”

“Drunid thought it might be something like a key or a spell,” Nella said, looking up at Ventel where he stood beside her. “I told him that I didn’t think that was it.”

She had an adoring look in her eyes very similar to the one Valdan had often seen the queen give the king.

He really hoped Lord Naranoff knew that his daughter was completely far gone, smitten by the adventurer in front of him.

Discarding the thought for the unimportant thought that it was, Valdan returned his attention to the wall and placed his palm on it.

[You do not meet the requirements to use this feature]

“You weren’t wrong,” he said, reading the notification once more. “It if was a spell or a key, I doubt it would read as not meeting the requirement.”

“Having a key could be a requirement,” Ventel opposed.

Valdan doubted it. He didn’t have any evidence to support his opinion, merely a feeling. He’d met a situation like this once before, long ago. On that torturous day, he had met the requirement to use the feature.

Some times he wished he hadn’t met the requirements that day. Other times he wished he had been the only one there that day.

Sometimes the world saves you by setting requirements you shouldn’t meet.

Valdan dropped his hand and stepped away from the wall, mind haunted by fragmented memories of an event that had led to his qualification for the title of [Knight of the Crown].

“Trust me,” he said. “It’s not a key or a spell.”

Keys and spells were the requirements of man made situations. Nature’s requirements were who you were as a person. What you had gained. What you had become.

Valdan didn’t know why, but whatever the wall was a path to had been sealed off naturally. And he wasn’t sure if opening it was a good idea.

A frown touched his lips as a realization came to him. It had no support but it struck him as heavily as anything instinctual he’d ever felt had.

Aiden opened it. He’s wherever this leads to.

He had to be. The young lord was enigmatic enough. Determined. Every action he took always led to something. Each time Aiden did something that wasn’t making sense, there was always a reason waiting at the end of it.

He fought me stupidly twice, in a way I didn’t understand, Valdan thought. At the end of that was a unique skill.

He suddenly wanted to come to these parts of the kingdom for no reason. At the end of that was this cave.

If it wasn’t official before. It was official now.

Aiden Lacheart knew too much. But the problem was how?

At this point, Valdan refused to believe that any information he had wasn’t gotten from the library. If Aiden said he’d learned that the sky was blue from the library, then he must’ve learnt it from somewhere else.

But where?

Off the top of his head, there were only a handful of societies that dabbled in the business of information that were truly worth their weight in gold. Of them all, only three operated with a reach that spread across the entire kingdom. Of those three, only two had a reach beyond the kingdom.

He would have to investigate both societies. That Aiden was purchasing information from them wasn’t the problem. The problem was the risk that came with it. A nobody didn’t just walk into a building that prided itself on information gathering and pay a hefty sum of money without the business gathering information on the person.

And for all Aiden’s impressiveness, there were risks Valdan was not willing to take. Aiden and his companions were practically royal treasures as well as royal secrets. Valdan couldn’t risk having Aiden jeopardize that secrecy.

There was another society with power over information, though.

“If you’re very sure its not a skill, then what do we do next?” Nella asked.

Valdan raised a finger. “I need a moment to think.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

There was nothing to think about, regarding her question. He already had an answer to that. What he needed to think about was the possible breach Aiden’s strategy to garner information may or may not have caused.

“Did all of you touch the wall?” he asked.

Ventel nodded. “None of us met the requirement.”

“Then that rules out your entire team.”

As he spoke, dread creeped up Valdan’s spine. He refused to believe that the society he was thinking of was the one Aiden was getting his information from. There was no way he would’ve gained access to them. It was impossible.

Unless they were the ones that reached out to him.

Valdan frowned. But when? How?

And if they were the ones he was getting his information from, would Aiden even know what exactly was happening? He wasn’t stupid but the society wasn’t any normal society. They possessed the power to topple kingdoms with information, to start or end wars.

They were every kingdom’s unavoidable nightmare. And if they reached out to Aiden, he wouldn’t even know what was truly going on. All they had to do was make the offer of information beneficial and completely transactional. They would ask for what information he needed, he would tell them, and they would give him a price.

Aiden was jaded enough not to take free things. But these guys were good.

Valdan drew his sword from its scabbard.

“What are you doing?” Ventel asked in a hurry.

Valdan focused his attention on one side of the wall. “Have you guys tried anything apart from touching it?”

“No.”

“Good to know.”

Valdan swung his sword with half his strength. It struck the wall with enough force to send sparks flying. Beneath the loud ringing of his blade was the startled and panicked yelps of Ventel and Nella.

“What the hell?!” Ventel snapped, stomping over to him. “Have you lost your mind?”

Valdan ignored the man. Focusing his attention on where he’d struck, he sheathed his sword. Not a single blemish stained the wall. Not a scratch.

“Why would you do that?” Ventel asked, his voice calmer.

“Because you hadn’t.” Valdan turned to Nella. She was still seated. “Lord Lacheart is on the other side of this wall. Wherever the other side is.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

Valdan nodded. “Almost a hundred percent. But we’ll need to keep this quiet. We’ll need people from a few classes. Not a lot, and we’ll start slow. For now, we can ignore the anyone with a class any of your teammates have and skills your teammates have.”

“That’s a long list,” she said.

Valdan shook his head. “Not really. We’ll focus on classes that aren’t physically focused first. Adventurers with more magically aligned classes.”

Ventel looked confused. “Why?”

“Just humor me,” Valdan told him, before turning back to Nella. “Keep the numbers short. Three, then four, then three.”

He had a feeling they wouldn’t have to go through too many people.

As for why he’d chosen classes that were magically inclined? The reason was simple. Most people thought that Aiden was a [Weaver]. But while he was a weaver, he was in no way a domestic class. If Valdan was to explain his class, he would call Aiden a weaver of enchantments.

“If we can get someone with the [Enchant] skill, that will be good, too,” he added.

Nella got up from the rock she was sitting on and nodded. “Come on, Ventel. They’ll be more inclined to keep their mouths shut if you’re the one asking them to.”

Ventel hesitated beside Valdan as Nella walked away. It did not last long, though. After a while, he left Valdan and followed after her.

Valdan stood, staring at the wall. Someone had to be here in case Aiden came out. Chances were he’d gotten his hands on enough information about the cave that had left him confident that he could get inside.

And there were only two societies that could’ve given him that level of information. The Mage Radiants and the Order. And one of them probably had Aiden dancing in the palm of their hands.

Please be the Mage Radiants.

…

Time had gone by. The time they’d spent dangled somewhere between half an hour and an hour. Although Elaswit had said she didn’t want to find the swarm, Aiden continued to keep an eye out for any tracks that would indicate their presence. If he was being honest, he knew he would feel bad if at the end of it all she didn’t complete her quest.

He also had words to say to her. Why? Aiden couldn’t say for certain. All he knew was that having her speak to him in only grunts and barely audible huffs wasn’t nice.

Not for the first time, Aiden resisted the urge to let out a tired sigh. As much as he liked to tell himself whatever pleased him, lying to himself was one thing he had never been good at. Not even that one time he’d lost a team mate the first time he’d been given command over a team in the Order.

He had spent the three days that followed after that doing his best to convince himself that the teammate had died out of their own stupidity. Aiden had given each teammate their commands, simple and effective. All that had been expected of them was to follow the commands and success without any losses would’ve been guaranteed.

The teammate had allowed his emotion get the best of him, tried to save someone he had no reason saving.

It had been his fault, Aiden had told himself for days. He should’ve listened. None of it really helped. The fact that the teammate had been a twenty-year-old at the time when Aiden had been twenty-six had only made it worse.

After three days, his mind had given up on trying to lie to himself. Aiden had been forced to accept the truth. He’d known the boy was emotional, prone to acting on what he felt was right and good over what was necessary.

His death had come from the grave error of trying to save a passerby from an explosion. It could’ve been easily avoided if he’d left the woman alone.

Aiden had known this. And knowing it had haunted him. He should’ve planned better, given instructions befitting of each individual teammate. You could expect a heartless teammate to do something heartless so you gave him the role that required it. You did not give the same role to a person so full of love and justice.

You do not tell a fish to hunt a tiger.

He had failed to account for those under his command. Failed to devise a proper plan. It had been the first lesson experience had taught him as a leader. And Onrad had died to teach him that.

So here he now was, with a princess who would not speak to him. Normally, he would’ve been happy with it. But this wasn’t a normal case, especially when he was to blame for it. His reaction to her question about how he expected to find the swarm had been a moment of poor control. The complete stupidity of the question wasn’t something he had intended to point out.

In fact, there hadn’t really been anything stupid about the question. He’d merely held her to a certain standard that was higher than he was supposed to. In the Order, it would have been a stupid question, but she was not a member of the Order. She was a princess.

A princess stuck with someone who shouldn’t know a lot.

Her question had been justified.

Aiden stopped walking, bent down and touched a hand to the ground. The ground here was different, warmer to the touch.

He took stock of that piece of information as he moved his fingers over the stubbled ground. Grains of sand a little too large to be called grains were displaced with each swipe of his hand. He searched for any sign, tracks of any kind. It didn’t have to belong to a gargoyle. Even human tracks would suffice.

Aiden found none.

Still, he did not rise immediately. His hand still touching the warm ground, he raised his head and looked ahead. Farther down, the light was beginning to dim. They were now on a straight path, it seemed. No turn or curve or junction seemed close. Only a straight path that seemed to go on forever.

A new path of the cave. It was as much a good thing as a worrying thing. New places were always a good sign when trying to make your way out of a maze. New places meant progress.

“We might be close,” he said, hoping to draw a response from Elaswit.

All he got was a grunt.

A part of him wanted to call it childish. He refrained himself.

She would not speak to him, but the fact that she was responding meant she was still aware enough to acknowledge the fact that she could hear him. it meant he could count on her to do what she was supposed to do.

So you should be able to count on yourself to apologize.

Aiden had some very choice words for that specific thought. Personally, while he would agree that what he’d done was worthy of offending her, he could also agree that she was blowing it out of proportion.

It had only been a facial expression. An hour long silent treatment was not an acceptable response. At this point Elaswit was being a child throwing an unnecessary tantrum.

She needed to grow up.

You expect a princess in her early twenties to grow up? he thought, surprised at himself. What do you think this is? The Order? Earth? She’s a princess.

Aiden didn’t like when he worked against himself. Sadly, it was a positive and negative effect of having a mind trained for critical and logical thinking. The effect of having a mind designed to cover all the basis of every situation.

His mind had been trained to be active and useful, capable of presenting him with a solution or at least useful options in high pressure moments. But it wasn’t a switch he could turn on and off whenever he wanted. So when he wasn’t in a high pressure moment, it did what it was thought with whatever mundane issues he found himself in.

And here it was, informing him of his stupidity. Elaswit was a princess. And while what she was doing was an overreaction to his mistake, it was stupid to call it unexpected.

She was a princess, which meant that she had probably never had anyone disrespect her in anyway except for her parents and her siblings. And now, here he was, younger than her as well, giving her a tough time she had no other option but to take.

If nothing at all, she was going to exercise her power and authority in anyway she could. And silence was a way.

Aiden stood back up and turned to her.

“Is this going to be a continuing problem?” he asked, realizing a little belatedly that he’d probably chosen the wrong way to start the conversation.

Elaswit looked at him as if she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Princess,” he said.

She raised her brows, acknowledging but not replying.

“How about we do this?” He took two steps, closing the distance between them and stopping an arms length away. “How about you tell me how I have offended you, and we work through it?”

My God! Are you really finding it difficult to just apologize?

Elaswit looked at him as if he was stupid.

Aiden had to give her that one. It was stupid to ask what he already knew. But he was simply being careful. He knew his facial expression had pissed her off, but what if that was not all. What if on top of that, she was also pissed off by the fact that he’d said nothing in the way of an apology for almost an hour?

You’ve said sorry a lot before, Aiden.

He had, but not like this. Not over something that he thought could just be forgotten. The only lady that had ever made him apologize for something he thought was unimportant was Shewa. And that had been because they’d been dating. She had earned the place to make him do what he didn’t want to do.

With the people he had ever worked with, simple problems like this were ignored. If it wasn’t something that could be ignored, the offended brought it up and they sorted it out quickly. Aiden had gone through life, but one thing he continued to have a problem with was figuring out social problems with people that were not marks or a part of a mission in some way when they refused to tell him what the problem was.

Aiden folded his arms over his chest, sheathed sword held in one hand. “What can I do to make it up to you?”

“Make it up to me?” Elaswit asked, flabbergasted. “Make it up to me!?”

Wrong choice of words, Aiden.

Elaswit sucked in a deep breath. It looked like it was supposed to be a calming breath. It was not.

“Lord Lacheart,” she said, voice firm.

“Princess,” he replied, hesitant.

“Do you even know what you did wrong?”

Aiden paused. He knew, but somehow it felt like answering the question was falling into a trap. But what could he do? He needed to sort this out before hey ran into new problems.

Just to be sure, he looked behind him, to the path they were supposed to take. there was no sign of an approaching monster. Then he tilted a little to the side, not that he had to, and looked around Elaswit.

The same.

“Lord Lacheart.”

“I have an idea of what I may have done,” Aiden said. “But I’m not entirely sure how to go about this.”

“You’ve never apologized before?” Elaswit asked, genuinely surprised.

“I’ve apologized before.”

Elaswit's lips puckered in thought. “But… not to girls.”

Aiden kept quiet.

Not for simple reasons like this. The words were on the tip of his tongue but Aiden left them unsaid.

“Wow.” Elaswit folded her arms. “When you said you didn’t have a lady you were courting back home, I didn’t think you also didn’t have any female friends.”

Aiden raised an incredulous brow. “Why did you say it that way?”

“What way?”

“Like I was some nerd that couldn’t get a girl to pay attention to me. And if I got one to pay attention to me I wouldn’t be able to keep her attention.”

Elaswit grinned. “Would you be able to. Keep her attention, I mean.”

Maybe I don’t need to apologize, after all.

At least she was smiling. Grinning was still smiling, right?

Aiden sighed, accepting her grin as a smile. He probably hadn’t been let off the hook, but an apology wasn’t the most important thing right now. At least not here.

Turning around, he continued down the right path.

“I didn’t get an apology,” Elaswit called after him.

“You’ll get it later,” he called back, listening to her footsteps as she caught up to him.

Elaswit was walking beside him now. “Apologies don’t come later.”

“Not all the time,” Aiden agreed. “But sometimes they come when they come.”

“And when is this one coming?”

“Once we start breathing fresh air.”

The rest of the path was walked in silence. It stretched down for a long time and they found two corpses on the way. One was an adventurer, and Aiden added his tag to his stash. The other was a mercenary with a massive cleaver.

Elaswit showed no interest in it since hers was better than his.

Before long, the path opened up into a clear space. It was almost as large as the meadow on the other side of the natural array. But there was no meadow here. Only cave. Rocks and stalactites hanging from above and shooting up from the ground. The moss and algae and bioluminescent lights that had illuminated their path since opening the natural array were scattered all over the place.

Red plants raised red glows from the walls that gave the space a touch of an eerie feeling. Regardless of how much light there was, the space still carried shadowy areas.

A boss room if I ever saw one, Aiden thought, taking careful step inside.

“If the named one isn’t here,” Elaswit said, looking around. “Then we’re on the wrong side of this cave.”

Aiden agreed with her.

His ears perked up suddenly, attention sharpening as he picked something out in the dark. It resided in one of the shadowy parts of the space, down on the other side of the space, facing the entry.

With a raised hand, Aiden gestures Elaswit to silence. She stops beside him, falling silent. Then he gestures ahead of them, to the shape in the shadow.

It looked like a statue, three times Aiden’s height. It was seated on the ground with a hand buried in the floor up to the wrist. Aiden watched the shape. Judging from what he saw, it was humanoid.

More like a gorilla, he noted.

The arms seemed a little to long. In the shadow, he couldn’t make out anything but the shape, no distinctive features stood out.

But Aiden knew what he was looking at. He didn’t need light to know what sat waiting for them in the shadow. It was there. It was ready.

And it opened its eyes.

Bright yellow eyes stared at them from the darkness.

“That’s ominous,” Elaswit muttered.

Aiden noted the absence of worry in her voice. That was a good thing.

Now, just one more thing, Aiden thought, activating a skill.

[You have used skill Detect]

The moment the skill activated, Aiden frowned at the information it gave him. An indicator appeared above the gargoyle’s head and Aiden almost groaned.

[Gangnar the starter (Named Gargoyle Lvl 49)]

This was a potential problem.

Aiden drew his sword from its scabbard but kept his other hand armed with the scabbard. It left both hands occupied, which was his intention.

“Ready?” he asked Elaswit.

“Ready.”

That was good.

Now Aiden just prayed the gargoyle wouldn’t reach level fifty during the fight. The last thing they needed was a gargoyle with a level fifty technique, even if it was an incomplete one. After all, nobody had to die for it to reach level fifty, it just had to learn a manifesting class skill.

He twirled his sword in his hand and prepared himself.

“Let’s get this done quickly.”