The sunrise painted the glacier peaks pink. Kliss and I stood at the riverbank for a minute, going over the checklist of items. When we were sure that we had everything, we climbed into our contraption. I released the brakes and the metal rings began to spin, picking up speed. Wooden gears rumbled, accelerating. The propellers buzzed louder and louder and then the hovercraft wobbled, lifting from the ground. I released another lever to make us move forward.

With a noisy hum, the machine came to life, gliding above the flat ground and heading towards the river.

"By Equality," Kliss exclaimed, her eyes widening in surprise as she looked over the side. "I didn't expect it to actually work… and yet we are moving! A glider without [Gravity] runes on it! Incredible!"

I grinned, feeling proud of our creation.

We cast off from Skyisle, the hovercraft gently gliding down the river.

The cliffs of the valley gradually rose on both sides, hugging the river and creating a breathtaking natural amphitheater of moss and stone. The sound of rushing water filled the air as we made our way down the river.

Waterfalls were coming down from the cliffs, rainbows shimmering in the air.

The hovercraft smoothly skimmed along the water’s surface, throwing up mist into the air. The verdant landscape around us was alive with flora and fauna. A herd of Blood Elks rushed to the edge of a cliff, turning their massive tree-antlers our way as they sensed our presence.

Delta floated beside the Alanian battery in her ghost-squid form, looking every bit like an Astral Phantom. One of her shimmering silver-blue threads occasionally touched the crystalline edge of the hexagonal stone to feed on the power leaking from it. Kliss occasionally glanced at her, sensing that something magical and dangerous was present there.

As we sailed further, the landscape changed gradually. The cliffs gave way to a sprawling delta of green moss and black sand, a maze of waterways spread out like a giant spider web.

"Are we close?" Kliss asked, her voice barely audible over the hum of the craft.

"We're just about there," I replied, pointing towards the mist-shrouded area in the distance. "Silent Glade is in that direction."

Kliss nodded. The Valley of Death was directly ahead of us now, looking like an alien, multicolored landscape. It reminded me of the vast wilderness of Kamchatka with its volcanic terrain.

Some of the river sand only a few hundred meters from us glittered with foreign, impossible colors. There was no life there whatsoever, only discordant desolation. Bewildering crystalline formations struck out of the ground in the distance looking like enormous, fallen, ice comets.

I turned the hovercraft, skirting the contaminated area. The interior of the hovercraft and our clothes were covered in [Green-Vitality] crystals harvested from the Mystic oak and hanging on copper wire-mesh. From what I saw in the Astral, they worked fairly well to keep the radiance of [Decay] away from us, but they would be overcome if we headed any deeper into the alien terrain of the magogenic fault.

Every thirty seconds I launched Infoscopes out into the Valley of Death. My spells burned out quickly, but I was gathering a wide array of data about the area. There were all sorts of rare metals within the ground like dysprosium, and erbium. A glittering, light violet and silver patch of ground was absolutely packed with neodymium. If I could find a way to procure enough of it, I could create a powerful magnet. An entire vein of Samarium was contained in a nearby cliffside.

My mouth fell open as I detected an entire section of Promethium in a green, glowing puddle about seven hundred meters away from us. Discovered in 1945, the extremely radioactive element was exceptionally rare, with only about 500 grams naturally occurring in Earth's crust at any given time as a product of spontaneous fission of uranium-238.

The weird thing was that I didn’t detect any Uraninite or natural reactors nearby. All of the local rare elements were scattered absolutely at random, completely senselessly as if a giant hand of god simply sprinkled them about, as if someone was trying to make fun of natural processes.

Promethium was a truly rare, alien element, identified in the spectrum of the binary star system HR 465 in Andromeda Galaxy. I wondered if the Valley of Death had somehow manifested so much of it in one spot because the local Astral membrane was so shredded.

"I've never seen these colors before," Kliss whispered. "This place is very strange..."

"Yes," I murmured. "It's like a patchwork of a thousand other… worlds stitched onto ours. My magic cannot identify half of the things I’m seeing here.”

“Only half? I’m surprised you can identify anything here at all, this place is said to have incredibly low Aetheric density,” Kliss commented.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “My spells keep burning out. Things are even worse deeper in. There’s very little magic there.”

“The heart of the fault is said to rip away the souls of men,” Kliss said darkly.

“How would you know that?” I asked.

“An Imperial warship, Titanius 441, crashed there, trying to map the area,” Kliss responded. “The legionnaires tried to make it out on foot, but their hair flaked away and then their flesh melted off their bodies. Their archmage Captain lasted the longest. He described the loss of his crew in a Voicecast broadcast before he himself perished in the fault.”

“The flesh melting likely wasn’t lack of magic,” I said.

“Oh?” My companion asked. “Then what killed them?”

“Radiation,” I said.

“Radiation?” Kliss tasted the foreign word.

“It’s a type of invisible energy,” I began, trying to simplify the complex concept. "Imagine... invisible particles, so tiny you can't see them, but so powerful that they can pass through almost anything. They're like invisible arrows, constantly shooting out from specific rocks. When they hit living things, they can cause incredible accumulative harm, even death."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Kliss frowned. "So, this... rad-i-ash-ion, it's like a [Death-curse] of Dragonfire?" she asked.

"In a way, yes," I conceded. "It's a natural phenomenon, but its effects can be devastating. It naturally happens within stars for example. Sunlight carries it down to Novazem too, but the planetary atmosphere and our Vitality magic blocks 99% of it from harming us. Some rocks here are absolutely packed with it. The human body can't handle too much of this energy and starts to break down. That green dot in the distance is ridiculously dangerous for example,” I pointed at the Promethium puddle.

Kliss frowned, her eyes glancing towards glowing hollow. "So, it's... invisible and deadly? And you can't even detect it with magic?"

"Correct," I affirmed. “You probably can’t detect it because your people aren’t very well equipped in understanding of non-magical elements. From what I've read in the Church of Equality books, you see all rocks as magical or non magical, have no idea that a rock could contain non-magical energy."

“Non-magical energy, huh," she muttered. "How come you’re so good at identifying things that aren’t magical?”

“Because I already know what to look for,” I said. “I can [Identify] the names of elements that I studied on Earth and quantify different energy types that I’m aware of.”

“What the hells kind of an Identify spell could do that?” She asked. “What level is it?”

“Twenty,” I said.

Kliss squinted at me.

“It’s an extremely optimized Identify that I designed myself over a period of over twelve years,” I explained.

"You've been working on a single spell for more than a decade, since your birth in Skyisle?" she asked.

“Before I was even born,” I nodded, "I started to design it in the Astral Ocean. It's not just a spell. It's a mathematical-language framework that allows me to identify almost anything, magical or non-magical. It's my most complex and versatile tool."

As we came closer to the Silent Glade, an eerie stillness settled over us, the hum of the hovercraft blades somehow becoming muted.

My Infoscopes rushed forward, examining the silver trails of fog.

[LV 1 Charisma-Fear-Desire] they reported back.

"The mist... is indeed filled with [Charisma] radiance," I informed my companions, watching as the fog seemed to coalesce around us. "Fear and desire, specifically. I think that [Fear] functions to make stupid prey run forward and [Desire] to draw clever prey deeper in. Curious.”

“I can feel it,” Kliss nodded. “Sort of like the smallest mental pressure.”

The large pyramidal ruby gemstone on her armor ignited, repelling the effect of the Charisma effect away from her body.

I dedicated a single Infoscope to snip the effect from accumulating on my soul. Delta sunk deeper into the Astral.

[LV 2 Charisma-Fear-Desire-Silence] Infoscope 2 reported.

The deeper we ventured into the swamp, the more the atmosphere changed. The air grew thick with the scent of damp earth, sedge and rot. Rays of light pierced through the dense fog, creating long, haunting shadows on the gnarled tree trunks and murky waters.

The swamp was eerily quiet, sounds muted as if we were underwater.

Suddenly, I noticed soft, dancing lights appearing and disappearing within the fog, casting an ethereal glow on the nearby vegetation. They moved with an otherworldly grace, their luminescence reflected in the still waters of the swamp.

"Are those... will-o'-the-wisps?" Kliss uttered. "Legends say... they lead people to their doom."

I sent an Infoscope ahead of us to track the lights.

[LV 4 Silence Moth] it identified one of them.

“They’re insects,” I said. “Something between a moth and a firefly.”

The hovercraft moved closer to the moths.

[LV 4 Charisma-Fear-Desire-Silence] The field around us intensified. I examined the moths. Their wings shimmered with magic, glowed in the dim fog.

[LV 4 Resonance] Infoscope 3 told me.

I noticed that Kliss had her eyes drawn to the moths. She nearly tipped out of the hovercraft as she leaned forward. I grabbed her by the cape and pulled her back into her seat.

[LV 8 Charisma-Fear-Desire-Silence] The field around us intensified rapidly.

[LV 12 Charisma-Fear-Desire-Silence]

“The moths are rebroadcasting the [Charisma] field,” I gritted my teeth, resisting the growing urge to jump out of the hovercraft into the dark water beneath.

Infoscope 2 detected a corpse of a massive Blood Elk that was sticking halfway out of the swamp. The creature was hollowed out, partially consumed from within. Thousands of Silence-Moths were fluttering around the dead beast. I detected nests woven from silk-like strands filled with [Silence-larva] inside it.

"Be careful," I warned Kliss, keeping a tight grip on her cape. "The moths are luring prey into the swamp so that their young can devour the drowned wildlife.”

Kliss blinked, shaking her head as if trying to clear it. "I... I see," she muttered, sounding somewhat dazed.

She glanced at the dead Blood Elk that emerged from the fog like a sunken ship and her face paled.

"They're not just mere passive broadcasters. They're predators,” I said.

[LV 17 Charisma-Fear-Desire-Silence-Resonance] Infoscope 3 reported. My eyes started to water. I blinked to clear the tears.

Something was lumbering towards us through the fog. Kliss raised her armacus, her hand shaking. A somewhat shaggy looking man with silver-gray eyes and a long, scruffy beard emerged from the misty silver clouds.

“Identify yourself!” The Overseer growled.

“Thank Ishira!” The man declared as he silently waded through the swamp towards us. “I didn’t expect to meet another soul here! Don’t open fire, please! I’m a hunter from Skyisle!”

“A hunter?” Kliss blinked.

Infoscope 3 rushed to the man and went through him.

[LV 20 Charisma-Fear-Desire-Silence-Resonance] It reported. Wait… What? I sent the Infoscope on another pass. The exact same result flashed at me.

There was nothing, nobody there.

“Name’s Klav Obrahix,” the shaggy hunter smiled.

“Equality almighty,” Kliss uttered. “Klav? No one has seen you in Skyisle for decades since Overseer Ignatius noted that you were lost in this damned place.”

“Ah, Lord Ignatius,” Klav nodded. “Yes. A goodly man, even if of another faith.”

“Kliss, he’s not there," I whispered. "This man has been dead for 20 years.”

“What?” She looked at me and then back at Klav. “He’s right there!”

“No, he’s not,” I insisted. “There’s nothing there.”

“Nothing? What?” Kliss asked, looking confused and dazed.

“I’ve been trying to get the gold from the Basq glider,” the hunter said, staring at us with pale, hollow, watery eyes. “It’s far more than I can carry. Could you kindly help me procure it? I cannot get it out by meself, the hinges are very rusted. I know the way to it, I’ve been living in the area for two decades now. It’s not far! There’s at least two barrels of gold inside, I saw it through the torn up roof!”

“Are you certain?” Kliss asked, her emerald eyes lighting up with greed. “Two... barrels of gold?”

“Oh yes, quite certain,” the hunter smiled with yellowing teeth.

I felt a strange sense of serenity settle over me, feeling like I was forgetting something.

Gold. I could buy nice things with gold! Things I could use to build things... right? Yes!

I like gold!