Every second that they lingered, the smell grew more pervasive.

Although they hadn’t grown used to Randidly’s body, both Claudette and Neshamah followed quickly enough after him as he made a beeline for a small ridge that seemed to dance with patterns of rejections. Feeling weirdly sick to his stomach with the wrongness of this place and the smell, he swiped a hand and took off a portion of stone blocking the way. Then they were through the narrow passage, while a massive roar blasted out from behind them.

In the next instant, the smell grew noticeably worse. Randidly wrinkled his nose, even as a wave of green gas passed above the high canyons and seeped down toward their position. Neshamah shook her head. “He must have held back initially to keep us out of the blast. Despite his attitude, Yust might be surprisingly conscientious.”

“More likely,” Claudette’s lips curled up into a smile, even as she wrinkled her nose. “He realize Moonlight Blade would kill him if he didn’t use everything at his disposal. Looks like your body will be put to the test, eh Randidly?”

Moonlight Blade with regret underestimating how tenacious my Stats will let Yust be. Randidly gestured sharply, bringing them left at a branching fork in the stone path. The walls pressed in tighter so that he could raise his hands and brush his fingers along the walls on both sides of them. But in the end, he just planted his foot and accelerated, pushing the two women to keep up with his movements.

Then a new presence arrived on the battlefield behind them.

BOOOOOOM!

“What the hell is this smell?!” After a massive impact, a familiar voice echoed out above the area. “I, Randidly Ghsothound, will rid the world of this horrid, wretched pestilence.”

“You-” Moonlight Blade howled. Then his voice came out low and rough, like a growl had to tear itself out of his throat. “Everyone knows you are not Randidly Ghosthound, Devick-”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

This impact was strong enough that even Randidly lost his balance. The stones around them rumbled and cracked. A portion of the passage behind them fractured and collapsed, spraying them with dust. Claudette stumbled and crashed into a stone outcropping, using Randidly’s tough forehead to hammer it to powder. After a short silence, Randidly’s borrow voice rose with fury. “How dare you refer to the gorgeous and lovely Actus Suprem without using her proper title. In her place, I will thoroughly discipline you for your transgression against her honor. Consider yourself lucky that she wasn’t here personally- the things she would have done to you-”

BOOOOM! BOOOM!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

“You-! Let go of me!”

HOOOOOOOOOWWWWLLLLL!

A horrifying wave of noise arose behind them as Randidly helped Claudette to her feet. Moonlight Blade unleashed his spectral wolves and they swarmed in the sky above them, aiding in the fight against Devick. Yet based on the continued howls of pain and frustration from Moonlight Blade, the combination of Devick’s instincts and Randidly’s body was fatal.

When it came to brutality, not even Pinnacle Seeker Moonlight Blade could rival Devick.

“Will the Don allow us to die in this place?” Neshamah asked quietly. Claudette shook her head, but the answer seemed less like a no and more of an expression of uncertainty at the prospect. After all, all the powerful individuals in the Nexus understood the risks of engaging in this sort of competition.

The winners accumulated and the losers were trampled. Perhaps with that in mind, the Randidly trio began hurrying forward once more.

The shapes are becoming more manifest, Randidly observed as the group hurried forward. Whatever is causing this… no, perhaps the treasure we are searching for is the source of the wrongness I feel?

For the next hundred meters the walls continued to press more tightly around them, but Randidly was not shy about reaching out with his hands and tearing down the stone to make additional space. It might make it easier for the other competitors, but moving as far as possible away from the rumbles of Devick’s strikes seemed the most pressing current issue.

Randidly slowed his loping run as they rushed out of the thin passage into a low and wide valley. Grass sprung up in verdant yet uneven clumps, leading eventually into several trees with wide and flat leaves. From here, even with the fabric of this place restricting his senses, he could hear the noise of the babbling brook.

The scenery seemed to be a positive sign. Randidly pointed upstream. “That way.”

The trio moved immediately, accelerating once more toward a somewhat respectable speed; the trial by fire was helping them acclimate quickly to the sudden accelerations that Randidly was so used to. The patches of grass grew more infrequent and the trees rapidly became smaller and wizened beneath the beating pressure of the sun. The heat about them rose, warping the air with wriggling visual distortions.

If Randidly hadn’t been able to clearly see the shapes of wrongness congregating with increasing density, he likely would have hesitated on this heading as the vegetation faded. It seemed like they were heading further away from life and deeper into a landmark-less desert. Even the stream grew thin and dry, more of a mud ditch than any true source of water.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

But as he headed along deeper into the desert, Randidly could sense the blurring force. The wrongness. And as he was streaking along through the desert, he abruptly understood the weird familiarity; of all things, the feeling of this place reminded him of the Armaments of the Swacc Family. Once he pulled up the memories of his fight against Shal, the similarities grew more apparent. Several images, albeit of a magnitude of power that Randidly couldn’t quite fathom, had been stitched together to make this place. To make the Skull of Truth. Perhaps that was why the Nether King had warned him away from it.

However, Randidly was bewildered by what that similarity implied.

The ground beneath them continued to slope almost imperceptibly down, their path slipping between the red hills. By now, they had moved far from the continued combat between Devick and Moonlight Blade. Claudette and Neshamah followed without question, trusting his guidance. The desert was quiet around them away from Devick’s rampage, making it seem like they were entirely alone in this competition.

Rather than a competition, it was just a strange jog through a desert.

But the weirdest part, Randidly chewed on the inside of his cheek as he glanced again at the drying creekbed. This was supposed to be upstream- does the water flow uphill?

Right about the time where even Randidly began to wonder if the wrongness fuzzed his senses and led him astray, he noticed a small path meandering behind a rock. He planted a foot and adjusted his vector immediately. Claudette and Neshamah stutter-stepped and then hurried after him. The path took them quickly down the side of another canyon, and there, waiting at the bottom-

“We are the first ones here,” Claudette murmured as the trio slowed. A glimmering sapphire lake lay between two jutting ridges of stone, feeding into the stream that they had followed to get here. “That means we have an advantage, at least for now.”

“Moving forward won’t be simple,” Randidly muttered. His eyes were fixed on the surface of the water, which appeared impenetrable to his senses. That thin plane, between water and air, was the location where the two disparate sorts of… something were layered and spliced together. Even his Grim Intuition couldn’t make any headway.

“It’s not the lake,” Claudette added, pointing to a spot on the far side of the lake, in the shadow of one of the ridges. An ornate wooden door sat into the stone, glittering at the edges with inlaid gold. Even to Randidly’s rather unsophisticated eye, it looked expensive. “Considering my father’s taste, that is definitely the path to the final reward.”

“There’s something about the lake though,” Neshamah frowned. Apparently, just having Randidly’s body still gave enough awareness to feel the strained location of the mixture. Randidly’s stomach continued to curl unpleasantly.

Claudette gestured toward the door and spoke in a joke, trying to mask her impatience. “We don’t have time to waste. I’m not spending the rest of my life under someone else’s thumb just because you wanted to go swimming.”

As far as jokes went, even Randidly heard how hollow and desperate it was. But he knew why Claudette was feeling so anxious and said nothing.

Neshamah gave Randidly a helpless look, but both of them followed after her. Randidly understood where they were both coming from, still having difficulty tearing his eyes away from the pulsing surface of the water. I’m not sure how much Neshamah can sense, but that lake is definitely not normal. And what’s waiting at the bottom… haaah, I wouldn’t investigate it casually. Especially not when I’m still experiencing some leftover mental strain.

After scanning the surroundings, Randidly reached out and grabbed Claudette’s arm. They were only a few meters away from the door. “Wait. There is a strange Engraving built into the rock.”

All three spread out and released soft touches of their images. Underneath the energy pressure, the Engraving flared defensively to life, allowing them to see the lines of power that animated it. Claudette spoke slowly. “From the arrangement… it’s a keyed lock. And the lock is relatively simple, but…”

“What is it?” Randidly asked.

Claudette gritted her teeth. “You need several people to open the door. Four, to be exact. So we need to wait-”

Rustling on the other side of the lake drew all of their attention. From a different path than the Randidly squad used, the rebel leader Allilia stumbled out of the bush and was quickly joined by one of her subordinates. Both looked bedraggled and had splashes of blood across their leather armor. Their third member was nowhere to be seen.

The two glanced around and spotted the Randidlys. Both groups regarded each other with suspicion, while Randidly cursed himself for just relying on his natural Grim Intuition. The fuzzy wrongness of the stitching of this world interfered so subtly in his senses that he missed it, and allowed these groups to catch them by surprise.

If he wanted to know information, he needed to read the ripples. So he raised his gaze and examined the surroundings.

For a split second, his face split into a grimace, but he masked it quickly. Then he coughed and called out to the Nexus rebels. “Come over here. This should be the passage to the next portion, but it requires a certain amount of people to open. Let’s work together and move forward.”

“It requires four people and there are five of us,” Neshamah pointed out quietly as the two rebels exchanged glances and then walked over toward the Randidlys. “And these are known malcontents- whatever they intend here, it likely won’t end peacefully.”

“One problem at a time,” Randidly answered just as quietly. “Besides, I’ll stay behind. I really do want to take a dip in the lake. At least for a while.”

Claudette looked over at him with a deceptively mild glance. Randidly couldn’t bring himself to meet her, his own, eyes.

They quickly figured out the mechanism and Claudette, Neshamah, and the two rebels moved into position to activate the door. There was a flash of light and the golden inlay along the frame became radiant. The wooden doors swung open while a barrier appeared, keeping Randidly unable to rush through the opening.

The foursome moved cautiously forward. Only at the last moment did Claudette pause and look back at him. “This is going to be the second time you’ve kept me waiting, Randidly.”

“I know,” He sighed.

Then they were gone, the door closing and the Engraving shifting; now it required three people to proceed through the door. When Randidly turned all the way back to the lake, the approaching threat he had sensed finally arrived.

“Well, well,” A Randidly Ghosthound with an expression animated from jarred madness grinned over at him. When the Actus Suprem Devick rode his body, his grin became sharp and biting. The air oozed with tension; she sauntered forward, every inch of an arch-villain. “Opening the door will require three bodies, eh? I guess we have no choice but to play around until someone else shows up.”