Zed stared once more at the door in front of him and wasn’t too pleased with what he felt on the other side. Sensing another human aura was supposed to be a good thing, but there was a part of him that doubted the candor of the aura he was sensing. For one, it belonged to a human not a mage.

That’s a slippery slope, he thought. Is the argument that mages aren’t human?

He shook his own thoughts aside, ignoring the question. It wasn’t because he wasn’t sure of the answer or because he was scared of what it might be—he really liked thinking of himself as human.

He stared at the door with a mix of emotions. His suspicion of the aura wasn’t in the fact that it wasn’t a mage, but in the fact that a normal human was alive in such a place.

Zed stood on the first floor of a dilapidated building. It was of the old world and covered in ruins. It stood on the far end of what may or may not have once been a business district and the only reason he’d come this far out was because he’d been fleeing from a few monsters that had caught his scent.

Those monsters now lay decimated at his feet, and while he was more than eager to use [Conqueror’s touch] on them, there was a clear warning amongst his notifications that kept him from it.

----------------------------------------

* Exp to category 2: 5001(2501)/2500.

* Maximum Exp per category approaching, advancement advised.

* Further Exp gain may lead to [Mana core] damage.

* You have 1 pending advancement.

----------------------------------------

Whatever mana core damage was Zed was more than certain he did not want to experience it. After all, there was no way adding damage to anything was a good sign. Oddly enough, he had twice the amount of Exp required for a category.

Doesn’t that mean I’m supposed to have two pending advancements? He wondered. I wonder if a double advancement has ever been heard of.

Zed continued staring at the door, wondering if there was any point to opening it. Nightfall was fast encroaching, and while a place to spend the night was a viable reason to open the door, he had no intentions of spending the night as a stationary target. He was a mage and a few more days without sleep wasn’t going to kill him.

But it will mess with my head, he thought, remembering when he might’ve hallucinated a monster duck earlier in the day.

With a final sigh, and hopes that he wouldn’t have to fight another monster, he placed a hand on the door and pushed.

It didn’t budge.

That’s odd.

He pushed again. This time he put in a little more weight. The aura he sensed was on the opposite side of the room but he didn’t want to force the issue so far that a flying debris would kill the person so he scaled his strength, slowly raising it as the door came ajar with the creaking sound of bending wood, then paused. He took his hand off the handle and looked down at it. Written on it was one simple word.

‘PULL’

Zed stared at it with an embarrassed expression.

“Oh.”

He pulled the door towards him and it opened easily.

On the other side of the room, seated in a terrified clump, with knees held up to her chest and eyes watching, was a young girl. She was small in stature and looked barely sixteen. She stared at Zed with terrified brown eyes shaking in their sockets.

“Aren’t you a bit far from home,” Zed said to her, stepping into the room.

When his leg crossed the door, the girl let out a short and instant scream, then her eyes rolled up into her head and she passed out.

A notification popped up in front of Zed.

----------------------------------------

* You have used skill [Bloodlust].

* [Bloodlust] has applied effect [Fear] on [Random human].

* [Random human] will power is too low.

* Effect [Fear] has inflicted [Terror], [Slow] and [Mind haze] on [Random human].

* [Random human] has been afflicted with status effect [Unconscious].

----------------------------------------

“I really need to remember to turn that off,” Zed muttered to himself, deactivating the skill. He felt a certain level of dangerousness leave him, as if the concept was a physical thing before continuing into the room.

He’d met the girl before and hadn’t recognized her then, but he did now. He remembered her from the party, standing beside Abed while Ronda had fought against her urge to fight the Rukh mage. She had been cleaner then than she was now, less dirty and her clothes less tattered. As much as he wanted to be surprised, the fact that she’d made it this far with only this level of dishevelment was a good stroke of luck for her.

He walked up to her and sat beside her unconscious form lying on the ground.

“Let’s hope no one heard that scream,” he muttered to himself.

……………………………………………………….

“Was that necessary?” Ven asked Heimdall.

Heimdall watched the man with the precise apathy veteran leaders watched their rookie recruits. His blue eyes seeming to looking past Ven even though they were fixed firmly on him.

“Perhaps it was,” Heimdall answered. “Perhaps it wasn’t. But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”

Ven sighed. “I guess not.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Heimdall was comfortably seated in a chair behind a long wooden desk. The desk had cracks and was greatly faded from the deep brown it must have once been so that instead of the high priced table it was supposed to be, polished to a deep oak shine, it looked like the work of a significantly amateur carpenter trying to imitate high class work.

Situated against one side of the wall was a couch and Ven moved to it, his footsteps heavy thuds against the wood. He was already leaning down when Heimdall stopped him with a raised hand.

“No,” Heimdall said. “I’m already having a headache thinking about the mess you’re currently making on the floor. I definitely don’t have what it takes to replace an entire couch.”

Ven’s brows furrowed in bafflement. “Then what would you have me do?”

“You’re a soldier,” Heimdall said with a shrug. “Stand.”

Ven let out a weary sigh but obliged.

“This isn’t very polite, Watchman,” he said.

He watched Heimdall’s expression, and if the use of his moniker had taken him by surprise, he didn’t show it. In fact, Ven might as well have called Ronda by name for all the expression he got.

“I’m sorry, was that supposed to surprise me?” Heimdall asked, legitimately curious. “Am I supposed to be surprised that some captain recognizes my face from the list of the VHF’s most wanted.”

“You seem calm and composed for a wanted man standing in front of the law,” Ven said.

“And you assume you’re the law?”

“I represent the VHF here. So, yes. I am the law.”

Heimdall’s lips pulled into a half-smile. “And you think the VHF is the law here?”

“The VHF is the law everywhere, Watchman.”

Heimdall let out a soft breath and leaned back into his chair.

“Can you dispense with the Watchman rant anyway,” he said. “It’s getting a bit tiring, and honestly I find it cringy.”

“Would you prefer I called you Terent, or Mr. Smith?”

“Heimdall’s fine. Everyone calls me Heimdall.”

“And does everyone know who exactly Heimdall is?”

Heimdall shrugged. “I’m sure one or two of them know Norse mythology. Watchman to the gods, first witness to Ragnarok and all that. We’ve implemented a schooling system but we’re not yet at mythologies yet.”

Heimdall was playing games. Whether he was doing it to rile Ven up or not was another thing. But if it was, it was working. Ven found himself playing with the ludicrous idea of taking the mage down and taking him in.

“Careful, kid,” Heimdall said suddenly. “You’re getting antsy. And when your kind start getting antsy in front of me it’s usually because they’re considering something stupid like taking me in.”

“And you think I can’t take you in?”

“It’s not a matter of thought,” Heimdall said. “You simply can’t take me in.”

“I have a battalion of Olympian armors outside,” Ven said. “What makes you think you can survive them?”

“You’ve got eight mages playing dress up, and I wasn’t talking about them. If we fight, against those odds, I might lose. But you won’t be the one taking me in. So let’s stop trying to see whose dick is bigger and get to the reason we’re both here.”

“The mana surge.”

“Good.”

Heimdall slipped a piece of paper out from under his table and placed it on the desk. It carried scribbles Ven could not read from where he stood.

“Now,” Heimdall continued. “My people have scoured as far and wide as is humanely possible ever since we sensed the effect of it, and we’ve found nothing.”

Heimdall then folded his arms and leaned back against the chair once more.

Ven stared at him, waiting for more. A small silence stretched between them as he waited. It took him a moment to realize the watchman was going to say no more on the subject.

“That’s it?” Ven asked.

Heimdall shrugged. “That’s it. We tried, we failed. Yet the monsters are already gathering, flocking to us from every angle like we’ve got the holy grail or something. Now, the fact that you guys are here means someone has said something. And if someone has said something and you’re still here after so long, then you guys must know something.”

“We know the mana surge is here.”

“Bolstering or stating facts?”

“Stating facts,” Ven said. “We even know its general location. However, to get a precise location, we’ll need one of VHF’s new tech which won’t be here for another few days.”

“We don’t have another few days.”

“You sure your guys can’t just wait it out?” Ven asked.

Heimdall shook his head. “No. Just last week there was a monster sighting. Bishop rank.”

“Are you telling me you’re scared of a Bishop rank, Heimdall?” Ven laughed.

“You seem to misunderstand, soldier. There was a sighting of a Bishop rank monster last week. On the back of a monster wave, a Bishop rank monster will become a few Bishop rank monsters. Or have you forgotten what happened at Old South Dakota two years back. Or had you not joined the VHF yet?”

Ven frowned at the memory. He’d been in the VHF then but he’d simply not been a captain at the time. They’d underestimated a monster surge, taken their time studying it while they allowed the soldiers deal with the monsters that came seeking power instead of isolating its effect. The number of Knight rank monsters had slowly increased until the world had witnessed its first King rank monster. The loss had been in the multitudes. Their error had cost the VHF a lot of manpower that they continued to suffer the effects of till today.

“If we don’t wait, we’ll be wasting our time searching,” Ven said, refusing to dwell on one of the VHF’s past errors.

“You said you have the general location, correct?” Heimdall asked.

“We do.”

“Where?”

“Do you intend to go and get it?”

“No. I intend to send my people out to go and get it. I had intended to create a joint team, but if your people aren’t willing, then that’s not a problem.”

“And if they don’t find it?”

“Then at least we tried.”

Ven let out a deep sigh. Beyond his suit of armor, it came out soundless.

“Alright,” he said. “There is a forest opposite the woods where your shed is…”

“We’ve searched it in passing,” Heimdall interrupted. “It’s not there. Besides, the ambient mana there is too thin. Locations of mana surges have dense ambient mana, denser than anywhere.”

“And that’s why your men didn’t put their back into searching,” Ven said. “The ambient mana might be too low, but the trees and plant life are drowning in raw mana.”

Heimdall’s brows furrowed at that.

“Raw mana,” he said, thoughtful.

“Yes, raw mana. Now raw mana is only found in the core of a monolith. Raw mana is literally what the crystalized mana core of a monolith is made of.”

“If the trees are rich with it, that means the crystalized core somehow released nutrients into the earth, instead of the air.” Heimdall frowned. “It’s unheard of.”

“But it’s magic,” Ven said. “Most things are unheard of.”

“So we never witnessed the fall of a monolith,” Heimdall said.

“No. What you all felt was the breaking of its core.”

“Then what happened to the monolith?”

“It might’ve fallen before you all got here.”

“Possible but unlikely. Anyway,” Heimdall waved the worry aside, “now that we know, all we have to do is search the forest.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover, though.”

“Not entirely. If we combine our teams, I’m sure we can be done in a few days. One team will take one side and the other will take a different side. Then they’ll converge at a point.”

“And you think we trust each other enough to believe one of us won’t take a swipe at the target if you stumble across it?”

“Far be it from me to believe in trust, captain,” Heimdall chuckled. “But I was aiming along the lines of mixed teams. Yours and mine in each team.”

Ven rubbed armored fingers along the jaw line of a featureless armored face. “And the leaders?”

“One will be led by one of mine. I already have the man for the job, and the other will be led by one of yours.”

“I see. So that makes it three teams.”

Heimdall spared Ven a skeptical look. “Three?”

“Of course,” Ven said. “I never had any intentions of sitting idly by until the next wave of monsters starts crawling in. It was always my intention to go for it as soon as possible. But to cover so much ground we’d need all the help we can get. So I’ve employed the assistance of another number of mages, each of them of Rukh rank.”

“I guess I can’t necessarily argue.”

“And will you be joining us?”

Heimdall shook his head.

“No,” he answered. “The mage I’ll be sending is a far deadlier monster than I am.”