Ethan woke up in his cabin with a peaceful expression. He sat up on his unnecessarily large bed that was also the epitome of comfiness and fought the temptation of lazing around. As he pulled himself from the loving embrace of his bed, he was a bit confused about not seeing Beet anywhere. Using [Mana Sense], he found him on the deck and made his way toward there while scratching his back.

On the filthy deck, he took a few steps forward among the blood and grime and stretched himself with a yawn. He gazed at the gloomy place with a placid face as a nasty smell assaulted his nose, and stated calmly, ‘’I hate this place.’’

Beet wasn’t far away from him, standing in front of the ship and watching his shades as they battled with each other. A rhea and a wolf shade were brutally fighting on the ground, but it was clear that other than to attack, they had more complex commands, like defend, dodge, or go for the lethal areas.

‘’Mornin’ buddy. Have you eaten anything?’’

Beet looked at him and shook his head.

‘’Why not? I gave you lots of food. You shouldn’t wait for me.’’

When Beet turned around to watch the shades, Ethan raised an eyebrow and sat near him, picking out two plates of food. He put one of them near Beet and started eating the other while thinking about what should be bothering the little fellow. ‘’You okay? Do you feel bad about the ghouls?’’

Beet turned his head and rolled his eyes.

‘’Yeah, I guess not. The other day you seemed to look at that limbless ghoul with pity. Maybe it was a pity for not getting its essence, huh?’’ Ethan chuckled before getting another bite and thinking about what was wrong. ‘’Are you perhaps upset that you didn’t get to help me much yesterday?’’

Beet shifted his eyes back to the shades while making their spar even more intense.

Ethan finally understood what was going on in that tiny head. When they were at tiers 1 and 2, their strength was about the same, but once he advanced to tier-3, the gap between them started to widen. Once he made breakthroughs with two of his void skills, his fights against low-tier beings became much easier. And now at tier-4, along with many different skills, the disparity between them was only more clear.

Even with his shades, Beet wasn’t able to cope with him anymore. His exoskeleton was extremely tough, but with how small he was, Ethan wasn’t willing to risk too much. After all, who knew if a solid claw attack from a tier-5 ghoul was enough to remove his head in a single move?

In the end, he killed more than a hundred tier-5 ghouls yesterday, while the kill counts of Beet and his shades were about a dozen. Not to mention, if not for Beet, Ethan could have escaped to the deepest corner of the place and cultivated for a short time until the ghouls found him. That’d allow him to regain his resources slowly, but since Beet didn’t have the [Mana Conceal] skill, this plan became pointless. That’s why they had to kill the tier-5s quickly with all they got.

‘’Look, you should know that this is temporary. You advanced your [Shade Creation] on the third try. Do you know what that means? You’d probably have a breakthrough even without a skill. That’s what a top-grade talent does,’’ he said sincerely, putting down his plate. ‘’They say rank-3 and rank-4 skills are much harder to achieve. If it goes like this, I’ll likely be stuck at some point because of my talent, and waste years without any advancement. But you don’t have a problem like this. I bet we’ll get you awesome skills from this place and you’ll surpass me in the future like a breeze! At that time, you better not forget that I’ve bathed in rotten flesh to get you these skills!’’

Ethan teased the little one with a smile and tried to cheer him up. Beet was listening quietly as the battle of shades became more refined and organized, no doubt he was feeling better, but not much.

‘’And even if you haven’t, so what? Since when we’re keeping scores about who did better? Didn’t you run blindly toward a dozen tier-5 creatures at the end? That’s all that matters. Whatever the case, we’ll face the calamities together and charge the impossible with a bold laugh!’’ Ethan’s grin became predatory, eyes piercingly sharp. ‘’If mere ghouls could make you depressed, what will you do when we slaughter the Ascendants in their home? When we fight against the rulers of the higher realms and their army of millions, would you lament that I’m killing faster or would you unleash hell upon the cage masters without holding back?’’

Beet’s eyes flashed with a strange light when he heard the cage masters, and he met Ethan's gaze with a decisive one.

‘’That’s right. We have a long road ahead of us and I don’t give a shit if we succeed or not in the end. But I know that we’ll tread this road with our heads high and face the challenges without shying away. More importantly, we’ll do it together,’’ he said and extended his fist with a smile. ‘’C’mon. Bump it with the back of your scythe.’’

When Beet did so with a small hesitation, Ethan’s smile widened.

They ate their meals in high spirits and resumed their journey inside the hollow mountains. Ethan wanted to clean the ship, but he didn’t know if it'd get dirty once again and didn’t want to waste his water casually. So, along with the grimy ship, they arrived in front of the giant door. Just like before, it sucked Beet’s mana and opened up with loud rumbles.

This time, a different scenery welcomed them. A labyrinth with chaotic walls. The moment they entered, Ethan noticed that his [Mana Sense] stopped working. He was still able to use his skills, but he wasn’t even able to sense his own mana, let alone to use [Mana Sense] to distinguish creatures or the place they were in.

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The ceiling was much lower and it was going both lower and higher as they continued in the only existing corridor, which also had similar walls, bending at different angles constantly without being too overwhelming. What the hell is this? Did they hire Salvador Dali as the designer?

Ethan slowed the ship and descended to the ground. ‘’Something is off with this place. Let’s carry on from the ground,’’ he said and jumped down. Beet followed after and he stored the ship before starting to walk while scanning everywhere.

Without [Mana Sense] all he had was his own eyes and ears. He was quite surprised to find out how much he was relying on the skill. Using other skills also felt weird, and he expected that his aim with [Fabric Tear] would be awful under these conditions.

They followed the path at a fast pace, but there was no sign of the enemy so far. At least there were no hordes running amok, or torches illuminating everywhere. Instead, the stones of the walls were giving a soft sheen, helping them to see what was ahead. After a short walk, they encountered a fork in the corridor without a sign or anything. That’s a labyrinth, alright. I’m really not good at this kind of shit. I guess I should do the most obvious. ‘’We’ll go right. Always right. Remember, even if we got separated somehow, always follow the wall on the right side.’’

Another hour of walking brought them to more forks and dead ends, but they kept walking. Since he was looking at the strange-shaped walls all the time, Ethan was starting to feel dizzy. Only after running into their enemy, did he sober up.

A white creature with four big paws. It had a humanoid shape, but it was walking on all fours. The short horns on its head were spiky while the long ones were bending toward the back. Its body was covered with scales and it had a thick tail like a crocodile.

Since they were still far away, the creature didn’t notice them. Ethan called his daggers and narrowed its eyes, looking at the perhaps most scary-looking monster ever since he arrived on Elisium. A wendigo. I’ve read about these in Ehrendil. What was that thing about their heart? ‘Ani, how do I kill a wendigo?’

‘Their heart is made of ice. Shattering the ice is the only way to kill them.’

Sounds simple enough. Let’s go then. Ethan motioned Beet to follow from behind and started walking toward the beast while staying close to the walls.

The wendigo was also treading the same path as them. It was walking slowly without looking around like it knew where it was going.

Ethan had no idea about the distance between them, but once the beast was about the turn from the corner, he used a [Blink] and opened [Fabric Tear] to attack with his dagger. Turned out the distance was closer than 150 yards, but [Fabric Tear] missed the beast by three feet.

Well, fuck [Fabric Tear]. Isn’t it only one tier-5 beast? He smiled at the creature who noticed him and charged straight away without waiting for the beast.

The wendigo let out a loud roar and welcomed him with a jump. Ethan didn’t even think about taking it head-on, and [Blink]ed to the side while slashing his dagger. Devi tore its scales and made a long wound, but there was no pain in the beast nor a single drop of blood. He still gained a small amount of mana, but he now knew that this creature could take a beating.

It penetrated the floor with its claws and made a sudden turn before attacking with the same ferocity. Just the body coordination and reflexes made the beast much deadlier than the ghouls. Ethan didn’t even want to imagine fighting hundreds of these.

Still, as long as he had to fight one, it was something he could handle, or more accurately, they could handle.

Beet joined the fight with his four shades. They immediately surrounded the wendigo, giving Ethan many opportunities to go for the heart. Unfortunately, the scales around its chest were incredibly thick, [Shadow Spikes] was completely ineffective, and even his daggers were barely doing any damage.

Only after the third try did he manage to stab with his dagger while blocking the beast’s sharp teeth with his arm. The already worn-out armor shattered from elbow to wrist, but as the wendigo’s sharp teeth reached his flesh, his dagger also pierced the frozen heart, killing the beast immediately.

Ethan sighed in relief and shook his arm, dropping the pieces of the armor under his cloak. ‘’I paid a damn 10 mana stones, and look at that. It can’t even handle a hundred tier-5s. I should’ve pestered the sage for armor as well. His dagger is still in perfect condition,’’ he complained with pursed lips before turning to Beet. ‘’Go on. Make a shade from this fellow. It’d be much better than yours.’’

Beet shook his head.

‘’Why not?’’ Seeing that Beet was pointing at him, Ethan frowned for a second but understood the next. ‘’Oh, right. You mean that your control would be lacking since it was me who killed it?’’

Beet gave a nod and called his shades back to his shadow.

‘’Well, I’m not sure if you could kill one of those, but we should definitely try it. This creature is a murder machine. Four of them would be catastrophic.’’

Ethan started collecting the claws of the wendigo while thinking about how he could help Beet to kill another. Since he didn’t get any essence from the wolf he kept busy, maybe he could do the same thing. He decided to only join the fight when Beet himself was in danger, and try to not give any damage to the beast. It wasn’t the same as watching from the sides, but he hoped that Elisium understands that it was Beet who killed it in the end.

He also cut off the wendigo's head and stored it with the claws. It didn’t have any core, but this beast was a rarity on Azora and even if it didn’t have any material value, he hoped to sell it for artistic value. Because the scary face of the creature was enough to give him chills; dead or alive. It wouldn’t be surprising for people to buy it just to show off.

The duo resumed their journey and followed the maze’s right side. Not much later, they found the second wendigo, and this time Ethan only watched at first. It didn’t take long, though. The beast threw the shades away with its hefty paw and dashed toward Beet.

He immediately [Blink]ed next to it and gave a powerful kick, making the beast crash into the wall. Hoping that it wouldn’t do much damage, he left the rest to the shades. But the shades weren't able to hold it much, every few minutes, he somehow involved himself in the battle and backed off right away. After an hour of a tough fight, the rhea shade managed to pierce its beak into wendigo’s heart and killed it.

Beet immediately tried his skill on the corpse and made a new shade. The shade wendigo was looking even more horrifying than the original. Its saw-like black teeth and the soulless look in its eyes were enough to spread fear in any enemy it’d face.

As the shade tried more complex moves, Ethan watched with an expectant look. ‘’So?’’

When Beet gave an excited nod, he chuckled with delight. Looks like the little terror will have four bigger terrors under his command.