Vandre wasn’t sure what was more dangerous in the dungeon. There were the vicious, half-meat, half-machine monsters attacking him and his companions, of course.

  Then there was the widening field of crushing power centred at the spot where Cultist Ross stood.

  Honestly, Vandre was doing more to avoid the latter than the former. Of course, that fact took into account that he was a proper mage. Not that he was intending to slight Cultist Ross, but the more Vandre got embroiled in fights, the more he found that his best performance came at a relative distance from his opponents.

  This was further compounded by the way his Aspect and Attributes kept growing. Aetherblood had already acquired a “mechanical” Affix called Ranged Intensity that empowered the Aspect based on how long his blood remained airborne before hitting his target. Why wouldn’t Vandre seek additional distance if that was the case?

  His throwing power was limited, of course. Unlike almost all the other Scarthralls, his Power wasn’t even Silver yet. Vandre only felt a tiny bit of shame at that.

  “Vandre!” Jalais shouted.

  Ah, crap. The battle.

  Vandre drew his arm back, ready to throw more acidic blood, but it turned out that wasn’t what Jalais was warning him about. The Fleshtank monsters weren’t posing a huge threat anymore as even they were distracted.

  By the screeching and groaning of their leader.

  Vandre followed everyone’s gaze to where Cultist Ross’s immense power was even pulling that potentially Opal-ranked monster. A heartbeat later, it was ripped free from the ceiling to plummet to the ground. Vandre shook along with everyone and everything else. He had to work to make sure he didn’t lose his footing.

  The monsters around them shrieked metallically in unison. Several tried to rush towards their fallen boss, though the other Scarthralls did their best to stop them.

  There was no need for that kind of effort. As soon as the monsters entered Cultist Ross’s energy field, they were immediately trapped to the ground. Oh, yes. Vandre was doing a fantastic job of keeping away from that kind of power.

  The titanic monster that had fallen from the ceiling was now rising again. That thing… Vandre scowled. Even after a plummet like that, it wasn’t just getting back up, it looked perfectly unharmed too. How strong was that monster? Vandre’s heart, which never beat the same as it had after he had turned, now stuttered again. This was why Cultist Ross was here.

  They hadn’t fully discussed it, but it was something that was evident to them all. Of course the strongest dungeon in Zairgon would have monsters that were well beyond any of them. Of course, no one but Cultist Ross could take on overpowered creatures.

  …could even Cultist Ross defeat that huge Fleshtank Titan? It stood several times his height, having survived—with next to no visible damage—a fall that would have squashed any other Fleshtank. And even now, it was preparing a salvo of light energy that sent a primal fear scurrying deep within Vandre’s soul. A need to run. A need to get away before he was incinerated.

  A need to yell at Cultist Ross to do the same, because where Vandre considered even himself expendable, his superior at the Sun Cult was the last person who deserved to die.

  But Cultist Ross stayed put. Despite the growing fury of the monstrous power in front of him, he was refusing to get out of the way. And so, neither did Vandre. As much as he wanted to yell at his superior to take cover or defend himself or do something other than looking like he was determined to tank it head on, he stood his ground and didn’t move.

  He didn’t budge when the Titan’s power reached its peak. Not when the monster glowed like half a dozen suns strapped together. Not even when it fired a coruscating beam of energy that ripped through the entire arena while vaporizing everything in its path.

  Vandre’s ears were ringing. He wasn’t the only one staring either. It felt like the whole dungeon had frozen to watch the interaction.

  When he could finally see again, albeit with that burning geyser of energy branded into his eyelids every time he blinked, his heart clenched again. There was no sign of Cultist Ross at first.

  A gasp was followed by a hand rising out of the debris that had fallen under the beam of light. He wasn’t dead! Vandre could have cheered. Though the impulse to do so fell apart when he noticed how half of the cultist’s armour had melted off, how his arms appeared burned and singed, his whole body partially smoking.

  The Fleshtank Titan screeched out metallically. Its smaller brethren followed, the whole dungeon once more rocked with terrible tremors.

  Moments later, it gathered the energy again before firing once more. And once more, Cultist Ross tanked it. This time, when vision returned, Vandre noted that the cultist hadn’t fallen to the ground. His knees had buckled momentarily, but that was about it. He didn’t even look more hurt than normal.

  What… what was that man made of? Vandre had been stupid to worry about Cultist Ross. If anything, he should have worried about what would happen to that dumb monster.

  It was the cultist’s turn to attack. He had pulled his hand back, creating an instance of power Vandre vividly recalled seeing during the Blight Swarm invasion. A compressed blade of energy that made the Titan’s beam look like child’s play.

  The monster screeched violently once more. Every single other Fleshtank dropped what they were doing and arrowed straight for the oversized one in the middle. They moved so fast, Vandre and the rest of the Scarthralls weren’t able to react quickly enough. The sudden appearance of even more of them from all around the arena had taken Vandre by surprise. Pits! That was way too—

  Cultist Ross’s field of dark energy rippled out even wider. It came so fast, Vandre got no time to move. Immediately, he was flattened to the ground, unable to move an inch.

  Panic clawed at his chest, but it lessened when he saw that everything in the chamber was caught. Every single Fleshtank and Scarthrall was locked to the floor. The metal contraptions with the belts and the mechanical arms were bending, crushing, and bowing towards the ground as well.

  This whole battlefield was now under Cultist Ross’s control.

  Vandre felt significantly better about it when he looked at it from the cultist’s perspective. He wasn’t just locking everything down because he could. By keeping everything trapped, he was making sure that none of the lesser monsters could interrupt him or get to the Scarthralls themselves.

  The massive Titan made more struggling noises. Vandre was able to turn his head just enough to see that the creature was desperate about not getting hit by that blade that looked like a sword-shaped sun about to explode.

  It fired another beam. But when this one passed, Vandre blinking away the brightness, he found Cultist Ross was fully unaffected. How?

  At the same instant, the field bounding everything disappeared. One second it was there. The next, as the monster’s massive beam ripped through the arena, the flood of dark violet threads vanished.

  Vandre liked to think he was a lot faster now than when he had been human. But he hadn’t even raised himself a handspan above the metal floor before Cultist Ross was slamming into the Fleshtank Titan, his bursting blade of overwhelming power now finally unleashing its unstoppable might.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Credit to the low-Opal monster, it was able to evade the worst of the fallout. Half the arena simply melted and burst apart. Contraptions exploded and lesser monsters vaporized on the spot. Every iota of the battlefield had turned volatile.

  Cultist Ross had been aware enough to keep the blast well away from where the Scarthralls were situated, but that didn’t mean Vandre felt nothing. He was awash in burning heat within moments. His body felt like it was both expanding and compressing at the same time with the weirdness the air decided to perform after that explosive burst. The flash of the tremendous detonation had nearly blinded Vandre too.

  When Vandre was properly on his own two feet, he felt like he was inside a volcano. Like existence itself was about to erupt in his face. Everything was still growing hotter.

  Unfortunately, Vandre wasn’t the only one who was free. The Fleshtanks that hadn’t died were rising too, reaching to attack again. Vandre just caught the Titan version—now half-melted but still alive and wriggling—trying to move away from the cultist before he was forced to deal with the monster coming at him.

  Light burst everywhere. Vandre had been about to fling his blood at the onrushing Fleshtank, but burning light materialized on the monster’s body, lashing in from all around the arena too. What in the world was going on?

  Vandre was forced to hastily step back. Fighting the Fleshtank while his body was seconds away from starting to turn to ash was a recipe for disaster. He’d have to find another way. Not that he needed to. The monster was dying, falling to the floor as it struggled against something it had no way of affecting.

  And then the light disappeared. So did the heat.

  Vandre’s head twisted to the right. Cultist Ross had taken to the air above the Titan with a rousing yell. His mace was glowing much like that energy blade of his had, though at a significantly lower intensity.

  Then he slammed down with a fiery burst upon the crunching impact.

  The Fleshtank near Vandre screeched out as its boss—parent?—got crushed. Vandre wasted no time driving his fist at the creature, flooding it with his acidic blood, melting it away as the dungeon finally fell in defeat.

  I breathed a little harshly as I stood over the corpse of the Fleshtank Titan. A series of blue screens were flashing in front of my face.

  [ Augmentation Unlocked!

  You have acquired a new Augmentation for your Vitality Attribute.

  Augmentation: Vital Mana ]

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Spirit and Vitality Attributes have risen by one Rank.

  Your Entropy Aspect has risen by one Rank.

  Your Gravity, Flare, Illumination Aspects have risen by one Rank.

  Your Path of the Auric Hierophant has risen by one Rank.

  Spirit: Gold III

  Vitality: Gold IV

  Entropy: Iron VI

  Gravity: Gold IV

  Flare: Silver V

  Illumination: Silver IV

  Path of the Auric Hierophant: Gold II ]

  [ Aspect Unlocked!

  Need detected. Ability acknowledged. Mana connection established. Requisite Path discovered: Path of the Auric Hierophant.

  New Aspect: Leadership [Iron I] ]

  Almost all of that was perfectly expected and normal. What I hadn’t been seeking was the Aspect of Leadership. Now that was a doozy. I’d get to it later. Right now, I was basking in the triumph of having attained another Vitality Augmentation.

  “We did it, Cultist Ross!” Atholaine said as she bulled through the debris, burning or molten or otherwise, to get to me.

  “You did it.” Vandre was shaking his head with no small amount of awe. “If you hadn’t been here…”

  “No, Atholaine’s right,” I said. “We all did great. We reached the end of the dungeon and beat the boss. I was… expecting it to be a little more difficult—you know, strongest dungeon and all—but I’m not complaining.”

  By the time all the Scarthralls had made it there, the boss arena was shaking. One side was shaking extra hard, which soon collapsed and revealed a large opening with our ultimate goal. All the treasures we needed to recover and hand over to the guild.

  “No time to inspect,” I told my companions. “We’re not going to be using any of them anyway.”

  “Right.” Lujean was first into the little cave, throwing everything he could into the extra dimensional storage bags we had brought. “Come on. Throw as much of all this as you can into the bags. Hurry!”

  I joined them in the exercise. While I had mentioned that there wasn’t much time to take things, what with the dungeon arena starting to collapse behind us, I did pause to observe one little contraption. It was a weird, whirring motor with a tiny glowing orb in the centre. I was reminded of the mana cores I had seen embedded in the Nether Vein walls.

  Could this be something similar? A mechanism that could draw power from this supposed mana core?

  No time. I threw my shit into my dimensional storage, then hauled ass out of the dungeon with the rest of the Scarthralls.

  “I don’t think we needed to hurry as fast as we did,” Sigrouen was saying as we made our way towards the Adventurer’s Guild. “The whole dungeon wasn’t breaking apart. Just that final boss room.”

  “You’re worried about that?” Lujean tutted. “I’m more concerned we wouldn’t have stood a chance against that monster at the end…”

  That silenced the rest of the Scarthralls.

  “You guys think too much,” I said. “It’s good to have ambition, but don’t let it be the be all end all. You did good in the dungeon. You have to remember that Rackshift is the strongest dungeon in all of Zairgon, and you’re all at best low to mid-Silver. You should take pride in the fact that your very first dungeon is the best that Zairgon can offer.”

  They seemed a little more cheerful at that, although I apparently hadn’t satisfied Lujean.

  “If this is the strongest,” he said. “Then what do people who are even stronger do to get more powerful?”

  I didn’t have easy answers to that. The series of circumstances that had allowed me to reach Gold in about half-a-year wasn’t replicable.

  “I have a different concern,” I said. “And it’s that you guys need to slow down just a tiny bit, alright? And I don’t really mean slowing down in terms of the effort you’re spending. I just want you to be more careful, understand? You’re Scarthralls and you can take risks that even I can’t. But that doesn’t mean you’re impervious to trauma.”

  They nodded back seriously, some only after a few moments of thought. I didn’t want to stifle them, but at the same time, being careless wasn’t going to fly.

  “Back already?” Dahath asked when we got to his office. He was staring at me. “And how is it that your armour looks like that, and you’re perfectly fine?”

  I looked down at the misshapen hunk of metal that had formerly played the part of my breastplate. “I got unlucky.”

  “Unlucky?”

  In lieu of explaining things, I just handed him all of the dimensional storages, which he proceeded to inspect carefully. It was neat learning there was a way to detect what exactly was inside those things without needing them to spill all their contents.

  “You’ve had a mighty haul,” Dahath said. Then he grumbled, “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  The Scarthralls grinned at each other.

  “Aren’t you grateful nothing’s non-standard?” I asked. “Just the regular old deal. Nothing extra or fancy.”

  Dahath sighed. “Yes, yes, I appreciate it. But with the Nether Vein opening up, everything’s going to be non-standard before long.”

  He had a point there…

  Happy enough with my current inflow of cash, we returned to the temple. The Nether Vein opening up was probably going to introduce a lot of complications, but I was looking forward to it in one sense.

  The last deal I had struck with Dahath after I had rediscovered the Nether Vein essentially had me perpetually earning a percentage of whatever the guild recovered from the Nether Vein. So far, it had been too clogged up by the Netherthreads for any delves or expeditions. But soon, it would be open again. I could see greater profit on the horizon.

  And potential complications I’d have to be wary of.

  The next day, I was strolling through Ring Three before I heard a familiar voice calling out.

  “Oh, Ross!” Silhatsa hailed me down like I was a forlorn taxi. “Fancy meeting you anywhere but at the temple or the Mage Guild.”

  “It is odd we’ve never met outside,” I said after I came over.

  “Well, it’s a good thing we did.” Her eyes took on an avaricious gleam. “Because you’re going to join me.”

  “Join you where?”

  “Shopping!”

  “…shopping?”

  She leaned in and whispered, “Is that not a thing where you’re from?”

  “I wish. I was just going to go to the Mage Guild…” I stopped. She stared at me, her eyes wider than any Scalekin’s I had ever seen. “… to talk to you, actually. About my Permanence Augmentation. But I guess that’s a moot point now.”

  “Exactly! Come on, I’ll be happy to tell you whatever you want so long as you, um, accompany me.”

  She meant being a pack mule for her. She absolutely meant it, no matter how innocent she acted. As I followed her, I reminded myself I needed to ask about my second mana core too.