Since there was still a bit of time before the Nether Vein expedition, I doubled down on training as hard as I could. There was the second mana core manifestation as well as trying to come up with more pieces of my eventual Icon, but what I really focused on for the few days I had was more practical stuff.

  For instance, I spent an inordinate amount of time with Gutran trying to make Agility work like I needed it to. Bless the Scalekin blacksmith. He didn’t mind giving me some of his time at all.

  It was on the second day that the Agility Augmentation I was going for finally manifested.

  [ Augmentation Unlocked!

  You have acquired a new Augmentation for your Agility Attribute.

  Augmentation: Drain ]

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Agility Attribute has risen by one Rank.

  Agility: Gold V ]

  “Hey,” Lujean said, coming to a stop in the middle of our sparring session. “Why do I feel slower all of a sudden?”

  I grinned a little mischievously. “I’m manifesting a little light and heat with Manifestation. Since they’re coming from my Aspects and are affecting you, my new Agility Augmentation can basically slow you down.”

  “No way.”

  The other Scarthralls had come to a stop too, impressed at the Augmentation I had learned.

  What had finally helped me earn it was using my other Agility Augmentation. Reflexive Mana created those javelins of mana around me.

  I used some of my Aspects to affect the Scarthralls. When they charged at me, I didn’t just use Reflexive Mana to dodge away from them. Instead, I also used the mana lines to try and leave a trace of magic on them, forming a partially ethereal connection between us.

  It didn’t work at first. I pushed it, trained and sparred with them longer than normal, and eventually, it materialized.

  “Isn’t that kind of… broken?” Atholaine asked. “You could just have them affected by a smidge of your mana and then poof! They’re all slow now.”

  “Hmm, maybe.” I rubbed my chin, considering. “I have a feeling there are scaling effects that I haven’t seen yet. But that’s what this little spar is for. Let’s find out just how much I can slow you guys down, alright? You don’t have to hold back or anything. Go all out. Use everything you’ve learned too, please.”

  With all of them well into Silver, they had the ability to train up their own Augmentations. Tracking what every single one of them was getting for every Attribute had started making my brain turn to soup, so I had requested that they kindly don’t ask me to remember. I had been happy to provide pointers when needed, of course.

  That said, I did recall that Vandre had taken up Manifestation for his Spirit Attribute as soon as he had been able to. I approved. Now he could call up his magical blood that much faster.

  Meanwhile, Lujean had trained a very interesting one called Revenger’s Mana for his Vitality Attribute. As impressed as I was by the Augmentation, it was his thought process that made me smile wider. He had decided that as he didn’t mind getting into the thick of combat like me, he had found and earned an Augmentation that gave him mana for every wound he suffered.

  Our sparring progressed well. The Scarthralls definitely didn’t hold themselves back at all. I did my best to fight back, appreciating that I was kept on my toes.

  More importantly, I learned about the limitations of Drain. It wasn’t as overpowered as it might have at first appeared. The amount of slowness I could inflict and how much I was sped up all depended on how much my mana was affecting my opponents.

  Minute use of Manifestation to get a basic, barely perceptible amount of my Aspects affecting the Scarthralls barely slowed them down.

  “It feels like Vandre’s frantically fanning me to push me back,” Lujean said when asked to describe what it was like.

  Vandre scowled as the rest of us laughed.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I confirmed. “I feel like someone’s blowing on my back.”

  Basically, not much of a drain. But that changed when I intensified the amount of the Aspects I was using. When I affected the entirety of Jalais with a wide and heavy Field Manipulation, I slowed him down considerably more.

  It was hard to tell since he was already trapped to the ground which made all motion difficult, but I did feel a more significant boost to my own speed. Like every running step that normally would have taken me seven feet would now take me eight or nine at least. Now, that was potentially a considerable buff.

  I didn’t get to test the upper limits of how much I could take that draining effect. Despite the Scarthralls professing that they could handle everything I could throw at them, I wasn’t so sure.

  It didn’t matter. I had enough proof. I’d test the ceiling for real when I hit the battlefield soon.

  Drain was going to be extra effective against more powerful foes. Something I was likely to face in the Nether Vein. Or it could be a dud since they were so much stronger and faster. I’d have to wait and see.

  The other thing I took their help with during the few days I had before the Nether Vein expedition was with Ritual. We were trying to use Liturgize to create a new Ritual that would help for cases especially like the Nether Vein, where I was supposed to face foes who were significantly stronger than I was.

  I remembered well how the Councillor was the only one who had been able to stand toe to toe with that ivory guardian. Faced with something like that, I’d be wiped out in the blink of an eye.

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  The Ritual of Defiance that we were planning probably wouldn’t make up for a vast difference in powers. It would be silly to assume any Ritual could bridge the gap between me and that Paragon bastard. But nevertheless, the buffs added up. A Sacrifice with Essence and Emulation, combined with rune buffs, then multiple Ritual buffs…

  And yeah, I saw myself getting up there, to a point where I could handle most Nether Vein threats. Especially with help.

  “It’s interesting that it’s all up to us to create this Ritual,” Vandre said.

  “Well,” I said. “When faced against me, you’re the ones in need of a Ritual of Defiance.”

  “True, true.”

  The steps of the Ritual were pretty simple. It was all a matter of determination. Of courage to face any odds, no matter how seemingly insurmountable. Of irrepressible will. Channelling those feelings was what let the Ritual come to life.

  “I will not be defeated by you,” Vandre intoned rather formally while maintaining a steely look on his face.

  He had to believe it. For real. It was a key requirement that any ritualistic process needed to be something that was performed with genuine intent.

  Yet another key ingredient was making the Ritual be something divine. Something that had to do with our profession as cultists. As people who had faith in something more than just the mundane. And that wasn’t difficult either. We simply believed in each other, believed in the temple we called home, believed in our growing power and prosperity.

  Maybe I was lucky that we got it to work before it was time for me to set off. It probably helped that I had extended the new Ritual’s practice to all the other members of the cult, asking them to participate in it.

  Not every single one of them was combat-minded like me and the Scarthralls, but still. We all remembered what we had suffered at the hands of the Blight Swarm.

  Something like the Ritual of Defiance would have been tremendously helpful, and a part of me was naturally regretting not having thought of it earlier.

  Early on the day of the actual expedition, I met up with my familiar teammates. Ugnash, Cerea, Khagnio, and I were going in together. But before we did so, we performed our own little preparations of purchasing what we were going to need.

  One of our stops was at Gutran’s smithy. After Cerea was done buying the stuff we’d need, I made sure to bid my farewells from Aurier and Gutran.

  “Ross has discovered yet another new Ritual, master,” Aurier was telling Gutran. “Doesn’t matter what it is exactly, but I was thinking we could also come up with a Ritual that could benefit us here at the smithy.”

  “A Ritual for the smithy?” I asked, intrigued. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure. Something to boost creativity maybe, or something that can enhance the effects we put into our creations. Sort of like a buff for smithing, I guess.”

  Gutran didn’t look convinced. “I appreciate the idea, but I am not about to pray to anyone save Ulk.”

  “No offence, Gutran,” I said. “But didn’t you swear off going to war? What’s the point of praying to a war god, then? To keep the god’s attention away?”

  “Not exactly. The war god and I have a tenuous relationship, but I essentially pray to him because we have a pact. I will create weapons and tools of war, so long as I get to stay away from war.”

  Cerea, who had stuck around at first because she was sticking with me and now because she was clearly interested, had raised her eyebrows. “You make it sound like you’re in contact with the Banished Gods, Blacksmith Gutran.”

  “The conversation may be one-sided, but it’s real to me.”

  Cerea and I then took care of the potions and runes from the Mage Guild. Meanwhile Ugnash and Khagnio had gone around and done their best to get to know our teammates and scout them out a bit. Most of the expeditioners weren’t the old ones who had accompanied Khagnio on his first trip into the Nether Vein after the Blight Swarm one.

  The path to the Nether Vein was lined with more soldiers than city guards, all of whom remained alert. I was more interested in the descent through the centre of what used to be Eversight dungeon. The Councillors had indeed found a way to stop the Netherthreads.

  It was the same kind of material I had seen in my vision. The same bits of magmalike, half-molten stone, patches of which glowed a little too bright like lights at a rave. They lined the entirety of the deep shaft, and were even on the elevator Zairgon had constructed to help hasten the descent to the Nether Vein.

  “So this is Klevacite,” Cerea mused. “It certainly looks magical. Don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before. Although, it’s not the most magical thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Khagnio shook his head as we descended, the lift operated by a Ring One officer. “What’s the most magical material you’ve played with, then?”

  “Shornscale from a decomposing Erdling corpse. The material has a distinct front and back. The front is potentially one of the hardest substances in existence, while the rear is essentially an attachment mechanism that can latch onto anything, both other material and organic matter like skin too. It’s very, very magical.”

  “Sounds like it would fetch a very magical price too,” Khagnio said.

  Cerea rolled her eyes.

  Once we reached the bottom, we entered through the enormous gates of the Nether Vein. The Ring One officer made us stick to a very specific path, which was also lined with the same Klevacite. Because outside the path, Netherthreads frothed and writhed like a monstrous, ravenous flood determined to drag in anyone who stepped one foot outside of safety.

  “Wonder what it is about this Klevacite that the Netherthreads hate so much,” I murmured.

  “They could just be allergic,” Ugnash said.

  “I don’t know. I saw that guy in the Nether Vein interacting with the Netherthreads using Klevacite.”

  Maybe someone like Se-Vigilance would have the answer.

  It took us about a few more hours to get to the main camp we were to set out from. I was surprised at how much deeper into the Nether Vein that was compared to how far I had gone when we had been fighting the Blight Swarm. We made good time, and were even joined by a few other teams who were part of the expedition, coming in from other camps.

  It gave me a strange feeling somewhere between a thrill and a deeper level of satisfaction, the same kind of feeling I got when I worked to advance the cult. There was a certain level of not-quite-excitement at seeing how much progress we were making here.

  “We” was right, because even if I hadn’t taken part in an expedition yet, I was the one who had reopened the Nether Vein and joined the very first foray into it.

  “They seem like a good lot in general,” Ugnash said about the other members of the expedition. “And the variation in membership is rather wild.”

  He was proven quite right when we reached our target camp. It was a small, hasty construction of a few tents and campfires, and I wondered what they were using for fuel.

  Ours wasn’t just any old dungeon party composition. Quite a few dedicated teams were accompanying the standard array of adventurers. There was a cadre of healers, several alchemists, a supposed historian or two from the academy—sadly not Izithy—people specializing in crafting like engineers and builders, and even some artificers—but not Linak.

  Even Revayne was there, accompanied by a small squadron of guards. She seemed busy, though, so she only waved a greeting while still looking at her book and conferring with the Councillor. Hmm. I wondered how that book of hers, powered by her Aspect of Escapism, was coming in handy here.

  I went around and at least tried to greet everybody there. If we were going to work together, it would help to be at least somewhat of a known quantity. Strangely, most of them knew me. Or more accurately, they knew of me.

  “Obviously your reputation precedes you now,” Cerea said when I returned to the teammates I was most familiar with. “You’re better known than any of us here.”

  Khagnio scoffed. “Need to tell the tall Councillor to start calling you Celebrity Moreland.”

  “If only it came with a yacht.”

  “Why would you need a boat?”

  Very interesting that the Weave had translated what I meant correctly enough for them to grasp it, and yet, none of them knew what chickens were.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Looks like we’re one of the last ones to arrive.”

  Thankfully, the alchemist team came in a little later, saving us from ultimate embarrassment. It wasn’t long after their arrival that the expedition’s leader called us forth.

  “Expeditioners,” Se-Vigilance said, her voice echoing over the entire area. “We have gathered here today to forge onwards through the Nether Vein and regain its old purpose. To regain our old foothold that we had surrendered centuries ago. I won’t repeat everything I said before, even though there are new faces here along with the old. Just know that the barrier we faced last time will no longer be an issue. So, prepare yourselves!”

  I joined the others in voicing a rousing cheer at her words. For once, it was nice to feel pumped without someone’s aura being used like a manipulating cudgel.

  It was time to start our Nether Vein expedition.