Sitting with his eyes closed, Kaius frowned as he did his best to shove all distractions from his mind.

  He’d left breakfast a little earlier than the rest, heading back to their rooms to make an attempt at cycling. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it since exiting the crucible — not by a long shot — but it was the first since his fight with Old Yon and his men; since he’d learned more about his father’s killer.

  While he hadn’t felt much of the deep resonance that Xenanra had said would precede valuable opportunities to cycle, it felt important. The kind of thing impactful enough that it should have made some difference.

  The soft crackle of the fire and the gentle, muffled hubbub of the common room below faded from his awareness as he focused fully on his soul space. Leveraging the grasp that authority had given him over his aura and his internal world, Kaius willed the trio of fires of his aspects to flare. They brightened quickly, merging into a singular pyre that stretched between them. Essence moved to his command, cycling through each of his pillars before drifting down to merge with his body and soul.

  Yet, just like every other time, the difference was minuscule. Oh, he could feel it — the way his essence suffused him, his Animus, Mentis, and Corporus moulding them from the inside out. His aspects drank at his essence hungrily, parched as they were. Yet his generation was still low.

  According to the system, his refinement was still of a wooden grade, and the progress he had made in the weeks since leaving the crucible made him feel like it might take years to reach the end of refinement. Hells, he had yet to even hit any of the bottlenecks that would come as his refinement moved through each stage.

  At the very least, each aspect seemed to progress in lockstep. No longer did they act like individuals, but as a unified whole — a triad representation of his deepest self. Through his focus, he heard the deep, bassy sounds of heavyset footsteps approaching — Porkchop ascending the stairs. With his bulk, even the mild sound-dampening inscriptions in Hensch’s rooms weren’t enough to fully block it out. Sighing, Kaius relaxed his authority, allowing the fires of his aspects to simmer down to comparative embers. He turned as the rest of his team opened the door to their private common room, still laughing over a shared joke.

  “Gods, did you see that fox? I swear it thought you were going to eat it,” Kenva said, smiling as she shook her head.

  Porkchop only snorted. “It is understandable. It’s a Deep Oak Fox. They’re native to the Sea. No doubt it has many an instinct telling it to steer clear of my kind.”

  Kaius cocked an eyebrow. He hoped Porkchop hadn’t been terrorising any poor sod’s bonded beast. “And what trouble have you gotten up to in the short half-hour I’ve left the three of you alone?”

  “I didn’t do anything, I promise,” Porkchop said, crossing the room to settle down next to the flames.

  “He actually didn’t, this time,” Ianmus said, when Kaius gave his brother a disbelieving look. “We were just finishing our breakfast when some delvers new to the city wandered in — Mystral, judging from the accent I heard. One of them was some sort of ranger or survivalist with a bonded companion, a Deep Oak Fox, as Porkchop said. It was happy as could be. Ran in like it damn near owned the place. Started trying to tug at Yan’s tail and everything.”

  That didn’t surprise him. While he wasn’t familiar with that particular type of fox-beast, he knew the mundane type well, and they were tricksters at the best of times. “What happened then?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Kenva said. “The damn thing just looked over and saw Porkchop, yelped like it’d seen the spectre of death itself, and then spent the rest of its time hidden inside its master’s cloak.”

  “I hope the ranger didn’t mind,” Kaius replied. It would have been unfortunate to make a bad impression on fellow delvers they’d be sharing the Dusty Stables with, even if only in the short term.

  “Oh, he was fine,” Porkchop said, sly mirth sliding across their bond.

  Kaius groaned. There was no way that little encounter had been as simple as a fox getting a fright. “What happened?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Porkchop replied. “It’s not my fault the man recognised what I was.”

  Ianmus nodded. “Honestly, it’s a miracle you slipped under the radar as long as you did. Anyone familiar enough with the Arboreal Sea to bond with a Deep Oak Fox would recognise a Meles.”

  Kaius frowned. While it was true that it was mostly dumb luck that let them slip under the radar, those who braved the depths of his childhood home were few and far between, and those familiar enough with the Greater Meles to recognise one on sight were rarer still. “There was no trouble, I hope?” Kaius asked.

  “None at all,” Porkchop replied. “He was a little deferential, but I told him it wasn’t quite public knowledge yet — though if he was sticking around, there’d be a Guild announcement soon enough.”

  “How did your attempt at cycling go?” Kenva asked. Lounging in one of the overstuffed chairs, she kicked her legs up over the armrest and gave him an inquisitive look.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  As much as he would have loved to tell them it was impactful, it would have been a lie. “About as well as most of our other attempts,” he said. “A little bit of progress, but nothing major.”

  Down in the Depths, where they’d pushed themselves hard against increasingly difficult enemies, they had managed to make some notable progress as each of them felt flares of resonance. Aside from that, progress was steady but slow.

  “Nothing for it, I suppose,” Ianmus said. “We all know it’s supposed to be a gradual thing with spurts of progress every now and then. We just have to keep at it.”

  “More importantly, what do we do about our loot?” Kenva asked. “Most of it’s going to be bloody hard to sell in a city like this.”

  Kenva was right. Deadacre was a city, but a remote and small one. Even at the best of times, the market for second-tier artifacts was slim. There weren’t that many Silvers and Golds, and due to their power and rarity they were expensive things. In a bigger city, with enough wealthy individuals, there would be some that could be sold off.

  It didn’t help that they had such a large and varied amount of them. While each of their guardian rewards was tailored to them and something they could use, the artifacts they’d received from defeating champions were much more randomised. They’d killed what had to be over twenty of the damn things, and with each one giving them at least one artifact — and sometimes two or three — their coffers were practically overflowing with an odd assortment of wargear that didn’t suit any of them, and other, stranger utility artifacts.

  “Some, I think, we could potentially offload to the Guild or the city’s coffers — weapons and armour and the like,” Ianmus replied. “While we would likely get a bad price, but as far as second-tier artifacts go, none of them are particularly special. A couple of others will have outsized value, though. Anything of that grade useful outside of combat will spur a great deal of interest from rich merchants and nobles.”

  “You mean that stealth emblem?” Porkchop asked.

  “That, and the detection ward,” Ianmus replied.

  Kaius understood how those two would be particularly valuable, even to those who weren’t high-tiered delvers or the rich seeking to bolster their personal armouries. The first was a disc that, when activated, would empower somebody with a comprehensive and durable stealth effect that made them uninteresting, silent, unscented, and blended into shadows. As a tier-two artifact, the effect was potent; it would take much to disrupt, and it lasted a full twelve hours. While it was something Kenva could potentially use, she had her own stealth skill: it was both considerably less potent if longer lasting that her own, and using it would reduce her ability to work on her own powers.

  The emblem could project a field up to a league across and would warn its user of any unauthorised people crossing its barrier. From the description of the artifact, the detection net it put out wasn’t insurmountable, but its true value came from the simple size and the number of people the ward could be keyed to. A valuable thing for any dynasty seeking to layer another defence over their grounds.

  Still, Kaius had very little idea how they would even go about selling the damn things. Even the slightly more common armaments would be a challenge. “Where would we even sell them, anyway?” he asked. “I doubt tier-two artefacts are the sort of thing you can just walk into any old merchant’s and see if they want to buy.”

  Across from him, Kenva laughed. “Gods, you make me look positively cosmopolitan. There are auction houses for this sort of thing. You wouldn’t find them in a place like this, but Baanswell, or, if not there, some of the even bigger cities in the Dukedoms, will have places where people can submit their goods for evaluation and sale. I believe they usually hold them monthly, if not every couple.”

  Ianmus nodded. “There are usually a few brackets. The houses in Mystral will often have weekly auctions as well as monthly and quarterly ones, with the less frequent having rarer and more expensive goods. I’d expect a monthly one would be where our assortment would end up.”

  Kaius blinked. It was odd to think — an auction house? He knew of them, of course, but it still felt foreign that they would ever sell anything at one. The very word drew to mind vaulted halls embossed with gold, dripping with crystalline ward lights and glittering chandeliers. He’d always seen them as the purview of the connected and powerful — though he supposed they were quickly falling under that descriptor.

  “I think being Silver is going to take a little bit of getting used to,” Kaius muttered.

  “You can say that again,” Kenva replied. “Especially with how much we’re going to stand out.”

  “What, you think people are going to notice that we’re a quarter their age and I’m a Greater Beast?” Porkchop joked.

  Kaius could only groan. He’d meant the additional complexity that would come with being powerful—both politically and in simple things like selling some excess gear. He hadn’t even thought about the fact they would no doubt become a topic of discussion no matter where they went.

  “At the very least we’ll have plenty of time to get used to it,” Ianmus replied. “Unless we go on an expedition to the Deep Wilds or another delve, I think opportunities that will grant us the volume of experience we need to keep growing will be few and far between.”

  They all nodded. It had become quite clear to them as they crossed the plains. Even with the prospect of exploring Empire Ruins, they were unlikely to find monsters down there — let alone ones high enough level to truly test them. Even the beasts that had continued to grow with the integration hadn’t matched their pace, and for all the wilds were deadly to the average person, they were anything but average.

  They were staring down a period of consolidation. Not that he found that particularly troublesome. They had more than enough to work on for the time being without worrying about the frantic pace of levelling they had pursued for so long. Cycling and refinement would take work, as would breaking through his remaining general skills to the second tier. Even beyond those basics, Kaius had plenty he wanted to explore — the mysteries of Vos, the development of his class skills. The most important was simple and applied to all of them: they barely understood their current limits.

  Each of them had grown so strong, so quickly, that they had only the barest gauge of how vast their capabilities were.

  Still, that was for the future — the coming weeks and months where they would have downtime to train, and an ancient ruin to explore. For now, the main thing on Kaius’s mind was exploring the city and showing Kenva around.

  He pushed himself to his feet. “Well then, if we’ve all eaten, and we’re on the same page regarding what to do with our haul, why don’t we go for a walk and see what’s changed around town?”

  quite so long, but i've def grown fond of it. This book should be a worthy send off before we move on to bigger things.

  by my rough calculations, Patreon is already halfway through b4 if you want to read ahead!

  https://discord.gg/NjsqGKHHaY