He aimed the Shard at the approaching tank, choosing the least damaging option he had time for. “[Spirit Blast].”

  The spell slammed into the outer layers of the man’s aura, crushing his intent and motor control and bypassing the defensive skill he’d coated himself with.

  The frontliner’s eyes rolled back as his muscles misfired, and his charge turned into a drunken lurch. The axe still came down, but space warped around it, and it cratered the ground several feet to Nick’s left, where a beastman had just arrived.

  “Thanks!” He shouted, getting a thumbs-up from Raphael, who was already focusing on the latest enemy to approach.

  Nick took a moment to get his bearings. The camp was in chaos, with all three groups fighting each other at the same time, yet there was a rhythm to the battle that told him they were doing better than the others. If he could maintain that pace a little longer, the momentum would become unstoppable, and they would overrun the rest.

  Still, that didn’t mean there was nothing else he could do. “Focus on the chains around their neck! If you take those off, they’ll stop attacking!” he warned through a whisper of wind.

  They weren’t exactly in a position to handle the beastman with gloves on, but it would be better if they could limit the deaths. The enemy wasn’t attacking on its own volition, after all.

  “Try saying that to the one trying to take my head off!” Monte grunted, ducking under a swipe that tore a lock of his hair, then responding with a hard blow to the beastman’s chin, before kicking his chest and slashing with his sword.

  It skittered off the Shadow Ore’s surface, but the interference was enough to scramble the beastman’s mind, allowing Monte to slip his blade beneath the chain and release another skill, ripping it off.

  “Working on it!” Joran yelled back, flinging more beads and eating away at the chains with malicious glee. His approach was the most successful, though he had to keep his back protected at all times, as the beastmen seemed to have noticed his progress and were converging on him, forcing Terence and Yvonne to guard him.

  The battle lasted for an endless hour filled with noise, blood, and flashing magic.

  Nick burned through more mana than he planned, but the Shard absorbed the dungeon’s ambient energy and the many emotions that filled the ether eagerly, easing some of the strain on his channels.

  Every time he thought they were making progress, another wave of beastmen would crash in, or one of Calder’s loyalists would take a cheap shot at an apprentice’s back, forcing them to slow down lest they get overstretched.

  Twice more, Tholm’s armbands triggered, and roots erupted from the ground, strangling beastmen and adventurers alike. Without them, Nick couldn’t guess how the battle would have gone, but he was sure it would have been much, much bloodier.

  The old man might be annoying, but his foresight shouldn't be dismissed. These things only activate when there's a risk of death, so they don’t steal exp.

  At some point, the scout who had tried to knife Nick got up and tried to make another run at him, but he swatted the man away contemptuously, crushing his legs in the process. The mage he had flung into the rock crawled behind a mound and stayed there, clutching his ribs and wheezing, wisely choosing to avoid another challenge.

  Beastmen without collars fought with dazed confusion once freed, turning on everyone around them or just fleeing to the outskirts and crouching, clutching their heads.

  The dwarven artifacts’ effects would linger in their minds for a while, but at the very least, they weren’t taken by murderous rage any longer, which was better than nothing.

  At last, the tide broke.

  One more coordinated push from Raphael, bending space to funnel a group of the remaining attackers into a kill zone, saw Willow slamming a dome over them, allowing Nick to fill it with suffocating pressure, weakening the beastmen enough for the others to rip the chains off them, thus leaving half a dozen of them unconscious in a heap.

  Only when the howling faded into low groans and whimpers, and the last of Calder’s men was subdued, bound in enough clay to prevent the slightest movement, did Nick allow himself to sag in relief.

  Sweat coated his back, and blood spotted his sleeves. The ritual still pulsed faintly at the edge of his consciousness, like a toothache, but now that he didn’t need to sustain a dozen spells across the battlefield, it was a tolerable pressure.

  The System chimed in soon after.

  Warmth flowed through his veins, and the familiar, addictive sensation of his body and spirit gently stretching and expanding brought him a sigh of relief. His muscles ached slightly less suddenly, and the ether felt somewhat less chaotic as his control over it increased.

  Notably, reaching level seventy-one marked a milestone in his physical stats.

  A hundred points of CON was nothing to scoff at, and he could feel the change in the way his chest suddenly heaved less and his lungs filled with more air, with each breath replenishing his energy a little more than before.

  It was a small benefit in the grand scheme of things, but it reminded him that his mother’s family legacy skill, the [Stalking Gait], had its own hidden depths and would serve him well to continue practicing it, even as he explored the higher mysteries.

  Once the excitement of leveling up faded, he shifted his focus outward.

  The camp was a mess.

  Half the stone mounds were cracked or toppled. The firepit had been extinguished, leaving only scattered embers that guttered out as pools of various liquids, including blood, spread. Beastmen lay bound in clay, roots, and makeshift ropes, some groaning, others ominously still.

  Calder’s adventurers were in similar trouble; three dead as far as he could tell, with two more unconscious, and the rest were disarmed and being watched cautiously by Malik, Yvonne, and Monte.

  A few even seemed offended to have been captured, clearly believing themselves innocent of anything that had occurred. Terence’s noble acquaintance was among those, and Nick already had a headache just thinking about having to explain the background of everything that had just happened.

  It’s a good thing I’m not the expedition leader. Raphael can manage that on his own. I have more urgent matters to attend to.

  On their side, everyone was still breathing, though several people had clearly not gone through the battle unscathed.

  Willow sat with her back against a rock, her fingers trembling as she tried to deal with a deep gash on her thigh, and her jaw clenched so tightly it looked painful as she poured a potion over it.

  Lina’s cheek was swollen and bruised purple from where someone had hit her.

  Mikel’s nose was broken and bent at a strange angle beneath a crusted smear of blood, but he still wove stabilizing spells over a fallen beastman, ignoring his own condition.

  Terence’s shield arm hung limp, but Monte had already bound it in a makeshift sling while they argued loudly with one of Calder’s less-battered men, who demanded to know why they were being treated as traitors when, to them, it was Nick who had started it all.

  And in the middle of it all, Calder Venn lay still, breathing shallowly.

  He lay on his back beside the central tent, his eyes rolled back and twitching, while his teeth were bared as dark veins pulsed angrily beneath his skin. Mana leaked from his torn channels like steam from cracked pipes, spilling into the air in a trickle now that he had exhausted all his efforts fighting the ritual, not realizing that he was only making things worse for himself.

  Nick swallowed, considering what to do with him.

  Letting the ritual completely consume Calder wasn't in the cards, no matter how satisfying it might have seemed. Not because of the gruesome death it would cause, since Nick wasn’t feeling particularly merciful, especially considering the man had been willing to let them be torn apart by coerced beastmen, but because he had much he needed to learn. Based on their reactions, Calder’s men would only know a part of the truth.

  He moved forward, ready to delve into the man’s battered soul to extract what he could.

  Raphael stopped him halfway, briefly grabbing his shoulder. The older apprentice’s clothes were soaked in blood, and his face looked exhausted, but his eyes stayed clear.

  “We’ll handle the wounded and the cleanup,” Raphael said, his voice hoarse but firm. “The prisoners will need careful handling, but I’m inclined toward restoring the camp rather than leaving. The noise may have attracted monsters, but we’re not in a position to run far enough for it to matter.”

  Nick nodded. It wasn’t an ideal situation, especially since the feeling in the air was still strangely expectant, but he couldn’t come up with a better plan.

  Raphael grunted at his assent and jerked his head toward Calder. “You are the only one here who can make sense of what that bastard did and why. Don’t let him die before you get everything out of him.”

  Part of Nick argued that he could do more good by helping with triage and healing. He could feel a few beastmen whose lives were about to fade, and he knew he could save them. But in a situation like this, time was of the essence. The sooner they knew what to expect, the better.

  “Alright,” he said softly. “But come get me if the situation looks bad.”

  “I will,” Raphael nodded, then walked away, shouting orders at Malik and Monte to start pulling rocks around the camp.

  Nick paused for a moment longer before kneeling beside Calder.

  The old adventurer was in a terrible state. If Nick had wanted to save his life, he was pretty sure he would have needed to perform a mighty ritual or use up every elixir Ogden had given him when he left Floria. Luckily, he had no such plans, because those potions were outrageously expensive.

  “In your next life,” Nick said softly, more to himself than to Calder, “don’t extend protection to someone you plan to sell out. That never ends well, no matter what world you find yourself in.”

  He chuckled to himself, amused that he was being sentimental at a time like this. “Let’s get this over with, then.”

  The judgment of broken hospitality had already done the hard work, opening the older mage’s soul, so all he needed to do now was slip through the gaps.

  [Empyrean Intuition] unfolded, sinking beyond flesh and bone, through screaming channels, into the core where only the true self existed, and nothing could be hidden.

  The world around him dimmed. The canyon, the groans, the smell of blood, all faded away, and he found himself in a surprisingly neat space, considering the chaos that had ravaged the physical body that hosted it.

  “So you would plunder even my soul. Is there no end to your wickedness?”

  Nick would admit that if he had been in his own body, he would have flinched, since he hadn't expected to hear much of anything from Calder beyond what disjointed memories he could pull out.

  Fortunately, he was spared that humiliation because in the soul space, such physical responses were unnecessary.

  He focused on the source of the voice and saw that part of the soul was starting to solidify, and from there, what was left of Calder’s mind spoke to him, little more than a ghost in his own home.

  45+ chapters: