The picnic was over. The Shadowgroves had left their cursed offer in the dirt, and we had eaten our fill of thunder and caramel.

  "Teleportation in one minute!" Malachia announced, her flickering form flickering between a princess and a pixelated mess. "Please ensure all limbs are inside the ride at all times."

  "Where to next?" Brandan asked, wiping sauce from his beard. The Kyn-Sang had worn off, and the Bear was returning, though tempered with a new, quiet resolve.

  "To the Cartographer's Sanctum," Malachia grinned. "You need to see the board before you play the next move."

  The blue light took us. But we didn't land in an arena. We landed on... nothing. We stood on a floor of invisible glass, suspended in a void filled with stars that weren't stars, but distant, glowing bioluminescence. Below us miles below us lay the World.

  It wasn't a globe. It was a massive, flat expanse, contained within infinite walls of concrete, illuminated by the artificial suns of the Anunnaki ceiling.

  "By the Ancestors," Gutrum whispered, looking down. "Is that... everything?"

  "Welcome to the World-Map," I said, my voice hushed with wonder. "The playground of the Gods."

  I walked across the invisible floor. As I moved, the map below zoomed in, magical labels floating in the air like golden smoke.

  [ THE CHOIRLANDS ] Our home. The land of the Angels. A glowing pentagon of gothic spires and divine light in the center.

  But beyond the borders of the Choirlands... the world got strange.

  To the North, I saw vast, hanging structures covered in purple and green fuzz. [ THE HANGING GARDENS OF ROT ] Home of the Myconids.

  "The mushroom people," I said. "No individual souls. Just a hive mind of compost and peace."

  "Not just peace," Brandan pointed to the flashes of steel amidst the spores. "Look at the forges."

  [ THE IRON-PAWS ] "The Ursine and Bovine," Brandan grunted respectfully. "Bear-smiths and Bull-warriors. They reject magic. They trust only muscle and steel. Good lads. Though they’d sell their own mothers for the right price."

  I looked to the West. A massive chasm split the earth The Great Divide. Beyond it lay a land of smoke, grinding gears, and brown smog. [ THE AUREAN REPUBLIC ] The Land of Clay. No Magic. Only Iron.

  "They hate us," Baldur noted dryly. "The Republic. They have no Spirit Power, so they turned to physics and hate. They call us 'The Winged Tyrants'."

  "They have good coffee, though," I muttered. "And siege-engines. No explosions, just massive torsion-bows that fire bolts of Cold Iron."

  "Iron that cuts through magic," Gerald warned quietly. "And Alchemist’s Fire. Sticky green liquid that burns feathers and doesn't stop until it hits bone."

  Just south of the Republic, in the jagged ruins of the Old World, fires burned uncontrollably. [ THE PACK-LANDS ]

  "Anarchy," Gerald observed, watching the chaotic movement of armies. "Wolves wanting an empire. Cats wanting coin. And the Foxes caught in the middle. Fenris’s people." "A guerilla war that never ends," I nodded. "A land of warlords and fleas."

  I looked Up. Not at the map below, but at the massive pillars holding the sky. Tiny cities clung to the sides of the concrete columns like barnacles. [ THE PILLAR-CITIES ] Home of the Chiropterans.

  "Bat-people," Astrid whispered, craning her neck. "They live upside down." "They sell secrets," I said. "If you ever lose a diary, a bat-man probably has it."

  "Look higher," Malachia pointed. "To the rafters." High above the bats, right against the scorching heat of the concrete ceiling, lay sprawling nests of gold and bone. [ THE HIGH-ROOST ]

  "The Avians," I sneered. "Bird-men. Too heavy to fly properly, so they climb to the roof and pretend they are gods. Arrogant bastards. Watch out for falling debris they treat the rest of the world as their trash can."

  I looked to the South. The water there wasn't blue. It was orange. Oily. Thick. [ THE RUST-OCEAN ] Home of the Ferrum.

  "Tragic," Melina said sadly, clutching her dress. "They are made of iron, but they live on water. They spend their whole lives polishing themselves so they don't rust to death."

  "Poetic," Bastian sighed. "To love the thing that kills you. Very romantic."

  And to the East... the desert. But not sand. It glittered. It blinded the eye. [ THE SILICATE WASTES ] Home of the Vitreous.

  "Glass people," I explained. "Beautiful. Arrogant. If you scratch them, they shatter. They don't wear armor because they think it's ugly."

  "Like Bastian," Brandan snorted. "I resent that,"

  Bastian huffed. "I wear velvet. It's tactical."

  Between the lands, there were patches where reality seemed... thin. Grey mists that drifted without wind. [ THE SILENT EXPANSE ]

  "The Echoes," I shivered. "Spirits with no bodies. They buy corpses from the grave-keepers just to feel physical for an hour. Don't go there. You’ll come back missing your skin."

  Finally, I looked at the dark spots. The places where the ceiling lights had burned out. [ THE HOLLOWS ] Home of the Lumins.

  "Light-Eaters," I whispered. "They have lanterns on their heads. If I went there in this armor..." I tapped my glowing Black Pyre Cuirass. "...they'd worship me as a sun god. Or eat me."

  The map was breathtaking. It was terrifying. It was a prison the size of a continent, filled with races that had evolved in the dark, twisted by the concrete sky.

  "The world is huge," Mary whispered. "And we are just fighting for one city."

  "We start with the city," I said, looking at the glowing speck of Kynoboros. "Then... maybe we fix the rest."

  Suddenly, the map rippled. A message appeared in the sky, written in fire.

  "The Lithos," Gutrum grunted. "The Stone-Dwarves. The Hollow Kingdom." "They hate flesh," I recalled. "They think we're rotting meatbags." "Great," Brandan cracked his knuckles. "I always wanted to punch a rock."

  The invisible floor dissolved. We fell. Not into darkness, but into a city made of bone and marble, where the dead didn't sleep they became the walls.

  "Hold on to your souls, lads!" I shouted, the wind tearing at my coat. "We're going to the graveyard!"

  We plummeted toward the next nightmare, united by soup, secrets, and the map of a broken world.

  We fell through the map and landed with a bone-jarring impact.

  We stood in a valley made not of dirt, but of white marble. The "trees" were obelisks. The "ground" was a carpet of crushed bone. Above us, the concrete sky was close, painted with frescoes of sleeping stone giants.

  "Cheery," I muttered, standing up and dusting bone-dust off my Black Pyre Cuirass. "I feel like I just dropped into a mausoleum."

  "You did," Malachia chirped, flickering on top of a tombstone. "The Lithos don't bury their dead. They build with them."

  Suddenly, the mountain of skulls to our right shifted.

  It didn't slide. It stood up.

  A creature rose. It was forty feet tall, composed of fused gravestones, ribcages of ancient beasts, and binding mortar made of cursed soul-mud.

  The Goliath roared a sound like grinding tectonic plates. It raised a fist made of a thousand femurs.

  "Big target," Brandan said, his voice flat from the Kyn-Sang. "I will engage frontally."

  "No!" I shouted, stepping forward. "Save your durability, King. This one is mine. I need to test the plumbing."

  I tapped the [Blood-Leech Vial] around my neck. It pulsed red, currently full at 1,000 / 1,000 ml.

  "Let's dance, rocky!"

  I drew the Aurean Glassbow.

  The Goliath swung its fist. A massive, slow, devastating arc.

  I pulled the string.

  My new helmet insert [Eye of the Shedding Serpent] flared. The world turned grey, but a bright red glowing spot appeared on the Goliath's shoulder joint. A structural weak point in the stone.

  "Found you," I whispered.

  THWIP.

  The glass spear screamed through the air.

  CRACK.

  It hit the red spot. The impact was massive. Stone shattered. Black, oily "blood" (soul-mud) sprayed from the wound.

  The Goliath stumbled, but it didn't stop. It twisted its torso and backhanded me.

  I couldn't dodge. It was too wide. I raised Cinderbrand to block.

  BOOM.

  I flew backward, smashing through three marble pillars. I hit a wall of skulls and slid down.

  My health bar plummeted.

  "Ouch," I groaned, spitting red. "He hits harder than he looks."

  But then, the magic happened.

  The black soul-mud leaking from the Goliath's shoulder was vaporizing into red mist.

  The red mist flew across the battlefield and slammed into my chest.

  WHOOSH.

  My Vial, which I had just used, instantly refilled.

  And because the Vial was full, the excess overflowed into me.

  "Hah!" I laughed, standing up amidst the rubble. "I'm a vampire, mate! You bleed, I feed!"

  I charged.

  The Goliath tried to stomp me.

  "Spider Web!"

  My [Web-Anchor Talon] ring glowed. The web didn't just stick; it drilled into the stone leg of the monster.

  I yanked myself upward, flying toward its face.

  "Smile for the camera!"

  I hovered in the air, face-to-face with the giant skull.

  "FUS RO DAH!"

  The Shout hit point-blank. The acoustic pressure cracked the Goliath's face. It reeled back, stunned, teetering on its heels.

  I landed on its chest.

  I gripped Cinderbrand with both hands. The blade was screaming with heat.

  "Thermal Shock!"

  I drove the blade into the cracks made by the Shout.

  The blade sank deep into the core.

  The heat expanded inside the cold stone.

  Physics took over. Rapid thermal expansion in a rigid structure.

  CRACK-BOOM.

  The Goliath didn't just die. It exploded.

  Massive chunks of marble and bone flew outward.

  I rode a piece of its ribcage down to the ground, landing in a superhero pose as the monster crumbled into a pile of dust behind me.

  A pillar of golden light erupted around me.

  I stood up, dusting off my coat. My Vial was already sucking up the residual magic from the corpse, refilling itself to full.

  "Efficient," I grinned. "Messy, but efficient."

  I opened my menu. One point.

  I looked at my stats. My agility was high thanks to gear, but my base was lagging.

  Then, a heavy stone chest materialized from the dust of the Goliath.

  I opened it. A glowing rune floated out.

  Effect: Permanently upgrade one piece of armor by +5 Stat.

  "Oh, yes," I whispered. "Come to papa."

  I looked at my gear. The Black Pyre Cuirass was keeping me alive, but I needed to be tougher. I needed to be unkillable.

  I slammed the rune into my chest plate.

  The magma veins in the armor flared from red to blinding white. The metal groaned and thickened.

  "Endurance 39," I breathed. "I could headbutt a castle."

  Brandan walked over, looking at the pile of rubble.

  "You are scary when you glow red, brother," Brandan noted.

  "I'm not scary, Brandan," I said, patting my overflowing blood vial. "I'm just... sustainable."

  "Let's move," I commanded, pointing Cinderbrand forward. "The Round isn't over yet."