The mithril mountains looked somewhat different to how I remembered on my first visit, and not just because I was viewing them upside down. My Memory had increased substantially since, so perhaps I'd forgotten a detail or two, but I was reasonably sure that back then none of them had been on fire.

  One of them was on fire now.

  The forest around the village of Greystone was gone, replaced by scoured rock. My eyesight wasn't good enough to pick out the location of the village itself, but I couldn't imagine it was still there. Whatever had done that to the forest would have erased it completely. The only way those villagers were still alive was if they got out beforehand.

  Flashes of light in the area suggested a fight was still ongoing. Given the distance, I couldn't hear a thing, but that just meant that to be visible, every one of those flashes must be a Skill on the level of Leo's [Heroic Impact]. Whatever was going on there, it was a battlefield upon which I wouldn't survive two seconds. Thankfully, it wasn't where the Enshrouded was headed.

  The Enshrouded... While I'd never comment on it to his face—and not only because I was yet to see his face—that name was even worse than the Fatal Breeze. Did everyone over a certain level automatically get granted a stupid nickname by the System, or did these people actually pick them for themselves?

  It seemed no amount of Reasoning would grant someone good taste.

  "The army has taken some sacrifices in order to lure the Unbound away from the ruins. Thankfully, we received a rather unexpected reinforcement, giving us some leeway."

  "A reinforcement?" I repeated. "As in, one single person?"

  "You are also one person, are you not?"

  "Touché."

  "And what language was that from?"

  "... No idea."

  My invisible companion snorted. At least he seemed easily amused, which was a reassuring trait in someone who could sprint across a canton in an hour and utterly ignore such obstacles as walls and the landscape.

  "What do you want me to do, exactly?" I asked as the mountains drew closer.

  "Observe. Translate. Offer whatever insight you can."

  "... You're trusting much to luck here."

  "Perhaps, but sometimes one must take risks to achieve a goal. You should be familiar with that fact."

  "I suppose," I agreed.

  "On a related subject, if you were to meet John right now, what would be your response?"

  "I... uh... surprisingly, not much," I answered, not bothering to ask how he knew about John. These guys had obviously investigated me very thoroughly.

  "Oh? Despite costing you your home, you bear him no animosity?"

  "I dunno. I certainly did at first, but... well... despite only being a few weeks ago, it feels like half a lifetime. He just seems so petty and insignificant now. I'm here, quickly approaching my second growth marker, and I doubt he's even in double-digit levels yet. Besides, even if he hadn't done what he did, I'd likely still have lost my 'home'. If I'm honest, it's been a while since I last remembered he existed."

  "Interesting. I wonder, as you continue to grow, how much more of humanity you will come to view as insignificant. There is more that I wonder, but it will need to wait for a later time. We're here."

  It had taken me days to make that journey, and this guy had just done it in little over an hour, while carrying me slung over his shoulder and keeping up some sort of invisibility Skill. I still had a long way to go if I wanted to compete on the same stage as the kingdom's highest echelons, but as I'd just said, it had only been a few weeks since I fled Cargellen Canton. I'd catch up soon enough.

  "We're here?" I asked, looking around as best I could from my position. There didn't seem to be anything around. Besides, if we were here, why wasn't he putting me down?

  "Yes. You'll want to hold your breath for this next bit."

  "Hold...?" I started, but was rather rudely interrupted by gravity.

  Despite the rock beneath our feet, we fell. I tried to scream, but couldn't. The solid rock covering my nose and mouth made any exhalation impossible. The rock covering my eyes left me blind.

  When we'd run through the wall, we'd been moving quickly enough that I'd not had time to process being inside the wall until we were out the other side. This time, I didn't have that luxury, and the experience was rather horrifying.

  It took a handful of seconds before we fell into a well-lit tunnel, but even a handful of seconds was sufficient to fall quite a long way. We must have travelled a considerable distance beneath the surface. I neither heard nor saw the Enshrouded hit the ground, but he somehow managed to transition me from over-the-shoulder to a princess carry mid fall, gently catching me.

  "... That was mean," I complained as he put me down.

  The only response was another chuckle.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "I assume you can't phase straight through the walls of the ruins?" I asked, looking around. We were in what appeared to be a mineshaft, with wooden supports along the walls and ceiling. The area had been opened out into a small room, with piles of equipment against one wall.

  Another wall was made of metal. [Blacksmithing] drew a blank, having no clue what the silvery-pink material was. There was a door in that wall, propped open with steel girders, a metallic corridor visible beyond it.

  "Alas not. The metals and enchantments used in the construction of dwarven facilities are beyond me. Wear this and do not use any Skills that consume Mana while inside."

  "Wear what?" I asked, before noticing that an amulet had turned up in my hands. "How in the hell..."

  He just chuckled again as I put it on, resulting in an odd sensation that took me a moment to work out. "It cut off my [Mana Sensitivity]," I said. I'd barely even noticed, because it was so homogenous, and hence pointless to pay attention to, but there was a 'background' of mana, and I could no longer feel it.

  "An unfortunate side effect, but not one that I believe will hamper you. Now, let us proceed."

  "Uh... Are you going to turn off that invisibility at any point? You're kinda hard to follow."

  "No, I am not, or every defence in the entire facility will target me. Besides, who said that you would follow me?"

  "Okay, I'll admit no-one said that. I just assumed, on account of, well, having no idea where we're going."

  "And you think I do? Somewhere in there is a device that the late Count Harvent used to overwrite his Status. We need to find it and reverse it. Now, go."

  "... This is an absolutely awful idea," I complained as I took a step forward.

  "And yet you're doing it anyway."

  "It's not as if I..."

  "... Huh? This is a dungeon? No, the message has always explicitly called out that I was entering a dungeon. This time it was just... uh... The seventh boundary?"

  "Oh? You could read that? Interesting."

  "Yes, I could read that, but don't ask me what it means. The boundary to what, exactly?"

  "Perhaps you'll discover that while we are in here."

  I was starting to suspect that defeating the Unbound was not the only reason I was here, and that they were hoping I'd unlock secrets of this place that had eluded the local scholars for however long they'd been researching such facilities. I suppose, in a way, that was reassuring: it implied that King Robeld had the leeway to think about things other than the kingdom's short-term survival.

  Thankfully, no hidden blades swished out of the walls to take my head off. In fact, the corridor was rather boring. It was undecorated, a simple square of metal, with glowing panels set into the ceiling at regular intervals. The walls and floor seemed completely smooth, without any ornamentation or features. The only issue with it was its height. I could walk without stooping, but there wasn't much in it. I could touch the ceiling easily, and I'd needed to duck through the doorway. This place was obviously built for shorter occupants than the average human.

  The corridor didn't last long until we reached a second door, much the same as the first. And beyond it...

  I felt my hands ball up into fists, a frown forcing its way onto my face. This place felt familiar. It was a weird feeling, because I knew full well I'd never been here before, nor seen anything similar, yet there were odd bursts of familiarity, and each one made me feel faintly angry. It was like walking into some stranger's home and finding it decorated with furniture I'd disposed of decades earlier. Some foreign place built with familiar components. But why did that invoke feelings of anger?

  There was obviously some relation to my previous life, but I had no idea what it was.

  "Is something wrong?" asked my watcher.

  "I... don't know. This place looks familiar, and I have no idea why."

  "Promising. Can you tell us where to go?"

  I looked around, but even before I did, I knew the answer was no. Even if it was built from familiar components, the place itself wasn't ringing any bells. I could say with some confidence that I'd never been here before, in either life. "No."

  "We'll just need to explore, then. Walk in whatever direction feels correct."

  The room was a simple cube of metal, with a door in each of the four walls. All four were wedged open with steel girders, just like the entrance. Aside from that, there were only lighting panels on the ceiling, and a couple of similar panels on the walls, except that they weren't lit up.

  No... That was wrong. I knew the ones on the walls weren't for lighting. They were... Darn it... How many stat points did I have left?

  Not enough. Somehow, I was sure they were important. Did I just... touch one? I took a step forward, and the Enshrouded remained silent, which I took to mean that he wasn't aware of them being fatally trapped. Or perhaps he'd run away, watching from a safer distance?

  I gingerly tapped one of the glassy panels.

  Nothing happened.

  I put my whole palm against it, but nothing continued to happen. I was certain it could be activated in some way, but I didn't know how. Worse, maybe I was doing it right, and the thing was simply broken. Trying the same thing with the other panel achieved nothing, either. Knocking on it didn't help.

  "Turn on, dammit," I yelled, to no effect.

  "If it helps, in previous ruins, dismantling the facilities has revealed that those panels are connected to a series of intricately enchanted crystals," said the Enshrouded. "Every facility has something similar. Left door, then third on the right, but do not enter the room."

  I followed his directions, walking down the featureless corridor, and counting to the third door. It didn't escape my notice that he was able to give me directions—he'd already been in here.

  The door was, as with the others, propped open. Unlike the others, two small skeletons lay just inside, fallen face first, bones charred and black. The anger ignited again, this time for purely local reasons.

  I refrained from stepping in myself. I would have known not to even without the advice of the Enshrouded. The dead kids were both smaller than me, so the room obviously had some trap that responded to more than size or Mana. Just how paranoid were the people who built this place?

  Pulling my eyes away from the dead children, I looked up into the room. There was indeed an array of crystals built into some sort of structure. Some of them were glowing. One of them was even glowing black, which was a level of physics defilement that I would previously have attributed only to dungeons. Cables linked them together, more lights flickering along them.

  I found my eyes inexplicably drawn to one crystal in particular. It wasn't the biggest, nor was it the brightest, glowing a simple, pale yellow. It didn't have pride of place, or anything obviously special about it, bar one thing.

  It was mine.

  I didn't know how I knew, but I knew. It wasn't something I'd discarded, or that these builders had reproduced. It was stolen. It had been taken from me.

  "Thieves," I forced out between gritted teeth. "Thieves and traitors! I will see you burn!"

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