Despite suddenly finding himself alone, Leo didn’t move so much as a muscle as he stayed atop his perch, staring at the subtle crack in reality he’d originally come through. Unlike himself, those three agents of the Planar Lords were more than capable of slipping right back through the rift again at any moment. Dampening one’s soul and entering a weaker plane allowed them to get around the one hour time restriction that other gem holders were stuck dealing with, as the plane itself seemed almost eager to spit the too-large souls right back out. The last thing he wanted was to scamper down the tree, only for one of them to double back just to be sure they hadn’t missed anything.

  As he hugged the tree and tried to wait as long as his shaking limbs would let him, Leo replayed the conversation he’d overheard in his mind, focusing on the new information he’d learned. Most importantly, it sounded as if the Planar Lords’ agents had failed to either kill or subdue his mother, which was fantastic news. Not only because he wanted his mother to be okay, of course, but because that meant most of the Planar Lords’ resources would no doubt be tied up in trying to take her down, giving himself a better chance of survival.

  Fire Maw and the Frozen Killer… Leo had never heard those nicknames before, but he supposed that made sense. Only people who managed to get their souls all the way up to rank 40 tended to earn nicknames like that, and his parents had led him to believe that they were nowhere near that powerful.

  On top of the news of his mother being okay, for the first time since picking it up, he had an actual hint as to what the box his father had given him held within. He’d already suspected it was a magical beast gem, because he couldn’t think of any other reason why his father would instruct him to wait until a certain soul rank to open it, but to hear it was supposedly a unique gem?

  As far as he knew, the only unique gems in the entire planarverse were held by the Planar Lords themselves.

  And speaking of the Lords… Leo had never heard any mention of a ‘Raider Lord’ before, but the Planar Lords’ agents sure sounded wary of him. They’d acted like his mother taking down one of the Raider Lord’s Chosen was a big deal, which meant the Raider Lord himself had to be incredibly powerful.

  All in all, Leo had not only managed to escape his pursuers, but learned quite a lot of important information at the same time.

  Now he just needed to escape this poisonous wasteland with his life.

  Finally, after waiting a good ten or fifteen minutes, Leo allowed himself to climb down from the tree. Now that his body wasn’t filled with adrenaline any longer, every single move he made sent daggers straight into his left side, and his eyes watered as he did his best to ignore the pain. If it were just his ribs he was dealing with, he probably would have been fine. But the poisonous fog was gradually beginning to take a toll on him as well.

  His head was pounding something fierce, and his lungs themselves were beginning to tingle, which definitely wasn’t a good sign. Leo had no idea what the poison fog in the plane did, but he had a feeling his rank 6 body wasn’t going to last too long if he didn’t find another way out of here.

  Climbing down as low as he dared, Leo picked one of the thicker branches and crawled out as far as he could over the bubbling liquid. Once he heard the branch begin to creak, he wobbled as he got to his feet, steeled himself, and leapt the rest of the way to solid ground. The back of his foot splashed against the surface of the liquid as he narrowly cleared the gap, and he hissed as he felt the liquid begin eating away at his shoe.

  Wiping off the liquid as best he could, he trudged over to his sword, thankful at the very least that the Planar Lords’ agents hadn’t seen any reason to take it with them. After confirming it was free of poison, Leo bent down to pick it up, when he paused.

  Lying directly beside the sword, almost blending in with the dead ground itself, was a tiny black box.

  Leo stared at the box, blinking as he wondered if the poison was causing him to hallucinate. He certainly hadn’t seen any of the agents chasing him leave the box behind, which meant it had either already been here and all three of them had completely missed it, or one of them put it here without him noticing.

  The maul-wielder… he crouched down to look at the sword before he left. It has to be him.

  Now, Leo had a predicament. On the one hand, this could very well be some sort of trap. Perhaps the box was rigged to explode, or to somehow send a message back to the agents in the event that it was opened. It seemed like overkill in his opinion, but the Planar Lords had all the resources in the planarverse, so it wasn’t that far fetched.

  On the other hand, the box could have been placed here to help him. He had no idea why any of the Planar Lords’ agents would decide to do something like that when it went directly against the orders they’d been given, but the box was definitely real. That meant if it wasn’t a trap, there really wasn’t anything else it could be.

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  He supposed it was technically possible that one of them had dropped it entirely by accident, but it didn’t seem likely. The box was simple but well-made, crafted from a jet-black wood with dark, metallic hinges screwed on. It looked valuable enough that its owner wouldn’t risk losing it so easily. In fact, it reminded him of the very box he’d been given by his father, which he hoped could only mean one thing.

  If this wasn’t a trap, someone might have just given him a magical beast gem.

  Leo simply stared at the lone box for a minute, trying to decide if it was worth the risk of picking it up. Before he could waste too much time, however, his lungs spasmed and he was racked with a coughing fit unlike anything he’d ever experienced. That strange, tingling sensation in his chest was rapidly shifting into one of burning, and he tried not to breathe as he could feel the poison beginning to make its way through the rest of his body.

  Now that he was back on the ground where the fog was thicker, he was running out of time.

  Seeing as he was going to die either way, Leo snatched up the box, quickly making his way away from the rift to limit the chances of him getting discovered. He still had at least a good thirty or so minutes before he could go back through it even if he wanted to, so there wasn’t much point in hanging around.

  And I still can’t tell time, he grumbled to himself as he fought off another wave of coughing.

  Once he was far enough that he couldn’t see the rift anymore, he stopped walking, turning his focus to the mysterious box once more. Before he could stop himself, he flicked it open, bracing for some sort of explosion to go off or acid to spray into his face. But just as he’d hoped, rather than trigger any sort of trap, all he revealed was a small, dark-purple beast gem with veins of bright green spreading throughout it, sitting on a bed of fabric.

  That color scheme… is it poison related?

  Trying to tell the skill that a gem held by its appearance wasn’t usually a very reliable method, but Leo’s soul was still too immature to give him a sense of the skill without fully incorporating it. Seeing as the box hadn’t been a trap, that meant someone had left it for him. And if they had left it for him, it would make sense that they wanted him to continue to survive, for whatever reason. Leo wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of being some pawn in a game he didn’t even know the players of, but he wasn’t above accepting help.

  Especially not when he could feel his body effectively dying a little more with every breath he took.

  Closing the lid once more before he risked the gem dissipating, he sat down, entering meditation as he worked to pull his Dash skill from his core. Converting the power back into a physical gem would have been difficult on its own, but with Leo’s body racked with dangerous coughing fits, the task was made nearly impossible. Every time he began coughing, he had to stop whatever he was doing and devote all of his focus to simply holding the power in place and preventing it from running rampant in his soul. It would have been easier to simply try to destroy the Dash gem and add its power to his soul’s outermost layer, but the gem was too useful a tool to give up.

  Finally, after far too much time had passed, Leo succeeded. Grabbing the gem that rose from his chest, he opened the box again and swapped it for the unknown one. Holding this new gem against his chest, he breathed in, struggling not to launch into a new coughing fit in the process.

  Fortunately for him, he realized immediately the new skill was only Grade 3, and he thanked his mysterious benefactor for not giving him anything more complicated. Desperately, he pulled the power down into his core, letting his soul do the heavy lifting as his empty core hungrily clawed to be filled. It wasn’t long before he slotted the unknown skill into his core, and he let out a sigh of relief as the pain and tingling that had now spread throughout most of his body vanished in an instant.

  Soul Rank: 6 (3 available)

  Beast Gem: Guck Toad (3)

  Skill: Poisonous

  Letting himself collapse and sprawl out over the ground, Leo could only laugh at the fact that his life had been saved by a guck toad of all things. From what he could remember, they were a pretty worthless magical beast that relied exclusively on the fact that their bodies were highly poisonous in order to keep themselves safe from other, far deadlier magical beasts. Their poison didn’t last long outside of their body, which meant it couldn’t even be used for weapons or anything remotely useful. And if that wasn’t bad enough, all their skill gem did was turn the gem holder’s body poisonous, which wasn’t really a very useful ability to have unless a magical beast was actively trying to eat you.

  Though apparently, that skill also came with a nice side-benefit of being either immune, or at least resistant, to other, presumably lesser poisons.

  Forcing himself back to his feet, Leo took a few deep breaths, trying to ignore the pain in his ribs as he enjoyed having the ability to breathe without coughing once more. He still needed to bind his ribs after his close-call with Jess, and there was a solid chance he may have sustained a minor concussion from the blow to his head. But for now, he was alive.

  Alright. I need to find somewhere to lay low, secure food and water, and take care of my injuries. Possibly try and find a new rift to go through to get out of this wasteland, assuming the plane isn’t too large and the rifts too far apart.

  Pleased to have a plan once more, Leo made sure the gem box holding Dash was safely nestled away within his pockets before he started walking. He could just barely make out what looked like a hill off in the distance, which would hopefully get him out of this dense fog. Even if it was no longer poisonous, it made monitoring his surroundings far more difficult, and the last thing he needed was to get attacked by a magical beast before he could take care of his wounds.

  So naturally, it was immediately after having that thought that a giant black cat of some sort leapt down from the top of one of the misshapen trees, knocking him to the ground and sinking its teeth directly into his shoulder.

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