Jemity blinked a few times, and her head tilted to one side. “Palic created the metal collars, but he had to wait until one of the Touched came by to empower them. Much like you.”

  “Touched?” asked Lenna before I could.

  This was it. The Forgers had to have a crystal singer to make this work, and now we had a lead to find them.

  “Creations from the High Sect. They are treated as above all others, and are not to be trifled with.” She rolled her eyes. “Palic treated it as such an honor for me to even lay eyes on one. He groveled for weeks to even get one here to test the latest batch. These results would have guaranteed better resources and access.”

  She motioned to the computer in the lab.

  We needed a target, and what better target than a Forger creating crystal collars?

  “What was their name?” I asked as I licked my lips. We were so close.

  “Asceto, The Shard…” she said without a care. “It was only a few test cycles ago that he came. He is at the fortress near the portal to home.”

  The fortress was on the map I still had in my inventory. This tunnel led in that direction.

  Bingo.

  “Does Asceto have a bounty on them?” I asked as I focused on my Unwavering Hunter skill. Normally, I didn’t try to actively use it. It felt like a passive skill, but what if it wasn’t?

  “Of course. They wouldn’t want to lose their precious Touched,” she said with an eye roll. “You should destroy the data sooner rather than later.”

  “Go for it,” I said, already pivoting to tracking down The Shard. I tried to send my senses out looking for someone called The Shard with a Bounty.

  A menu popped up, called Bounties. A giant list appeared, with names and last known locations. It scrolled down until one appeared.

  [Asceto, The Shard, Last known Location: Planet X2-2873]

  That wasn’t actually helpful. Wait, could I search my location?

  I pulled the list up of all the Bounties on the same planet as Asceto was on. The list wasn’t too large, surprisingly.

  Jemity brushed by me on the way to the lab, and I accidentally closed the list. I glared at her back as I went to reopen it, but got distracted.

  The computer screen started glowing. A black tingle formed in the center and spread. She exited the room and closed the door as the screen burst into pieces while smoking. The room quickly filled with a thick black smoke.

  “You don’t want to breathe that,” she said, still staring at the sight with glee.

  The cavern went silent at her comment.

  It was impressive, though I wasn’t sure why the archway kept her here if she could blow things up. The seams held the smoke inside, but I didn’t want to get any closer.

  “What was that?” asked Lenna, leaning away from the lab walls.

  “I overloaded the power source and data storage.” She smiled brightly, like she’d just won a prize. “They cannot recover any of that.”

  “You should have done it with the archway to free yourself.”

  “Freedom wouldn’t have helped my situation. Where would I go where I wouldn’t be collected to come back here? Now, I have a chance to return to my people once this initiative is dealt with.” She blinked at me like I was stupid.

  “The crystal initiative, or the planet colonization initiative?” I asked. It felt like we were discussing different things. Part of me wished we could sit down and get all my questions asked, but with the information on the Shard we didn’t have time.

  “The planet one wouldn’t exist without the crystal one. That's the point of this operation.” Jemity shrugged then rubbed the rocky texture under the crystal growing out of her shoulder. Dirt fell to the floor. “Destroy one, and you destroy the other. The High Sect is nothing if not efficient.”

  Lenna narrowed her eyes and stepped closer to Jemity, before whispering something to her. Jemity focused on Lenna and the two started to converse about something in low whispers.

  I pulled the bounty list back open and tried to mentally search by my location. Planet X2-2873 is what popped up, which meant this was the planet we were on.

  Asceto was at the top of the list, along with another name that caused me to freeze.

  [Dilom, The Hybridizer, Forger, Level 55, OFFENDER.]

  That wasn’t possible.

  We’d destroyed the cloning facility on the lake, along with the tubes that he’d started to reform in.

  My chest tightened and sweat formed along my brow. If he was back, what about… her?

  The level grabbed my attention, and it ticked up as I watched. I waited, but it didn’t change again. Yet, I couldn’t get myself to scroll through the names to see if hers was on it.

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  Holls whimpered a plea for help that snapped me out of my panic.

  I didn’t need to know about her just yet. Though Dilom… We needed to find him and kill him again. If we could, we needed to make sure that he couldn’t be resurrected again. Or whatever he did to come back this time.

  Holls suddenly stiffened and scrambled even closer to Jemity, almost knocking her over. She reached down to pet him while still chatting with Lenna.

  “Sh… don’t worry, we will leave soon,” she whispered to the wolf-life creature.

  He stared at the tunnel entrance that Dengu paced in front of.

  Jemity suddenly stiffened as he whimpered again.

  “Didn’t you kill all the Forgers?” she asked in a whisper, almost angry.

  “We killed several.” We hadn’t killed all of them on the planet. That was clear from the list of offenders.

  She shook her head, taking a step away from the lab and toward the other entrance. “But did you get them all?”

  “We got the Bag guy, the Ooze guy, the fighting chick…” I tried to remember everyone we’d fought.

  “Bran, did you get Bran?” The crystal in her shoulder dimmed, along with her hair, as she took another step away from the tunnel.

  Why did that sound familiar?

  The very strong dude had mentioned him during the fight.

  “Not on our list…” I mumbled.

  “We need to leave now,” she kept her voice low and hurried away without saying another word. She headed the way we’d entered the base.

  Holls whimpered again, but he didn’t follow. Instead, he stuck close to me.

  “Alpha,” whispered Dengu from across the way.

  Lenna nodded and hurried to Kabi. “Everyone needs to leave now. Quietly, but quickly.”

  All the Azurafolk hustled after that, following Jemity to the back.

  I hurried in that direction and found her waiting for them. Holls stuck by my side.

  “Holls, you can go with Jemity if you want,” I said as his multitude of eyes flickered to her.

  He nodded, but sniffed in my direction.

  Lenna waved the Azurafolk through the door. “He thinks you need his help to track down The Shard. He knows what the Touched smells like.”

  “Oh, buddy, don’t worry. Well find him. You can help these people get to the other tunnel. After that, if you want to help, I bet you can find us.”

  He stared up at me. All the eyes reminded me of Noseen. He nodded and hurried out the door.

  Jemity quickly followed after nodding at me.

  “Well, we are in a mess.” Lenna shut and closed the door with the wooden cross-beam. “More Hunters, and another Forger…”

  “Nothing's on my radar yet,” I added, glancing back at the cavern with the growing crystals. I needed to grab those before we left.

  “Dengu said he could smell more Hunters, and Holls told him there were some on their way. We have time, but only the stars know how much. Though, it doesn’t feel like much.”

  We both hurried back to Kabi and Dengu. Both stood near the tunnel entrance.

  I hurried into the cavern and dug out the last of the stable mana crystals. With the one in my pocket, I added them to the ball that I’d created from the collars, then joined Kabi and Dengu. More than one dark area that indicated an opening was visible soon after the tunnel entrance.

  I snatched out the map and stared at the tunnels that opened up on this side of the cavern. I hadn’t paid much attention to it before, since we knew what tunnel made it directly to the badlands and the fortress.

  There were other options.

  “We could flee…” I said quickly, pointing to one of the other options we’d ignored before. “Send them on a wild goose chase, and give the others time to get away.”

  I traced the other path. It led to the surface.

  “The Hunters couldn’t follow, and we’d still be heading in the right direction.” I motioned to the lab behind us. “Lenna can break the glass and we take off this way. Quietly.”

  “That might cover our exit,” she said with a frown.

  “Yeah, we can find a better place to make a stand than here.” While the walls boxed us in, they didn’t box the Hunters in. Especially after seeing Holls dig, I knew we’d gotten lucky with the other fight.

  Plus, this one had a Forger.

  We all quietly padded to the tunnel entrance I’d pointed at on the map, while Lenna lagged. She pulled out her bow and aimed it at the lab door.

  The silver arrow pierced the glass without a problem, and the thick black smoke that covered the inside leaked from the new hole. It trickled down to the ground almost like a vapor.

  We all fled at the sight.

  I took the lead, stretching out with my senses as Lenna's silver light glowed brightly overhead. It didn’t mess with my night vision in the tunnel, or the little mushrooms that were dotted here and there with their faint glowing.

  Something touched the edges of my radar, but it was gone before I could get a good reading. It wasn’t directly behind us, but off to one side. Hopefully, they were heading to the lab.

  The tunnel twisted and turned, not made by one of the Hunters. It took a few moments of sprinting to realize that we headed lower, not higher.

  I slowed down as water dripped along the walls and more mushrooms formed.

  Kabi caught up to my new pace, and he pointed at them as well.

  The map showed a cavern ahead, then the tunnel headed to the surface. Unfortunately, we had a while to get there, and all we could do was push on as fast as was safe. It had to be at least half an hour without a sign of being chased before I slowed down again.

  My radar tingled with beings up ahead, and I slowed to a crawl, trying to figure out what I felt.

  Dengu and Lenna bunched up behind us as I held up a hand.

  I motioned I’d go look.

  Carefully, I crept to the edge of the tunnel opening and glanced ahead. Multiple beings rested in various locations. Some were on top of one another, others rested just by themselves.

  I studied the first of the shadows, but it took a few moments for anything to pop up.

  [Deep Crab, Sleeping, Slammer, Level 165, Prey, Unknown.]

  [Crab Swarm, Sleeping, Swarm, Level 150, Predator, Unknown.]

  Mentally I glared at the last unknown. I had tried to get my notification to not show how things tasted, but this still popped up.

  I crept back to Kabi to relay the info.

  “What’s a deep crab?” I asked right next to his ear.

  His eyes went wide, and he shivered. He held up two hands like giant pinchers and then motioned them running very fast.

  “Dangerous.”

  “We sneak by…” I said, but Kabi shook his head no. That’s when my radar tingled behind us. Something had caught up.

  I frantically motioned back and shook my head.

  Everyone twisted in that direction, then back at the cavern.

  “I go first,” I said, before heading back to the cavern.

  The crabs slept, though they came in all shapes and sizes. There were way more than my radar could pick up individually. Maybe that was why the notification had called it a Swarm.

  We kept to the outer edges of the cavern and took none of the various tunnels that branched off. Instead, I headed for the one that headed up.

  My focus stayed on the exit, but I kept an eye on the things coming up behind us. They moved slowly, but kept coming.

  It wasn’t until we passed the halfway point, and there weren’t any crabs nearby, that it happened.

  Two large Hunters darted into the cavern, growling. One let off a very loud howl. It echoed around the cavern, and for a moment everything was silent as the other stared at us. Then, there was chaos.