Daniel was not the first one through the breach. Regardless of his occasional recklessness since Hunter’s death, he wasn’t stupid enough to stick his neck in first when the team had a dedicated tank now.

  …though, hybrid Daniel might have been arrogant enough to. Another reason that that form was being kept in reserve. Instead, they had the soarer pilot ascend to just under the tear in space, the avianoid giving them and the ruins bewildered looks. When Sigron wasn’t immediately devoured by some cosmic horror, the rest of them individually filed in.

  Passing through the rift had the effect of a system reset, as if they’d gone into another region. It was an annoying complication, but one Soraso had mentioned and they had prepared for. Willow already had a hand on the wyvern and had preventatively taken her sister’s soul into her just before the crossing. As she replaced it, Daniel took his first look at the ruins.

  The sight made Daniel’s skin itch. They’d come into a hallway larger than Soraso had initially indicated, though Tlara was still filling up about 75% of the width. It was big as corridors went, a normal one wouldn’t have fit her at all. One built for gods though?

  It wasn’t the exact same style, but Daniel felt an unwanted connection to his time in the pavilion. No new memory sprung up at least, as it would have been too much to ask for an hour of downtime just after going in.

  “I’ll hold this open for at least a few hours,” Soraso told them as he floated to just under where the entrance had been cut. “It’s just my luck that I have to be nearby to sustain this or I’d just leave it open. The random few astral beasts that would sneak through wouldn’t change much if I’m honest. Try not to get lost. Stay past that and I’ll have to come looking, which will make things more dangerous.”

  “Marker!” Khare exclaimed back at what was likely both their inspiration and bane as they dragged their flight gear into them, as if they were deploying a parachute in reverse. They’d been given some paint and sticks to ensure this very fear wouldn’t come to pass as their dispersed lower half could passively mark the walls while they traveled.

  “Very good! I knew I hired experts,” Soraso replied with good humor, but it gave Daniel some trepidation. They weren’t experts. At killing monsters, maybe, but in ruin exploration they were just as good as everyone else considering sites like this were rare.

  No, I think people like Farthest Run would be better, he thought as he took a quick look and sniff down both paths. Nothing. The entire area felt dead, though if he had access to Sense Astral he was sure that would change. “Any last minute advice?”

  “Aside from not dying? No. I moved too fast through the first few times trying to understand what I’d found.”

  Daniel frowned at that answer, part of him screaming that they shouldn’t be here and to get out before they all started splitting up to check for ghosts. “If anyone doesn’t like what they see, you don’t have to do this. I’m committed, the rest of you don’t have to be.” He waited, but no one took the easy way out. Tlara might have, but she had the second strongest reason to be here. “Shuni, do you sense any traps?”

  “Nothing on Sense Danger or Sense Traps,” she reported with nervous anticipation.

  “Those are both powers? That sounds redundant.”

  “How many do you have to fire that thing?” she casually replied, shrugging towards the held blast bow. Everyone who used them had their weapons readied, though Daniel only had basic ammunition loaded for now.

  Rather than answer the rhetorical question, Daniel leaned over the edge of the entrance rift. “Soraso, this hallway’s bigger than we thought.”

  “Oh?” The gestalt flew close to the hole but was careful not to cross through it. If he could come along without theoretically affecting the strength of the monsters that were spawning, he’d already be here. “I did encounter one of these. The main path I went down crossed perpendicularly and I prioritized getting a sense of scale and seeing if there was anything shiny to grab. I mean, important discoveries for the benefit of Threst,” he corrected, somehow rotating his eyes to self-consciously glance at the pilot behind him without turning. “Like I said, my first few shots into this place were haphazard. See what you can find out and hurry up with it, I’m sure there are already some coming.”

  “I’m pulling us back if it turns out everything in here is level 4,” Daniel warned before departing. Evalyn would have done a better job of it, but at least he didn’t sound scared, which he wasn’t. Apprehensive maybe, but the only major threat was a monster stealthy or powerful enough to evade all of their senses and ambush them. It sounded like a huge risk, but the same could be said for traveling anywhere in the world as of late. Looking to the darkness of the hallway illuminated only by the break in space, he murmured, “I wish my phone could still be a flashlight.”

  “We have torches,” Willow commented, pulling out one of the spark torches he’d enchanted based on what might have been the first magical item he’d ever seen in the hands of a gestalt that hadn’t survived the Thormundz.

  “You wouldn’t get it,” he just sighed, continuing to aim his blast bow down the hallway. If he needed to see he could just copy Hunter’s Night Eyes, though the auras from Identify Creature would do fine by themselves. He took a moment to look closer at the space and frowned. It was mostly blank and featureless, the opposite of what he’d expected from some ancient temple except for one thing. On the ground was a set of tracks, Soraso’s sword having cut through them. No one else seemed to have noticed the significance, or what it implied the corridor was.

  That didn’t exactly put him at ease. “I need to test something.” Daniel raised his weapon, pointed it at the nearby wall, and fired. Shuni flinched, expecting a crack of sound in the enclosed space and no doubt internally bemoaning any chance of stealth they had, but she was unaware of the most recent modification to Daniel’s arsenal.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  While the modular design of the blast bow made it a headache to assemble initially, it allowed him to swap out parts. Almost none of them were easy enough to replace in a fight, but he’d anticipated a shut in environment after Soraso’s briefing and made use of one of the formulae he’d acquired from his most recent haul after the horde attack. Silent weapon. It’d come from a variety of monster that used a sonic scream, and had also been the source of the first instrument formulae he was saving for Evalyn.

  Exploiting a principle he’d already known about before, Daniel had enchanted a second bone barrel to effectively apply the enchantment to the rest of the weapon. The explosion of the ammunition should have still made some sound if only the air going through the barrel was affected, but magic. Unfortunately, as a quizzical third barrel had shown, the arbitrary limit of ‘one enchantment affecting ammunition per ranged weapon’ applied across base formulae and affixes, so he couldn’t combine this with the far-shot affix. Considering he was looking to explore ruins, stealth was more important than sniping.

  There was still a jump in his hands as the weapon kicked, but the majority of the noise was suppressed. The ricochet of the slug against the wall and down the corridor was not muted, but not even Soraso noticed the incidental noise. “Uh, what are you doing?” Shuni asked as the space became silent again.

  “Seeing if I could shoot through the wall.” Belatedly, Daniel considered that he should have warned his team but paused further explanation as he saw Sigron staring at his blast bow. Honestly he wanted to see what the Knight’s new arm could do as well. The bulky armor he wore didn’t cover it and the absence of a shield was conspicuous, considering that was what Sigron had used for his last Focus. Knights typically chose their armor due to how that interacted with gear made from high level material, so it hadn’t been a frivolous choice but likely one guided by what powers he had. “I can show you how it works later,” Daniel told the curious Sigron, “For now, just think of it as a super crossbow.”

  Sighing, Shuni just gestured ahead. “Well, if we aren’t blasting our way through I vote moving on and seeing what this place has to offer. A big, boring hallway was not what I was expecting.”

  “At least we have room to fight,” Willow compromised, nodding at Tlara who was taking great pains to be within a meter of her sister. She had been in deep concentration when they first entered, though now she had a beaked frown. “I’m not sensing anything, no spirits at least.”

  “We should find a rift. If we can seal those it might stop monsters from coming through,” Daniel replied, though it was anyone’s guess if that was possible. Hunter was on his mind more than anything, but at the same time he was constantly reminding himself not to put the team in too much danger. They could come back as long as they stayed alive. “Let’s move, carefully. There’s no telling if the monsters that responded to Soraso are still here, but at least he put us somewhere he wasn’t before. Shuni, do you need to lead?”

  “I think I’d like to stick behind metal guy,” she chirped lowly while drawing up her hood. Already the Rogue was becoming slightly hard to spot even without considering the low light. “You know, I always liked the strong but silent types. They tend to get stabbed first. Don’t worry, I’ll call out before anything happens.”

  “You’re ok to take the front Sigron?” Daniel asked. “We’ve got a wyvern no one cares that we could just- Tlara, just because my back is turned doesn’t mean I can’t hear what you’re doing.” Behind him, Tlara stopped approaching with her mouth open as if to bite him in half. He was… still pretty sure she was all there despite not having found someone with Telepathy to confirm it. Sigron continued to be bewildered, though all he did was pass a glance at the wyvern before sighing and turning to face one of the hallways. We really should have met up sooner. Would’ve given me a chance to read the letter. Oh well.

  As he worried about how Sigron would react to Beast Mode along with all of the other developments that had happened while he was sick, Khiat was holding an arrow in her hand and glancing at the wall. “What could this be made of? I don’t think my arrows could get through either, your bow didn’t even dent it.”

  “Alabaster?” Shuni whispered, mostly as a joke.

  “It’s the right color.” Willow shrugged as several incredulous looks were passed her way. “It’s not like I’ve seen any. That would explain why the Regent wants this place.”

  “It’s too bad we wouldn’t have a way of getting any,” Daniel pointed out. “Level 9 material would be unbreakable. I can’t even enchant it to change its shape because it resists that kind of stuff.”

  “Imagine if you could though.” The Rogue raised her arms in what was a decent approximation of a rifleman’s stance for having only seen the blast bow a couple times. “You’d clear the region of monsters in a week.”

  “Anticipate.”

  Daniel had to softly chuckle at what Khare was implying. “I think at that point I would have to charge you something, Khare.”

  “Copper.”

  “Two,” Daniel replied in a completely brutal display of greed winning out over friendship.

  “You know, wasn’t expecting you guys to be so relaxed after what I heard about you. How you lost people,” Shuni quickly clarified. The entire conversation was being carried on at a volume quieter than Tlara’s foot and wing falls, yet it seemed the Rogue tried to retroactively hide her comment by how she winced. Unfortunately for her it appeared Shuni didn’t have any powers in the Time domain.

  “We’ll get serious when there are monsters,” Daniel assured her, trying to be encouraging with his voice without reaching for Reassure. “I never would have thought I’d be doing this growing up.”

  “Then you got your class?”

  “You could say that,” Daniel laughed. “You?”

  “It’s what everyone wants to do if they could.” The Rogue didn’t sound as enthused, though she was also half-concentrating on their surroundings. Blank as they were. Daniel knew they’d reach a terminus of some kind eventually, but this first run could wind up extremely boring if not. He was keeping a timer running with Quick Mind and had decided they would turn back if that hit half an hour before finding something. “World as it is I can’t say no to stabbing a few monsters to death if it keeps everyone safe.”

  “I don’t think having a class means you have to fight,” Willow interjected. “I don’t see any Craftsman with us.”

  “Artificer,” Daniel said, raising a hand. Willow gave him a look to let him know he was being facetious and he bowed out.

  Shuni was smiling as she picked up the moment. “I don’t mind it. I mean, I’m used to it now. I do like this better though, assuming we ever find something.” A scornful gaze was passed over the walls and ceiling. “What even is this place? I was expecting either a flock of monsters flying straight into our face or an amazing sign of the people that came before us.”

  “It’s some kind of mass transit line,” Daniel explained, not seeing a strong need to hide his suspicions. If Shuni or Sigron somehow tied his knowledge to Earth subways he had bigger problems. “See these indents in the floor below us? They’re to keep a vehicle on course as it travels across these ruins. Not really a need to decorate what’s basically a road.”

  “Could they still be moving down here?” Willow asked tentatively

  “Now you know why I wanted to see if I could shoot through the wall.” They walked silently for a few minutes after that, as if it would help with him already having Keen Senses on. The only person truly in danger was Tlara as he doubted whatever car ran down here was completely flush with the wall. Worst case they could stow the body in the pouches Willow now carried, though they’d have to then wait out the cooldown as they still operated on the Beastmaster’s powers.

  He was about to suggest turning around after they’d failed to find any sign of a landing when Shuni spotted something, and soon after, something else found them.