232, 2/2

Half an hour after he began the wax sculpture, that part of the process was done. After setting the wax with spurs and vents, to allow metal to flow in while letting air escape, Erick plunged the staff and all of its little parts into a slurry of quick-set plaster. He set the thing to dry inside a hooded drying station, where all Erick had to do was flick a switch on the wall and air rushed through the chamber, pulling out all moisture with it. Five minutes later, Erick pulled the cast back out of the drying hood, plunged it back into the plaster slurry, and then poured dry sand from a large tub over the wet mold. When it was good and sandy, Erick put it back in the dryer. He repeated this process three times, growing the shell of plaster around the mold deeper and deeper, until the original sniper staff’s shape was lost to the layers of sand and plaster surrounding it.

While it dried one more time, and did not crack, Erick smiled a little, enjoying the act of creation, as he grabbed a crucible from the furnace supplies. That crucible went into the open-top furnace, and Erick shut the lid before he flicked another switch. Fire burned brightly all around the crucible, casting red light into the room. Another flick of another switch turned on the heat vents, and some of the heat of the furnace shunted outside.

Three minutes later, the crucible was red hot, and Erick stuck the broken Staff of the Anti-Magus into the container. That would sit for a while before it started to melt.

Erick had time to go put the dried wax mold into the mold furnace, which is what he did next, turning it upside down and setting it inside. The mold furnace had a window in the front, so as Erick flicked the switch on that machinery, he watched the wax melt out of the container, into a bucket below the furnace, clearing out the mold. The mold would have to fully burn out, to remove all the wax inside, so Erick kept an eye on it while he went back to the metal furnace.

The staff was just beginning to melt down, into the crucible.

Erick grabbed some tongs and ensured that the melt went into the container without spilling.

Not too long now, and he’d have the base weapon.

Everything went off without a hitch. The staff melted down perfectly, making a molten puddle of silver metal inside the hot crucible. The mold burned out properly, leaving behind an empty space for Erick to fill with the silver metal. With some large tongs and some careful maneuvering, Erick grabbed the hot mold, and set the mold into a pouring space recessed into the ground to prevent catastrophic spills. If the mold should break, then it would break down there, and not spill out over the workshop floor.

It had taken Erick two hours of rather slow, manual work to get to this point, but everything went quickly in the last minute.

Erick grabbed some heavy tongs that were suspended from the ceiling, to help offset the weight of metal projects, then he popped open the furnace, secured the crucible in the tongs, and he levered the molten metal out. Burning heat filled the air, but Erick had on a facemask and some workshop pants and armguards. He wasn’t used to needing to use tools to survive heat like this, but it was what it was.

He looked down into the crucible. There appeared to be no contaminants in the metal to skim off the top, so Erick went right to pouring that metal into the heated mold. As liquid metal flowed into the mold it burbled and spat, but it settled down into the cavity, and held.

And the mold did not break.

Erick smiled as he began putting everything away and cleaning up all the messes he had made, as the sniper staff cooled in its container.

You couldn’t make magical metals like this on Veird; magical metals needed to be carefully handled there, without allowing them to turn molten at any point in the process, for if a magical metal turned molten, then they lost all magical power. Celesteel became normal platinum. Prismasteel became normal platinum. A lot of magical metals became normal platinum when they turned molten.

So you had to work magical metals carefully; cold forging as much as you could.

If there was anything specifically different that Glittering Depths was doing in order to be called a ‘Second Script’, it was this ability for metal to retain its magical, conductive properties, after being heated to a molten state. In fact, the only way to truly change the function of a bit of meta-iron was to do what Erick was doing right now, and burn out all that had come before.

At least that’s what Erick figured would happen, based on clues here and there.

Otherwise, as with Erick’s Rod of the Lightning Guardian, if he applied any sort of mana to the staff at all, then it would just revert to its broken shape. Which would be bad, when he wanted to make a whole weapon.

Erick was probably too eager to bust open the mold, but it was cool enough after twenty minutes of resting. So he used the hanging tongs to grab the filled mold and toss it into the water bath. Steam burst out of the bath as sand and plaster boiled away from the metal inside. Five more minutes after that, Erick used the hanging tongs to grab the metal out of the water and shake off the bits of plaster and sand, stuck here and there along the sniper staff’s length. Then he threw the ‘staff’ back into water, to cool it off enough to work with.

Several minutes later, Erick pulled the metal out of the water and got to work with some heavy brushing from a cow-hair bristle comb. That removed most of the rest of the surface shit. Over the next half hour, Erick used some heavy duty clippers to break away the spurs and vents from the staff, and some grinding wheels to knock off other non-staff objects from the surface of the creation. Some more grinding refined the look of the whole thing.

It was still kinda warm when Erick was 90% finished with it.

The ‘staff’ was 110 centimeters in overall length, and shaped mostly like a very large wand. It had a 2 centimeter wide pointed end, followed by a gentle increase to a 3 centimeter wide top end, capped off with a faceted silver-ball top. A curved handle extended from the side of the staff, just before the faceted top, making it look quite a lot like a cane… So maybe Erick should have been calling it a cane in his head this whole time.

Some decorative runes started around halfway up the length of the weapon and continued upward, to adorn the handle with the words: ‘REPENT ALL SINNERS AND BE SPARED’.

The whole working wasn’t too fancy, and maybe Erick had gone too far in with that lettering, but it felt correct, and so he had done it. There was no achievement notification from the dungeon, though. Which was fine. It wasn’t even a real weapon yet.

Erick tapped his Ring of [Identify] across the nascent artifact.

Primed Staff of Power (depleted), unattuned artifact, ~/500

Erick hefted the cane in his hands, spun it around a little to feel the balance, gripped the handle and then pointed it at the wall, and played around with it a bit more.

It would serve.

Erick divested himself of every metiron he had except for his [Meditation] necklace and his new staff, and then he grabbed a bunch of stuff including the metamonds he had made earlier, and went to the mana chamber.

– – – –

Erick stood off-center of the mana chamber, holding his staff outward, channeling perfectly clear Force mana into the length of runed silver.

The mana that the dungeon assigned to him was Benevolence-flavored, so it wouldn’t work for all sorts of magic. But that was fine. Erick had been Mana Altering manually for a while, for the Script did almost this exact same thing with ‘assigning mana’, so all it took was a hum of a Forceful nature and a bit of normal aura control, and the staff in his hands had begun pumping Force into the chamber.

It looked like mirage ripples filling the air, and felt like being in a stuffy room.

Rather quickly after Erick started, focusing circles lit on every interior wall and began collecting that Forceful mana into the center of the room. That act of collection reminded Erick of a reverse-ripple in a pond.

When the mana in the chamber reached saturation, Erick was finally able to extend his aura past his body, to reach into that collection space in the center. He already had a fair number of meta-diamonds that would serve as the basis of his sniper staff, but he still needed to prime the staff.

His first act of creation was to tickle the mana in the center into forming a mana crystal that he had already made once.

A little hum of Force, a Forceful touch of aura, and Erick created a sculpture of mana shaping, and distant intent. It was simple gridwork spellwork that took but a moment to stabilize inside his controlling aura. When it finally looked correct, Erick slowly pulled his aura back, allowing the ripples of mana in the air to actually coalesce.

A dollop of a gem held in the air, floating on ripples of Force.

Erick plucked it out of the air with a tap of his aura and the gem fell into his waiting hand. He activated his Ring of [Identify].

Long Bolt, instant, long range, 5 mana

A bolt unerringly strikes a distant target.

Erick grinned. Yes. This was correct.

His staff was already filled with power, so Erick put the gem he had created back into the floating center of the chamber. And then he poked it with his staff.

The gem slipped into the shooting tip of the staff, and then barreled all the way down the length of it, before coming to rest inside the faceted top, near the handle. It surfaced atop one of those facets, but mostly remained under the silver metiron, like a white gem floating in a pool of mercury.

Erick [Identify]ed the staff.

Staff of the [Long Bolt], attuned artifact, 250/250

Shoot an unerring bolt at a distant target, dealing minimal damage. 5 mana per bolt.

Erick smiled.

It wasn’t much to look at now, and the maximum capacity of the staff had gone down, but that would change soon enough.

Erick created a second [Long Bolt] gem and joined that one to his staff, to join the [Long Bolt] already inside the artifact.

Staff of the [Improved Long Bolt], attuned artifact, 275/275

Shoot an unerring bolt at a distant target, dealing minimal damage. 7 mana per bolt.

Ahh…

That was good.

This was probably going to work.

But first, Erick broke the gems he had created inside the staff. Force mana filled the air, some of it going back into the staff itself, and some trying to recollect in the center of the mana chamber. Erick held that Force back, preventing it from reforming, as he [Identify]ed the staff.

Staff of Controlled Power (depleted), attuned artifact, 500/500

“Mana crystals are kinda odd!” Erick said, chuckling.

Erick wasn’t exactly sure how mana crystals worked like they did, or why the capacitance of the staff jumped around like that, but he could certainly do some experiments to find out! He’d probably have to do more experiments with [Identify], too, since that spell was always an odd one. Under the Script, an [Identify] usually produced mental feedback, informing the caster of the target’s nature based on one’s own understanding of the [Identify]ed target. But this [Identify] was producing results in the air, for all to see…

Sure, you could do that with [Identify], too, but the Glittering Depths seemed to only have this visual option. Erick wondered what would happen if he did that Book Magic sort of [Identify]-on-dungeon-cores magic that Quilatalap had taught him the other week.

He’d have to do that, sometime.

But for now, Erick turned his focus to one problem at a time, and aura controlled the rippling Force in the center of the room, turning it back into a [Long Bolt]. The [Long Bolt] went into the staff, forming the base for what was to come…

– – – –

An hour later, Erick exited the mana chamber with his new weapon in his hands.

With this weapon, he was far above the 10/10 metiron cap of the Glittering Depths, so he had some reorganizing to do. He was keeping the staff, of course. This thing had turned out better than Erick could have hoped.

Staff of Absolution, attuned artifact, 2000/2000

Trim the garden, so that all may grow stronger in the absence of corruption. 50 mana per activation.

Strong spells in the Script usually resulted in blue boxes that were more evocative than truly descriptive. Apparently, [Identify] in the Glittering Depths suffered from the same sort of nebulousness.

The overall shape of the staff was the same as it had been pre-imbuing, but now the faceted-metal head of the ‘cane’ had turned into an iridescent rainbow gem, covered in wrapping metal that almost formed a butt of a hunting rifle. It had no trigger, but it did have a sight. That sight was little more than a protrusion at the firing end, and another protrusion part of the way down from the handle.

As for the rest of his gear…

Erick moved some stuff around on the tables outside the mana chambers, and began narrowing down what he truly wanted to wear, and have. All the excess junk went into a chest in the room beside the mana chamber room. He did keep the two utility wands he had made, but they went into his fanny pack; unattuned. If needed, he could switch out those items later.

And this was his loadout, now.

“Status,” Erick said.

– –

Ashes Woodfield (9 saves remaining)

Health: 1000/1000

MP per day: 8500

Meta-Irons: 3700, 0 in storage

Meta-Diamonds: 10/10, 0 in storage

Rod of the Lightning Guardian, 1000/1000

Staff of Absolution, 2000/2000

Breastplate of [Regenerating Health], 250/250

Bracelet of [Hidden Wind], 100/100

Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], 100/100

Necklace of [Meditation], 50/50

Ring of [Identify] 50/50

Belt of Many Functions, [Blessed Memory], [Eternal Benediction], [Benediction of the Unseen], 50/50, 50/50, 50/50

Unused Meta-Irons: Wand of [Drinking Food] ~/200, Wand of [Regeneration] ~/100

Unused Meta-Diamonds: [Murky], [Flaming Ooze]

– –

He wanted to keep the Shield of [Reflection], but he was tight for room, so his Ring of [Identify] won out in the end, and mostly because all this stuff was so much different than what Erick was used to seeing out on Veird.

Like the Breastplate of [Regenerating Health]! That just wasn’t possible on Veird under normal circumstances… Or maybe it was! Erick didn’t know. Magic items on Veird constantly degraded, especially if they got used regularly and moved around all the time. Even Erick’s Gates needed replacing occasionally, when some odd magics happened around them, disrupting the flow of power inside them and causing a catastrophic rusting.

The spells in his belt were another anomaly. They were like permanent self-auras, and they didn’t break from constant use, like all other highly-mobile enchantments usually broke.

Erick’s All Stat rings had been a revolution in enchanting when he had worked out how to make those work, and these things could be another revolution in enchanting when he figured out how to get mana crystals like these on Veird… If that would even work!

Anticipation and excitement trilled through Erick’s chest. He was excited for a lot of reasons.

“And I have claimed the number one spot on the Most Decorated rankings!”

That should get Clarice Icewind’s attention. No need to go chasing her down to ask her about her experiences [Witness]ing this dungeon if she came to him.

But for now! It was time to test his new loadout, and then go clean up some corruption in this garden. Maybe he’d get the quest completion for making a ‘weapon to end the war’ once he actually ended the war in this location…

“Or maybe this new staff is shit!” Erick laughed.

No way to know without testing!

– – – –

Erick stood behind the parapets at the top of the wall that surrounded all of Marii’s castle. He had thought he might have been alone, but even up here the place was crowded. Probably because it allowed a certain amount of individual space, as long as one watched out and called out problems before they could threaten the castle. That had happened a few times since Erick and his refugees had arrived here earlier in the day, and Marii had been quick to action each time, doing whatever it was she had to do to ensure the castle remained impregnable. Or at least that’s what Erick had gathered after the fact. Erick had never felt the movement of the castle to a different hill, or illusion magics activating, or even heard any of those battles at all.

Whatever spellwork Marii had in this place was either very, very good, or the dungeon was cheating with those attacks and making this a ‘safe zone’. Erick was going to look into all of that later. It’d be a lot easier to defend certain places if those places moved around at the drop of a hat!

Anyway.

Erick felt the wind brush through his hair as he gazed out across the land. Marii’s castle was at the top of a hill —one of six— that overlooked… Nothing, really. For maybe ten or fifteen kilometers around, as far as Erick could see, all there were were low hills, and a lot of corpses.

Far to the west lay a lot of burning places, with black smoke drifting into the dim blue sky. To the north lay mountains, though Erick could only guess at how far away those were. Erick guessed that he could ‘complete’ floor 2 by spending a month escaping this place and going to those mountains, to meet up with the real resistance, but Erick wasn’t going to do that.

He was going to fight.

Erick placed the jeweled end of his cane-sized staff against his right shoulder, then he put his hands upon the engraved length of the weapon and looked down the top of the weapon, down the sight. He lined up the front sight of the weapon, just above the very end of the staff, and turned his gaze to a target on the… hill down below…

No targets down there at all. The hillside was clean of all obstructions, which of course it was. No one wanted obstructions around a defensive location. People could hide behind those obstructions, and that was the opposite of being safe.

Eventually, Erick set down his staff and walked around the rim of the castle, looking for—

Ah.

A boulder. It was completely buried and served more as a flat expanse of the hillside than any sort of real target. But it would do. One end of the boulder was wider than the other, and the whole thing sat maybe 120 meters away, down on the side of the hill.

Erick set his staff against his shoulder, took aim, and said, “Fire.”

An imperceptible spot of Force and darker magics spat from the end of the staff and instantly struck the boulder on the skinny end. The staff made no sound at all, but the impact on the boulder sent a rapid grouping of ‘spack-crack-tap-tap-spack’ into the air. It was the sound of a handful of pellets from a pellet gun all hitting stone at almost the same moment.

There was no visible damage upon the stone. Maybe a few dark spots, but nothing else truly visible.

That was by design, though. The spell that came out of this artifact was not meant to injure non living things.

Erick shot quite a few more targets, getting a feel for his range and his accuracy and testing out how the staff fired through a simple tap of his aura, instead of a verbal command; it worked as well as all his other items.

A head-sized, distant rock got several marks, while the grass around it remained fine. The flat boulder got even more dots. It was only when Erick shot a particularly large lump of grass, that the true capabilities of the weapon appeared, causing a minor explosion and leaving a divot in the hillside.

That was just the effect on grass, though. The weapon wasn’t meant to kill grass. It was meant for much bloodier targets.

Erick kept firing.

The staff’s accuracy was rather phenomenal for up to 250 meters, with a rather steady decline after that. Targeting was impossible if Erick did not have a clear target in mind when shooting, and if his aim wasn’t rather close to where he was trying to hit. The staff had a minor amount of course correction —Bolt was the basis for this staff, after all— but the speed of the strike was so much that Erick’s aim needed to be rather close, or else the shot wouldn’t be able to curve fast enough to hit the target. The sights were not just for show.

Erick would have preferred some more practice with the weapon before he took it into an actual fight, but there was no time for that, apparently.

For Kinder had been poking his head out from the door at a tower near the wall for about half an hour now. He had pulled back every time Erick almost looked his way, too. The man was not plotting something, as far as Erick could tell; he was nervous about something, and he had no idea how to approach.

Erick felt he had gotten good enough with the staff to stop, and he had finally had enough of Kinder’s whatever-he-was-doing, so Erick called out to the man, “Kinder!”

There was no movement in the doorway.

“Kinder,” Erick repeated. “Get out here.”

… Kinder slowly stepped out, into the light. He stood tall and nervous, as he said, “Uh. Don’t mean to interrupt your time, but we could all use more food?”

Erick blinked a bit, and then he looked out across the land. The sunstone was getting kinda close to the horizon, wasn’t it? Ah. Well. Quilatalap wasn’t the only one who could get lost in his work.

And so, Erick took the Wand of [Drinking Food] out of his fanny pack on his lower back. “I guess it has been a few hours, hasn’t it.” He walked over and handed the wand to Kinder, asking, “Can you use it yourself? I unattuned it earlier.”

Kinder’s eyes went wide. “I could not take that from you, sir—”

Erick set his staff down and rummaged around for the Wand of [Rejuvenation], and then he tried to hand that over, too, saying, “I unattuned both of them.” Kinder wasn’t taking them, and he kept trying to say that he couldn’t possibly have that honor, so Erick grabbed the man’s right hand and slapped both wands into his hand, saying, “You get to feed and heal the people here, Kinder.” Erick pulled away, too fast for Kinder to refuse. “I’ve got other things to do.”

Kinder looked at the wands in his hand and great big tears began to fall. His voice cracked, as he said, “I can do this, sir! Leave it to me!”

Erick chuckled a little. “Good. Now where is Scout?” He picked his staff back up. “Unless you know of a better way to find the enemies out there?”

“Scout will want to work with you, but I think Architect Marii has some mapping magic, too.”

“Good man. Take me to it.”

– – – –

The sunstar dipped down toward the horizon, casting the hilly grasslands into deep shadows. Erick waited down in those deep shadows, at the bottom of a hill, crouched near stinking bodies and slippery gore. The shadows around him were thick, his bracelet of [Hidden Wind] keeping them that way, obscuring most of his body, while his eyes and sight lines remained unaffected.

Scout seemed completely unaffected by Erick’s hiding magics, too. She dropped out of the air three meters off to the side from Erick, bent low to the ground, already whispering, “Enemy spotted.” She pointed. “450 meters, that way.”

“Good. Stay out of the fight. If I fall, then return back to Marii’s, otherwise rejoin with me after the threat is gone.”

Scout wordlessly vanished back into the wind, her feet barely making a sound or a sight as she hopped away, and then paused near the bodies. As she stilled, she went completely invisible.

Erick broke his own near-invisibility by getting to his feet and stepping forward, up the hill. It was not a single step; it was ten, all at once, and effortlessly, all for the cost of one mana. Erick had almost fallen down several times when he first started using this ‘windstepping’, but he had gotten used to it fast enough. It was almost like using [Silent Movement], that Health-costing skill of the Script, but different, because [Silent Movement] cost 1 Health per meter moved; not one mana per step.

One mana was a pretty low price, Erick thought, as he sailed through the air, stepping lively, rushing up the side of the grassy lowlands. He stuck in the shadows, keeping away from the absolute tops of the hills as he made his way forward, toward the enemy.

In most situations, Erick would try to talk to these NPCs, to change the narrative in this dungeon, but the enemy here was way too strong and dedicated to ever give up the fight. Not when they were winning, anyway.

Maybe if Erick killed enough of them the remaining ones would surrender. That might be nice.

Erick barely crested the hill and saw the enemy camp. He fell into a crouch, letting the shadows crawl around him as he began to move much slower. If this [Hidden Steps] bracelet had some sort of ongoing cost for when Erick wasn’t actively using its stepping function, then that cost was too small to be noticed.

The camp had three stone towers at the top of a hill, along with a stone wall all the way around. It had been Shaped, for sure. The whole thing was maybe a hundred meters in diameter, and well defended. Several red-tabarded soldiers stood behind parapets on the walls, but only two of those wall-patrolling soldiers actually had eyes on the darkened land around the camp. Most of the people on the walls had eyes pointed inward, watching whatever was happening in the courtyard, roaring approval and making snide remarks at whatever was happening just beyond Erick’s sight—

A cheer broke the night, as some metal clashed with something wooden—

Someone screamed out for mercy, their voice echoing in the twilight, and then came silence and a grand roar of approval from the butchers of the camp. Even the people looking out into the dark had to turn their heads to the interior of the camp, to see what was happening.

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Erick hoisted his ‘gun’ and set the gem pommel and silver handle against his shoulder. Once again, he tried to visualize what would happen if he went up to these NPCs and asked them to surrender peacefully. Would they be willing to end this war here and now? To go away, and never return?

That probably wouldn’t work out so well.

And worse, it would give away Erick’s moment of surprise.

Erick took aim at a guy on the wall; the one who was calling for the next prisoner to be brought forth.

There was no need to ask his weapon to ‘Fire!’. All it took was a tap of intent to trigger the weapon.

The business end of the staff sent out a trailing ripple of a mirage; the Bolt moving too fast and too quietly to be known before it hit.

And the man’s head exploded, followed fast by his chest, and then his upper arms. The detonation ended there. The crowd was still cheering as the caller for more blood turned into little more than a popped balloon of blackened blood himself.

Erick popped another three red-tabarded soldiers before the camp really understood what was happening, and even then, many people made the fatal mistake of staying on the walls, to try and see what was killing them. It wasn’t a very good response.

Ten kills and less than 5 seconds later, Erick repositioned; he pulled back, going backward, further out of sight, before he circled around and came up the other side of the encampment. By the time he was in position again, the hornet’s nest was thoroughly kicked. Red tabarded people hovered in the air, surrounded by thin shields that seemed to hold them aloft, as they swept spotlights all over the lands outside of their encampment.

Erick took aim at the nearest hovering woman. He fired. The translucent bubble popped as several pellets of magic cracked the Forceful surface. A lot of the attack was thwarted, but one of the scattering Bolts touched the mage inside, on her arm. That arm exploded in black blood as blackening Decay rapidly spread through the rest of the mage. The soldier dropped like a dead bird, right out of the sky.

Three minutes later, Erick had killed enough floating mages to force the camp to change tactics. They knew where he was now, though. The front gates opened, and soldiers rushed out of the encampment, surrounded by shields, aiming toward Erick, swords raised and magic empowering them with speed.

There was no Script Second inside the Glittering Depths, though, which was pretty interesting, from a resource perspective. Erick could theoretically have burned through his entire 2000 mana staff in a matter of moments, if he wanted. But since they only sent seven people rushing down at Erick, there in the shadows, it only cost Erick 450 mana and a few seconds to aim properly, at arms holding up swords, at legs below shields, at anything fleshy at all, to take down the entire grouping.

None of them had any Health at all, and even then, Erick was pretty sure that his staff would cut through that rather well. The only real defense against these supercharged Blood, Decay, Angry Benevolence, multipronged burrowing Bolts, was a thick layer of metal, or stone.

… And that seemed to be the majority of the camp?

Erick wasn’t sure, but he had time to kill and lots of enemies elsewhere, so he waited for [Meditation] to refill his weapon.

And then he [Hidden Step]ed toward the encampment, fast as he could, before circling around it again and stepping up off the hillside, easily leaping several vertical meters to land on the wall. Just like he suspected, there was one major enemy remaining. Erick’s reaction was fast enough for him to send a quick salvo at the enemy down below, before it could do anything worse than it had already done.

Erick’s mind caught up to his action a fraction of a second later, as he watched his spellwork impact a monster. For a moment, the thing in the center of the camp was a towering man, with the lower half of a spider and two sets of arms, with each hand filled with a different weapon; a sword, a mace, a shield, and a wand. It was an ugly fucker, with bony growths poking out of every hard edge of its body. All of that was bad enough, but the existence of a clearly-intelligent monster was an odd enough thing to see that Erick might have tried to talk to it, if it hadn’t already tried to attack him.

And it had a red tabard on, and it was in the middle of committing horrors, so the results of that talk were already a foregone conclusion. Plus, it was already attacking him, too. It had pointed that wand in its hand at Erick.

A stream of bright red fire lanced from that wand, threatening to take off Erick’s head, or slice him into halves.

Erick shot off another tap of his own weapon, from the hip.

As Erick dodged the fire, the abomination in the center of camp exploded into blackened gore.

Black gore rained down all around the decaying body of the monster humanoid, and Erick strained his actual senses, trying to hear or see if there were other people in the camp. He still had some mana sense, but that personal skill wasn’t that great down here, when his range was only 10 meters and the truly dangerous enemies had ways of making themselves invisible to his senses.

… Nothing else attacked him, though.

Erick took another step, and another, checking out the areas nearby. A quick walk around the walls of the camp was enough to show that he had killed everyone that needed killing.

“… I think that’s the last of them,” Erick said, daring the dungeon to throw a surprise monster at him.

… No surprise monster came forth.

So that was one camp mostly done! Wasn’t too bad.

There was only one fly in this ointment: Erick had felt, when he saw those soldiers cheering for the deaths of people inside the camp, where Erick could not see, that there were people down here, suffering, just out of sight. And he had been right.

Three bodies in blue tabards lay in the center of the camp. They were burned and bloody, and very dead. Erick suspected that they had been executed in a gladiatorial sort of way; set against the abomination for the pleasure of the Riam soldiers, though he had no real way to confirm or deny that happening right now; he would be [Witness]ing later, but he doubted he would get any temporally local answers in that [Witness]. At least these blue tabarded people had died fighting, unencumbered by manacles.

Two more people in blue tabards, with their arms and legs locked together in irons, sat in cages to the side of the courtyard.

Erick went and grabbed the keys hanging beside the cages and began freeing the blues. Aside from dirt and small wounds suffered from being captured, both of them looked healthy enough to make it to Architect Marii’s on their own—

As soon as the first of the blue tabards was free and outside the cage, the man suddenly stood straight, and stated, “Thank you for the rescue, sir. I am a healer. Where should I go?”

Before Erick could formulate a response to the pure oddity of the man’s sudden change in demeanor—