The world flickered and changed as my mind was dumped into another vision of stage 4. Instead of appearing hovering among the rafters with the gargoyles high above Queen Marisara's huge, vaulted throne room, I appeared in a much smaller room.

Still bigger than most living rooms, the space was cozy compared to the throne room. Walls sheathed in golden wood planks, and colorful rugs spread across the flagstone floor made the space feel more homey. A wide fireplace was filled to bursting with logs being consumed by pink flames. Shutters covered the tall, narrow windows, blocking any view of the outside.

And of course, sitting in a thronelike chair near the fire, but facing the room, sat the beautiful nymph queen. Marisara looked as resplendent as always, but she'd swapped out her sparkly dress for epic silver scale armor that fit her lithe frame like a second skin.

It looked exceptionally flexible while protecting her entire body up to her neck. She still wore the diamond-studded, 7-layer choker on her long, slender neck, and the tall, upswept, fin-shaped diamond crown on her head. Her white tresses were woven into a thick braid, making her flawless face look far younger and somehow vulnerable.

Her glowing blue eyes destroyed that fabrication as she stared with haughty pride across the room, directly at me. Her fancy trident leaned against the back of her chair and she sat in a relaxed pose, delicate white hands draped over the arm rests.

As soon as I appeared, I willed myself to roam around the room. Just like in the movie experience, I zipped around anywhere I pleased. I circled around behind Marisara and tried snatching the trident. Too bad, my hand passed right through. So unrivaled viewing experience, but no actual interaction.

What a relief. In the last video, she'd impaled me with that trident. It felt all too real and the shock had hurled me out of the vision, but I'd been unharmed.

Queen Marisara spoke, her voice still harsh, and an unseen force yanked me back around to my starting position to face her. The hint of a mocking smile tugged at her perfect lips and her blue eyes blazed with power.

"Don't dawdle, minnows. The sooner you climb to my stage, the sooner I can be done with you and leave this tiresome planet."

She made a dismissive gesture, and I expected to be thrown from the vision again. Pretty lame. Not even a glimpse of the outside, no help with estimating her castle's defenses or the power of her army. No glimpse of her court full of mighty noble elite powerhouses either.

I didn't disappear, though, and Queen Marisara's gaze narrowed, as if she could see me hovering there.

"You need to work on the whole negative PR vibe you've got going on. Must kill your tourism."

I didn't expect her to hear me, but speaking helped me feel less out of my depth.

She rose and approached, her movements fluid and graceful. Her figure was as beautiful as her face. On Earth, she could have won every beauty pageant instantly, but along with her superhuman gorgeous looks radiated an icy aura of cunning. She would gut me as calmly as she'd cut that black gecko in half in the first vision.

When Marisara spoke again, her words were softer, her tone curious. "Of all the vermin we have watched, you remain a puzzle."

"Glad I could help."

"We shall see to that now," she added.

And then the vision disappeared, dropping me back onto the barren dry plaza in the center of the rainy stage-3 ruins.

"Huh. That wasn't what I expected."

"She's easily bored and casually cruel to those she finds uninteresting," Cyrus responded. "But she's far more dangerous when her curiosity is piqued."

"What was all that about at the end? It sounded like she was talking to only some of us."

"Who can understand the whims of a woman, let alone a queen?"

I had no idea what she'd been talking about with that last pronouncement, but Cyrus clearly wouldn't enlighten me. So I switched topics and said, "That was quite an announcement you just dropped on us."

"I'm so excited for this next stage," Cyrus exclaimed, sounding like a kid jumping up and down in excitement Christmas morning. "I've barely resisted the urge to tell you all about it early."

He actually hadn't resisted very well. "Why keep it a secret?"

"The build-up makes it so much more fun!"

Maybe for him.

Cyrus continued, his tone more serious than usual. "Lucas, live feeds begin in an hour, and things will be different."

"Yeah, you had suggested there's going to be a lot more scrutiny. I hadn't imagined it would get this invasive, though."

"As one of the more interesting humans, you'll get more than your share of views too. That's why we had to push so hard on stage 2."

"Can't folks rewind to watch earlier events?"

"Only curated highlights, like your boss battles. Even the snippets I showed on the daily highlights reels racked up enormous numbers of views. I suspect you'll earn a lot of VIP points from each of those boss fights."

I knew it. "So what can we spend VIP points on?"

"Lots of things. Options will open up in the shop soon," he said in an off-hand way, clearly not interested in that right now.

"Lucas, our experiment has progressed beautifully. Stage 1 was all about testing your potential, and you passed every test with style. On stage 2 we focused on fast power growth and securing a solid foundation. Again, you excelled and became strong."

"I'm definitely starting to see the benefits." I almost said stage 3 should be easy compared to stage 2 since I'd leveled so much, but caught myself before I jinxed it.

Cyrus added, "As I warned you, I won't be able to offer as much direct help on this stage. With streaming unlocked, you'll be watched constantly, and no doubt scrutinized even more closely by potential sponsors. We cannot risk the full details of our experiment being exposed."

That dulled my enthusiasm. "How is that possible? People will see I'm tier 1, with a couple evolved abilities."

"True, but they'll also see all the incredible death battles you survived. Your meteoric rise in power through stage 2 came only after you nearly failed to survive stage 1. No one will bother studying the minutia of your struggles when they can enjoy your exciting and entertaining duels."

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Even if they tried, I bet he'd selectively edit the saved videos. "Okay, that makes sense."

Actually, I wasn't sure what to feel. At one level, the thought of Cyrus being forced to leave me alone sounded amazing. I could leverage my higher stats to crush stage 3 and help my team excel without his meddling. That had to be a good thing.

On the other hand, I had to admit if he hadn't forced me to undergo Fulvia's brutal mana evolution therapy, I would have died on stage 2. His tactics were unforgiving and had seemed cruel at first, but definitely resulted in unprecedented growth. As much as I'd sometimes doubted Cyrus, he'd kept his word, albeit in a roundabout way that included me almost dying way too often.

I pushed my worries aside. I'd survived his many tests and could leverage my power now to keep my team safe and help save Earth. That was why we were there, after all.

"So, what happens if I run into another rift in space?" Every time I entered one of those behind-the-scenes maintenance areas, I'd gained some kind of benefit or high-tiered loot box.

"There will likely be fewer opportunities on this stage."

He hadn't said there would be none. No doubt, he had a way to fudge the live stream so that no one actually noticed me step out of view. I had to trust that he could, or both of us could get into a lot of trouble. If I found a rift, I'd take the chance and check it out.

The plaza was pretty dull with only me and Nigel standing there. So I checked in with Ruby and Steve. She asked a lot of questions about Cyrus's announcement that I couldn't answer yet. I hadn't gotten extra insights about how things worked yet. Steve was gloating about his placement on the top-10 list.

Tony and Burns confirmed they were preparing a large expedition to make the first organized push up to stage 3. In the meantime, Nigel and I decided to do some more hunting.

Jumping on Switchblade, we headed east. The road in had followed a nearly straight course almost due north all the way to the Port Royale settlement area. Now I wanted to scout either side of the route folks would be following toward town to ensure there weren't any major ambushes or bosses or other dangerous unknowns lurking.

Over the next half hour, we wove east through the ruined city, the buildings slowly deteriorating again. All of the rubble-strewn streets looked identical, and the many fast-flowing canals criss-crossing the area did little to help differentiate where we were.

In the poor visibility, folks could easily get lost, especially those lacking a Navigation utility spell. Even those of us with the nav spell could get turned around unless we paused to study the full map display that covered our entire vision. So I started carving marks on the demon statues in every intersection to help with navigation.

Like some western US cities I knew, I chose C to mark the center line running east to west that would bisect the settlement. Each street we moved east, I marked as C /100 E, C /200 E, etc. As we started moving farther south, I adjusted them to read 100 S / 100 E, etc. That way folks would know they were 1 block south and 1 block east of the settlement.

I shared my system with Tony and Burns, and they agreed to follow it. As long as no one got the math wrong and we all started marking from the settlement and working our way outward, we should be able to quickly and accurately add street numbers to the entire ruined town, making navigation a breeze.

Pushing on, suddenly Nigel perked up where he perched on the front of Switchblade, his little, shaggy head turning to the right. I slowed, ready to trigger Shield Dome or Shattercore Ballista if a monster appeared.

"What is it?"

"I smell sunshine," Nigel said, then leaped off Switchblade, swelled to Flying Lynx size, and raced into one of the more intact ruined buildings we'd passed in a while. The roof and upper story were gone, the windows and doors gaping holes in the sagging walls, but they hadn't totally collapsed.

Banishing Switchblade, I gave chase, every sense alert. I couldn't smell anything but the ever-present rain. What did sunshine even smell like?

The interior walls of the large building were more substantial than others I'd seen so far, made of actual stones instead of crumbling bricks. Nigel dashed through a huge entryway that must have been grand in its heydey, but now was a shattered ghost of its past. We traversed a long hallway with rotting floor planks that groaned with every step. I prepared to cast Tether Slide if the whole thing collapsed and sent us plunging down into an unseen basement.

Nigel darted into a broken doorway to the right, and when I followed, I nearly trod on his tail. He'd stopped inside and crouched in front of a set of worn stone steps leading into the ground.

Basements of ruined buildings in a shattered city called Ruin, drenched in constant rain, should be dark and foreboding, not glowing with bright sunlight and radiating delicious warmth.

"What have you found?" I breathed as I edged closer. The stairs reached a landing about 50 feet down, then turned so I couldn't see the source of the light. That was one deep basement.

"Sunshine and trees," Nigel said, then bounded down the stairs.

Usually I was the one to race into the unknown, but I had to scramble to keep up. After 4 steps, Nigel just jumped, spreading his limbs out to stretch the loose membranes running the length of his sides out like a wingsuit. He soared down the steps in a single bound.

I'd never actually seen him use the ability that gave his medium-sized form its distinctive name, and it was pretty awesome. Not to be outdone, I cast Tether Slide, with my tether point on the opposite wall of the landing, then leaped off the steps and let my spell yank me down after Nigel.

Using the spell to fast-fall down a flight of stairs was new, and I might have whooped just a little as walls and ceiling flashed past while I shot down the steep chute. I landed feet-first on the wall and pushed off, performing an easy backflip to drop to the flat landing next to Nigel.

Even though we could see around the corner, I blinked a couple of times to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. The staircase emptied into a sunlit city under a bright, blue sky.

"We're not in Kansas any more," I breathed as I followed Nigel down the flight of stairs that somehow deposited us in a pretty little park covered in short grass, dotted with dwarf apple trees, heavily laden with fruit.

"You haven't been in Kansas in weeks," Cyrus laughed.

"You know what I mean."

"Sure, but on Arasha you'll need to tweak that saying a bit."

"I'll work on it," I promised as I stepped onto the soft grass of the park. It was situated on a low hill, giving us a great vantage over some of the vast city stretching away in every direction.

"Hey, I know this city," I exclaimed as I absorbed the full scope of the scene before me.

It was Eryndale, the famed capital city of the Ashen Covenant. Unlike rain-soaked Ruin above, this city gleamed with alien wonder just like the city of that vision I'd seen when I touched the pedestal with the Heartstone Shard.

Well, it was very similar, but the enormous skyscrapers only rose 5 stories before just ending, as if they'd been sheared by a giant, invisible sword. Bright sunlight streamed down from the clear, blue sky, although there was no visible sun.

Some fluffy clouds even dotted the sky above the buildings, and somehow I couldn't see a ceiling, even though we'd definitely walked down steps to get here. The sky just kind of faded to a hazy blue that made judging the top of this underground city impossible, even when I tried zooming in on it with Spellseer's Gaze. Cyrus's voice boomed loudly across the expanse of the secret city.

"Welcome to Eryndale, the Echo City. This alternate glimpse into the famous capital offers insights into the world of the Ashen Covenant before its tragic collapse. From its gilded streets and grand edifices, you may glean vital clues to the power and brilliance that made them so mighty, as well as the hubris and folly that brought about their downfall."

"Note: You may explore this wondrous Echo City as much as you wish, but don't lose track of time. This is but an echo of reality, and it's never safe to live in the past for too long. Anyone who remains in Echo City for more than 1 hour will be randomly teleported somewhere on stage 1 or 2."

Cyrus's voice dropped to a conversational tone and he chuckled right next to me. "I do hope someone pushes the time limit. I'd finally get the chance to trigger the apocalyptic collapse of stage 2. Want to take the challenge? There's a great loot box in it for you."

"Thanks, but I'll pass." I barely paid attention to the offer, too caught up in the wonder of Echo City.

It was like a fantasy paradise with buildings that blended beauty and function in ways never imagined on Earth, wide boulevards paved with what might literally be gold, and greenery peeking up everywhere. From our vantage, 3 immense structures peeked up above the rest.

Unless I'd gotten totally turned around, one beautiful palace was situated pretty much exactly where Port Royale would be located in Ruin. Too bad the towers were all cut off because that palace would have put to shame the grandest castle on Earth.

Beyond the grand central palace, far in the distance rose heavier walls and turrets of a huge military castle. Then to the northeast rose a long, unbroken stone wall covered in ivy. Behind it peeked up countless large buildings and glittering steel and glass towers. That had to be an important area too.

"We've got an hour to explore. Where do you want to go?"

Nigel leaped to my shoulder, shrinking to kitten size. "Mighty capital cities of famous empires must have great restaurants."

I chuckled. "If we find one, we'll definitely see if they have any steak."

I headed for the nearest road, which headed northeast toward that walled compound. It was closer than the other 2 big structures, so might as well start there.

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