Without any soul nurturing treasures, it took Rafe's damaged soul approximately eight hours, longer than usual, to heal.

Rafe rolled his neck and shook his shackles as he prepared for the day ahead. It was finally the day of the promotion event.

Of course Rafe needed to prepare earlier than most that day. He needed to go to the Chosen's secret room.

Over the past week, Rafe sent his soul out to the top of the spire to spy on the city. The gods wouldn't tell him this sort of trivial information, and he also didn't care to ask about it. He didn't really care what would happen to the average citizens of Primus after the events of today.

More than a thousand floating islands came to the Ma'la capital to witness the promotion event. Finally, this place looked like a continent from back on Earth, and Rafe could not see where the islands ended even when standing atop the spire in his soul wisp form.

The last week had been one of debauchery, at least in the areas closest to the spire. This was a big moment in the history of Primus.

There was no word about the other hidden citizens of Primus, and Rafe did not care enough to ask the gods about it. But presumably, since these people were staying in places apparently hidden from the Ma'la, then they should be in contact with the gods and should know what was going on in their world.

Rafe wondered what these people were doing now. He wondered what he was going to be doing in a few hours. He didn't know what the gods had planned. He didn't know what the natives had planned.

In his defense, plots and intricacies weren't his strong suit. The gods had promised him a way to fight the Chosen, and so he would fight. What kind of plot could he come up with to fight someone so much stronger than him anyway? It was better to leave that kind of thing to others.

He would only need to grab his sword and swing when the time came.

Rafe was healed and waiting. He didn't know what the time was outside, but presumably it wasn't the time to act yet. He could have taken the matter of escaping into his own hands, but the gods promised him an escape if he survived the pits, and he even ended up fighting an E grade for that opportunity.

He was sitting with his eyes closed when he sensed a hot aura in his cell. Someone appearing this suddenly obviously meant they weren't an easy opponent, because his aura was still spread throughout the underground complex.

And with this hot aura, Rafe had a few suspicions.

It was not Goleon though. Rafe was very familiar with the former Chosen by now. So who was this new god?

Rafe did not care about it at all. Presumably this was the god going to deliver on the promise to free him. He didn't even open his eyes, just waiting patiently for the game to start.

He heard the god click his tongue. Then he felt the shackles on his arms and legs start to heat up. Obviously the fact that he could feel their searing heat was meant as punishment for offending this new god.

But Rafe's body was desensitized. Even if his last torture session was weeks ago now, Rafe's nerves had hardened. Not any trivial pain could affect his mental state.

When the shackles fell off, Rafe opened his eyes to stare at a golden bearded man. The man had white flames for eyes, and was looking at Rafe curiously.

"Maybe I can take out my hammer one last time," he muttered, though Rafe was still able to hear it. "Boy, my name is Burn, father of fire!"

"Okay?" Rafe said with a frown, eyeing this discount Prometheus up and down.

"You have two hours to do your own thing, don't waste it. You have only five minutes to escape before the guards all around the spire return from breaking their fast."

Rafe stood up and started stretching out his body. He spent a whole minute trying to work out the kinks in his muscles, but obviously it was impossible to be completely fit in such a short time. Especially given he was in a seated position for months.

The only thing he could do to improve his chances was reach into his soul void and pull out the sword Noid gave him as a gift after the first stage of the Skyholm legacy trial. It had been a while since he fought with a sword, had it not?

****

Somewhere at the bottom of the sea, Filoria stood below a transparent screen, looking up at the islands blocking her view of the sky.

There were mer people swimming every which way, playing and partying with the other citizens of Primus. The sounds of music and even more raunchy affairs reached her this far down. The people were very happy, very excited.

They had no idea they were all going to die on that day.

"Daughter," a voice said from a dark compartment behind her. "It is time. Go and collect the boy for me. And in my office. The tiny pods, I want all of them, and the pod with the C grade woman. Don't tarry. You know the promotion will be starting soon."

Filoria teleported straight into the spire, then she moved towards the cells first. She would collect Rafe and take him to the Chosen's office, where she would pick out the other things her father sent her for before finally setting out in the tiny space ship there. Her father had given her preliminary instruction on how to fly the thing.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

She walked to the bottom of the spire briskly, not stopping for anything. At a junction just before the entrance to the underground chamber, she heard laughter coming from the path to the right.

The guard who was working with Collab was doing his best to chat up the old man. Collab looked annoyed, and Filoria did not for even one second believe the second guard did not know this. He was just being willfully ignorant. She saw Collab's eyes narrow when he saw her.

With him here, things were going to be a little hard, but so what? She had about ten E grades guarding her in the shadows.

Then Collab looked away, and a dangerous glint entered his eye. She heard him growl.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, not looking at her.

When she turned, Filoria saw a smiling old man. He almost looked benevolent. Who would believe he was a deranged torturer?

"You asked for me to get permission from the Chosen to play with the boy," the torturer said. "Please have a look at this official document."

Filoria held the letter in her hands and her body shook. Clearly her father still didn't trust her enough. This deranged old man was going to escort her and Rafael, and make sure no unexpected problems occured.

Collab also read the letter with a stormy expression. Filoria saw his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword. He was about to erupt, and this torturer would probably be the first person to die.

"Enough of this," Filoria said. "We have limited time to achieve our objective."

She walked past all three men and moved through the entrance and into the basement. She had to go down two flights of stairs as the cell Rafe was in was that deep underground.

When she got to that floor, a sense of wrongness hit her. Every time she came down here, she felt like something was watching. An assassin from the shadows, holding a sharp metallic weapon to her throat. She always felt a hint of danger. Today this place was quiet.

Unconsciously, Filoria sped up.

Behind her, she could hear the old torturer struggling to keep up. Almost running. And he was breathing hard.

She kept on praying it wasn't so. Her heart sped up.

And then she reached the cell. The broken wooden door beams greeted her first. They were thicker than a reinforced wall, so the amount of strength required to break them was simply astonishing. But were they broken or simply hacked to pieces by something like an axe? Maybe a sword?

And inside the cell was even worse. The expensive energy suppressing shackles were melted, the runes that operated them destroyed. What's worse though, was that the cell was completely empty.

"This…" said the second guard.

Collab threw his head back and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

"Lord Collab, have you gone crazy?" the torturer asked. "We have to find the boy, otherwise we will be unable to face lord Chosen."

"Yes," Filoria said in a panic. "We have to —"

"I will not kill the girl, but the two of you will not be going anywhere today," Collab addressed both the guard and the torturer.

Filoria saw the torturer's face going blank. The man was a F grade, probably a very low level one even. There was no chance he would survive no matter how much Collab even tried to hold back.

"Former lord commander," the guard said while drawing his sword, emphasizing the former part. "Are you trying to rebel?"

Collab smirked, "what if I am?"

"Then I will have to kill you," he said.

Collab did not even get into a stance, instead moving forward and slapping the E grade guard, sending him barreling into the cage. Collab turned to the torturer who was shaking so much he looked like he might pee himself.

Although just then, more than ten new E grade auras burst to life in the second underground chamber. Collab was besieged before he could kill the torturer.

Filoria ran out, and the stinky old man followed her closely.

Now Filoria had a dilemma. Rafe escaped from the jail. How was she going to find him? The spire was very big. And from what she knew, all the nobles of the country, who her father hated, were here. He hadn't said as much, but he had given her a time limit.

After thinking about it a bit, she came to one conclusion: the spire was about to be destroyed. Why should that be surprising though? The whole world was going to be destroyed in a few hours. Maybe as few as two hours.

Filoria decided to go to her father's office and prepare everything else first. In fact it would be better if she didn't risk her life down here. She'd leave this so called teacher of hers to deal with things here.

"Teacher, I'm going to do something in father's office. Why don't you look for the boy down here and meet there later?"

"What?! You want to leave me down here with that brute?" the torturer shrieked.

"Don't worry, he is being tied down by more than ten people at his level. Just mobilize the royal guards to search. After all, this prisoner did kill a royal. I'll go up first."

****

Meanwhile, it took Rafe quite a bit of time to get into the secret compartment of the office.

And once he got in the damn system started spamming the emergency quest again.

"Shut the hell up!" he screamed.

Then he felt that same sense of being watched. He turned to the large mirror in the room, tilted his head questioningly. He shrugged it off in the end though. There was nothing he could if someone was using that mirror to spy on him.

He rushed to the tiny pods, thinking maybe there was some complicated mechanism to opening them.

But the damn things were being restless and awake, a sharp contrast to the rest of the room. Rafe suddenly had hope these little creatures might just survive.

But that didn't last long. He decided it would be better to just pry the pods open instead of looking for some kind of button or for some weird way to connect these things to his status screen. He had read a lot about artifacts previously, and he thought maybe these things worked similarly, but with the tiny creatures this agitated, he had no choice but to use the fastest means possible.

But when he opened their pods the little things flew out lethargically. He continued his work for more than thirty seconds. And then he finally arrived at the last tiny pod. And he noticed it was the pond with the creature that had many colors, like every part of it was grafted from a different type of sprite.

He also noticed this sprite wasn't active like the others. And that all the sprites he had freed previously were now congregated around this last pod. They suddenly turned to him and screamed on small frenzied voices. A few even lifted their tiny fists in warning.

Rafe had no choice but to open the pod.

Immediately, a group of sprites went forward to look at the immobile one. But a single sprite, a golden coloured one approached Rafe instead.

Rafe frowned, wondering what was happening here.

Then his status screen suddenly lit up again, and the menus switched rapidly. It wasn't Rafe manipulating his status. It was the little sprite.

And it landed on his inventory screen. Rafe read through the list as things scrolled down faster than he could see. Then he noticed that something was flowing from the little sprite's body. Some kind of powder? And the sprite's body was getting smaller, like it was losing part of its essence. It didn't pay that any mind though, instead going through his inventory and shaking its head in misery and disappointment.

Then it suddenly stopped and started chirping excitedly. Two other golden sprites and a black sprite shot over and watched. They started nodding excitedly and communicating to each other through chirps. Their bodies were all fading.

It turned out they really weren't going to be able to live after this. And what was it that got them so excited?

Still born phoenix egg…

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