Ethan climbs up the stairs to the room where Lucian and his men are. The one who was in the altar room left while Ethan talked with the girl. As he enters the throne hall, he sees that Lucian's men are gathered near the door, unconscious. Azriah and Lucian are making sure they are all breathing.

"What happened?" Ethan asks.

"That's our question," Lucian barks, playing into their cover. His question is genuine, but the emotion is fake. "What did you do?"

Azriah lays her weapon against a wall and removes a guard's helmet to take his pulse. She glances at Ethan, giving him an angry side-eye.

"I met your spirit. She's a child left here centuries ago to protect a vault filled with the bodies of cursed warriors." Ethan triggers Predator's Sight to check the soldiers' vitals. They are physically well, but he can sense that their souls are exhausted. "There is nothing for us down there."

"Who attacked them?" Azriah asks. "They cried tears of joy right before they fell to their knees."

'I didn't think they could sense the illusions we created,' Ethan thinks. He searches Lucian's soul and realizes that he's pretending to be well. His soul took the same hit as his men's. "Both of us, I think. The altar must have amplified my abilities."

"You should know better than to flaunt visualization next to weak souls," Azriah reprimands. She comes close to Ethan and jabs a finger into his chest. The pressure at the back of him pulsates with each poke. "You could have crippled them! I'm not even sure they'll all wake up."

"They are all fine. Their souls are exhausted but not done." Ethan grabs her wrist and moves her hand away from him. The pressure at the back of his mind flares, turning into a stabbing pain.

Hate that isn't his own surges up from the spike in Ethan's mind. He staggers half a step back, feeling the thrill rising and war Ether forming in his heart.

"Kill it," Maelor whispers. His words rattle the spike stabbing Ethan's mind. The pain grows, stabbing deeper. "Kill it!"

Ethan lets go of Azriah's wrist. The pain and Maelor's voice vanish, replaced by the usual pressure. He looks at her and sees in her gaze that she knows that something happened. Did she sense Maelor's presence like she sensed Kaliathra's influence?

Azriah moves back to place herself next to Lucian. She cannot stop herself from staring at Ethan.

'Why?' Ethan ponders. He tries to probe Maelor's memories for previous encounters with Azriah, but they feel even more distant than usual. He thinks of removing his necklace of willpower to give in slightly to the merging. But he doesn't have the luxury to risk a fight between them.

"Are you all right?" Lucian asks, letting none of his soul's worry into his voice.

"Why did I feel a god's influence coming from you?" Azriah asks.

'Do you think it could be any god, or do you already know and are trying to catch me in a lie?' Ethan thinks. He sighs and molds his expression to look slightly ashamed. "Some time ago my soul was invaded by an errant one. He was a priest of Seraphel and, despite having been silent for weeks, decided he doesn't like you."

"That's all? He just dislikes me?" Azriah asks. It draws a suspicious glance from Lucian that she doesn't catch.

"Yeah," Ethan lies. Would Maelor's command be justified by what she's hiding? Ethan himself was marked by Seraphel for simply conversing with Kaliathra. "I was just surprised he acted up again."

"Will this be a problem?" Lucian asks.

"No," Ethan answers.

"Possessions only get worse," Azriah refutes. "It will only take a few weeks for you to lose control unless you do as he wants."

Ethan tuts. "I've been dealing with this for months. We have an agreement, and he's shown himself more than lenient about the time it takes."

Lucian doesn't let it show, but Ethan can feel he's getting confused by the conversation. Crossing his giant arms, Lucian asks, "What agreement?"

Ethan answers, "Errant souls stay in this world because of their regrets. Like she said, I need to fulfill his literal dying wish to get rid of him. In his case, it's to find an artifact that was stolen by the people who killed him."

Azriah's eyes twitch to the side as she thinks. "What artifact?"

"None of your business," Ethan denies.

"It is when you could turn into a zealot one morning because he took over!" Azriah barks.

"I've already dealt with that," Ethan retorts. "The worst of it has passed, and his only influence is the skills he bequeathed me and his dislike of you."

"Enough," Lucian commands. Ether rolls out from him, carrying his voice and making it reverberate. "I appreciate you both coming to our help. But this bickering has to stop. I have nine men unconscious, and we are three days away from base. Can you even tell me how long they'll be knocked out?"

"Hours at best, days at worst if left on their own," Ethan answers. Sensing a man's struggle through Predator's sight, Ethan moves the soldier's head to ease his breathing. He stands, summons Zhiznezhret in his right hand, and places the blade against his left palm. The chipped, dulled, and nearly fractured weapon struggles to cut Ethan, but he presses against it until it draws blood.

Whips of red light escape Ethan and float away from him, dragged towards the nearest soldiers.

Azriah steps away from the group.

"What's that?" Lucian asks. He makes it sound as if he doubts Ethan despite the trust echoing from his soul.

"Life force," Ethan answers. He moves from one soldier to the next, giving them all enough life force to wake up. He quotes Alaric, "It's a transitory energy – the substance of souls. You can consume it to replace or strengthen your Ether, but the soul can also absorb it to repair itself."

"Aren't you worried you will exhaust your soul?" Lucian asks, feigning concern.

"His soul is a lot more powerful than that of your men," Azriah comments. She glances away, almost refusing to look at the strands. "But it's rare to be able to stand the pain of having your life force drawn. I've seen people begging for death when it happened to them."

"And when was that?" Ethan asks. He directs strands towards Lucian and unsummons his weapon.

"I said enough," Lucian reiterates. As his men begin to stir, he turns to Azriah. "Can you make sure our path out of the city is clear?"

"If it pleases you," Azriah accepts. She grabs her weapon and walks onto the bridge.

"You were right," Lucian whispers. He moves to the side, far enough so his men can't hear them talk. "She's hiding something she doesn't want us to know. But she carried every last one of them out of your reach, despite the danger. And I gave her several opportunities to attack me, but she didn't even consider it."

"She was in no danger; she's immune to it," Ethan refutes. "Let's say neither of us nor your haven is her target. She's also not pushing to go back to the mind control city, meaning she doesn't have the same goal as me."

"Which is?" Lucian asks.

"I can only dance around the topic. If I talk about what I'm looking for or its owner, it might attract him," Ethan says. "What I can tell you is that it's an item, and I have to destroy it before leaving this place. It'll hinder its owner long enough for me to kill my father's murderer."

"Wait, what?" Lucian exclaims. He grabs Ethan by the shoulders. "You finally found him?"

"He was here all along," Ethan explains. He senses Azriah returning and steps away from Lucian, remodeling his face to hide his anger.

"The way is clear," Azriah says as she enters.

After a day of travel, the group beat their estimate and travelled fifty kilometers north. Ethan and Azriah, being able to tear apart any surface-dwelling monsters, reduced the need for stealth. And Lucian's men proved themselves to be inhumanly endurant, wearing their armor for the entire journey.

Lucian tracked time with a makeshift pocket watch. As night approached, he pulled out a paper map and directed them towards the ruins of a fort. Only its tower remained above ground, but through a breach in its exterior, they were able to enter the building. The fort's interior was mostly intact, except for the rare walls collapsed by dirt and roots.

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Lucian ordered the men to set up camp. They split themselves between acting as sentries and barricading the place with the broken furniture they found. Their discipline was silent and mechanical, exactly what Ethan expected of men trained by Lucian.

Ethan drew his ritual to cover an entire barrack of stone beds and vanished from the group.

Sitting at the top of the tower, surrounded by an anti-dark Ether ritual, Ethan reads Verses of Power as Lucian's men eat. This particular section of the book is mostly theory. It talks about how the glyphs and words used in spellcasting are influenced by the meaning they are given by man. That, with enough time, a spell or ritual may change because the meaning of its components evolved.

Lucian climbs the stairs to the tower's top. He removed his heavy armor, revealing a physique healthier than Ethan remembers. It looks like he stopped taking drugs and rebuilt himself with the system. He speaks in English. "The others are resting or on guard duty. And she's doing doodles on the ground."

Ethan smirks. He followed everyone with Predator's Sight and saw her trying to reproduce the ritual he laid out in the barracks. "She's trying to copy my anti-dark Ether ritual. I think I scared her; she might try to go East on her own."

"She's a powerful asset. If she's ready to split, it could mean she's truly an ally of fortune. Or she's planning for after she kills you." Lucian joins Ethan and looks over his shoulder to see the tome he's reading. He sits on a metal crate beside Ethan. "Still keeping your mind busy."

Russ grabs the bag of shredded beef he was eating from and brings it next to Lucian. He lies down beside Four and continues eating. For some unknown reason, he seems to favor Lucian over Ethan; it had been the case before.

"You got some more of that?" Lucian asks. He puts a hand into his haver-satchel and pulls out a glass bottle with a hand-drawn label. It was painted by a child with wax pencils and reads 'mead' with a few red bees flying around. "I've got some of these in exchange."

Ethan extends his hand and summons another MRE, exchanging it for the bottle. He uncorks it and sniffs the liquid; it smells strong and sweet, with a note of elderberry. "I haven't seen any hive in Haven Under, not to mention the near absolute absence of flowers."

"Blood hornets. At least that's what the system calls them," Lucian says. He shows their size with his fingers, making them out to be ten centimeters long. "They clean up the corpses and make honey from them."

Ethan tips the bottle into his mouth, taking a sip. It is stronger than Earth's mead, and he doubts it only contains alcohol. "Who was brave enough to steal it from them?"

"They aren't venomous. But they do bite," Lucian says. His soul turns somewhat sorrowful. He takes a swig from his own bottle. "Do you remember the last time we shared a drink?"

"Two nineteen? After our little tournament," Ethan guesses.

"It feels so long ago. I've lost track of how much time I've been here." Lucian opens the MRE bag and sets the main course aside to heat up in its cardboard. "How was it when you got stranded?"

"It didn't feel as if I was losing track of time. And with Russ there I had more than enough to keep myself occupied. You got quite busy yourself."

"East was my first bet, following the rivers. I thought I might find a coastline, maybe a port. But when you get too far, a fog appears out of nowhere and starts burning you, as if it were acid." Lucian pulls out his smaller map and points west. "The other way is filled with living swamps. The ground grows teeth and eats you. I lost two men before we realized."

"I could send you back now," Ethan reveals. He summons a Return Stone and tilts it towards Lucian. The first experiment he did after laying his ritual was to see if every Return Stone was affected. "Mine isn't sealed."

"How many people can it transport?" Lucian asks, staring at the item.

"A party of four, plus bonds," Ethan answers. "But I can't go with you. I've my business to deal with before I leave this place."

"Do you have another way to travel back?" Lucian asks. He looks away from the stone and opens his bag of tortillas.

"Not yet," Ethan says. "Maybe you are my way out. The master of the Realm of Ascension didn't specify. He only said that doing this job would be in my interest."

"You're going to have to explain that," Lucian says, half laughing.

"The Realm of Ascension is the place you go when you reach max level. He is the owner of that place and a part of the system. There is no telling how long will pass here while you are there, and you could reappear anywhere."

"So, in three levels I'll get to meet the guy?" Lucian asks.

"Probably not," Ethan denies. "You'll go to his realm, and maybe it will offer you to undertake a greater challenge once you succeed. It's worth it, by the way. But I only met him because I was a danger to his realm."

"I only pretended to be satisfied with your explanation in the temple," Lucian says. He finishes his bottle and pulls out another one. "You have to tell me everything now that we aren't on a battlefield."

Ethan smirks and replaces his tome's bookmark before closing it shut. He unsummons the book and turns towards Lucian. "Soon after this all began, I explored the ravaged temple of an order of demon killers called the Abyss Watchers. There is a cracked stone at the bottom of the place that, I think, leads to the Abyss."

"I heard that before; people curse by it," Lucian comments.

"It's the realm of demons. I've met two kinds of these monsters – mouths, eyes, and limbs abominations and humanoids but with external skulls, horns, and such. One of the latter travelled through the stone after a ritual to reseal it was interrupted by assassins who took the artifact it required."

"The thing you need to find for the ghost in your head," Lucian connects.

"Yes. It's called the Etherlight Crucible, and it permanently radiates light Ether."

"Light Ether?" Lucian probes. "My status named the corrupted Ether dark. Is that the same thing?"

"Yes. Every god has his own Ether – light, life, dark, death, fire, war, and so on – they can all corrupt you and have different effects. And they are required to cast some spells. The crystals you found in the temple contain the death one." Ethan waits for his mentor as he slowly nods, taking in the information. "I found his undead corpse down there, and after killing him again, his soul invaded mine. It allowed me to speak their language and see some of his memories, but he also tried to take over."

"How bad?" Lucians asks.

"Disastrous," Ethan recalls. "But in his memories, I found my father's murderer. Maelor, that's the ghost's name, witnessed him giving a speech. So, I went back home and found out that my father took a pendant from an immortal. A pendant his killer was looking for and took from him before using the thing to return here."

"An immortal?" Lucian asks, dubious.

"Aranthor Elarion. He was a king here eight hundred years ago, but in a fight for the pendant, he sent both of them to our world. The time between worlds is weird, and he ended up stranded for thousands of years in ours."

Lucian looks to the side, thinking. "Isn't that whom she said your sword belonged to?"

"She was right on that one," Ethan comments. He summons Stormshard and hands it to Lucian. "He tried to kill me because he thought I was my father, who stole a lot of stuff from him, and said I was colluding with my father's murderer. He seemed insane."

"Why would he think that?" Lucian asks.

"That I was my father? The guy must have lived so long two decades must seem like a month to him. That I was colluding with his murderer? I don't know. Aranthor hated gods, and at the time I was being helped by Rest, one of the goddess of death's servants."

"Why?" Lucian pushes.

"Because I was in the Labyrinth of Death. They are long trials that appeared back on Earth to test if we are ready to connect to this world in a more permanent way than Dungeon Stones. There was a trial about regrets, and she helped me cheat it." Ethan's thoughts dance in his mind. The drink is hitting him like an entire bottle of vodka would have. "She helped me because her boss had a job for me, a job that basically boils down to killing Caelum Cindralis, the man I hunt."

"Is he here? Is that why you came to this place?" Lucian asks.

"Nooo, and yes," Ethan blurts out. "I'm here because she colluded with the master of the Realm of Ascension to get me to stop another guy from taking over Cindralis when he dies. The job is to stop what he's doing from happening."

"And that's?"

Ethan focuses and imagines the drunkenness leaving him as his liver filters out the alcohol and the toxins. "Your drink hits like a truck."

"The hornets leave poison in their honey. It takes some time to get used to, but without it I can't even feel the alcohol anymore." Lucian takes another swig from his second bottle. "What is he trying to do?"

"I've entered a pact with Rest that forbids me from telling you why he's doing it," Ethan answers. "But if he succeeds, it will destroy our world."

"What?" Lucian sobers up as he stands in surprise. "Are you serious?"

"I've seen it happen," Ethan confirms. "The fruit that made me evolve into a high human gave me visions. When triggers happen, I get taken to the past or the future. I've seen him destroy ours, and I've seen the man I'm trying to hinder destroy the Orcs' world – Varnokh."

Lucian laughs at the absurdity of it all, even if his soul echoes that he trusts Ethan's word. "You are telling me that while I was stuck in this place, you got roped into another world-ending conspiracy?"

"Yup," Ethan confirms, letting go to the drunkenness as he takes another sip. "It seems like if I play into Kaliathra's plan, I'll have a shot at him before that happens. But other gods might be making moves to counteract her plans."

"Why is she trying to prevent it? Wouldn't billions of dead please a death god?" Lucian asks. His soul echoes confusion as he comes to terms with the notion that gods exist.

"Their souls would be consumed instead of going to her," Ethan answers.

"And the other guy?"

"No idea. He said his job is to ensure we mortals get stronger." Ethan grabs his own, now-heated, bag of shredded beef and opens it. "When I see how weak the people of this world are and how fast the people from ours are growing, I think he wants to preserve our potential."

"How are things back home?" Lucian asks. He's still trying to get comfortable with what Ethan told him but feigns nonchalance.

"Last time I checked governments were still holding up. Billions died when the monsters appeared, but after that, things returned to normal. Obviously, there are some who abuse their new powers, but the states seem to handle it. Or at least they give us new contracts."

"But didn't you say the labyrinth linked our worlds?"

"Ho yeah, that," Ethan buffers. "The U.S. Army tried to set a foothold in this world through the portal I opened. It's in Iraq. But they met a dragon, and right now the portal is surrounded by blue flames. And even if they went out tomorrow, the portal is the subject of international negotiations."

"Everyone wants to have access to it," Lucian guesses.

"Likely," Ethan confirms. "The U.S. going in first started a one-night war with China. A lot of the labyrinths are in Europe, so it's likely they'll be the cause of other conflicts."

"Damn," Lucian comments. "That's all?"

"A lot has happened, but this is the important information," Ethan confirms. He takes a bite of his food as Russ brings him his empty bag. Ethan summons another MRE and pulls out the serving of beef for Russ.

"When will you be done here?" Lucian asks.

"Don't know," Ethan admits. "I think what I'm looking for is in the city next to your Haven. But when I escaped its illusion, it reacted to me, and I'm not sure I can return unnoticed."

Lucian thinks for a moment, silently chewing his food. "Before I improved things for them, they used to. Some of them just got up, screamed at their comrades, and ran back inside. Nobody stopped them."

"Interesting," Ethan comments. He opens his black beans and tortillas to assemble his side dish. 'I'll need to experiment with the city's influence. Maybe there is a way I can imagine my soul as subdued to it.'

They eat in silence for a while. Lucian's soul is almost mute, but when he glances at Ethan, he echoes worry.

'I wonder how he would react if he knew I could read his emotions.' Ethan thinks. He eats his cookie and throws the emptied MRE into his Inventory. Tiredness invites itself, making his eyes heavy. "You should go back to your men. I'll come down when I feel I can't resist anymore. I want to see if she tries anything."

Lucian gathers his and Russ' garbage and hands the bags to Ethan. He stretches his neck and begins to walk down the stairs. The worry coming from his soul grows, but he uses his serious, commanding voice. "I felt the gap in our strength the moment you reappeared. And I barely understand what you got yourself into. But if you need help, ask this time."

Ethan looks down, thinking of what he should say to him. He takes too long, and Lucian descends the stairs.

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