Battlefield Reclaimer

by David North

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

High Peak Publishing.

Cover Illustration by MiblArt.

Copyright by David North.

Battlefield Reclaimer 1: Class Day

"Stupid, broken system," Sam grumbled as he kicked the rock in front of him. The last bit of hope in his future had just fallen away, leaving him bitter, as he saw the prompt at the corner of his vision.

"Why couldn’t I have been a Wizard or Healer? Or even a Farmer? But nope, it had to be the same damn class…."

The class his family had received for the last fifty years, ever since the World Law had started to fail. At least, that’s what the more superstitious members of the village thought was happening.

Once upon a time, his family had been Arcane Researchers, a well-respected subclass of Wizards who delved into the past. They worked for the really powerful battle wizards, creating spells and strengthening wards. They had accumulated a lot of wealth and even lived in the city.

But ever since his grandfather’s time, when the class had failed to be inherited.... The change was a death curse.

Now they were stuck living in this little village that was all he’d ever known except in his imagination.

The notification hung at the corner of his vision and he flopped down on a rock as he tried to wave it away. Instead, it opened again to the sound of cheerful trumpets. It was even outlined in gold light.

Congratulations! You have unlocked a unique class! There can be only one of these classes in each generation.

Henceforth, you are a Battlefield Reclaimer!

"Go away!" He shouted at it, waving his hand through the air where it appeared. Stupid cursed thing.

The class was completely broken. The realization that he hadn’t escaped his family’s fate was a mountain pressing down on his shoulders. It was crushing his dreams.

"Sam!" His dad’s cheerful shout came from across the field. He wasn’t far from their house, just around the corner. Like always, his dad knew where to find him.

Before long, the slightly portly man jogged up in front of Sam, grinning at the same time as he gasped for breath.

"Son!" He laughed as he grabbed Sam’s shoulders and bear-hugged him. "You got your class! This is excellent. You can come with me and explore the old ruins now. I think I’m getting close to unlocking a secret that will let us advance."

He let his father lead him back to their house, his head low. It was his eighteenth birthday and he couldn’t avoid the celebration his family had planned, no matter how embarrassing it was.

Their small house was warm and bright. His mother and little sister had decorated it with silver and gold streamers, which had probably cost too much, and they were waiting for him with smiling faces. His sister, Altey, grabbed his hand and danced around the room with him.

He couldn’t stop a smile.

On top of the chipped wooden table, there was a cake, which was also decorated in silver and gold. Colorful metallic icing and spell-inscribed candles shot little sparks into the air.

Eighteen was a special birthday, since it was the day you got your class. He had been hoping that he would be a powerful Battlemage or a Paladin, or even a Scholar or Farmer, any of which would have given him a clear path for advancement and useful innate skills and abilities to support his family.

Now, he was just sure that the cake had cost far too much. It had to have been at least worth a couple silver coins, which was a week’s pay for his father as an unclassed laborer.

His mother was from a different family line and should have been spared the curse, but she was unlucky in her own way. Her family class was Historian.

Not all of the classes in the world were easy to level and some were outclassed by much more powerful versions. Unfortunately, Historian was one of them. They could never measure up to an Arcane Researcher, much less the much more powerful Seer.

The class didn’t even have magic as one of its abilities. It was supposed to earn experience through reading and writing books about what had happened in the past. In a world that ran on power and magic...basically, they were useless.

They couldn’t even afford the paper to help her get past the first level.

When she first met his father, it had been at the unskilled laborer’s pool. Her family was as broke as his father’s, so they hadn’t been able to set her up for success either.

The only way to level a useless class like that was if you were a noble and had the time and resources to pour into it...and then you could at least learn some of the non-class specific skills and subclass as a swordsman or guard.

A Historian Swordsman, hah....

His mother’s bright smile washed away all of those thoughts as she pulled him and his sister towards the table. Looking at her, he felt ungrateful for even thinking such things.

"Happy Class Day!" His family cheered as they sang a birthday song for him.

"May you have great success on your path!" His little sister was first to offer the traditional congratulations. She was practically dancing in place, jumping around as she held onto his hand. She was only ten, and completely adorable with blond hair pulled up behind her head in a bun that their mother must have done for her.

Even coming from his sister, the words burned.

What path?! He cried in his heart. There was no future for this class! His father was proof of that. Even with the ability to earn experience from universal tasks, like killing monsters, farming, building, or other common professions, it was never equal to leveling your own class.

Even after all of these years, his father had only made it to level 9. The level 10 barrier required a class quest to complete.

A Wizard could have made level 10 in a month.

It got progressively harder the higher you went, but the first twenty levels were nothing. Even once you hit 100 and you had to look for evolution paths to upgrade your class...that was still easier than trying to survive with a broken class.

"Sam!" His father called, pulling his mind out of its rut. He ran into the bedroom, the single other room in the house, and came out with a scroll wrapped in a leather tube. "I have your present!"

"Oooh, what is it?" Altey cheered as she jumped up and down. Her excitement was palpable. "Open it! Open it!"

Sam took the scroll from his father and, at an encouraging look, unrolled it.

It was a spell scroll.

"Now that you have a class, you can learn general spells," his father grinned at him, his enthusiasm unflagging. "Read it! It took a lot of work to prepare that for you. I know how much you’ve always loved the idea of being a Wizard! What’s more, learning a spell will give you enough experience to get your first level! Happy birthday, son!"

"Your father has been holding onto that spell for a long time, Sam," his mother said, smiling gently. "You don’t know, but it’s something your grandfather left him before he passed away...he’s refused to use it himself and has been saving it for you."

Sam’s hands trembled as he unrolled the spell scroll, reading the contents.

The scroll was an ornate swirl of sigils and runes, a spell pattern that flared into existence. The information swirled through his mind and settled into a prompt, translating all of that information in a way he could understand.

Aura Bolt.

Aura Cost: 1 AP

Duration: Instant

Classification: Damage.

Do you wish to learn this spell?

Sam’s hands trembled as he held onto the spell scroll. He couldn’t tell if it was rage or joy...or just self-loathing. He hated that he was such a failure.

That he would never amount to anything.

"This is too much...." His face was pale as he tried to push the scroll back, but his father just smiled and shook his head, refusing to accept it.

A lesser man might have become angry with him for rejecting a very expensive gift, but his father understood. He’d felt the same bitterness once.

"It will be fine, Sam," his father said proudly, as he patted him on the shoulder. "Read that scroll and then let’s eat this wonderful cake your mother prepared!"

A burst of warmth spread through Sam’s chest as he let out a sigh, finally accepting what he couldn’t change.

He might be a failure, but at least he had his family.

The spell scroll crumbled to dust in his hands. The sigils on it flared into brilliance, forming a pattern in the air that sank into Sam’s forehead.

Congratulations! You have learned Aura Bolt!

A chime of experience flashed as a wave of power flowed into him. It was something he’d never felt before and amazement filled his mind.

The ability to gain experience required a class, and that only happened when you turned eighteen.

It was only a small spell, but it had given him ten experience points just for learning it.

That announcement was followed immediately by another.

Congratulations! You have reached Level 1!

Your Status is now available to you.

A new notification popped up in front of him, drawing his attention towards a flashing icon that looked like a scroll.

Sam Hastern

General Level: 1

Experience to Next: 15.

Class: Battlefield Reclaimer, Level 0.

Sub-Class: None

Profession: None.

Race: Human

STR: 8

CON: 10

AGI: 9

WIS: 8

INT: 10

AUR: 10

CHA: 10

Spells: Aura Bolt.

Skills: None.

As soon as that screen appeared, another notification popped up.

Your life before receiving a class has been evaluated by the World Law. You have gained a Profession.

Scholar, Level 1.

That was expected, as was its level. Professions couldn't be higher than your level. His family had always been well educated, and his father had made sure that their history as researchers had not gone to waste on him.

You Have Also Gained a Trait.

Defiant.

For just a moment, Sam’s hope shot upwards, as his eyes widened. It wasn’t everyone who could get a trait as soon as they got their class!

Then he read the description.

Your desire to rebel against the World Law has marked you. This trait results in town guards, magistrates, and officials of Law regarding you with disdain. This trait grants you CHA - 2.

CHA: 8.

"Damn you!" Sam howled towards the sky as he read the trait. His hands clenched into fists.

"Haha, it’s all right, son." His father patted him on the back. "The old Defiant trait got you, eh? Don’t worry so much...no one out here cares about that. We’re too far from the cities for it to matter. Your grandfather had that trait too, and so do I. It comes with the territory."

"What?" Sam turned towards his father, his mouth dropping open in surprise. "You..."

"Don’t look so surprised, lad. We’ve been struggling with this class for a long time. Do you think I always accepted it so easily? No!" His father laughed as he patted him on the back again.

Before long, the birthday cake was finished and his father had taken him away for a father-son discussion, sharing more about the struggles of the Battlefield Reclaimer class.

"Your grandfather and I have always been trying to overcome the barrier of this class. Your grandfather actually created that spell hoping it would help us gain experience. He had two copies of it and they were the culmination of his life’s work. He used the first one himself, but it never helped him much. Perhaps he was too old by then."

His father shook his head.

"I have been saving that one as a way of easing the blow for you. I know how hard it is to suffer with a broken class."

"He made this spell?" Sam’s eyes widened as he looked at his father for answers. This was something he’d never heard about.

"Yes, his profession was Arcane Scribe. It was his gift." His father nodded in agreement. "Unfortunately, the materials to make spell scrolls are extremely expensive and finding a pattern for an unclassed spell like this one is even harder. Making those two scrolls was all he could do."

His father grinned, his belly shaking as he patted Sam on the shoulder again. The two of them were sitting on some flat rocks a little way from the house.

"He always claimed that he based the spell on everything he could figure out about the class, but he never had any luck in making it work. I’ve been studying the same thing, but I never found a way to use the spell to unlock the class and gain experience in it. So, instead of wasting it on myself, I saved it for you. Maybe you’ll have better luck."

"What do you mean?" Sam frowned. "How can the spell help gain class experience?"

"You know how classes work, right? I gave you a good education in that." His father’s answer was a question that turned the subject back to him, as it often was. He wanted him to think it through.

"Class experience comes from class quests, sub-professions, and nearly anything that levels one of the class abilities...but our class doesn’t have an ability, because we’ve never been able to unlock it. That’s one of the reasons it’s broken. A class should have a clear path of progression, with abilities starting at the first level, but ours doesn’t."

"Correct." His father grinned. "So, what do you think your grandfather planned?"

Ideas raced through Sam’s mind as he tried to put the parts together.

"If we’re able to gain regular experience...we can still hunt beasts, get professions, and so on, but ...how do we break past the Level 10 barrier? We need to accomplish a class quest for that."

"Correct again." His father smiled in approval. "So, what’s the name and description of the class?"

"Battlefield Reclaimer..." Sam mumbled, as he accessed the class description that he already knew by heart. He hadn’t even bothered to look at it until now.

The Battlefield Reclaimer is an ancient enchanter and smith who uses aura and essences from the elements, including rare ones like the sunset, aurora, or ocean light, to imbue items with rare and inexplicable properties.

This class allows the user to become attuned to concepts beyond mortality.

Seek out a battlefield and learn how to reclaim the artifacts of the past.

Then, for the first time, he saw something underneath the description.

Initial Class Quest (Unique to Battlefield Reclaimer): Reclaim an Aura.

Required to Unlock Class Abilities and Gain Class Experience.

Normally, a quest would have a description along with it, but this one didn’t. It was as if the system thought it was self-explanatory. That sort of thing was why it was a broken class.

"What...?" He wondered as he looked at the quest.

He was a smart fellow, and the connection between "Reclaim an Aura" and the Aura Bolt spell his father had given him was obvious. He just wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it or how he could possibly "reclaim" an aura.

It was part of the title of the class, sure, but...what did that even mean?

Apparently, his grandfather had never managed to pass this step, and he’d known far more about Aura than Sam did. He’d even been able to create a spell based on it.

"Now you see," his father laughed. "That’s the key we’ve all been chasing. Since you’re an adult now, I won’t hold back from swearing a bit. Feel free to ask me, ‘What the hell does that mean?’ And I’ll tell you that your guess is as good as mine. Neither your grandfather nor I ever figured it out. Hopefully, you have better luck."

His father patted him on the shoulder again as he stood up from the rock, groaning slightly as he stretched his back.

"Meet me here tomorrow and I’ll take you to the ruin I’ve been exploring. It’s ancient, something from before the World Law was broken, if you believe the superstitions. Perhaps it can give you a hint."

With that, his father headed back into the house.

Sam’s thoughts were tumbling like mad through his mind as he tried to sort out the information he’d just learned with the class quest, guessing wildly at what it could mean.

But...his father and grandfather had spent their entire lives on this quest. How could he possibly figure it out?

His eye was drawn to his status sheet again as he pulled it up, glancing towards the bottom where the cursed trait was visible.

"Defiant, am I?" He swore at it. "I’ll show you defiant."

Battlefield Reclaimer 2: The Old Dungeon

Sam was out behind their house in an empty field, near the low wall that surrounded the village, as he focused on the spell he'd just learned.

Aura Bolt.

Despite everything else that had happened, the ability to cast a spell was something that hit a place deep in his heart. His father had known exactly what to give him for his birthday.

Sparks of blue light surrounded his hands as he focused on channeling it. The spell pattern rotated in his mind.

It was a spell and it was his.

He'd never heard of one that could focus aura before, but that didn't matter. The pattern was a series of interlocking runes that inscribed a blue circle on the palm of his hands.

The circle was about three inches across. The runes floated in an outer band, leaving the center empty. It rotated slowly in the gathering dusk as night fell.

At the center of the pattern, a spark of light appeared and intensified, radiating the same bright blue color. It turned a bit deeper and more crystalline as he watched, keeping a close eye on it.

The pattern seemed to operate by itself as long as he was feeding it with energy, but he wanted to understand every part of it.

He concentrated on the light that was gathering as he touched the vague concept of aura that flowed through his body. The spell had pointed it out to him, but it wasn't something he'd ever used before.

Aura...felt like he was pulling vitality from his muscles and pushing it into the runes of the spell. Or maybe his bones and blood?

"Sam?" A familiar and unwelcome shout came from across the field as two young men wandered in, calling to him. "What are you doing out here all alone?"

Sam looked over at them, frowning, as the light in his hands continued to glow. Kilian and Boric, the two junior guards that had been assigned this year by the village council.

Technically, they were also villagers. They'd turned 18 the year before and got their classes. Killian was a Smith like his father, but he had subclassed as a Guard, and Boric was a Warrior through and through.

They had played together as children, but as they grew up and the importance of classes had become more prevalent, things had become less pleasant.

The average level in the village was in the mid-20s, and these two were already around 15. In the cities, he'd heard that it was even higher...and that the village was very weak. The level in the city was supposed to be closer to 40 or 50.

It drove home the problem of never unlocking his class. He would never be successful, never have the ability to stand on his own....

The thoughts ran through his mind, bringing with them a crushing darkness.

Right behind them, a girl followed. Her name was Nasya. She was...well, if there was one girl in the village that Sam was interested in, it was her. To put it simply, she was gorgeous.

Her hair was chestnut curls with darker highlights that ran down her back in a gleaming waterfall, her face was an elegant heart shape with curving cheekbones, and her eyes were sky blue.

Sam dragged his gaze back away from her.

"Haha! Did you get your class?" Boric shouted across the field as the three of them walked closer. "Is it as useless as your father's?"

The guard wasn't pulling any punches tonight. He nudged Kilian in the side, trying to get him to join in, but Kilian sent him a dirty look.

He, at least, remembered their earlier years.

"Boric, stop it," Nasya commanded. Her voice was clear and pleasant. She looked at the light between Sam's hands and smiled, like a ray of sunshine in the dark. "Sam, you got a spell?!"

"Ahh...yes," Sam struggled to say. He was a bit stunned by her presence. He didn't have the confidence to talk to her yet. He had hoped that his class would....

Well, it didn't matter anymore.

He was locked in the same failure as his father.

"What, did your dad spend all his savings on that for you, to make you feel better?" Boric laughed again. "What is it, a flashy light?"

Hatred at the World Law, as well as at himself for being a failure, bubbled in Sam's mind. His hands clenched into fists. How dare this idiot...

The spell responded. He felt his aura being absorbed into it as a small, but brilliant, blue ray shot away from him and exploded against the earth a dozen feet away.

"What?!" Boric shouted, as his face turned a bit pale. Spells were never harmless.

Then arrogance and pride surged back into his expression and he took a step forward, his hands clenching as he got ready to show Sam who was stronger.

"Stop it." Nasya's hand on Boric's chest halted him, as if it were a wall he couldn't pass. "He's just practicing and you startled him. He's not attacking you. Anyway, we should go."

Boric looked at her, and then back at Sam, before he finally nodded. He turned around without another word and walked away, dragging Kilian with him.

Nasya followed, but as they left, she looked back once. There was a flash of compassion in her eyes.

Or maybe it was pity.

---

"Sam, come on!" His father yelled from outside the shack that he had taken as his bedroom. It was a convenient spot to sleep and have a place to himself, since the house was so small.

"The ruin will still be there, but I might die of old age if you don’t hurry up!"

Sam groaned as he rolled out of bed, tossing aside the worn blanket he used as a sheet.

"Coming!" he yelled, as he pulled a shirt over his head.

He hadn’t meant to sleep in, but he’d stayed up too late trying to figure out how to use Aura Bolt and thinking of how it could connect with his Aura stat. He'd also been angry over the mockery from Boric.

He pushed that memory aside as he thought about his initial class quest again. It was a new day and he had a spell to practice with.

Now he just had to figure the rest out.

Reclaim an Aura...

Aura was a part of life. Everyone had it. It was like vitality, or qi for those monk classes, something that radiated from living things and the world itself. Some classes used it instead of mana.

Aura Bolt was unique in that it shaped aura into something to be cast, like mana. His grandfather had been a genius. At Level 1, he only had 10 aura, which meant he could cast the spell ten times. He rearranged his notifications to make it obvious.

Health: 100

Aura: 10

He didn’t have any way to use his mana, which was also at 10, so he ignored that.

"Coming!" he yelled again as he ran outside, stopping in front of his dad.

"Haha," his dad laughed as soon as he saw him. "I can see you’ve been practicing with your spell already. Feel better?"

"A bit." Sam nodded in agreement. He had to show a more positive face to his dad. He had kept that scroll for him for so many years. "What’s in the ruins? You’ve never let me go there before."

"Come on, we’ll talk on the way." His dad patted him on the shoulder. He was wearing hiking boots and a dark, battered pack. On his belt, there were several heavy tools—a hammer, a chisel, a dagger.

"Here, you carry this." His dad handed him a pickaxe and another pack. "And don’t forget your dagger."

Sam ran back inside to grab his dagger, and then he struggled into the gear. There were water flasks and a few lumps of bread inside the pack, as well as several empty bags. He swung the pickaxe up on his shoulder.

"Ready!"

His dad nodded, and turned to the west, heading towards the path that led out of the village.

"It’s a long hike, but it’s been a while since we spent a day together." Jeric Hastern looked towards his son with a smile.

This lad of his...such a dreamer, but a good boy. Good man, he corrected himself.

The two of them hiked out of the village and then down the cliffs that bordered it, heading toward the valley below.

The village wasn’t much, but at least it had these natural walls for defense. It was hard for beasts and even the more vicious monsters to get up here.

Most of them.

Every year, they lost a few people. There wasn’t anyone in the village who had a strong enough class to protect it. They could only join together and use spears to try and hold them off, as well as the few hiding skills they had between them.

Jeric shook his head as he pushed the old thoughts away.

They made do.

"This ruin is from a long time ago, Sam," he said, talking over his shoulder as he led the way. "Most of it is broken down, but some spots on the walls are covered in an old script. If I had to lay bets on it, I’d say Outsiders built it."

"Outsiders?!" Sam’s head shot up as he stared at his dad. "But...how could Outsiders be here?"

"Not here now," Jeric corrected. "Just once, in the past. You know that they break through the world barriers sometimes and invade, right? Some of those invasions last for a long time."

"But if the kingdom finds out we’re investigating an Outsider ruin...." Sam’s face went white as he thought of the outcome.

The kingdom hated anything to do with Outsiders.

Every time they showed up, disaster followed.

Whether it was strange enormous beasts, weird humans, or other races, nothing that came from outside the world was good news.

"Well, we didn’t know it was an Outsider ruin." Jeric winked conspiratorially at his son. "Did we now? Besides, do you think we’re going to find what we need in normal places?"

Sam’s look turned to amazement as he stared at his dad, wondering if he were really seeing him for the first time. Had he always been this...bold?

Suddenly, Jeric Hastern took on an entirely different light. Words like intrepid and adventurer chased themselves through his mind. Even his dad’s gear and weathered pack looked more awesome.

Then he waved those thoughts away. He was an adult now, not some romantic kid.

Jeric’s eyes sparkled as he understood what his son was thinking, and he turned around with a smile.

What dad doesn’t want to be seen as a hero to their son?

Even if he had to spend most of his days as a laborer, these rare explorations were what kept him going.

It took a few hours of hiking down through the ravines and across barren hills before they reached the ruin. They avoided exposing themselves on the horizon, since nothing good would come of that.

Barren silverfern shrubs stretched in a wide, double-arched embrace over a broken slab of stone. It was the height of two men and at least six feet thick, but something had broken straight through it, leaving only two shattered pieces behind.

There was just enough room to slip through the gap.

"In we go, son," Jeric announced, as he pulled a torch from his pack and lit it. He led the way into the ruins, the pool of light around him highlighting the damage to the structure. "I’ve been here a good dozen times now and nothing’s tried to eat me yet, so it’s safe enough. We need to head all the way down."

The ruin had once been a magnificent structure. The walls were broken, but when they were new, they’d been carved with ornate shapes. Lines of unfamiliar beasts and inscriptions flowed down the tunnels, hidden between piles of dirt and shards of stone.

The walls twisted in strange angles, as if it had never been designed for humans.

"Outsiders," Jeric tapped at one of the twisting curves. His hand was deft and moved with an old familiarity as he traced the lines on it. "No human made that."

Sam could only nod in agreement. Outsiders scared the heck out of him, as they did everyone in the kingdom.

No one wanted to deal with a weird, alien beast that tried to eat your brain as a midnight snack.

There were even stories of Outsiders who carried plagues with them, breathing them out as they walked, and ones that lived off of human skin or blood. Sam shuddered.

"Haha, don’t let it get to you." Jeric patted Sam on the shoulder again, as they walked farther down the tunnels. "I bet half those stories are made up. It’s true that we don’t want them around, since we have plenty of monsters on Aster Fall already, but what’s a few more if it comes down to it."

"Do they really eat brains?" Sam asked with a grimace.

"No idea, son," his dad laughed again. "But I won’t be volunteering to find out! Now, tell me, and use that education I gave you...why are Outsider ruins useful to us?"

"Err...well, the class is broken," Sam mumbled as he thought about it. "Broken classes can’t be leveled because we can’t meet the requirements...."

"Right! And?"

Sudden realization sparked in Sam’s eyes as he looked at his dad.

"You think...?!" Was it really that desperate, and was his dad really willing to go that far to unlock their class?

"Who says we know everything about the world and its classes." Jeric nodded in agreement. He had come to this conclusion a long time ago and was perfectly calm about it, even knowing what was at stake.

"Maybe Outsiders are the key and we’ll find out what it means to reclaim an aura here."

It felt like his dad was another person, as if he’d never understood him before.

"I’ve been Defiant my whole life, son, just like you." Jeric smiled as he patted Sam on the shoulder again. "If the world won’t give us a clear path, we have to make our own. Even if that means grasping at things that scare most people."

His dad was thirty years older than him, and for a moment Sam wondered what he had experienced in all that time.

How many times had he faced despair over this broken class and then pushed on to find another way?

All while taking care of his family.

Sam let out a breath. Wherever his dad wanted to go, he’d follow him.

"That’s a lad." Jeric smiled as he saw the light in Sam’s eyes. "Now let’s get down to where I left off before."

---

The way through the ruins was long and winding, with many broken paths. It took nearly two hours to descend to the level Jeric had last visited. A wall stretched in front of them, rising up the side of the biggest room in the entire ruins.

The entire thing was covered in grooves and swirls, as if someone had tried out abstract art with spell patterns.

"Alright, lad," Jeric announced as he stared at the wall. There was a light in his eyes, a spark of hope that still hadn’t died. He turned towards Sam.

"I’m going to teach you the one skill your grandfather was able to pass on to me. It’s the root of what it meant for him to be an Arcane Scribe, and it’s what has let me explore ruins and make an extra silver now and then."

The transfer of skills was extremely difficult. Even if you were a master in one, it usually required transferring them through a spell formation or skill scroll. Only a few could be learned directly. Why hadn’t his father ever mentioned it before? He couldn’t have used it until he got his class, but he could have been thinking about it!

"I know what you’re thinking, but some secrets are too important to risk," Jeric answered. "This is one of them. It’s a key skill for Wizards and their guild does not appreciate it being out in the world, outside of their control. Now, listen to my words and try to sense what’s happening."

Jeric placed his hand on the center of Sam’s back, right above his spine, as he began to speak. Sam’s skin tingled where it touched.

His words were a rolling cadence, speaking of common things.

"Beneath the world, the earth rises in quiet slumber. In the oceans, the water ebbs and flows, unending. In the heavens, the sky shines down like fire. Seasons pass as the wind greets the sky and the clouds cross over the earth..."

The words took on a strange quality as Sam listened to them and his dad’s hand tingled on his back. Nothing in the words was new, but there was something...strange about them that he’d never felt before.

Something in the combination and the...flow of energy from his dad’s hand.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, as he tried his best to learn whatever it was his dad was showing him.

Sometime later, his mind snapped back to reality.

Congratulations, Defiant. You Have Learned the Skill: Mana Control.

You have unlocked your Mana and may now use it to power common objects.

The notification flashed across his vision and then disappeared, as Sam staggered on his feet, nearly falling over. He accessed his status screen and saw the skill listed there now, the only one he knew.

His dad was pale and sweating as he pulled his hand away.

"Congratulations, son," Jeric gasped out as he struggled to get a good breath. "I thought that would be easier. I wish I could teach you how to control Aura, but I’ve never figured out how."

Sam sat down on the ground, looking almost as bad as his dad, as his mind whirled. He was astonished and ecstatic at the same time and he didn’t know what to do.

Mana Control? It was one of the best-known skills for mana users. Suddenly, the way his dad had made a little extra money was something he understood. A person with Mana Control had the ability to sense objects with mana and sometimes to use them.

So, if his dad found an old, enchanted ring in one of these ruins, he might not know exactly what it was, but he’d recognize that it could use mana. He might even be lucky enough to find something he could use, and then he could pour his mana into it.

No wonder his grandfather had been able to make spell scrolls. He couldn’t have done it without a skill like this.

"Let’s take a break." Jeric groaned as he flopped down next to Sam and pulled out a piece of hard bread and jerky. "Then we’ll look at that wall. Before that, you should check your mana."

Mana: 10.

He arranged the notification to float next to his Health and Aura now, so he knew what to do with it.

"Even at Level 9, I only have 14 mana," his dad announced. "I’m going to need your help with this wall. That’s another reason I wanted you to come here."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, confused, before his head shot to look at the wall again. "This wall is...?!"

"Maybe, lad, maybe," his dad grinned back at him, his face still pale. "I put all the mana I had into it a week or so ago and it didn’t do anything. Maybe if we both try, we can get it to activate."

The idea of a level 9 and a level 1 activating anything was ridiculous, but that wasn’t going to stop Sam from trying!

"Now, breathe like me and learn to recover your mana," his dad instructed. "I used up almost all of mine just now to help unlock that skill for you. It’ll be a little bit before I get it back."

With that, new lessons began on how to breathe to meditate and recover mana, as well as his dad’s thoughts on Aura, how they might be able to Reclaim an Aura, theories of their class that he’d been thinking about for decades, and more.

They talked for hours as Jeric’s mana slowly recovered.

"All right, let’s get to it!" Jeric finally announced as he pushed himself back to his feet. "You try to infuse mana over on that side and I’ll try over on this side. And then we hope that we don’t die!"

His dad’s laughter had a certain element of madness to it this time.

Fortunately, activating spell formations was usually safe.... As long as you stayed in control of the formation, it shouldn’t harm you...right?

Sam pushed aside a flash of nervousness. What did it matter anyway? If they didn’t unlock this class, they’d be laborers for the rest of their lives! He knew exactly why his dad’s laugh carried that edge to it.

He’d learned the rudiments of how to use the skill over the last few hours and now he just needed to push his mana into this formation. It was the most basic thing he could possibly do with it. Even his little sister could have done it and she couldn’t focus on anything for more than three seconds.

Sam’s face turned grim and focused as he laid his hands onto the wall, feeling for a good spot. When he touched one of the grooves, he felt something click and a tingle as if it were connecting with his mana pool. He knew that mana flowed through meridians to exit the body, but beyond that he had no idea what exactly was happening.

"Start!" His dad’s voice rang out from the other side of the room, where he was doing the same thing.

Sam’s face turned to a mask of concentration as he chewed on his lip. Mana began to gather at his fingertips and flow into the wall, following the path he commanded.

The wall sucked it away like a huge, devouring mouth. Faint blue lines began to radiate from where his fingers touched, extending outwards as he transferred more and more mana.

A point of mana was something only the system really understood. Each one was actually quite a bit of power and it took him several minutes before he felt his mana drop.

Mana: 9.

The blue lines extended out farther, nearly two feet away from his hands now. They began to glimmer as he continued pushing mana into the formation.

They were really grasping at straws here, but that didn’t stop him from hoping it still worked. No matter what happened, as long as it was something that helped them understand their class, it was worth a shot.

It was probably going to be a recovery spell for the walls, or some command function for the ruins, or even a communication node...and all of those would be crazy risks in their own way. But at this point, it just didn’t matter.

When you had nothing, even a straw was worth grasping.

The formation began to light up as another point of mana flowed out of his hands. The light was stretching for four feet now and it seemed to be accelerating, moving faster as it built up more mana.

"Keep going!" He heard his dad’s shout of encouragement from the other side.

Point after point of mana flowed out of his body and he felt himself becoming light-headed and pale, just like his dad had been. That was one of the side effects of losing your mana pool, when it started to drop too low. But he still didn’t stop.

He didn’t care if he fell unconscious. He just wanted to unlock his class.

When his mana reached one point, the wall in front of him was a giant, shimmering web of blue light. Swirling patterns covered it from one side of the room to the other.

Just looking at it made him dizzy.

Or maybe that was the mana loss. It was getting hard to think straight.

"One more point, Sam!" His dad roared out. His voice was thin and it felt like it was swirling through the room with the blue...patterns....

Sam gritted his teeth as he forced the last point of mana he had into the formation, letting it flow into whatever the spell was doing.

As he did, he almost expected nothing to happen, for all of this to just be a huge waste of time and effort.

Then a voice spoke, rising out of the formation on the wall. It echoed out across the room, rolling like thunder as it swirled with blue and white swatches of color. Sam swayed on his feet, barely recognizing what was happening.

Time blurred as he slumped against the wall. From across the room, he heard his dad’s groan and a thud as he collapsed.

"Transfer Formation activated.

"...Accessing stored mana reserves....

"...Mana reserves corrupted. Attempting to correct.

"...Correction failed. Mana crystals are broken. Spell formation integrity at 7.665%.

"...Accessing astral displacement...requesting reinforcements.

The words faded in and out of Sam’s mind as he leaned against the wall. He could barely think. All of his energy was drained. He didn’t even have the strength to push himself away from the wall.

"...Request failed...no contact points available.

"...Activating final protocol....two controllers identified. Protocol dictates that they must be transferred home if possible.

"...sufficient energy for one transfer. Closest controller identified. Selected. Self-destruction of final mana core required to initiate transfer.

"...Command accepted.

"Self-destruction commencing. Controller will be transferred to the closest operational outpost."

The starry, blue swirls of energy swept out of the wall and engulfed Sam, tearing him away from reality as the world around him disintegrated. Stars swept past his vision and a black void spun around him, a huge, brilliant blue and green sphere filling it. White and silver streaks swept across it in misty waves.

And then he felt himself jerked back, like a slingshot, even faster than before.

The final thing he heard was not comforting.

"Transfer failed...returning controller to base. Self-destruction imminent."

Battlefield Reclaimer 3: Below

The void spun past Sam in a blur, the shimmering blue and green of the world looming in his eyes as he hurtled back towards it.

He could feel a strange resistance, as if he were pushing through an invisible layer of something. Whatever it was slid along his skin and tingled as it sank in, weaving around his bones.

His body crackled under the force of it, changing shape. The energy intensified until it was burning hot, scorching his skin. It felt like his eyes were on fire as the energy boiled out of them again, leaving him behind.

Everything turned into a blur, and then he was through.

He slammed back down onto the floor of the ruins. The same, strange voice echoed out all around him.

"Transfer failed. Self-destruction commencing….

"…Controllers will be shielded."

The same blue energy that had infused the wall poured outwards, surrounding Sam and his father in a crystalline shell.

His last thought as the world around them imploded was to hope his dad was okay.

---

The crystal blue bubble shuddered as the world around it dissolved into liquid stone. It sank down through it, deeper and deeper as it headed through the old core of the outpost and then continued farther.

The last flicker of intelligence from the exploding core kept the shield from fading, but it was a weak, transient thing. It had no control over where they went.

Even when the explosion faded, the force of it continued to push the bubble farther away. They moved to the side as well as down, traveling an unknown distance.

Layers of stone, some of them caverns filled with horned and scaled monsters, flickered past them, until the crystal bubble finally came to a rest.

It was a small, stone cavern with stalactites descending from above, hanging over a pool of swirling silver-white liquid. The liquid was translucent and it gave off a soft silver light that illuminated the area closest to it.

There was no obvious exit, but there were a few small air vents in the walls, probably made by burrowing animals. Around the edges, there were lichens and mushrooms of different sizes growing along the walls. Some radiated a dim light of their own.

Sam and Jeric lay in a tumble of limbs at the center of the cavern, near the silver pool. Some time passed, but no one was paying attention to how long it was.

"Urgggh...," Jeric’s eyes flickered open as he reached toward his head. His entire body felt like it had been hammered by Surtek, the drunken smith in the village.

That bastard...had he gotten drunk and knocked everyone out again? After that, the village made the unanimous agreement that he would never again be paid in beer, even if that was all they had.

His head was pounding and there was a strange taste of dust and metal in his mouth. The world was a blur of silver-white, but it was so faint that he couldn’t see very well around him.

Where was Sam?

He reached around, patting at the air and stone floor as he tried to find his son. What had he been thinking, pouring mana into an unknown spell formation....!

Desperation had gotten the better of him and he’d risked his son too. Self-recrimination hammered at him as he continued to search.

Why was it so dark? What had happened to the torch?

And what had that strange voice been? He’d used too much mana infusing the wall and he’d barely heard it before he passed out.

Something about controllers.

"Sam!" He tried to shout, but his voice was hoarse and it came out as a rasp.

His hand finally touched something, a leg or an arm. He patted his way along it until he reached a foot and then he turned and went back up the other way, his hands checking for injuries.

"Sam!" he said again, this time in a lower voice. They couldn’t make too much noise. Something might have been attracted by that mess he’d caused. He’d felt an explosion and the area around them shifting, but he had no idea what else had happened or where they were now.

Sam’s skin felt hot to the touch, as if it had been heated by the sun. It was nearly hot enough to burn his hand if he left it in place. He dismissed the strangeness as he felt his way up to his son’s head.

"Sam, wake up," he whispered. He put his hand against Sam’s forehead to check his temperature, and then jerked it back with a gasp. Sam was practically on fire.

He reached behind him, fumbling for the water flask that was strapped to his pack. He still couldn’t see, so he worked by feel as he soaked a bit of cloth in water and held it to Sam’s head.

His hand brushed against something hard, like bone, that was sticking out of Sam’s forehead.

He drew in a sharp breath of air as he held the cloth there with one hand and explored with the other. Had something hit him and been stuck in his head?

How could he have been such an idiot?

What would he do without Sam? How would he explain it to Aemilia and Altey?

He shoved those thoughts aside. They weren’t doing him any good right now.

First, he needed to see what was wrong.

He felt around the bone thing, feeling where it connected to Sam’s skull. It was hot, but strangely there was no blood running from it. He tugged on it, but it didn’t come free.

Sam’s head rocked in place.

"Ugh..., da...dad?" Sam’s unsteady voice rose up from somewhere under the weird bone thing. A hand reached up and wrapped around his wrist, holding it with surprising strength.

It almost made the bones in his wrist ache, compressing them together.

When had his son gotten so strong?

And there was still that feeling of heat that burned outward from Sam’s skin.

---

Sam woke up to the feeling of someone yanking on his head, pulling it up and down like a ball. There was also the familiar presence of his dad next to him. He could smell him, the scent of his old sweaty shirt, along with a smell of dust and stone.

Past that, there was something else, a bright liquid that smelled like energy.

"Ugh..., da...dad?" he groaned out, as he reached up to stop him. "Why are you pulling on my head...?"

His eyes flicked open, and then he instantly closed them as he was overwhelmed with light and energy. It felt like a sun had just exploded in his head.

He didn’t know where they were, but it seemed they were both alright. Thank the Law for that.

No, never mind that, screw the Law!

The stupid thing was what put them into this mess in the first place. If the World Law had been working, they’d never have gone exploring an Outsider ruin!

They never would have had to deal with that explosion and whatever the voice had been.

Where the hell were they now?

He’d passed out when he’d landed back in the room, but he understood that the voice had stuck some sort of blue shield around them, which was how they’d survived its self-destruction.

What had happened after that?

It smelled like they were still underground. There was stone and...lichen? There was also a feeling of weight pressing down all around him, as if he could feel the rock.

Was that a side effect of Mana Control? He knew the skill was supposed to put him more in tune with the world and the flow of energy.

Where was all that light coming from?

"Sam, can you let go of my wrist?" His dad’s strained voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Sorry," he released his grasp. He’d forgotten that he grabbed him.

That strange, burning heat that had poured into his body during the failed transfer was still there, or some vestige of it. His whole body was radiating heat. He could feel it reflecting back at him from the stone he was lying on.

It wasn’t hurting him now, but it still felt weird.

What had happened?

"Sam, there’s something on your head. What is it?" His dad interrupted his thoughts again, sounding concerned.

Was that why he’d been yanking on his head when he woke up? Sam reached up to his head, feeling around for whatever it was, and his hand bumped against something hard and hot at the side of his forehead, near his hair.

His fingers traced along the curve of it. It was thicker near his skull and then it rose upwards, coming to a sharp point a few inches away. He tugged on it, but it didn't come off.

There was another one of the same type on the opposite side.

What they were was obvious.

But, ...when the hell had he gotten horns?

"Umm..., don’t worry, dad," he replied. He really had no idea how to explain that one. "It’s...fine."

"I can hear the hesitation in your voice," his dad replied. He could almost hear the smile in it.

"What is it? Tell me and we’ll deal with it together. It’s too dark in here for me to see anything and I haven’t found the torch yet."

"It’s...umm...," Sam hesitated again, before he finally just spat it out. What was the point in not telling his dad? He was going to see it in a minute, as soon as they got a torch going. But why was his dad saying it was dark in here? He hadn’t even been able to open his eyes, it was so bright.

"It’s horns," he said simply, since he had no better way of explaining it. "I have no idea why they’re there."

"Horns?!" His dad’s shocked voice sounded out in the cavern. "Why do you have...never mind, it’s all my fault. We’ll figure out a way to fix it before your mother sees them...."

Jeric swore internally at the same time as he let out a breath. At least Sam wasn’t hurt. Horns...were weird, but there were all sorts of spells in the world. It must have been some type of transformation spell on the wall.

They would just need to find it again and maybe they could undo it.

"Never mind that then," his dad said, with commendable self-control. "Help me find a torch. We need to find a way out of here and get back to the village. Your mother and sister will be worried."

For good reason, but he kept that to himself.

"Once we get out of here, we’ll...not be mentioning this to them, right?" he suggested. "No reason to worry them more."

"Definitely not," Sam agreed fervently. Neither of them wanted to listen to one of his mother’s lectures. They went on for days and included everything negative you’d done for the past ten years. He shuddered at the thought of it.

This was definitely one of those things to never, ever tell his mother.

Now, they just needed to get out.

He tried to open his eyes again, and the light was just as blinding this time. It reminded him of that one time he’d stolen a bottle with his friend Leres and they’d gotten drunk in a haystack. The next morning had been like this, but dizzier.

His dad had found them shortly after that, laughed his ass off, and thrown him in the river. That was another thing they didn’t tell his mother.

He opened and closed his eyes, squinting against the light. Slowly, they adjusted, the brightness in the room falling to a more normal level, until it was the same as bright daylight.

He looked around, taking in everything. What was that glowing pool? Was that why the room was so bright?

His dad was fumbling around, looking for a torch in his pack, so he turned to help. He spotted it in a moment. "Got it. Hang on, I’ll light it."

He was reaching for the tinderbox to light the torch when a flicker of heat jumped out of his hand and fell on it. The torch ignited in an instant, filling the room with a bright, yellow light.

"There we go," he said, as he held it out to his dad.

As for why a spark had jumped out of his hand...he just didn’t feel like thinking about it. It was probably that energy that was heating his body. At least it was faster than using the tinderbox.

It would go away soon and then things would be back to normal. The horns too. Those would disappear in a bit when the spell wore off.

He stuck to that story, repeating it to himself so he didn’t freak out.

His dad took the torch and held it up, blinking as his eyes adjusted. He looked around the area, frowning.

"Sam...!" His dad sucked in a breath. His legs twitched as he barely held back a jump.

This was his son! He wasn’t going to jump away from him, no matter how dangerous he looked!

"What is it?" Sam asked, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the torch. Why did that thing have to be so bright? His eyes were adjusting again, and after a moment it was more comfortable.

"...just something else we’re not going to tell your mother," his dad replied, as he let out the breath he was holding. "But it’s going to take some effort to hide that."

Sam frowned, and then he turned and walked over to the silver-white pool. He looked down into it, searching for his reflection.

When he found it, he couldn’t hide a jump back. A feeling of absolute panic came over him when the thing he saw in the pool was not at all what he expected.

"Aghh!" he shouted, as he waved his hand in front of his face, trying to wipe away what he’d seen. "What is that?!"

His dad came over and set his hand on his shoulder, hiding the wince he felt when Sam’s skin nearly scorched his hand.

"It’s fine, son. We’ll figure it out." His voice was steady, which showed admirable self-control.

"But I...!" Sam’s breath came fast and panicked as he forced himself to calm back down.

It was fine.... It was like the fire from his hand.... It would all go away soon.

"Son, I think you’d better check your status," his dad finally said. He left his hand on Sam’s shoulder, even though he could feel it burning. He only pulled it back after another reassuring pat. "Maybe that’ll tell us what happened. I have my guesses, but...let’s see what it says."

Sam’s eyes flashed to the notifications from the World Law, noticing that there was an entire chain of them he’d been ignoring. Without hesitating any more, he opened them all at once, letting them stream into his vision.

Attention. You have located an Outsider outpost. Your class and level are insufficient to deal with this threat.

A warning has been sent to local authorities of Law. You are required to assist them.

Then the next one.

You have activated an Outsider teleportation formation of unknown origin.

At that point, the notifications seemed to twist, turning foreign and garbled, before they reformed into new words. The style was archaic and more forceful than anything he’d ever seen before, the coloring an intense gold that seemed to demand attention. The World Law no longer had the same bland distance as before.

His entire life, the notifications of the World Law had treated him as something beneath notice, just indifferently letting him know when he hit certain milestones.

Now, they felt threatening, as if he’d come up against an unknown power that he couldn’t comprehend. But at the same time, he felt like he was seeing a more essential form of things, accessing a layer of the World Law that was beyond anything he’d seen before.

Attention, Outsider, you have entered the World of Aster Fall.

The World Law here is opposed to your interference. An alert of your location has been sent to the local authorities.

And then again, the notifications warped as he watched, taking on a calm, ornate style that was more welcoming now, as if the World Law had changed its mind.

Attention, Defiant...you have broken the World Law by leaving Aster Fall.

Your situation has been evaluated. The alert on your location has been canceled.

The authorities of Law have been notified of the Outsider outpost that once existed and that you have been affected by its collapse. You are required to assist them when they arrive.

Your innate trait marks you as originating from Aster Fall and so you are granted leeway to return to our world, as long as you do nothing that harms the Law.

Breaking the Law is not without penalty, even if you intended no harm. Henceforth, you will be watched.

Beings of Law will be uncomfortable in your presence and are unlikely to assist you.

You encountered Outsider energy on your travel outside of the world, which altered your body when you passed through it.

Your Race no longer fits the definition of Human.

Your Race has been changed to that of the Outsider energy you encountered.

You may find this race holds different traits than the Humanity you had before. If you use these abilities to harm Aster Fall, you will be eliminated.

The World Law will continue to evaluate your existence and alert the authorities of Law as necessary.

The notifications flashed in a brilliant gold with clarion calls and ornate, scrolled borders surrounding them.

Your Race Has Been Changed.

You are now an Outsider (Aster Fall).

You have gained +4 Strength, +4 Constitution, and -4 Charisma.

Racial abilities are currently unable to be evaluated. They do not belong to the World Law. Use them at your peril.

The notifications blurred again. The next one was more helpful.

A racial trait has been evaluated by the World Law and translated into local terms.

Ability Gained: Enhanced Vision (Special).

The same notification about a racial trait came twice more, each with a different conclusion.

Ability Gained: Enhanced Senses (Advanced).

Ability Gained: Fire Affinity (Special).

Finally, the notifications stopped. Sam just stared at the space where they had been, overwhelmed. He felt as if he’d been ripped apart by the World Law, put back together again, and dusted off.

The attention he’d gotten was so strong that it had bled through the notifications and petrified him as he read them.

How had all of that happened? He...wasn’t Human anymore?

In a trembling voice, he explained everything he’d just read to his dad, including his updated status page.

Sam Hastern

General Level: 1

Experience to Next: 15.

Class: Battlefield Reclaimer. Level 0.

Sub-Class: None.

Profession: Scholar, Level 1.

Race: Outsider (Aster Fall)

Health: 140

Aura: 10
Mana: 10

STR: 12

CON: 14

AGI: 9

WIS: 8

INT: 10

AUR: 10

CHA: 4

Racial Abilities: (Str/Con +4, CHA -4), Enhanced Vision (Special), Enhanced Senses (Advanced), Fire Affinity (Special).

He looked back towards the pool again, taking in the changed appearance that had scared him so much.

His face was almost the same as it had been, but leaner, with more defined cheekbones and eyes that were more deeply set. His eyes were dark, slit-pupils on a crystal blue iris. What should have been the whites was instead a very light blue.

His skin was ivory, like aged paper, and it was hard and smooth to the touch. His hair had turned from brown to pure black, so dark it looked like ink, but it was still held back from his head by a leather cord he’d put there this morning. Two small, curving horns stretched up from the sides of his forehead.

The rest of his body was almost the same as before, but it felt like he’d gained a few inches in height and his muscles were more defined than they had ever been. His fingernails had turned to short, sharp talons that stretched out for an inch past the tips of his fingers. They felt somehow dexterous.

His teeth, when he bared them into a smile, were dangerous-looking, the canines extending almost into fangs. It also felt like his jaw was stronger and that his mouth could open wider than he was used to, although his face looked almost the same.

As he finished reading the notifications to his dad, the sound of Jeric falling to the ground in a dead faint was easily heard by his new ears, which were at least four inches longer than before. They ended in a sharp, angular point.

Battlefield Reclaimer 4: First Encounters

"This was never what I wanted...," Jeric sighed. It was the first thing he said when he woke up and looked at Sam again, taking in all of the changes. "I’m sorry, son. This is all my fault.'

After a moment, he added his next thought.

"I don’t know how we’re going to explain this to your mother."

Aemilia was going to be furious with him for getting Sam into this mess. Their son looked like an Outsider! He'd given him blue demon eyes and talons!

Despite the changes, he never even thought about rejecting Sam or being afraid of him, no matter how weird he looked.

He was his son.

It didn’t matter if he had eerie blue eyes, pointed ears, or...fangs? Jeric took another look at that and hid a grimace.

Well, people come in all shapes and sizes.... They'd just have to make sure no one saw him and tried to kill him.

How was he going to manage that? Was Sam going to have to hide from everyone for the rest of his life? The village would not be...happy to see him like this.

Jeric's thoughts tumbled back and forth as he considered what these changes meant for the future.

Sam was having his own struggles as he stared at his reflection in the pool, and then at his dad, and then back at the pool. He looked down at his hands, curling and uncurling the...claws? ...Talons?

Click, click.

They felt very normal, even if they looked weird. He frowned at them.

"Don’t worry, dad," he said at last. This wasn’t on his dad. This was the result of playing with a weird Outsider ruin. His prospects in life had always been dismal. What did it matter if he added one more?

"Don’t let a little thing like this get you down, son...," Jeric said, as he took in the changes in Sam’s expression. Even with the changed features, he was able to read him as easily as a book. His son hadn’t changed that much.

"There’s good news and bad news in everything. Let’s look for the good."

He was going to make this right. There had to be some way to fix Sam and he wasn’t going to rest until he found it.

But right now, they had other issues.

"Do you think any of your...changes...can help us get back home?"

He’d listened carefully to Sam’s description of his new status, even if it had been overwhelming at the end. Right now, maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

It was an Outsider ruin, so...maybe it was going to take an Outsider to get them out of it.

Sam looked around, moving his eyes across the walls as he considered his dad's suggestion.

"It looks like we could dig through the walls," he offered. "We have the tools still. The pickaxe, your hammer and chisel.... There’s also this pool here. What do you think that is?"

He reached out to poke at the water, only for his dad to swat at his hand and pull it back.

"Don’t touch weird things, Sam," his dad said automatically, even if in the grand scheme of things, it was a bit late.

"But, if I had to guess...I think that’s concentrated mana in the water. Reach out with Mana Control and see if you can sense it. It’s like a sun in here."

"Hmm...," Sam let his hand hover over the pool, feeling the radiant energy rising up from it. His dad was right...it was like a sun, but also like a miniature ocean. It contained an enormous amount of power that had been condensed into liquid form.

He'd never seen liquid mana before.

More than that...this was what had been making the cavern glow like a fireball when he’d opened his eyes. It was so bright and close to him that he hadn't been able to identify the source until now.

His eyes had adjusted to it, but it was still intense. Compared to the pool, the torch was just a flicker of light in the room.

"It must have condensed from mana veins in the earth here and slowly dripped down the stalactite into the pool.... It probably took centuries for it to form."

Jeric waved his hand across the pool. After a moment, he snatched it back. His palm felt like it had been stuck into an open flame.

"It would be a very bad idea to touch that. It’s so concentrated that it's burning my hand just from being near it. Drinking it would be even worse. Mana poisoning is a bad way to go."

Sam had heard of mana poisoning before. It happened when a wizard got too ambitious and tried to drain a mana crystal or spell array that was much more powerful than they were. It usually killed them, or at least shattered their meridians and crippled their class advancement.

The overload of uncontrolled mana could warp or melt your body, like a very powerful acid.

"Right, no drinking the pool...," he muttered to himself, even if it looked tempting. Maybe his new body would be able to handle it better than before, but he didn’t want to blow up.

"Maybe if we dilute it, if we run out of other options," Jeric suggested, as his eyes lingered on the pool. The intensity of mana there was incredibly valuable as well. If they could bottle it and take it with them....

He shook his head. Their leather flasks wouldn't be able to hold that mana. They needed jade bottles...or crystal, or silver.... Something to isolate the mana and contain it. All of those were much too expensive for him to have them on hand.

Why couldn't he have just been an Arcane Researcher like his grandfather? Then he could have taken care of his family and this wouldn't have happened.

He pulled himself back to the present as he looked at Sam, focusing on more immediate things.

"I have one water crystal in my pack," he added, "as part of an emergency stash. It should be able to give us water for a week or so, but after that we’re going to have to find another supply."

"We'll also need food," Sam agreed. They only had some bread and jerky with them, which had only been meant to last for a day. "Maybe some of that lichen is edible...."

"We'll figure it out." Jeric patted Sam on the shoulder as he looked around the room. "We’ll just have to dig our way back up."

Neither of them had any idea of how far the formation had transferred them or how long it would take to get back to the village, but their family was waiting for them. All they could do was try.

Jeric swung his pack to the side and arranged his belt so it sat more comfortably.

"Let’s get to it, son," he said determinedly as he pulled the hammer off his belt. "Your mother’s waiting for us."

The sound of a pickaxe and a hammer rang out in the small cavern as the two of them began to dig.

The wall they picked was random and they had no idea what was on the other side.

---

It took them two days of determined effort to break through the wall and into an adjoining tunnel, which was about six feet wide. It stretched away in both directions, curving slightly until it disappeared in the distance.

The bread and jerky in the packs was almost out, even though they had rationed it.

"Hah!" Sam shouted, raising his pickaxe with triumph. They’d managed to get out of that damn cavern!

To celebrate, Jeric passed Sam a beaten-up metal flask.

It was another thing from his emergency supply, which only had three things in it: a water crystal, this flask, and a drawing of his family that a hard-up Artist had sketched for him, for the price of a silver.

"Take a swig, and then we’ll get back to work," his dad laughed. He was doing his best to keep the mood optimistic, since it wasn’t clear how long it would take them to get out of here.

Sam took a drink and almost spit it out. He clamped his jaw shut and forced himself to swallow. It tasted like the furniture polish his mother used on the table every few months.

"Haha, that’s the way," his dad laughed as he took the flask back. "Energy to keep you going. Now, back at it!"

Before they could continue, however, the sound of chittering voices and shuffling feet sounded down the tunnel. Sam’s ears tilted towards the sound as a wave of alertness flooded his body.

Before he knew what he was doing, he had the pickaxe in one hand and was pressed up against one wall, staring in the direction it had come.

"Sam..., what are you doing?" His dad just looked at him with confusion. He was speaking in a normal tone of voice, and it sounded like thunder in Sam’s ears.

"Something’s coming!" he hissed back, motioning his dad to move against the wall. His dad might be level 9, but he didn’t have a combat class!

Whatever was coming, they had to be careful.

Over the past two days, Sam had noticed that his strength was much better than before. He was even stronger than his dad. His agility and speed also seemed to be better, although his status didn’t agree.

Whatever was coming, their best bet was to ambush it before it ambushed them.

That was life in this world. Nothing they encountered here was going to be friendly to them. Whatever it was, it probably thought they were delicious.

...Three of them, he decided. He listened to the sounds with his head tilted, separating them out one by one. Finally, he could see them, skittering through the dark.

Jeric had put the torch out, but it wouldn’t be long before they noticed them.

Monsters.

A prompt notified him as soon as they appeared, outlining their forms in a bright orange that marked them as dangerous.

Giant Rat (Subterranean).

That was all the information the prompt gave him.

Appraising monsters was notoriously difficult unless you had a class focused on them. Without that, the only way to get information was to kill a bunch of the same type. The more you killed, the more complete the information would be.

The giant rats were the size of hunting dogs, dark and lean things with corded muscles and claws that clicked against the stone as they slunk along.

In his eyesight, they were outlined against the stone behind them. A dark, oily radiance was flowing through their bodies. He wasn’t sure if it was mana or something else.

He’d figured out over the last couple of days that he was seeing things very differently now. The lichens and pool in the room glowed to him, shedding light all around. Even in these tunnels, where there was nothing like that, the darkness was as easy to see in as broad daylight.

It had to be some type of mana vision, according to his dad, who had taken it in stride with his other changes. All he had said was, "At least it’s useful."

The rats crept closer, sniffing at the air with their long snouts. Their eyes were a dark, glowing red.

They were probably able to see heat. It was common in subterranean monsters.

Sam was stronger than when he’d entered the ruins, but he was still only Level 1 and without any class skills. His dad wasn’t much better. Most stat increases and abilities came from class bonuses, not from your overall level.

The only reason there was an overall level as well as class levels was because you could subclass and evolve. So, you could theoretically be Level 300 overall, with your first class at 100, your evolved class at 100 again, and a subclass that was also at 100...or various other dreams that a teenage boy liked to come up with.

It wasn’t important at the moment.

Right now, he had to kill three rats that looked like they could go through his entire village like a hot knife through butter.

He had some skill with his dagger and a spear, since every child in the village learned those. He’d also swung the pickaxe enough for it to be comfortable. Other than that, he didn’t have any combat skills.

If he hadn’t transformed, he was sure they would have both died here. Hopefully, that Outsider energy had changed him enough to help.

He didn’t have time to signal his dad and whispering would only have got the rats’ attention, so he did the best thing he could come up with.

He charged.

An Aura Bolt flashed out from his hand and slammed into the chest of the lead rat at the same time as his pickaxe swung up above his head.

The bolt was a crackling, blue light that struck the rat with a sharp explosion, causing it to rear backwards. Its ribs broke as the bolt cut inward, leaving behind a smoking hole three inches wide.

He didn’t have time to prepare another bolt as he rushed them. The pickaxe swung down in one hand as he drew his dagger with the other, barreling straight ahead. The tunnel was narrow and only two of the rats could stand side-by-side.

The rats reacted instantly, releasing a loud hisss as their naked tails lashed at the wall beside them. Their red eyes glowed brighter and they bared their fangs as they crouched down on their forelegs.

He swung downwards as soon as he got into range, ignoring any defense, as he slammed the pointed end of the pickaxe towards the first rat’s skull. He ripped it back as he kept going, charging through them.

If he stopped moving, it would only encourage them to attack. He had to overwhelm them, frighten them, and kill them. He also wanted to get to the other side so his dad could attack from this side.

His dagger flashed down, hammering into the second rat, and then he was past.

The third one was waiting and lunged with wide jaws, its fangs dripping with saliva. They were as long as his hand.

A roar burst out of his lungs as he brought the pickaxe around and slammed it at the rat, but the head had tilted to the side. The flat slammed against the rat’s neck as it dodged, hissing at him again. Its jaws clashed together and its front claw reached up to shred at his stomach.

At the same time, behind him, he heard his dad’s shout. The torch flared to life again, casting brilliant shadows across the wall. It was followed by an incredible roar, as if a beast had been unleashed in the tunnel.

There was no way he was going to let these damn beasts hurt his son!

The roar distracted the first two rats long enough to turn their attention to him and Jeric charged forward, his hammer in one hand and his dagger in the other. He had flipped his pack around in front of his chest as a sort of armor.

Sam’s ears tracked the scuffle between the rats and his dad as he lunged to the side. It felt like he could track nearly everything around him, a combination of hearing, scent, and his new vision.

The rat’s claws scraped against his stomach, tearing ugly lines as they ripped his shirt apart. It drew back as it saw the pickaxe swinging down towards it again.

The rats were accustomed to this darkness, but his new senses were at least as good.

He’d tried for the head before, but that was as hard as a rock. The pickaxe had only drawn blood as it bounced off their skulls. This time, he hammered the spike down, driving it into the rat’s back.

A shrill scream ripped through the tunnel, making the other rats whip around and stare at their partner, turning their attention away from his dad.

Jeric had a series of claw slashes down his left arm and the hammer in his hand was bloody. He lunged forward and swung down again, following it up with a stab.

The rats screamed, their hisses rising to a fever pitch as they were trapped between the two men, who continued to swing wildly.

Fury and aggression are sometimes the greatest advantage.

The rats were scavengers. If they had been confident, they might have done a better job, but right now, they were ambushed, overwhelmed, and frightened by this crazed attack.

A minute or so later, Sam and Jeric slumped to the wall above the three dead rats, panting for air. They were completely covered in dank, red blood and tufts of loose fur.

Their clothing was hanging off of them in shreds and they were covered in long claw marks that seeped blood. Sam even had two deep fang marks piercing the skin of his shoulder.

There were a series of notifications from the fight, but he ignored them for now. There were more important issues.

Their skin was already swelling around the wounds. Some of the blood was filled with dark streaks.

"This is bad, son," Jeric admitted, as he examined the wounds and tried to catch his breath. "Those damn things were covered in filth.... The wounds are already infected."

Beasts in the world were a huge threat, and without a healing class down here.... Things didn’t look good.

"I wish we’d brought a healer," Sam muttered. "Not that anyone sane would have followed us here."

His skin felt like it was on fire. The heat that was always present now was more intense than usual. Flames were starting to flicker across his skin in some spots.

The flames caught Jeric's eye as his mind raced. They couldn't die down here. His breath was coming in short, sharp pants as he sucked air back into his lungs.

"You’re going to have to try and cauterize the wounds with that Fire Affinity," Jeric decided. It was a stretch, but it was the only thing that might help. His son had gained some good abilities, and if they wanted to survive, they were going to have to make the most of them.

He was a decisive man. The world wasn’t kind to those who weren’t, especially at Level 9.

"The spirits in my flask might work," he added, "but there’s not much of it. The sooner you try, the better."

Sam looked down to where the flames were flickering across his hands. He felt a connection to them, like he did to his heartbeat, but he didn’t know how to control them.

Plus, ...he didn't want to burn his dad.

"You'll have to figure it out," Jeric ordered. He let out a groan as he poked at one of the deeper wounds along his leg. "If it’s a racial ability, maybe it’s easy to control. It’s the only thing I can think of, even if it’ll hurt like hell. If we don’t, we’re going to end up as bloated corpses when this infection settles in."

Sam looked at his dad and then back at the flames on his hands.

He didn’t want to do this.

He looked up through the ceiling of the tunnel towards the unknown and distant World Law. Rage surged through his veins at the injustice of it all.

"Damn you!" His voice bounced off the stone walls.

"You need more practice swearing." His dad grimaced, shaking his head as he looked at the flames.

"Now hurry up. The longer we wait, the worse the infection will get. This is one of those times when the quicker you act, the less it’ll hurt."

Sam swore again under his breath.

He focused on the feeling of Fire that was running through his body, reaching out to it. He called it to him.

It flared in response, like a heartbeat, in stutters and starts. He could feel it there, like a low, steady pulse, but when he actively tried to summon it, it was like grabbing water.

"Hurry up, Sam!" Jeric’s insistence pushed him on. His son was going to have to figure it out or they were doomed.

Sam’s mind shifted, focusing on the infection in his wounds and the need to burn it away.

That seemed to get a reaction. The flames leapt higher, searing through his veins as they intensified.

Stronger flickers began to run across his skin and he felt his mana drop by a point.

Mana: 9.

He hadn’t used his mana at all during the fight and he’d barely touched his Aura. He’d only been able to get off that first Aura Bolt, which had drained it by a point.

It took him a moment to prepare it and he’d barely had time to think.

Now, it seemed he’d found a way to use his mana.

Hopefully, it worked.

The concepts inherent to Mana Control helped him as he tried to feel around for what to do, and then suddenly he could feel the flames clicking into place, as naturally as if he were breathing.

The key was feeding the flames with his mana. A flame needs something to burn. It was the only step that he’d been missing. The rest happened on instinct.

The flames started off as yellow and red sparks, but as his mana joined with them, they turned crystal blue, the same color as his eyes that had been reflected back to him in the pool.

Apparently, that was the color of his mana.

Crystal blue flames surged down his arms, as friendly as a cat rubbing up against his leg as they curled around and settled into his hands.

Another point of mana drained away, telling him that he didn’t have long.

He turned to his dad, commanding the flames to settle into a more controlled form. Obediently, the blue flame flowed into a liquid pool in his hands.

"Do it," his dad ordered, pulling off the remains of his shirt as he exposed the wounds. There were three long slashes down his left arm, and his right wrist had been lacerated by fangs. There was also a long, double cut down his right leg.

His chest had been spared. The makeshift pack armor had done its job, with just a few holes in the durable leather. Jeric pulled out a strip of leather from his pack and bit into it, nodding to his son.

Sam grimaced as he leaned closer, pouring the flames in his hand into a line that matched the first wound.

The air sizzled as smoke filled it. The leather strap was chewed to pieces as Jeric’s face went white and beads of sweat covered his skin, but he didn’t make a sound.

Sam worked as quickly as possible. It would be even worse to stop and to have to do it twice.

When he was done, another four points of mana had burned away.

He drew in a deep gasp of air as he pulled away from his dad and began to work on his own wounds.

He was much luckier than his father, as it turned out.

The flames were part of him and they burned through the wounds without any pain. All he felt was a dull ache and pressure as the dark saliva was purged. It boiled out of the wounds in a hiss of dark vapor that ignited as it hit the air.

His face was pale and his mana was down to a single point by the time he was done.

"Let’s get back to our cave and barricade it," Jeric panted as he forced himself to his feet. "We can drag those rats in and see if they’re edible."

Together, the two of them pulled the three rat corpses across the floor and then used loose rock to create a barricade, piling it in the gap they’d made. It wouldn’t hold against much, but it was better than nothing.

They flopped to the ground again. After they’d caught their breath, Jeric reached out to touch one of the rats, feeling for the thread of energy in it.

"Sam, come here," he ordered, when he found what he wanted. "You’ve never absorbed experience before, so I’ll show you how. This experience won’t do me any good as it is, so it's all yours. I’ve been maxed at Level 9 for decades."

Sam followed his father’s instruction as he located the thread of energy that his dad was talking about. It felt like...a current that was running through the rat’s skin.

"That feeling? That's experience," his dad told him as he guided him through the process. "Think of it like mana. Some people say it’s just a condensed form of mana, once it’s combined with living vitality, but that's beyond me. Now...pull it into yourself."

Sam pulled the thread of power from the first rat towards himself and it responded in an instant. It was ownerless now, able to be seized by anyone with the qualifications.

"Experience only lets you absorb it if your own energy is mixed into the beast before it dies. That way, it’s like it knows who you are. So, you have to kill things yourself, or at least help to kill them, if you want to get the experience.

"Also, remember that only monsters and beasts give experience, but no civilized race does. That's one of the ways we know what to kill. They try to eat us for the same reason, I think. The world is a battlefield between us and them. Seers and the like can tell if something will give experience."

A notification flashed into Sam’s vision as he absorbed the experience. It wasn’t as big or as loud as the other announcements he’d experienced. It was just a quiet chime that told him something had happened.

You Have Slain a Giant Rat (Subterranean). Experience Gained: 10.

Absorbing the experience came with a rush of energy, like jumping from a cliff and laughing until you hit the water. It shivered along his veins in bubbles and explosions of excitement, little pops of strength that made him feel like he could climb to the top of the world.

It was the best thing he’d ever felt.

He froze as he let the feeling run through him. This was what it meant to have a Class! The world rewarded your progress! It made him want to unlock Battlefield Reclaimer even more.

Eventually, he moved on. The experience from the second rat came with a difference.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have gained a Level. You are now General Level 2.

You have two free status points to distribute.

That was all. If it had been a Class level, there would have been more...maybe abilities or automatic stat point increases. The World Law didn’t care much about general levels.

"Put them wherever you think is best, Sam," his dad told him when he asked for advice.

Jeric held back a groan as he massaged the cauterized wound on his shoulder. The flame had felt like a lightning bolt hitting him, but at least it had done the job. The wounds were clear and seared close, no longer swelling.

"You probably need more mana and aura overall, but physical things could help you in a fight," he added. "I trust that you’ll make the right decision. In the end, anything you do will be useful."

Sam nodded as he looked at his status sheet. His strength and constitution had been boosted by the Outsider transformation, but not his Agility. He had been too slow against the rats.

He also needed more mana to support his Fire Affinity. His Aura would be enough for right now.

He split the difference and put one point into Agility and one into Intelligence to boost his mana.

Health: 65 (140)

Aura: 9 (10)
Mana: 2 (11)

After that, he absorbed the experience from the third rat, leaving him with 15 to go again until Level 3.

It looked like it was ten experience for Level 1, fifteen for Level 2, and twenty-five for Level 3. He was nearly halfway there already.

These rats must have been Level 1 too, which meant they were the absolute easiest things around here. It was hard to tell with monsters. Without an analysis class or skill, you could only estimate from the amount of experience they gave. At higher levels, you wouldn’t get all of it either.

He turned his attention to the other notifications that were waiting for him. Since there were several of the same type, the World Law summarized them into one.

While in combat, you have demonstrated basic proficiencies in Pickaxe, Dagger, Blunt Tools, and Dodge.

You have gained 40 experience.

Congratulations, Defiant. You are now General Level 3.

Experience to Next: 25.

You have two free status points to assign.

The proficiency names glowed as they were added on to the bottom of his status sheet, hidden behind the simple title "Basic Proficiencies." He had to open it to see them.

The World Law didn’t allow you to gain levels in a weapon skill exactly, but it did recognize your ability if you demonstrated it in combat. You could get experience for showing your skill at the Basic, Advanced, Expert, Elite, and supposedly Epic levels, not that Sam had any idea what that would look like.

There were schools in the cities that focused on teaching you how to train for proficiencies, but for most people, they just muddled along and it was a bit of experience here and there. Once you were past Level 20, it was basically unnoticeable.

For this level, Sam put the points into Strength and Intelligence, spreading them out and increasing his mana again. More strength wouldn’t hurt and every stat was so low that he felt like he needed to be a little bit of a generalist if he wanted to survive.

Jeric gave him a hearty clap of congratulations and a big smile. At the same time, he tried to hide a wince and the pain in his eyes. He didn’t have the rush of experience and leveling to distract him from their conditions.

"Think you can start a fire?" he asked, as he glanced toward the rats.

Battlefield Reclaimer 5: Exploration

The smell of roasting rat wasn’t bad. They’d eaten worse in lean years at home. The only problem was that they didn’t have any wood. To cook it, Sam had to keep up a constant flame.

It was draining on his mana and he couldn’t maintain it for long, so the rat was half raw and half burnt, but at least it was good practice.

"We’re in more trouble than I thought, Sam," Jeric announced between bites of rat as he looked towards the rocks they’d piled in the gap between them and the outer tunnel.

"I don’t think we’re anywhere near the ruins. I’ve gone pretty deep underground all around the village and I’ve never encountered anything like this area."

It was not good news.

"Where do you think we are?" Sam asked, as he tried to focus on roasting his rat leg to a slightly more even golden brown. At least it didn’t take a full point of mana to keep the flames at a low burn...maybe one point every five minutes.

"This...," Jeric looked towards Sam as a trace of conflict passed through his eyes. "You’re an adult now, so I’m not going to hide anything. I think we’re under the Abyssinian Plains."

"The Abyssinian Plains?!" Sam’s jaw dropped open and he nearly bit his tongue on his new fangs. "That’s...hundreds of miles from us!"

Jeric just nodded, grimly.

"It’s the only thing that fits. The explosion must have thrown us a long way and deep underground, somehow. The Abyssinian Plains are the only place I know of nearby that have a large underground system of caverns and tunnels. Unfortunately, it’s not a popular place for training..., so we’re unlikely to run into anyone here unless they’re desperate."

"...That’s because of the acid worms on the surface, isn’t it?" Sam grimaced as he remembered his geography lessons.

"Yes, the Abyssinian Plains are a disaster and no one wants to be in them. Those worms are only the size of your finger and their bites can be deadly, like miniature snakes. They dissolve you from the inside."

"So, we need to get to the surface and then past that," Sam confirmed.

"Easier said than done, but we’ll do it," Jeric agreed, his voice filled with conviction. "Maybe we’ll even find something down here to make it worthwhile. The real problem is that it’s going to take us longer to get home than I expected. Your mother and sister are all alone and are going to worry about us."

Sam grimaced as he thought about it. The village was sort of safe, and the other families might band together to help, but it wasn’t good to leave his mother and sister there alone. It was hard for two people to survive. They needed to get back to them.

"Eat your rat and let me know if you think of any ideas about how to do this better." Jeric frowned as he took another bite of his lightly charred rat leg.

Sam’s mind spun as he considered the situation, cataloguing everything they had. At least they’d found some food, even if it was just meat. It would keep them going for a while.

Around them, there were lichens, rocks, the mana pool, the rat corpses, and the tools they’d brought. Outside, there was a tunnel leading in an unknown direction, filled with more rats and probably worse things.

The only things he could think of were insane, but if they didn’t try something, they were almost definitely going to die down here.

The first idea was to kill more rats until he got to Level 9, which would make him stronger. The second idea was to use that mana pool, even if it was dangerous.

He wished they could take some of the liquified mana with them, but without the right containers, it was a lost cause. That would be worth so many silvers...enough to feed them for a long time.

Maybe even enough to fix up the house and buy his sister something....

He yanked his mind back to reality. There was no point in dwelling on things he couldn't control.

Other ideas began to spin through his mind, one after the other.

All through it, he also kept thinking of ways to unlock his class. If he could just do that....

What was an Aura and how could he reclaim it? It wasn’t regular "aura," he knew that, no more than regular mana was an enchantment. This was something else.

The description of the class floated through his mind again.

The Battlefield Reclaimer is an ancient enchanter and smith who uses aura and essences from the elements, including rare ones like the sunset, aurora, or ocean light, to imbue items with rare and inexplicable properties.

This class allows the bearer to become attuned to concepts beyond mortality.

Seek out a battlefield and learn how to reclaim the artifacts of the past.

Initial Class Quest: Reclaim an Aura.

There was clearly a connection between battlefields, auras, and the two key concepts of enchanting and smithing. His father and grandfather’s ideas ran in the same direction, and he let those ideas filter through one part of his mind as he thought about it.

At the same time, he continued to practice with his flames. His mana was running low, and aura was on his mind...

Could he burn aura too?

He could sense his aura, vaguely, but he didn’t have as much control over it as he did over his mana, thanks to Mana Control.

He felt the shift in his flames as he switched over from one source to the other, like catching your step in the middle of a fall. The crystal blue flames faded and then suddenly surged up again, burning steadily.

He could feel his aura draining away, like vitality flowing out of him and into the fire.

Well, that worked.

Auras, enchanting, smithing...artifacts of the past from a battlefield....

The classes of Smith and Enchanter were well known. The village even had a Smith. Enchanters were much rarer and usually only in big cities. Small places couldn’t support the necessary resources.

Enchanters were the ones who made magical items, imbuing them with spell patterns and effects.

How was he supposed to reclaim an aura from an artifact...?

"Dad, can I see your water crystal?" he asked after a minute. The water crystal that his dad kept on him was something that a low-level enchanter might have made. Did it have aura...and did it count as an artifact?

Jeric passed him the water crystal with a nod, and then went back to his own planning.

The crystal was a deep blue, darker than the color of his mana, and about as long as his first finger. It was an oblong shard with six faceted edges, like a stretched-out hexagon.

Had it been made naturally and harvested or was it crafted this way?

The vertical slits in Sam’s eyes opened wider as he examined the crystal, trying to see into its depths. To his dad, he knew the crystal just looked like blue glass, but to him there was a distinct glow around it.

He rolled it across his palm, one way and then the other, as he peered at it. If he’d dared, he would have tried infusing mana into it, but he didn’t want to break their only source of water. Plus, it was expensive.

This blue glow was the mana in it? Or was it more complicated than that? The World Law had said his new eyes were special. Maybe he could see something?

Was it possible to see aura?

He gave his dad some warning and then he went over to the side of the room, preparing Aura Bolt. He could feel the aura flowing through him as he cast the spell and he focused all of his attention on it, trying to understand it in the same way that he did Mana Control.

The crackling, blue bolt exploded against the stone in front of him, chipping off a few shards.

He looked down at the water crystal, searching for the same feeling there, but he couldn’t make sense of it yet.

He tried again.

He needed more practice in using Aura Bolt anyway, to increase the speed of his casting. If he could learn how to channel his aura like he did mana, and figure out the new things he was seeing....

Well, it would be helpful.

Jeric looked across the room at his son, nodding to himself. Obsession with unlocking the class ran in their family. Let him experiment. Maybe he would come up with something.

The rest of the day faded away as they ate, healed, and planned.

Now and then, Aura Bolts crashed against the back wall.

---

Sam was insanely frustrated. He could see the glow around the water crystal, and he’d even been able to separate it into two parts, one lighter and one darker blue. The darker one was mana.

That meant the lighter one had to be aura, right? So, why wasn’t it working?

Their health was back to almost normal and their wounds had sealed over. Thankfully, the cauterization had worked and the bite marks hadn’t gotten infected.

They needed to go out and explore soon, which meant he was going to have to stop practicing until later. He only had a little bit of time left.

He was trying to manipulate the aura in his body to connect with the aura in the crystal, similar to how he had infused the spell formation with mana, but the water crystal was refusing to cooperate.

His aura was just sliding off of it.

Besides that, his practice hadn’t been completely futile. He’d cast a lot of Aura Bolts and there was some success in moving his aura around like mana, but he hadn’t gotten a skill for it.

It was just a little easier to sense his aura now as a distinct thing.

He knew he was being impatient.

If anyone could just learn Mana Control on their own, it wouldn’t be such a key skill, would it?

The more he thought about his class, the more he wondered if the concepts for it had been lost in history. Maybe it wasn’t a broken class, so much as an "ancient" class, like the description said.

Had people once understood aura in a different way and the class would have made sense to them?

"An ancient enchanter and smith," he muttered to himself for the hundredth time. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way.

For an Enchanter to master an enchantment, they had to know it intimately, right? That meant meditating over it until the spell was second nature to them. Then they could imbue it into something, usually with a formation or by engraving it into an inscription.

The water crystal had a small sigil on one end, which probably stood for "water," if he were guessing. Without understanding that, perhaps it was impossible to connect to the aura of the crystal.

What else could he try?

"Dad, do you know the rune for fire?" he called out, as an idea suddenly occurred to him.

"What...? Umm...yes, I believe so," his dad said slowly, as he looked towards Sam.

Jeric was skinning one of the rats, under the theory that it might be useful as armor if they could find something to cure it. He was going to try a mixture of the rat’s brain and urine, and then get Sam to bake it over the fire

It was a long-term plan, but he’d run out of other things to do while waiting for his health to recover.

He took a stick of charcoal and drew out the rune for fire on the wall, along with the ones for the other elements that he knew.

"Your grandfather taught me those when I was your age," he said, thinking back. "He hoped that I could become an Arcane Scribe like him, but I was never able to do anything with them."

"How do you become an Arcane Scribe?" Sam asked, interested. This was a part of his father’s history that he’d never heard before, and also a very useful profession. If he could learn that....

"You have to make a spell scroll," Jeric replied. "Usually, you can acquire it as a profession or a subclass if you’re taught well enough and demonstrate that by crafting a scroll. Even the simplest will do, but you need specially prepared paper and the right brushes to help you form the proper symbols and to channel the mana."

Not all professions could be used as a subclass, but the ones that could were extremely important. They gave you class experience as you leveled them. The problem was that you could only have one subclass at a time and you couldn't change it until it hit 100.

There were other limits, including that the level of your subclass could never be higher than your main class.

A profession was limited by your general Level instead.

His grandfather had never been able to get higher than Level 9 as an Arcane Scribe, but it had still been enough for him to support his family.

"Can you teach me what he taught you?" Sam asked, his eyes blazing at the idea.

Jeric tapped his thumb against his chin as he looked at the wall and then back at Sam...before finally nodding.

He wasn’t sure it would work, and they didn’t have any of the correct materials here, but it was something to do. Perhaps it would help Sam out in the future.

"Let’s explore once more first, and we can try that while we’re resting," he agreed. "It won’t hurt."

He turned around and so he didn’t notice as Sam walked over to the wall, his fingertips tracing the sigils. Flickers of crystal blue flame began to burn, following the path of the charcoal.

The sigils reflected in Sam’s eyes, curling through his awareness as they sank into his memory.

---

The father and son were wrapped in a layer of charred rat skin as they ventured into the tunnels once more.

There hadn’t been time to cure the hides, so Sam had baked them until they hardened into sheets, making something like rawhide sheets. Then they had cut them down to size, poked holes through for their heads and arms, and belted them around their waists.

It was a rough, rat hide tunic. If they killed a few more, they might be able to make some breeches to protect their legs.

Jeric chose a direction at random, heading to the right. The tunnels around them were silent now, with no rats in sight. Perhaps they’d managed to scare them off.

More likely, they had just gotten lucky.

Strange skittering sounds and clicks echoed through the tunnels, coming from insects that crawled along the walls and from more distant things that they couldn’t see.

The sigils Sam had just learned were bright in his mind, outlined in that crystal blue fire that was part of him.

He reached out around him, trying to sense everything, as he worked to distinguish the flows of mana and aura in the environment. It let him keep an eye out for anything approaching at the same time as he was practicing.

He was learning that aura operated under different laws than mana. He didn’t know what they all were yet, but he knew that aura was more linked to emotion, movement, and a sense of life. If mana was lightning, then aura was the wind and the clouds around it, or maybe the sunlight that warmed the world and caused everything to move.

Similar, in some ways. Different, but still connected.

Two sides of the same coin.

Why had his family received this broken class anyway? The World Law was a bastard, but it didn’t do things for no reason.

Had it originally had something to do with his grandfather’s Arcane Scribe profession, or his great-grandfather’s Arcane Researcher class?

Maybe this class was linked somehow to that type of research, to sigils and runes, and to using them to craft enchantments, like the description said.

Or a more ancient form of it...maybe there were sigils for aura and mana both, or even a completely different language that he would need to learn.

Classes weren’t supposed to be this hard! You were supposed to be able to use them immediately. What if the class weren’t really broken, but something was just missing in how his family understood it?

He liked that thought. It was a good one.

He had to keep hope alive.

A new sound down the tunnel brought him back to the present. This time, it was the hoarse chufff of breath and a wave of heat, followed by low-pitched voices. The clatter of wood on stone echoed down the tunnel.

Sam exchanged a look with his dad, and then leaned over to whisper into his ear what he’d heard. "Three, at least. I don’t know what, but it doesn’t sound like rats."

Jeric nodded at him, raising his hammer in one hand as he gestured the outlines of a plan. They still didn’t have good weapons, but they had learned a bit from the last fight. Sam nodded back at him in agreement. He knew what to do.

As the creatures approached, Sam prepared an Aura Bolt and ducked out from around the wall. There were four creatures down the tunnel. Two of them were low, four-legged lizard-like things with dark red spots and blunted claws. Their bodies radiated a sense of heat and they were wearing collars with leashes that led back to two short rock monsters.

The rocky creatures were about four feet tall. Each of them had a leash in one hand and a spear taller than they were in the other. Their faces were flat and their features were blunt except for a slightly triangular forehead, making it look like a cliff had smashed into them. Their eyes were glowing red, similar to the rats, and their mouths were a gash of sharp, metallic fangs.

They held the spears in blunt, four-fingered hands. The points were chipped from a dark stone that was similar in color to their skin. They were also wearing some type of rough leather armor covered with scales. On top of their heads, there was a brownish-red ruff like a lizard’s fringe.

Dark Salamander (Subterranean).

Basalt Gnome (Subterranean).

The prompts chimed into his mind, giving the monsters a name. Meeting a person for the first time didn't give you a prompt like that.

They were called basalt gnomes, but they looked more like very hostile rock elementals. As soon as they caught sight of Sam, they raised their spears to attack. Their jaws unhinged, showing long, powerful fangs that could bite through skin as easily as rock.

The Aura Bolt moved faster than a spear and hit one of the salamanders in the shoulder. Sam ducked back around the wall, preparing another one as he ran backwards. He sidestepped, bringing himself into view of the monsters again, as he threw it at them. This time, he made sure to aim.

The bolt exploded against the chest of a basalt gnome, tossing it backwards by a foot. The armor on its chest ripped apart and a splatter of dark blood appeared, but he didn’t have time to look at anything more.

Sam continued running backwards, trusting to his memory so as not to trip over anything, as he threw another bolt. This time, he aimed for the legs. Hitting them in the chest hadn’t been enough to stop them directly.

He didn’t have time to see how effective this one was as the gnomes roared, their rough voices like pebbles grating across a pan. They dropped the leashes with a barked command and the salamanders shot out of their hands. They raised their spears to throw.

Sam ducked to the side of the tunnel, already swinging his pickaxe as the first salamander approached. The spike on it slammed into the salamander’s chest and it was ripped out of his hands.

He had no time to retrieve it and he spun around as he continued to run, pressing himself as closely as possible along the curve of the tunnel wall to avoid the spears that were coming. Angry, rocky shouts followed him.

The second salamander was on his heels, its legs slamming into his back. Its breath was hot on his hair.

At least it didn’t have claws.

Fire surged around him, a wave of reddish-orange, and crackled against crystal blue fire that rose off of his skin.

Never mind, it had a fire attack....

"Now!" Jeric shouted as Sam rounded the tunnel, hitting the point that they’d marked.

Sam threw himself into a slide, putting all of his weight into his feet as he fell backwards. Jeric’s hammer whoooshed over his head, slamming into the salamander that was right behind him.

Sam rolled, catching himself as he surged upwards again. He spun in place as he found a target and threw another Aura Bolt down the hall towards where a gnome had appeared.

Its spear left its hand at the same time.

"Down!" he shouted, but Jeric was already diving forward, hitting the ground next to the salamander as he slammed his hammer down on its head again. The first blow had stunned it, leaving it open.

The Aura Bolt crashed into the gnome’s chest. At the same time, the hurled spear struck sparks from the wall next to Sam’s head.

He was already running forward, another Aura Bolt forming in his hand. The lesson in aggression and sudden violence was one that he’d learned well. When you had an advantage, seize it for all it was worth. This bolt took the gnome in the face, shattering its head as it crackled inwards, and the gnome fell to the ground.

Sam didn’t stop. There were two more monsters still in the tunnel. If they didn't win, they would be the ones killed for experience.

Jeric’s hammer beat down on the salamander again, making sure it was dead, before he sprang to his feet and ran after his son.

The second salamander had recovered and was racing down the hall in a limping half-run towards them. Sam’s Aura Bolt hit it in the face this time, and then he was past, leaving it to his dad as he looked for the second gnome.

When he caught sight of it, it was half-standing as it raised its spear to throw. One leg was half collapsed under it. The Aura Bolt arrived before it could, slamming into the hole in its chest that he’d made before.

Another Aura Bolt and a few hammer blows later, and the four monsters were dead.

Sam and Jeric slumped to the ground, gasping in long draughts of air.

"Well, at least that went better than the last one," Jeric muttered as he looked at the gnomes. His hair was charred from one of the salamanders and the rat skin tunic was covered in scorch marks.

"Basalt gnomes...." Sam considered the things they’d just faced. Their jaws were clearly not just for chewing rock, and he shuddered at the thought of being bitten by them. "There must be a lair somewhere. It looks like they trained the salamanders."

"Take their experience and let’s get this cleaned up." Jeric nodded in agreement. "The salamander skins would be worth something, but we don’t have any good way to carry them."

Jeric searched for loot as Sam touched each corpse, absorbing the experience from it. The chime of ringing notifications and levels was a balm to his soul. He was starting to see why killing monsters was the best way to advance. These gnomes and salamanders must have been around Level 4.

He got nearly 200 experience from them. The first 25 experience got him to Level 4 and the rest got him all the way to level 5 with some to spare.

Congratulations, Defiant. You are now General Level 5.

Experience to Next: 125.

You have four free status points.

He put two of the points into Agility and two into Aura. As he did, he felt his connection to that ephemeral energy become deeper and stronger. He also felt lighter on his feet and his movements became smoother and better balanced.

Those were the two skills he’d used the most in this fight.

The experience system was making more and more sense to him. 10, 15, 25, 50...and then 100 experience for Level 5 and 200 for Level 6. Each level now required twice what the last one did, so it was pretty easy to keep track of it.

It had been a lot easier to kill the gnomes and salamanders than the rats...mostly because they had planned better and they’d still had the element of surprise.

It was very clear that a good offense was better than a good defense at the moment. They were all at such low levels that their innate defenses were not very high.

On top of that, Aura Bolt was incredibly deadly. Spells were usually stronger than an equivalent weapon attack, which was why Wizards were so dangerous, but they were limited by your mana.

Aura Bolt had no information as to what grade it was. He’d thought it was Basic, but maybe it was Advanced instead?

His grandfather was a genius.

Of course, another way of thinking about it was that three generations of effort in his family had resulted in his ability to kill a rat and a salamander, and he still hadn’t unlocked his class....

When you put it that way, it didn’t sound so great.

Sam shook his head as he helped his dad finish looting the corpses.

"Now, we have spears," Jeric said with a smile, as he passed one of them to Sam. He was much happier with the way this fight had gone. He had also stripped the armor off the gnomes, but it was much too small to fit either of them. Perhaps if they’d had some thread....

"Let’s keep going for a few more hours, and we’ll retreat to the pool to sleep. If these salamanders are still here, we’ll pick them up on the way."

Sam’s eyes burned with crystal blue light as he looked down the tunnel, searching for the next target.

Battlefield Reclaimer 6: A Young Man's Lesson

Sigils spun in front of Sam as he studied the latest runes his father had drawn on the wall, memorizing them in a wash of crystal-blue flames.

With each one, he felt like he was gaining an advantage in the world.

This was magic! It was power in its most essential form.

He'd always wanted to be a Wizard or something powerful, throwing bolts of energy and destroying his enemies. If he could just master these runes and use them...maybe he could achieve something similar, even if his class was broken.

If he was lucky, some part of this would also let him figure out what he needed to do to unlock Battlefield Reclaimer.

If he could just use these to understand what was missing from their class....

He hoped the runes would give him a better understanding of aura and the essence of things. Those were the ideas that were in the class description.

What did it mean to use aura and essences from the elements? Hopefully, the runes were the link he was missing.

Once he'd learned the water rune, he'd started to feel like it was a little bit easier to connect to the water crystal, but he still wasn't successful in merging his aura into it.

The fire rune also seemed to resonate with his Fire Affinity, although he didn't understand exactly how.

There was still something missing.

---

They were resting again, in between searching the tunnels. Another day had passed and they had gone several hours in each direction.

They had run out of bread in their packs, so they had started to eat the lichen and mushrooms that were growing in the tunnels. They'd found a few types on the basalt gnomes and had taken a risk in trying them.

So far, they were feeling alright, even if mushrooms and rat meat weren't the most balanced meal.

They’d encountered two more batches of monsters, two rats in the first one and two gnomes in the second, but they still hadn’t found an exit.

The upside was that the experience he'd gained was almost enough to get him to the next level.

He would have kept going, but his father needed to rest. The battles were much harder on him. His Strength and Constitution weren't as high as Sam's.

Two new salamanders and two rats were in the pile at the side of the room. His dad was working on them, fashioning new clothes from the hides. From time to time, Sam went over and baked the pieces to a rough hardness, helping to form them into armor.

In between, he studied the runes.

There was something there, if he could just figure it out. The runes were made of mana right? So why couldn't he connect to the water crystal?

He was able to pour mana into it and make water..., but he wasn't able to connect his aura to it.

Mana and aura.... What was the key that connected them?

At least it was something to think about. He needed a task to keep him focused. Otherwise, his mind spun around in circles trying to figure out how to get out of the tunnels.

It was the fourth day that they’d been trapped down here now. They didn't have enough information, or any real idea where they were.

The tunnels seemed endless.

Despite their intent to get home, each fight left them a little more wounded. His transformed body seemed to be handling it better than his dad's, but even he needed a break between fights to restore his health and recover.

He was leveling quickly and it felt like the Level 10 barrier that had hindered his father for his entire life was closing in on him. A dozen more fights might be enough to max his level....

Forever.

He refused to let that happen. Hopefully, these runes would lead him to the key.

He kept repeating the description of the class in his mind as he listened to his father’s guidance.

They started with the basic runes and then it got more complex as the ideas became increasingly abstract.

Wind, earth, fire, lightning, sun, moon, aura, mana, force, world, life, death, and then a new series: hope, blood, destruction, fortify, charge, artifact....

The runes for aura and artifact stood out to Sam, since they were concepts that his class was focused on, and as he memorized them, he assigned each a special place in his mind.

He was going to experiment with those.

Jeric was a surprisingly skilled teacher. Perhaps it came from the scholar profession, or maybe it was the heritage passed down by his grandfather.

There were hundreds of the runes, and sometimes he paused to think, recalling information that he hadn’t used in a long time. But eventually, he always wrote another series on the wall, explaining them one by one.

Jeric wasn't entirely sure why Sam wanted to learn the runes, but he wasn't going to stop him. All knowledge was useful somewhere.

Perhaps Sam would be able to see something that he had missed.

He also didn't want Sam to go explore the tunnels alone, so they needed something to do during the downtime.

Along with teaching him the runes, Jeric explained everything he knew about making a spell scroll, from the most basic ways to create the base material to the more advanced ways to use a stylus and engrave the symbols.

Sam’s grandfather had been a savant in the field, and he had passed down his wisdom to his son. Perhaps now, it would be useful to his grandson.

Jeric had never used the information himself. His father had taught him how to be an Arcane Scribe, but he didn't have any talent in it.

Perhaps that was due to his own choice. After his father’s genius had failed to obtain results, he hadn’t been able to make himself follow the same path.

Even if it paid better than the job he was doing now.

Despite that, he remembered the lessons and he taught Sam willingly, hoping that his son would have more success than him.

The lessons also helped to take his mind off of things.

He wanted to get back to Aemilia and Altey as soon as possible, but he wasn't going to make it if they fought non-stop. The downtime was eating at him.

They'd done better in the latest fights, but they were still getting injured. He'd never fought this much before, even on the nights he defended the village and the few years he'd spent in the militia....

Those were either dull and boring, or a sudden burst of stabbing at things he could barely see.

He was a realist, and he saw what they were up against.

If he didn't make it out of here, he hoped Sam would. These lessons might be the last thing he could do for him.

It was a thought that he didn't share with his son.

---

As the lessons continued, Sam’s fingers were twitching. He wanted to try some of these runes out, to see if he could make both mana and aura connect in them.

He needed to create a working rune, so he could study it.

Of course, the only way he knew how to draw a functional rune was to turn it into a spell scroll. A rune couldn't just stand alone.

He didn’t have any spell materials to write on, but...his gaze was drawn to the pool of concentrated mana in the cavern.

What if he tried using that?

"No, absolutely not," Jeric replied as soon as he brought up the idea. He was adamant, shaking his head.

"We don’t have any tools to channel the mana, to prevent backlashes, or to limit how much power ends up in the spell scroll. At the very least, you would need a silver stylus to write with to shield the scroll from fluctuations in your own mana."

Sam looked at the mana pool and then back at the runes on the wall. An idea occurred to him...but it was a lot to ask, especially for their family.

"Dad, do you have a few silver coins we could...melt down into a stylus?" His voice was low, almost embarrassed.

His father only earned two silvers a week, plus a bit extra if he went exploring and found something good.

Jeric frowned as he looked at his son and then at the sigils on the wall. He knew what Sam was thinking, but the likelihood of it working....

Even if they could make a stylus, spell scrolls were not simple things. Each part had to be specially prepared to handle the complex flow of mana.

"A simple scroll shouldn't be that dangerous, right?" Sam insisted. "Something with a basic spell in it and just a little bit of mana?"

If he didn't get a chance to see the runes in operation, how was he going to understand them?

Jeric gave him a long, unreadable look. Then, he turned to look at the wall where Sam had been practicing.

What was Sam thinking about with this idea?

He didn't like the idea at all, but...the pleading look in Sam's eyes made his resistance fade.

At least it was less dangerous than exploring the tunnels on his own.

"Alright," he finally agreed, "but not until you can copy down all of these runes perfectly in charcoal. And only while we’re resting. We need to keep pushing through the tunnels to see if we can find an exit."

Sam smiled for the first time in a while, his ears perking up.

His dad had agreed!

Now, he just needed to keep training and see if he could figure out the connection that he knew was there. How was mana connected to aura...and what was "Aura" from a battlefield?

"Making a stylus is harder than you think," Jeric told him, but it wasn’t enough to dampen his mood.

"First, we’ll see if you have enough control of your flames to melt silver at an even temperature...and we’ll need to make a small crucible and a mold out of stone here to hold it."

Jeric paused as he looked around the room, assessing what was available. There wasn't a lot, but maybe if....

"We’ve got a couple hours before we head out again, and I’m almost done with the hides...," he said at last. "I’ll get started on it while you work on the runes."

Jeric didn’t think making a stylus would be the most useful thing in the world, but who knew. Maybe they would get lucky.

He understood his son's desire to achieve more than the world had given them.

He frowned as he returned to the rats and held up a piece of hide, turning it one way and then the other as he assessed it.

A spell scroll needed more than just a stylus. You also needed a base material to write on.

Beast hide was a primary component in spell scrolls....

He supposed a rat counted.

---

"Left!" Jeric shouted as his hammer slammed down onto the skull of a salamander. It hissssed as it thrashed left and right wildly, knocking its gnome partner away as it tried to escape from the pain.

There was a mess of gnomes and salamanders in the tunnel, scattered apart by their initial charge and Sam’s Aura Bolt-enhanced ambush.

Sam rolled to the left, sliding past the tail of a salamander that whipped over his head, and then sprang back up, his spear stabbing downwards.

Jeric’s hammer spun through the air and slammed into the face of a gnome who was about to throw his spear.

Their tactics had gotten better over the last couple of days, but the number of monsters they were running into had also increased. They had to be getting closer to the basalt gnome nest, and the frequency of the patrols had picked up.

The first two gnomes and salamanders had been one of the bigger groups. They’d encountered a couple more after that where there were only two gnomes and no salamanders. There were already a couple of extra spears and more pieces of the gnomes’ strange armor back in their cave.

This time, they’d run into four gnomes and two salamanders. It was the biggest group yet.

They’d been lucky so far that Sam’s hearing was better than that of their enemies. They almost always had warning before the gnomes arrived. Without that, they would have been the ones getting ambushed.

There was still no sign of an exit from the tunnels, but their skills were increasing. They were learning more about how the salamanders and the gnomes liked to fight.

Life in the village required using a spear and manning the wall when beasts came by, but that was mostly stabbing and then ducking back behind the fortifications as fast as possible. This was different. It was a real fight, with strategy and tactics.

Sam had already gained a few new proficiencies, and Jeric was getting them too as he tried new things. They were all Basic, and the experience didn’t do anything for the older man, but the saving grace was that it was banked.

Like his son, Jeric had never given up hope of unlocking his class. If he managed it one day...all of the experience that he’d earned over the years might be enough for him to reach Level 20 or higher.

He couldn't tell exactly, since it wasn't visible on his status page, but the boost in Constitution and mana would add years to his life.

Then he would teach Sam and neither of them would be stuck any longer.

Jeric pushed the thought away as he watched the gnome he’d hit fall backwards, its face crushed from the hammer. The spear in his hand stabbed forward into the salamander that was shaking its head.

Sam drove his own spear down until he felt it hit bone. He yanked it out again, changing his grip as he jumped across the salamander to the opposite side.

He jerked down on the end of the haft, flipping the salamander over and pulling his spear out.

An Aura Bolt flashed out of his hand towards one of the two gnomes at the back that was still standing, shooting the gap between the salamanders.

He sank to the ground, using the corpse for cover as he summoned another Aura Bolt, letting it flash out toward the other one.

Then he was running forward again, his breath coming in hard and short gasps as he lunged, stabbing forward with all of his weight behind the spear.

In a few more blows, it was over.

The gnomes were clever and dangerous, but manageable. Their first reaction was to let the salamanders attack and to throw their spears, waiting to see if they could kill you at a distance.

If that didn’t work, they had small knives made from the same dark stone as their spear points. They’d try to get close to you to use them. Despite their size, they were as strong as an adult human, or perhaps a bit more.

It was difficult to fight them hand to hand—they were small targets and every one of them fought like an angry cat in a barrel.

Sam already had two long slashes down his arm and a rent in his rathide tunic from those daggers. Jeric was luckier, or perhaps smarter, and had managed to keep the gnomes at a distance, but his right arm was burnt nearly pink from a salamander’s breath.

Aura Bolt was the best way to kill them, or to get them with a spear or ranged attack, so that you didn’t have to get close.

Sam's spell and the spears they’d acquired from the earlier groups were what made the current situation possible. If they’d faced this group at the beginning, it would have been ugly.

The gnomes and two salamanders lay scattered across the floor as Sam leaned on his spear to catch his breath.

Transformed or not, he was still panting at the end of every fight.

His dad also looked exhausted.

"Collect the experience and let’s get back to the cave," Jeric said faintly as he tried to control his breathing. His head was pounding and his arm felt like it’d been dipped in boiling water.

His constitution wasn’t high enough for him to heal very well, regardless of how much rest he got, not without medicine of some type or a healing class. If only he’d brought along some poultices from the village....

Being locked at Level 9 was a slow death curse.

Sam touched each corpse, absorbing the twisting threads of energy from them, and notifications chimed in his mind. It was about 300 experience for all six of them, almost as much as he’d gained total before now.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have gained a Level. You are now General Level 6.

Experience to Next: 15

You have two free status points to distribute.

...

You have demonstrated Basic Proficiency in Spears and Combat Casting.

You receive 20 experience.

It was just enough to get him up to level 7. A moment later, the same notification chimed again.

Congratulations, Defiant. ... You are now General Level 7.

Experience to Next: 795

You have four free status points to distribute.

His experience needs were doubling for every level right now and the looming amount of experience he needed to get to Level 8 made him stare at it. After that, it probably scaled even more.

He would have to kill like...sixteen gnomes and salamanders to get that.

No wonder these gnomes weren’t that high of a level. Even if they lived down here for their entire lives, the number of things they’d have to hunt to get up higher was ridiculous.

From what he could tell, the gnomes primarily lived off the lichen and mushrooms that grew in the tunnels. Hunting wasn't their main occupation.

What was it like leveling a class all the way to 100?

Sam’s breathing started to fall back to normal as he shook his head and distributed the points. That goal was much too far away for him to worry about it.

He added a status point each to Aura and Intelligence. After a moment, he split the last two between Strength and Constitution. He was using those too much to neglect them.

The higher his Constitution, the tougher his skin would be and the more quickly he would heal. It would also help with his stamina in a fight, making it easier for him to fight for longer.

Maybe soon he wouldn’t be gasping for air after every fight.

If he’d been back in the village, he might have neglected the other stats and put everything in Aura and Intelligence. He was feeling more and more, almost like it was an intuition, that those were the prime stats for his class. Maybe if he got them up high enough, he would gain some insight.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to do that right now. Hopefully, it wouldn’t affect his progress.

When he was done, his status page looked a lot better than it had back at Level 1.

Health: 150

Aura: 13
Mana: 13

STR: 14

CON: 15

AGI: 12

WIS: 8

INT: 13

AUR: 13

CHA: 4

The tunnels seemed endless and the monsters would only get stronger. At the very least, adding a bit to each stat would help with fights.

Hopefully, the gnome nest would be near a route to the surface, but there was no guarantee that the rock monsters went up there. Maybe they spent their whole lives underground?

They were lucky that they hadn’t landed in a higher-level area. These tunnels were just within the range of what they could handle. Maybe the Outsider spell formation had known that.

"Let’s get moving," Jeric said, as he tried to catch his breath. He pushed himself back to his feet, using a spear to help.

As quickly as they could, the two of them tied the salamanders to spears. Then they shouldered the corpses and began to limp back to their cave.

It took hours to make the return journey, with pauses along the way to rest.

Fortunately, the tunnels were relatively barren and monsters didn’t wander into the area too frequently. They only had to deal with one more pair of rats on the way back.

Aura Bolts to the skull and a spear through the heart took care of them before they could close the distance.

If they’d had the spears the first time, they would have been able to do a much better job against the first pack.

"We’ll come back for the corpses," Jeric groaned, as he pulled the salamander-laden spears onto his shoulder again and motioned for Sam to take the other ends.

Once they were loaded, they continued to slowly trudge back towards their cave.

Jeric didn't see the look in Sam’s eyes.

His father was hiding it to keep up a positive mood, but Sam knew he wasn't doing well. A pang hit his heart like a coal had ignited in it.

Every little scratch and bruise was another weight on Jeric's shoulders. Cauterizing the wounds had been bad enough, making it harder for him to move without pain. Now, the salamander burn was affecting him too.

And yet, they couldn’t stop, or they would never find a way home.

Sam swore silently as he slid forward and took more of the salamanders’ weight onto his shoulders, promising that he would find a way to fix it all.

Battlefield Reclaimer 7: Crafting Experiments

Three silver coins were slowly melting into a puddle of shining, liquid metal as Sam and Jeric watched. They were resting between explorations, which gave them time to try out Sam's request.

Sam was working to keep his crystal-blue flame at an even heat and Jeric was carefully observing the stone cup he’d fashioned into a crucible.

He had to make sure that it didn’t get any cracks as it took the flames. He’d chiseled it out of the best piece of stone he could find and he had tried to smooth out the interior so it would heat evenly, but it was still rough.

It had done well in the tests when they heated it up empty, but if it started to crack now, they would have to stop.

He only had the three silvers. If the metal escaped, it would be very difficult to get it back into this form. They’d have to scrape it off the floor and then figure out how to purify it to remove debris....

He didn’t want that to happen.

He’d also made a mold for the stylus, which was somewhat easier. He’d carved a groove of the right size into a softer variety of stone, which was waiting to one side. When the silver was poured in, it would take the shape of the mold and cool. Then he could break it out.

He hoped it worked. It was easier said than done.

It would have been better to use a clay mold or proper tools, but they could only work with what they had.

The cauldron continued to heat at an even rate as Sam’s flames curled around it. Jeric still wasn’t sure how hot the crystal-blue fire was, but it was at least enough to melt silver.

Fairly quickly, too.

The stone took the heat better than the silver, and it was barely changing color at all.

So far, so good.

"Carefully...," Jeric murmured, as Sam’s flames licked over the top edge.

Sam nodded, focusing as he reduced the intensity. His mana was slowly dropping, but it wasn’t a problem yet.

Maintaining the flame was like trying to control his heartbeat. Any extra movement or a sudden thought could send it racing again.

The coins were fully warmed now, deforming into lumps. Molten liquid began to run from the edges to form a pool in the center.

Sam stared at the flames, barely blinking, as he kept his concentration steady. It was taxing, but he was managing it.

"Sam, try to infuse your mana now," Jeric instructed, as he also kept his eyes on it.

The silver was shining brightly and about to reach its peak heat. The coins were almost fully molten, their lines blurring together as they gathered into a single mass.

Now was the time for Sam to attune it.

Threads of crystal-blue mana curled out of Sam’s hands, forming a liquid cloud that sank into the metal. He could feel the energy permeating it, shifting the structure in a way he didn’t quite understand.

At the same time, he felt his aura flowing into it as well. It happened automatically, as if it were required. He probably wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been practicing with Aura Bolt so much. It was the same color as his mana, but more diffuse.

It didn't seem to affect the process.

The silver was becoming something more than it had been before.

Attuning was the process where an Enchanter or Wizard made an item their own by infusing their mana into it. You could do it with any item, but the best tools were the ones you crafted yourself.

As his energy flowed in, a connection formed. It flared into his consciousness like one of the runic symbols, snapping into place with its own area in his mind.

It was new...but somehow comfortable, as if it were meant to be there. He could also feel that there was something unfinished about the stylus.

It had potential and energy, but it wasn’t done yet.

It needed his personal soul mark to complete the binding.

He had thought long and hard about what that should be. He’d taken some of the runes he was learning and redrawn them, merging ideas into a symbol that stood for him.

It was based on the runes for aura and battle, but he had combined it with his personal aesthetic.

It looked like a crystal-blue eye with the merged rune in place of the pupil, and it glowed with his signature flame.

He infused the mark into the silver as it finished melting, spreading it to every part of the metal. Then he looked up and nodded.

Once he had crafted his soul mark, it had felt like a part of him. That had helped him realize something about the runes he was learning.

As soon as they were consumed by the crystal-blue flames, they were seared into his memory.

He was able to redraw them without a single error, and when he thought about them, they floated in his consciousness as if they were alive.

He wasn’t sure if it was the Outsider transformation or something unique to his class that was making it happen. His father also had an incredible recall for them. He was pulling them out of his memory from thirty years ago without a single mistake.

"Keep it just like that," Jeric approved as he watched the crucible. "Just a little more and we’ll move it to the mold. We want to make sure it’s evenly heated all the way through."

Sam turned all of his attention back to the silver. It was almost there.

A minute later, Jeric used two of the gnomish daggers like tongs to pick up the crucible. His hands were steady as he moved it a few inches to the side and tilted it towards the mold.

The silver poured out in a shining stream as it flowed into the groove. Threads of crystal-blue energy curled through it.

Sam didn’t know if it would help, but he willed it to work, pushing all of his intent into the molten stylus, as if his willpower could prevent accidents and make it turn out the right way.

The liquid filled the groove and hovered there, forming a small dome.

He held his breath as it began to cool. He could feel its structure shifting and solidifying, the potential turning to reality.

A few minutes later, a notification appeared. It had an ornate silver border and came with a clarion chime.

Congratulations, Defiant. By infusing your essence into a magical tool you crafted, you have taken the first step as an Enchanter.

Do you wish to accept this Profession?

Be advised that you can only have three active professions. Any profession you accept after that will overwrite one of your active professions.

Inactive professions will be stored, but they cannot be leveled until they become active again.

Sam’s heart leapt into this throat as he accepted the notification without a second thought. That was the Enchanter profession!

A feeling of ecstatic delight rushed through him.

He knew that it was just the start of the path and that he would have trouble leveling it, but it was still a mark of progress.

As soon as the chimes faded, another notification appeared.

Congratulations, Defiant. By using your skills to craft a metal tool, you have taken the first step as a Smith.

Do you wish to accept this Profession?

Again, he accepted immediately, as a smile stretched across his face that was as wide as a sail. His fangs flashed.

"Focus," his dad said sternly, glancing up at him. "And you’d better have accepted both of those professions."

He had seen Sam’s eyes light up, so he knew well enough what was going on. He had expected that the World Law would recognize what they were doing, at least for the Smith profession.

He wasn’t as sure about the second one, but he knew it was probably Enchanter or Wizard.

Over the past decades, Jeric had trained in several professions, but all of them were capped at Level 9.

The chime of experience sounded in Sam’s ears as the notifications faded, but he ignored it as he focused on the cooling stylus, even as he felt the little bubbles of delight flow through his veins.

Each new profession was worth 100 experience. There was no other reward for gaining them, except that they were added to his status screen.

In Aster Fall, nothing was given for free.

The World Law verified your work and granted experience or notifications, but you needed to learn recipes and techniques from other people. You could also try to figure them out on your own.

Jeric held out his hand, testing the air above the stylus, and then pulled it back. A bit later, he did the same thing again.

Finally, he nodded.

"It’s basically cool. Pour your mana into it and try to pull it out," he told Sam. "If you’re lucky, it’ll work and save us the trouble of breaking the mold."

Sam’s hand hovered over the stylus. Eagerness and nervousness warred in his veins. Then he reached down and touched it.

A spark leapt up, touching his hand, and the connection flared to life. Slowly, he pushed mana into it.

The stylus began to glow with a crystal-blue light, warming to the touch. Then it slid out of the mold and fell lightly into his hand. Stone dust dropped away as he shook it.

At first glance, it was an inelegant thing, roughly made, and he felt a surge of disappointment.

"Do the mana refinement, Sam," his dad instructed. "It’s the final step. Keep going and imagine what you want it to look like. Before it’s cooled and while your mana is infusing it, you have an opportunity."

Sam’s mana continued to pour into the stylus as he imagined what he wanted it to look like.

Crystal blue flames surrounded it and its form rippled, slowly shifting. The stylus absorbed two full points of mana as beads of silver ran down the sides and were reabsorbed. The structure corrected itself, becoming more crystalline and perfect.

When it stopped changing, the stylus had changed from a rough cylinder to an elegant, slender shape that flared slightly for the grip. There was a thin groove in the middle for ink that narrowed as it reached the tip.

A notification popped up.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have learned the Skill: Mana Refinement.

You have gained 20 experience.

Experience to Next: 575.

"It worked," Jeric said with a broad smile, as he watched the stylus correct itself. "It’s part of you, so there’s a small window of time where you can alter its shape, within limit. You can only use Mana Refinement when you craft and attune an item yourself."

Sam tilted the stylus to one side and then the other, letting the light play off of it. Even though it was only the beginning, it was a symbol of hope in the dark cavern.

It was beautiful.

---

Three hours later, Sam was swearing as he tried for the twentieth time to dip the stylus into the mana pool and get the mana to adhere.

The mana didn’t want to stick!

It kept running right back off. He needed it to gather in the groove on the stylus, so that he could use it.

The pool itself was a comfortable, tingling heat against his skin, like a hot bath, as his hand hovered over it. He was lying on his stomach, with his hand outstretched as he dipped the stylus in.

The liquid mana was a brilliant, glowing silver-white and it felt as if he were dipping the stylus into molten gold. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he actually touched the concentrated mana, but the idea of his hand melting was on the top of his mind.

It was dangerous, but he needed to do it.

If he’d had proper training, he probably would have known what was going on with the stylus, but the technique was escaping him.

If he couldn’t get the mana onto it, then he couldn’t use it to write a spell scroll. And if he couldn't do that, then he'd never get the Arcane Scribe profession.

If he was going to make a spell scroll, then he might as well try to get the profession for it. It was killing two birds with one stone.

Getting the mana to stick had to be related to Mana Control, right?

His father couldn't help with this one. Jeric had trained a number of professions, but his magical ones were only at Level 1 or 2. They were too expensive to increase.

So, while Sam knew a few theories, they were very basic. He had to figure out the rest on his own. Everything Jeric had told him about Arcane Scribe suggested that magical ink should just...stick.

So, what was the issue?

Was it because he was using concentrated mana itself instead of infused ink?

Behind him, on a rock, there was a piece of salamander hide waiting. He had prepared it himself, following his dad's instructions.

He had scraped the flesh from it, heated it to make it harder, and rubbed it with a soft piece of stone until it was supple. Then he’d infused it with his mana.

It was as prepared as it was going to get.

Now he just needed to draw the runes and he could try to make the most basic of scrolls. Even if it failed, he might still get the profession, as long as he demonstrated enough skill.

He might also see the connection he was looking for.

He dipped the stylus into the liquid mana again, just under the surface so it could touch the groove.

He had been trying to use his mana to connect with it, which hadn't worked, so this time he added aura to the mix, letting both flow down into the stylus.

He still didn’t have very good control of his aura, but it was improving. It was everywhere, like a cloud, and if he focused in just the right way, he could get it to do what he wanted.

Something happened.

He felt like he’d touched a stream of lava, but it didn’t burn him. The stylus was there as a shield. The intense heat ran through the silver and became gentler. Then it sank into his veins.

His mana jumped up from 8 to 9.

A stream of the liquid mana also stuck to the stylus, flowing up it.

"Hah!"

He’d got it! His eyes widened as he carefully pushed himself to his feet, tilting the stylus so the mana wouldn’t roll off.

He didn’t need to worry about that, as it turned out. The mana was wrapped in a cloud of his aura, keeping it on the stylus as he turned toward the salamander hide.

There was an outline of a formation on the scroll with the rune for light at the center. It was a very basic scroll, with just the focus rune and a larger stability rune outside of that to hold it.

He held his breath as he lowered the stylus to the first line, squeezing with his aura to keep the mana in place. Slowly, he released his aura at the base of the stylus, letting the liquid mana run onto the rune.

It sizzled as it hit the hide. One line of the rune turned a brilliant silver-white as he ran the stylus across it. As carefully as possible, he traced the other lines, trying to keep a steady flow of mana to each.

First the base.... Then the supporting lines.... The swirling curve at the top.... He worked from the outside to the inside, completing the support rune first so that it would hold the focus rune in place.

It took about ten minutes for him to finish tracing it out. When he was done, the runes on the page gleamed with a brilliant silver light. The final line snapped into place with an audible hum of flowing mana.

And then the entire scroll exploded into a fireball.

"Ahh!"

Sam darted back as the flames washed over him, charring his clothing, but at the same time the crystal-blue flames that were always there surged outwards, consuming the energy that touched him.

He shook his hand to get rid of the charred ash that had once been a scroll.

"Haha," his dad laughed from the side, once he saw that Sam was okay. "It’s not that easy to make a spell scroll! That hide is very low quality and using liquid mana is like dripping lava onto it. I’m surprised it lasted long enough for you to finish all the lines."

Sam grumbled as he rubbed the rest of the ash off.

---

As they stalked around the slow curve in the wall, the tunnel started to flare wider. Sam and Jeric froze, glancing back towards the two basalt gnomes that they had just killed.

Sam clenched his spear tight, his muscles taut as he pressed himself up against the wall and looked around the curve.

Ahead of them, the flare in the tunnel continued to grow larger. He could just make out the opening to what had to be a very large cavern in the distance. From inside, the sounds of rolling gnomish voices and the hiss of animals carried to his ears.

He crept as close as he dared, until the tunnel mouth turned into a slope downward. He lay on his belly as he looked over the edge.

A huge number of gnomes and salamanders were scattered between small stone huts. It was a ring of dwellings at least five hundred feet across, with a low wall at the border.

At the center, there was a bigger hut, five times the size of the others. It had its own wall around it, with gnomes stationed nearby. They looked stronger than the ones they'd seen in the tunnels. They had to be guards.

His eyes darted across the nest as a feeling of dread filled him. He couldn’t tell how many gnomes were in there, but it was a lot.

At least a hundred.

And some of them were clearly more powerful than the ones he'd fought already. Some of them might even have class abilities or magic.

Was there a gnomish Shaman or high-leveled Warrior in that central hut?

He slowly crept backwards, making sure that the guards didn't see him. They had been lucky to end up in a quiet section of the tunnels...but how much of that had to do with this nest suppressing the area?

When he returned, he waved to his father to step back farther. The two of them retreated down the tunnel again, dragging the two bodies with them, until they found a place to talk. He filled his father in on everything that he'd seen.

"Do you think they’re looking for us yet?" Sam asked. He was worried that guards from the nest would come looking for them. They hadn't been exactly subtle about killing the patrols.

"These tunnels are dangerous," Jeric said, shaking his head. "It’s hard to say. We’ve killed...ten of them so far. Without knowing more about them, I can’t tell if that’s going to get their attention. Not all monsters care about each other."

"These seem to have some type of society, so they must watch each other a bit," Sam pointed out.

"Good thinking." Jeric nodded at him, with praise in his eyes. "But we can’t tell what they’ll do. They haven’t come after us and it’s been nearly a week since we started killing their patrols. Maybe they think it’s a beast hunting in the tunnels. We’ve dragged some of the corpses away each time, which might make it look like something is eating them."

Sam frowned as he looked towards where the gnomish cavern was and nodded.

"Do you think we can get past them?" he asked hopefully.

"Not without a lot of luck." Jeric shook his head. "Based on what you saw, their nest can’t be that small. A hundred might be a low estimate. We don't have a chance if we attack them right now. All we can do is hope they don't follow us and start exploring another direction now."

The air quality of the tunnels had been changing as they explored, but Sam wasn’t able to tell if they were getting closer to the surface. There was an incline in some areas, but drops in others.

All his Outsider senses told him was that there was a stream of heated air from somewhere up ahead, past the gnome nest.

"Let’s go back and see what we can come up with," Jeric suggested. "Maybe we can make some traps to slow them down if they come after us."

Even if the gnomes’ average level was four or five, it didn’t matter when they had numbers on their side.

Sam’s mind raced. Traps might work, but there was a whole nest of gnomes and only two of them.... He also didn't want to give up this route if he didn't have to.

He was going to have to figure something out.

The silver-white intensity of the mana pool floated into his mind.

Battlefield Reclaimer 8: Essence

Sam and Jeric spent several hours fortifying the tunnel that led to the basalt gnome nest, but they didn’t have the ability to block it off. All they could do was fill an area with some loose rocks that might discourage patrols.

They dug out part of a wall, knocking it inwards, to make it look like there had been a cave-in, but it probably wouldn’t fool creatures who spent their entire lives underground.

They might have to abandon their cave if they couldn’t figure something out.

After that, they returned to the cavern. Jeric went to work on a rat hide, cutting it into a series of leather strips, as he tried to figure out a way to turn it into a trap.

"Go study," Jeric finally said, waving Sam away. "It’s better for you to keep learning the runes than to help with this. Maybe you’ll figure out what went wrong before."

Secretly, he wanted to take Sam’s mind off the monsters. His son was levelling quickly, which always came with enthusiasm, and he didn’t want to ruin it for him. There was no need to remind him of how dire their situation was.

Sam gave his dad a long look, and then nodded. He understood what Jeric was doing, but he went along with it anyway. It would make his dad feel better if he thought he was protecting him from it all.

When he went over to the other side of the cavern, he took the water crystal with him again.

He still hadn’t been able to connect to it, but there was something there...he could almost feel it, like an idea at the edge of his mind.

He turned the crystal around in his hands as he thought about mana and aura, and how they each worked. At the same time, he was thinking about the Enchanter profession and how to make spell scrolls.

There had to be something in there that would help.

It was all new to him, for better or worse. He didn’t have a tradition of Enchanters in his family to tell him what to think about it. He wasn’t even sure how his grandfather had succeeded in making spell scrolls.

The notification for the Enchanter profession echoed in his mind as he thought about it. It seemed simple, but there was something about it that was bothering him.

"By infusing your essence into a magical tool you crafted, you have taken the first step as an Enchanter."

By infusing his essence.... That was the word that was sticking in his mind. It was the same word that was in his class description, the "essence of the elements."

Why hadn’t it said ‘mana’...? That was what Jeric had told him to do, to infuse his mana into the stylus.

Was mana the same as essence?

He thought back to what he’d done while infusing the stylus. He’d poured in his mana... and his aura. It had just felt right, like it was something he needed to do.

And when he’d pulled mana out of the pool, he’d had to use his aura to hold it in place....

If that was true...then maybe ‘essence’ was the combination of mana and aura!

Was that why the World Law had used that word?

It felt like he was on to something.

He didn’t know if ‘essence’ was something that high-level enchanters already knew about or not. No one in his family was an Enchanter, so he didn’t have anyone to ask. The idea of going to a city to find one was obviously out of the question.

He’d already seen that if he wanted to use mana, sometimes he needed aura to help, like with getting mana from the pool.

...If that was the case, then maybe....

Were mana and aura two sides of the same coin?

Maybe the class abilities for Enchanters helped them to channel aura, whether it was conscious or not, so they didn’t bother using the term. It could be built into their meditation or the techniques they learned.

Aura classes were fairly rare, and he didn’t know the names of many. He’d heard that there was a Battle Enhancer class that used it to boost their strength...but that also sounded a lot like a Warrior.

Warriors and other physical classes used Stamina, which was the combination of their Strength and Constitution, but he’d heard rumors that they could also tap into aura, especially once they reached the legendary realm and evolved their class, after Level 100.

He might as well dream about flying.

All he knew was that he had to use aura consciously...at least if he wanted the stylus to work.

He kept thinking about it, turning ideas around in his head as he brought up his class description again.

"The Battlefield Reclaimer is an ancient enchanter and smith who uses aura and essences from the elements."

If he was right about ‘essence,’...then what the description meant by "aura" might also be something different.

The more he looked at it, the more he was becoming convinced that the World Law had given him some type of very old class. It was even in the description.

The Battlefield Reclaimer was an "ancient" enchanter and smith.

Maybe essence was the old term for using mana and aura together?

Whatever the answer was, it suggested he needed both aura and mana to tap into the elements, just like he had with the mana pool. He had to have both sides to the coin.

He thumbed the rune on the water crystal and thought about it some more. He had been using mana and aura individually to study it, but he’d never tried them together.

What if it were like the mana pool?

If his hunch was right...then not just that, but a functional rune was based on both, just like the spell scroll needed a support rune as a frame and a key rune in the center....

He looked down at the crystal with a solemn gaze. Well, water was an element...and his class was supposed to be able to use mana from the elements.

What else was there to do but try?

He still didn’t have perfect control over his aura, but he was getting better.

Crystal-blue strands of mana and aura flowed down his hands and into the crystal as he tried again to connect to the rune in it.

Before, it had felt like the crystal was inert and he couldn’t see into it. This time, his mana flowed in with aura wrapped around it. It seemed to be smoother.

The crystal shook in his hands with a minute vibration.

For a moment he worried that he’d broken it. His heart rate sped up as he stared at it, checking it for cracks, and then....

The crystal turned translucent in front of him, its appearance changing as his energy continued to pour in.

It was like a key entering a lock.

He froze, waiting to see what would happen, but nothing else did.

It just rested there.

The blue color of the hexagonal crystal was completely clear. He could see straight through it to his hand on the other side.

After a couple of minutes of checking to make sure that the crystal was still intact, he concentrated on controlling his aura, moving it exactly with his mana as he touched it to the embedded rune on the end.

Ssppllooooossshhhhh!

A gush of crystal-clear water exploded out from the crystal, dousing him as it flowed around his feet.

It poured out like a mountain stream, quickly forming a puddle on the floor that began to flow down an incline towards the side of the cavern.

It was gushing out much faster than when he activated it normally.

"Sam!" Jeric shouted from across the cave as he saw the water splashing everywhere. His eyes were wide as he looked up from the piece of hide he was working on. "What are you doing?! Don’t break that crystal!"

It was their only source of water. It was already on its last legs and if Sam broke it....

They hadn’t found any other source of water in the tunnels yet.

Sam turned towards his dad at the same time as a notification chimed in his ears.

It was outlined with a style that seemed out of date, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. A bright trumpet call sounded.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have demonstrated a rare control over both parts of essence: mana and aura.

You have unlocked the Skill: Essence Control.

This is a core skill for your Battlefield Reclaimer class. As a reward for learning it early, you gain a level of proficiency in its use. It has been upgraded from Basic to Advanced.

Your previous Skill: Mana Control (Basic) has been merged into it.

You gain 200 experience.

Experience to Next: 75

As the skill settled into place, he could feel his connection to aura grow stronger and steadier. It was just like Mana Control, but for both parts of essence.

And...it was part of his Class!

"Sorry, dad!" He shouted back as a huge smile broke out across his face. "It’s alright! I want to show you something!"

He looked down at the crystal, which was still gushing water, and carefully pulled his mana and aura...his essence...back out of it.

As he did, the water dropped from a stream to a trickle, and then stopped completely.

The blue color returned to the crystal, but it was brighter than before.

This time, the act of moving his energy felt natural, as if he’d tapped into something essential. He knew it was the effect of Essence Control.

With the help of the skill, his control over his mana and aura had jumped tremendously. They responded to his will instantly.

"Watch this!"

He slowly pushed his essence back into the crystal, touching the rune at the end. As soon as he did, the crystal glowed in his hand and turned transparent again.

This time, he could feel the crystal drawing in energy from the world, using his essence to convert it into water. He could also feel the crystal absorbing his energy like a sponge.

With the help of Essence Control, he could feel the weak spots in the crystal where it had been stressed. They had been pouring mana into it, but not aura.

Now, he was using both energies and the balance was correcting itself, smoothing over the damage.

Water was shooting everywhere again, soaking him to the bone, but his laugh filled the room as he held it up and showed his dad.

"I figured it out!" He yelled, still grinning.

---

It didn’t take too long for Sam to explain everything that had happened to Jeric.

"What...?" Jeric’s eyes were tight as he took the crystal and turned it over in his hand. He had just heard Sam’s explanation, but it was completely new to him.

He’d never heard of a skill like Essence Control.

"What did you do to it?" Jeric wasn’t able to see the changes as clearly as Sam, but he could tell that something was different.

"It does look a bit brighter."

To Sam’s eyes, the crystal had gained a much deeper blue color and the energy in it was clearly more intense, but Jeric couldn’t see it the same way.

He was only able to tell that it felt more stable when he put a thread of mana into it. If he had to guess, it felt like the crystal gained another day or two of use.

"Good work...," he said slowly, as he turned the crystal over again, examining the rune on the end. "But how?"

"Mana and aura are part of the same thing," Sam repeated, going over the idea again. "It’s essence. I think that’s what we need for our class."

"...Your grandfather would have been so proud of you," Jeric said at last, looking up from the crystal. His expression was solemn. "Do you know what you’ve done?"

Their family had been working for fifty years to unlock this class. Sam was the first one of them to ever have a notification about it.

Tears sprang into his eyes as his voice got choked up.

"You...," Jeric coughed, clearing his throat. "You can break through to Level 10, I know it. You’ve done more than I or your grandfather ever managed."

"Dad, don’t say that," Sam frowned as a sense of embarrassment hit him. "I would never have thought of it without grandfather’s spell to show me the way, or you to teach me. And, at best, it’s only one part of the class. We still need to find the rest."

If they could unlock their classes and break past Level 10...maybe they could get out of here. Essence Control was a step in the right direction, but he still needed to figure out what "aura" was in the description.

"Let me teach you about Essence Control," he suggested, looking at his dad.

To his surprise, Jeric only shook his head.

"You can try, Sam, but...I’ve never had any talent with Aura. I don’t know if it will work. Maybe that was why I never became an Arcane Scribe."

Jeric looked at the crystal in his hands again. He was still in disbelief that Sam had changed it.

Based on everything he knew...Sam should not have been able to interfere with the enchantment on the crystal.

Only the Enchanter class could do that, or a Wizard who subclassed as an Enchanter. That was the only way to get the necessary abilities to create or modify enchantments.

Sam might not be aware of that, but he was.

Having the Enchanter profession alone didn’t give that to you..., which was why it shouldn’t have worked when Sam tried.

Maybe Essence Control was a key part of the Enchanter class abilities? He wasn’t sure. Everything he’d heard about Enchanters only mentioned mana and spell inscriptions.

A profession was just a class without the abilities...a recognition of skills you already had and a bit of experience for unlocking it. They were what you chose from when you wanted to get a subclass.

You could get experience from them, and they helped to increase your general level, but most people focused on their classes instead.

If someone was a Wizard, for example, and wanted to focus on enchanting, they would subclass as an Enchanter and then keep Enchanter as a profession too. That way, they would get twice as much experience for everything they did.

He waved the thoughts away as he looked at Sam again.

"This...," he barely knew where to begin. In the end, it wasn’t important how Sam had done it.

What mattered was that he’d gotten a prompt about a class ability for Battlefield Reclaimer!

A surging hope was seizing his limbs and it felt like something was shaking him back and forth.

Then he realized that he’d grabbed Sam’s shoulders and was crushing him.

He carefully let go.

Sam’s grin was as wide as the sky.

Jeric was still caught by disbelief, but the water crystal shining in his hand was proof of his son’s accomplishment.

Had they been wrong all this time, focusing on aura when what they needed to do was focus on enchantments?

No...it sounded like aura was part of this essence.

He looked down at the water crystal again.

It was hope staring him in the face.

---

After Sam gained Essence Control, their explorations were put on hold for the rest of the day as they studied everything related to it.

He tried to teach Essence Control to Jeric, but so far, they hadn’t had any luck. Neither of them was sure why.

Still, it wasn’t enough to dampen their moods. No matter how much Jeric hoped to unlock his class, as long as Sam could do it, it would be enough for him.

Unlocking the class would also help them get out of the tunnels. Classes came with abilities and at least one of them would finally get past Level 9!

"Two parts to essence...," Jeric muttered to himself, as they wrote ideas in charcoal on the wall.

"When the class is talking about gathering essence from the elements, it really just means mana and aura.... It's almost as if they're both types of mana, but active and passive forms. That makes sense with the Enchanter part of the description.... But what’s the other ‘aura’ it’s referring to then? It can’t be the same as what we mean by the word."

Jeric had never examined the class from this angle before. Maybe Sam was on to something when he called it an old class.

"If the term has multiple meanings...what else was aura in the past? ... Aura is the air, or quality around something, the light or feeling it gives off...," Jeric continued muttering as he examined the idea from every angle, trying his best to dredge up every description of aura he’d ever heard, more than just the stat for it.

"It says an ‘aura’ from the elements, and has the focus on ‘reclaiming artifacts of the past,’" Sam chimed in. "What if it’s talking about something like intent or willpower, the feeling of things? Isn’t that required for enchanters too?"

He was thinking about the stylus again, and how he’d poured his intent into it when he attuned it.

"Intent is something I don’t know much about," Jeric replied, shaking his head. "It could be, but how would we test something like that? I’m not sure how to reclaim willpower from a battlefield or from the elements. The class says to reclaim the artifacts of the past...which seems to be saying the same thing as the initial quest to Reclaim an Aura."

He’d always thought it meant finding a sword that had been used on a battlefield and somehow extracting the aura from it. But, what if there were another type of artifact from battlefields?

If Sam were right about ‘essence’ being an old term...then this other ‘aura’ might be something old too. Perhaps it had been thought of differently once.

He had heard legends of the World Law going through different periods of awakening. Each time, there was an upheaval that shattered the world and changed the way the Law functioned. Usually, most of the living things on the planet died.

Those who survived wrote that the World Law was different afterwards, and that classes had different names.

Maybe...Battlefield Reclaimer wasn’t a broken class after all, but just a...class that had once existed and no longer fit the current model. That was where Sam’s ideas about an ancient class eventually led them.

If that was true, it raised other questions, like ’Why was the World Law handing out ancient classes?’

But that wasn’t something Jeric could answer. He just wanted to make it work.

"What about experience?" Sam asked after a while, thinking about the feeling that had become so familiar to him over the past few days. "Is experience the only thing you can get from a monster? Maybe there’s an aura from a monster we can get."

Jeric froze, his muscles simply refusing to respond, as he stared at Sam.

It went against everything he’d ever heard about monsters. If it hadn’t been his son asking the question, he would have said they were insane.

But this was his son who had just unlocked a skill he’d never heard of before and found the first lead about their class.

"I have no idea, but we’re going to find out," he finally agreed.

Battlefield Reclaimer 9: Spell Scroll

"What if, instead of just experience," Sam wondered again, as he looked at one of the rat corpses along the wall, "there’s an aura from monsters that we could claim...?"

There was no answer to the question yet, but the thought of the dark, oily energy he’d seen running through the rats came to mind. That was where this idea had come from.

The rats weren’t the only monsters with a strange energy around them. The gnomes had a stone-grey light that hovered just above their skin, and the salamanders had a flickering, dark flame.

He’d thought it was their mana, but now that he knew mana and aura combined to make essence...this new idea had sprung up in his mind.

What if that energy was something else, like an aura he could claim?

"I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Sam," his dad admitted when he mentioned it to him. "I don’t see anything like that. Maybe it’s because of your...new eyes."

The Outsider energy had transformed Sam in a way that neither of them understood, especially his eyes. Whether it was seeing mana, or aura, or something else...it was hard to explain.

It had to be the reason why he could see it.

The trick would be to see if that energy was as important as he thought.

Sam frowned as he pushed the rat corpse away. It didn’t have the energy any longer. It must have dissipated after it died, or maybe when he’d absorbed the experience from it.

"Give me a couple hours, Sam," Jeric said. His eyes were burning with the new idea, but he was still pale from their last fight and the effort it had taken to collapse part of the tunnel.

"Then we’ll go out and test your idea. We can probably find a rat or a salamander out there without too much trouble."

Jeric was looking worse than ever, but there was a sense of hope supporting him now that put a spring in his step. Sam’s efforts with the water crystal also helped make him more optimistic. Whatever he'd done had extended its use for at least a couple of days.

Sam pushed aside his impatience as he looked at his dad. Concern filled him, mixing with hope. If they could just unlock their class....

"I should work on the runes too," he agreed, turning aside so Jeric wouldn’t see how worried he was.

While waiting, Sam turned his attention to Essence Control, trying to figure out what else he could do with it. He knew it was a key skill for runes and enchantments, but he didn't know all about how it worked.

He would have tried to do more to the water crystal, but he didn’t want to risk breaking it. It was too important to them.

He could try and make a new water crystal, but he didn’t have a good piece of crystal to use. Did it require a special material? He could try it with a rock...if the mana pool and stylus let him inscribe a rune onto one....

A better idea popped into his mind as he kept thinking about it. What about the spell scroll he’d failed before?

Surely he could do a better job now.

A few minutes later, he had a piece of salamander skin in his hands and was scraping it clean with a thin piece of stone.

---

Drip.

Molten silver mana flowed off of Sam’s stylus and onto the salamander skin. He’d prepared this one better than the last, putting even more attention into it.

He kept the flow of essence steady as he drew out the line of the rune. This time, instead of just putting mana into the pattern, he made sure to include aura as well. Essence Control helped him feel how the two energies stabilized.

He could sense now that using mana alone was like putting a lightning bolt down on the hide and just hoping for the best. There was no way it was going to stay there by itself.

The liquified mana was so potent that he had to use the tiniest thread he could squeeze out of the stylus, but it was settling into place much more smoothly now as he wrapped it in aura.

It also required mana, for some reason, to get the lines to stick. His mana and aura were both dropping by a point with every two or three lines.

Essence Control didn’t tell him how much to use of each, but it did give him a greater awareness of how violent the mana was, so he followed his instincts as he looked for a balance between the two forces, trying to use just enough aura to make the mana settle down.

This scroll was nearly the same as the one he’d blown up before, but instead of using the Light rune, he was using Water.

If it worked..., well, he’d see in a minute.

He finished imbuing the last line of the rune and gently pulled his stylus away, being careful not to touch any part of it.

The energy in the scroll roared as it rushed around the lines of the runic formation, creating a spinning current. He could feel it testing the bounds of the design, pushing against every line. The salamander skin shuddered as a bright silver glow radiated from it.

If he’d messed something up...

Then it happened...as the energies in the spell scroll stabilized, settling down into a calm and ordered rune that hummed faintly in his awareness. He could feel the intensity of the mana and the way the aura held it in place.

An ornate silver chime rang in his mind and a notification appeared. It was in the same archaic style as the one for Essence Control.

Congratulations, Defiant. By creating a spell scroll with essence, you have taken the first step as an Essence Scribe.

You gain 100 exp.

Do you wish to accept this profession?

At the same time, another notification rang out, with the bright trumpet call that was becoming so familiar as bubbles of excitement rushed through his blood.

...You have gained a Level. You are now General Level 8.

Experience to Next: 1575

You have two free status points to distribute.

"Yes!" Sam jumped into the air and shouted, punching his fist skyward.

Jeric’s face stretched into a smile as he watched, but he didn’t interrupt. Sam’s progress was the single light in these tunnels. He hoped Sam...would be able to achieve what their family had tried so hard to accomplish.

Sam’s excitement was surging as he accepted the Essence Scribe profession and set it to be active, replacing Scholar. That was a useful profession, since it would allow him to gain experience through studying, but not as important right now.

He also grinned as he saw the level notification.

Level 8!

Even the ridiculous amount of experience he needed for Level 9 wasn’t enough to depress him.

He glanced at his status sheet and hesitated for a moment, before he added the two points he’d just received to Wisdom.

He didn’t know why, but the low score there was bothering him. He hoped that rounding it off at 10 would be enough to give him some insight into the problems he was facing.

Wisdom was a strange score, used by Priests and healing classes, as well as classes that focused on identification and assessment. Sometimes, he knew, if certain stats were too low, you couldn't get an ability for your class.

He didn't want that to happen to him.

He wasn’t planning on putting a lot into Wisdom, but...maybe he needed a certain base score to help unlock his class?

Hopefully, it would help him figure out what an ‘aura’ was.

Once he had things arranged, he looked at his status sheet again. His three professions now were Enchanter, Smith, and Essence Scribe, which made him feel satisfied.

He had expected that he would get Arcane Scribe if he succeeded in making the spell scroll, but it seemed like things were different for him.

These three professions also aligned with his class. The description said he was an "enchanter and smith," so hopefully these professions would complement it.

Once he unlocked it.

He picked up the scroll in front of him and inspected it.

Scroll of Water (Basic).

That was all the information it gave him.

"Dad, look!" He shouted, holding it up for Jeric’s inspection. His grin stretched wide and his eyes shone with a crystal-blue intensity.

Jeric put down the half-completed net and walked over to Sam. He accepted the scroll from him with a proud smile on his face.

"You did it, Sam," he told him, his smile widening as he examined it. "I haven’t seen a scroll made like this since I was your age. It’s a ‘Water’ scroll? Hmm...."

Jeric tapped his finger thoughtfully on the edge of the scroll, trusting that it wouldn’t blow up. If it were going to do that, it would have happened already.

"Spell scrolls come in different varieties," he told his son. "This one is Basic. Do you remember how the tiers go?"

"Yes," Sam agreed as he recalled his lessons. The tiers were how abilities and skills were ranked. "Basic is usually Levels 1-20, ...while Advanced is 21-40, Expert is 41-60, Elite is 61-80, and Epic is 81-100."

"Right," Jeric approved. "The fact that you have an Advanced ability before being at the usual level is a good advantage, but you probably still won’t be able to make an Advanced Scroll until your profession is past Level 20."

"Are there degrees to the Basic ranking?" Sam asked, thinking about the scroll. He wasn’t familiar with the grades of things, since he rarely had the opportunity to see any crafted items.

"Some assessors use more specific degrees to distinguish the grade of items inside a tier," Jeric nodded as he thumbed the scroll again.

"This one, because of the materials you used and it being your first time, would probably be called Crude, which is the lowest grade of Basic. But that doesn’t matter, because it will work just fine. It just won't last as long or be as powerful as a higher grade. The other grades are Common, Professional, Fine, and Superb...in that order."

Jeric handed the scroll back and patted Sam on the shoulder. His eyes were steady and deep as some of the pain in his body flowed away.

"You have a bright future ahead of you. You could make a living selling spell scrolls like this, and the grade that you can make will only increase. Even if you sold Basic scrolls for the rest of your life, it would be a profession to support you, like it was for your grandfather."

Jeric pointed towards the wall in the distance, as he added. "Now, why don’t you see what this one will do?"

Sam walked a few steps away and held the scroll up in the air. There were different types of spell scrolls. The one with Aura Bolt had been special, a scroll that you could learn a spell from. Making something like that was far beyond him for now.

This one was consumable, like a stored spell he could cast. The question was what it would do.

He held it up in front of him gingerly, stretching it out at arm’s length as he pointed it at the wall. Then he pushed his mana into the activation point on the rune.

The scroll shook as the mana flowed into it, and then the rune at the center ignited, the energy in it flashing as it converted from energy to substance.

The center of the rune changed first, turning into a translucent, liquid swirl that sucked in the energy around it as it grew in size.

In an instant, the inner half of the scroll was a crystalline whirlpool. Then the edges around it began to dissolve, liquifying as they broke away and sank in.

Finally, the outer edges of the scroll collapsed as the support rune was absorbed, falling inward, and the entire thing turned to water.

A swirling, crystal sphere of water hovered in front of Sam’s hand.

Strands of mana and aura flowed from his hand, connecting him to it. It wasn’t large, only about the size of his fist, but there was a lot of mana contained in it.

"Haha!" Jeric laughed from across the room as he saw the look of wonder on Sam’s face. It reminded him of his youth, in the rare instances when he was able to play with the scrolls his father made.

"Throw it! Think of it as a Water Bolt spell!"

Sam stopped staring at the sphere of water and stepped forward, throwing it towards the far wall.

Sswwoooosshhh!

The sphere shot forwards, whistling through the air. It landed with an explosive craaack against the stone and exploded into a dozen streams of water. Finding no purchase, the streams collapsed, flowing downwards.

A large puddle of muddy water gathered in a dip at the base of the wall.

Sam’s eyes were wide and a stunned half-smile was stuck on his face as he stared after it. He’d been able to feel the mana and aura flowing through the spell as it had hit the wall. He’d lost control of it when it struck, but it had been very similar to how he controlled Aura Bolt.

"Looks like we’ve solved the water problem," Jeric laughed again as he looked on, his smile growing wider as he saw Sam’s reaction. A lot of his enthusiasm had returned as he watched his son’s growth.

"Good job, Sam!" Jeric patted Sam on the shoulder.

Sam shook himself out of his stupor as an idea started to take shape in his mind. So many new possibilities were opening themselves in front of him, if he were able to make spell scrolls for different runes....

He didn’t think he could make anything too complicated, but ...

"I have an idea for the nest," he said suddenly, looking at his father.

---

"We’ll try to find a rat and then we’ll come back to prepare," Jeric announced, as he listened to Sam’s idea. "Making spell scrolls to deal with the nest might work, but it will require a lot of effort on your part."

"Do you think I can teach you how to make them?" Sam asked, studying his dad. Over the last couple of hours, he had tried to teach him Essence Control by pouring it into his body, just like his father had taught him Mana Control, but something was wrong.

"I'll keep trying to teach you Essence Control, at least, even if it hasn't worked yet."

"We tried a bunch already, Sam." Jeric shook his head, a frown etched on his forehead. "I’ll keep trying, but I don't know if I'm capable of learning it like you are."

He hadn't been able to sense what Sam was doing, or even feel the essence as more than a subtle flow of energy. Maybe it was because he'd never had any talent with Aura, or maybe Essence Control was something else all together.

He'd also never been that talented with spell scrolls. He remembered the lessons, but actually creating a scroll wasn't one of his talents. Something always failed during the preparation stage. He couldn't get the parchment to accept the runic structure.

"Plus, we’ve got a lot to do," he added, as he pushed those old thoughts out of his head, "especially if you want that idea to work on the nest. You’re going to need to study more runes and we’ll need a lot more hide."

There wasn’t enough rat or salamander hide left to make more spell scrolls. Jeric had cut up most of it to make a net. If he’d known Sam would be so successful with the scroll, he’d have saved some.

Now they needed to go find more.

"You can activate a scroll I make, right?" Sam asked. The tips of his long ears tilted in a questioning way.

"That should be fine." Jeric nodded, agreeing to the idea. "Let’s go see if we can try out your other idea on the way and we’ll collect some hides."

The mana pool next to them was the only thing making the scrolls work. The pure mana shouldn’t have worked that well...not without being refined into a proper ink, but it had.

Jeric shook his head again as he thought about it.

Sam was quickly becoming something he didn’t understand at all, but it didn’t make a difference. He just hoped it helped them get out of these tunnels.

He had tried his best to learn Essence Control, but he wasn't able to see what Sam was talking about.

His son could see both mana and aura, but he couldn't.

He had tried to get a feel for it with the help of Mana Control, but it hadn’t worked. He couldn’t feel the aura at all.

He was becoming convinced that Sam’s transformation was the key factor in his success, especially his strange eyesight. If it were true...it might turn that disaster into a blessing.

It was also possible that Sam’s talents were just better than his.

As a father, he liked that idea. What was all the hard work worth if your kid wasn’t better than you?

There was still a lot he needed to teach Sam, especially about the world. His son had never left their village before and the world was...not a kind place, especially to those with a low level.

Sam's new appearance, no matter how much it helped with his skills, was only going to make it harder on him.

The two of them packed up their supplies and headed back out into the tunnels, heading away from the basalt gnome nest this time.

Battlefield Reclaimer 10: 50 Years of Sorrow

"Hah!" Sam shouted as his Aura Bolt slammed into the lean, dangerous form of a rat, blowing a larger-than-usual hole in its ribs as he knocked it away. The oily, black energy was flowing all around this one and it pulled at his attention.

Two points of aura flowed away. As his Essence Control was becoming more familiar to him, he was able to put more aura into his spell, up to two points on a single bolt. It was the benefit of having the skill at Advanced instead of Basic.

He lunged forward towards the rat, following up with his spear as he stabbed at it.

Jeric was to his left, holding off a second rat with his spear. As soon as Sam finished off the first one, they would flank it together.

They’d spent about an hour searching the tunnels, moving continually farther from the gnome nest, until they found these two rats. They had been digging at a clump of mushrooms in a small cavern.

Sam's Aura Bolt nearly killed the rat and it didn’t take him long to pin it down with his spear, driving the basalt point into its neck. It thrashed around, its sharp claws scrabbling at the air as it died.

As soon as it stopped moving, he turned towards his dad and they moved in on the second rat together. He didn't use Aura Bolt on this one. He needed to save his aura in case something more dangerous appeared.

Jeric lunged, making the rat turn towards him as it swiped at his spear with a flashing claw. Its tail thrashed as it tried to back up and the glowing, red eyes narrowed, considering whether it could escape.

Before it could retreat, Sam moved in, driving the spear deep into its side.

The rat tried to twist away, but he held it in place for long enough for Jeric to join in, his spear stabbing into the rat’s abdomen.

A few moments later, the rat collapsed to the ground.

They’d learned a lot since their first battle with these scavengers. The rats were big and dangerous, but spears and teamwork meant that two of them weren't too much trouble. It would be harder if there were more.

"Okay, Sam," Jeric said with a deep breath. This fight hadn’t been intense enough to wear him out, but he was still feeling his age. "Do what you need to do. Is that energy there still?"

He couldn’t see it, but Sam had described it to him. He was deeply interested in what it could be.

"It’s still there," Sam agreed, as he studied the rat. "It was moving through its body, but now it’s stopped. I think because it died. It looks like it will fade soon."

"Better hurry up then." Jeric leaned on his spear as he waited to see what would happen.

Sam leaned forward and touched the rat, trying to connect to the energy he could see.

It wasn’t the same as searching for experience. He could feel that powerful thread bumping up against his awareness, demanding center stage. He forced himself to ignore it.

His senses roamed over the rat, trying to find a place to connect to the dark energy. It was everywhere in it, like it was part of the rat’s blood or infused into its skin.

At first, he didn’t feel anything except the experience, but as he focused, he could feel Essence Control flowing through him, making him aware of every tiny bit of mana and aura that made up the rat.

He could see the energy, but he couldn’t quite...he pushed himself towards where he knew it was, trying to grab at it....

He bumped up against something. It was like a thin layer of oil on the rat’s fur, hovering in between illusion and reality.

The energy curled against his hand, half there, as it bubbled and popped. It was...oozing somehow, like...

Ugghh.

His face turned white and he felt like throwing up. It was like the fluid at the bottom of a trash pile, where you had bits of food and junk mixed into it that had liquified and begun to smell...as well as some unidentifiable thing that had ended up in there.

It was absolutely disgusting.

He almost jerked his hand away automatically, but he forced himself to touch it, trying to pull it towards him in the same way that he pulled experience.

A silvery chime rang in his ears as a notification appeared.

You have encountered an unknown aura.

Do you wish to reclaim the aura (10% chance) or to attempt to identify it?

Identification will assist you in future attempts.

It was only a few simple lines, but the weight of it froze him in shock. His eyes were wide as he read it again.

Before he could even consciously decide what to do, he had already selected "Reclaim."

He felt the aura from the rat begin to flow towards him and he reached out to grab it..., but it ran through his consciousness like dirty smoke, and then it was gone, leaving behind only the smell of decay.

A dull chime rang in his ears as a line was added to the notification.

You have failed to reclaim the aura.

Then the notification disappeared and everything returned to normal.

The energy that had once been in the rat was no longer there.

Jeric saw him staring at the space above the rat with a slack-jawed expression and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Did you find anything?" He could see that Sam was acting strange, and his heart leapt up into his throat, but he forced himself to act calm.

"Dad...," Sam said slowly, his voice cracking to a halt as he tried to wrap his mind around what had just happened.

He looked down at the rat. He could still sense the aura that had been around it, but there was a feeling of absence now.

The scent of decay in his senses told him that it had been real.

He still wanted to throw up.

"Dad...," he managed to get out, "we’re going to need another rat."

"There’s one right over there," Jeric replied, looking down at his son with some consternation. Had Sam figured something out or not? What was with this shock?

"Go try."

Sam stood up on wooden legs, moving like a marionette as he remembered there was another rat. Of course there was....

He shuffled over to it, his mind still fixed on the meaning of aura, as he reached down and touched it. It took him a moment to find the thread of energy, but it was faster this time. It was there.

He could feel it fading away, like an ooze that was slowly dissipating into nothingness.

It probably wouldn’t last more than ten minutes at this rate.

The same notification appeared again.

You have encountered an unknown aura.

Do you wish to reclaim the aura (10% chance) or to attempt to identify it?

Identification will assist you in future attempts.

This time, he hesitated over what to choose, but in the end he still went with "Reclaim." It was just too tempting.

The dull chime rang in his ears again as the same message appeared.

You have failed to reclaim the aura.

Once more, the energy ran through his consciousness like smoke, adding another layer of disgusting something on top of the one that was already there.

Like rotten mushrooms liquifying on a compost heap.

He nearly gagged.

"What is it, Sam?" His dad asked, impatiently.

He could see the various expressions flying across Sam’s face, from hope to disgust, and the wide eyes that were staring at nothing. He knew something was going on, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

He forced himself not to get his hopes up. Maybe Sam had just found something else.

Still, the old saying that he’d told himself a thousand times resonated in his mind. "Unlocking your class isn’t supposed to be hard." It was his method of reassuring himself that one day he would make it.

It was the hope that his family was like everyone else and that their class wasn’t really broken.

Sam turned to look at him, his eyes still wide.

"Dad..., acgk," Sam coughed, the taste of rot still coating his tongue, even though he knew it was an illusion.

Jeric looked down at him, his gaze like a thread of lightning.

"It’s real," Sam forced out, his words running one over the other as they chased his thoughts around in circles. "It’s...part of them. It’s just like experience. I could touch it...!"

He was babbling, but it didn’t matter. His excitement was pouring through his words.

"What was...?" Jeric demanded urgently, his hopes rising as he listened to his son. He could see the light in his eyes and it told him that....

But no, he couldn’t say it until he heard it from Sam!

Jeric's father had received their class when he turned 18. At that time, he had a fiancée and a promising future as an Arcane Researcher. Everyone had expected great things of him.

On his Class Day, everyone congratulated him, hailing him as a genius for receiving a unique class. In the same year, Jeric had been born.

He still remembered a couple of early golden years, and then all the hope faded into grey hatred and self-loathing as his world shattered to pieces. His father changed into a different person, his mother left, and he had grown up despising the World Law that had ruined his entire life.

Fifty years....

"It’s aura!" Sam finally shouted out, his voice rising to a fever pitch. "It’s there! It let me try to reclaim it!"

"WHAT?!" Jeric’s voice roared back, as he reached out and grabbed Sam’s shoulders, shaking him with either joy or madness as a ray of hope cracked through his heart.

After three generations and fifty years of searching....

"WE FOUND IT!" Sam finally howled out, tears pouring out of the corner of his eyes.

Jeric’s heart shook as his eyes turned red. He was shaking Sam like a leaf, but he couldn’t stop.

"WE CAN...UNLOCK...THE CLASS!" Sam shouted again, his words falling apart as all of the desires he’d bottled up for eighteen years burst forth at once.

His dad continued to shake him, unable to believe his ears, as the words resounded like thunder in his mind.

---

It took the father and son a while to gather themselves, and Sam added the rest of the details that he’d discovered. He finally managed to calm down enough to explain it all to his dad.

"A 10% chance?" Jeric muttered as he too finally calmed down enough to think about it clearly. "That just means we need more rats...."

Sam’s discovery was a ray of light in the darkness. There was a clear goal in front of them. They just had to accomplish it.

His world was shaking as hope and desire warred in his chest, as well as a sense of gratitude to the World Law that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

For most of his life, he had hated the World Law for ruining him. He had blamed it for giving him something that was broken and that he couldn’t use. For him, like for his father, there had never been success or fame.

Even the joy of leveling had been strangled, since he was reduced to a mere Level 9. Through it all, his family had been his only comfort. Now, hope was like ivy vines breaking through the hardened wall of his heart, as he began to wonder again what was possible.

If Sam could do it...could he?

He didn’t know, but he sure as hell would try.

"I can’t see that aura, but I’ll try if you show me," he told Sam as he gave his son a deep look. "But first things first, let’s get your class unlocked!"

No matter how much he wanted to unlock the class for himself, he put his son first. He didn’t have Sam’s eyes to see what was going on with the beasts’ aura. There was still a chance he wouldn't succeed.

He needed to make sure that Sam got there first, and then.... Well, they still needed to get out of these tunnels. There would probably be a lot of rats on the way.

"Let’s go find some more rats," he suggested, his smile getting wider as he looked at his son. "We can grab the rat hides here to make spell scrolls on the way back."

Sam absorbed the remaining threads of experience from the rats and then the two of them set out, heading farther down the tunnels towards the unknown.

They moved at a careful pace, as cautiously as possible. The tunnels were dangerous and they were not that strong yet, even if their awareness of this dark world was increasing.

"Dad, do you think it’s better to identify or try to reclaim an aura?" Sam asked quietly, as the question turned around and around in his mind. He was trying to keep an ear out for noises and his voice was at a low whisper.

"Next time, try to identify it," Jeric replied in the same fashion. They needed to be careful, especially now that hope was right in front of them.

He’d been thinking about the same question.

Fortunately, there were a lot of rats. If identification helped boost the success of reclaiming an aura, then there was no harm in trying it out.

Based on the notification, it sounded like it was one or the other. You couldn’t identify and then try to reclaim the same aura. He’d never heard of a class like theirs before, but the message seemed to point in that direction.

He doubted the World Law would give them a free try.

"I’ll try next time," Sam agreed. "We just need more rats. What do you think will happen when we unlock the class?"

"When you unlock the class," Jeric replied, with a quiet smile, "I expect that you’ll get some class abilities and a bit of information about it. With any luck, it’ll be smooth sailing from there!"

"Do classes always come with abilities?" Sam asked, curious. He knew the basics, but his dad was much better informed.

"Almost always," Jeric agreed, nodding as he checked the tunnel behind them, to make sure nothing had appeared there. "You should get some abilities, or maybe a choice from several abilities. Some classes have paths that you need to choose at the beginning."

"What type of abilities do you think are in our class?" Sam asked, getting excited again as he thought about it.

"Probably things related to aura," Jeric laughed, as he reached out and ruffled Sam’s hair, making sure to avoid the pointed ears. His son’s appearance was becoming more normal to him and he was able to forget about it sometimes, although he still blamed himself for it happening.

But without it, Sam might not be able to unlock the class.

Jeric shook his head. If that were the case, why had the World Law given out a class that couldn’t be unlocked by a normal human? He was positive the key was in Sam’s new eyesight, as well as whatever other changes in his body helped him to sense the energy.

Their class's focus on aura was very strange. It almost sounded like a myth from the past, like something a Shaman would have collected from a beast in the years before human records...or the legend of Spirit Gatherers, who harvested souls from their enemies and turned them into power.

He wasn’t sure what the aura was that Sam had seen, but from the description, it fit these rats. They were scavengers, attuned to decay and rotting things. The aura they had was probably the same.

The infection on their claws was proof enough of that.

If Sam could unlock the class...what would he become?

What was the future of a Battlefield Reclaimer? Even the name of the class sounded archaic, as if it didn’t quite fit the modern era.

If it was an Enchanter or Smith, like the class description said...well, Jeric figured it would be better if it focused more on enchanting. Smiths were needed, but they didn’t have the same success or opportunities as even a rudimentary Enchanter.

But there was always a place for them in a village.

Dreams of the future chased themselves through his mind.

Jeric forgot about his fatigue as they pushed onwards, searching for another rat.

Battlefield Reclaimer 11: An Army of Rats

Sam peered over tumbled stones in a half-collapsed wall as he looked towards a group of eight rats. They were gathered in a cavern just off the main tunnel, gnawing at the corpse of some large beast that looked threatening even in death.

It had...tusks? And...skin like an earthworm that was covered in stony, grey ridges. Whatever it was, it made him hesitate as he considered what was farther down the tunnels. What if there were more of those?

Encountering something like that would be difficult. It was so large that it would take up almost two-thirds of the tunnel by itself.

He wished he could take the experience from it, but he hadn't helped to kill it. Also, experience decayed over time. Around a half-day after something died, the thread of experience in it would dissipate into the world.

They had walked for hours before they found this pack of scavengers, but looking at the scene in front of him made Sam frown. Eight rats were a lot for them to take on at once.

The rats were only Level 1 or maybe 2, but they weren’t easy to divide. They were fast, and as they had already proved, their claws were deadly.

Sam frowned as he considered the dilemma. He could probably lure the rats out and break up the group a bit, if he used Aura Bolt heavily at the beginning. It would drain most of his aura, but he might be able to disable three or four of them before they got to him and Jeric.

Then they could deal with them the same way they had the last pack, holding them off at spear point…. Maybe.

He pulled back from the stones, returning to where his father was waiting.

---

"Eight rats?" Jeric asked, frowning as he considered what he'd just heard. That was going to be difficult. "I wish we had some type of shield to hold them off...."

He rubbed his chin and thought about what was available. Then a light glinted in his eyes as he looked toward his pack.

There was no way he was going to give up this many rats, even if it was a little dangerous. His determination was soaring now that he knew there was a future for their class.

Every class required an initial quest to unlock it. Sometimes it took a while, but most requirements were well known and not very hard.

All a Wizard had to do was learn a Basic spell, so if you gave them a spell book to study and some pointers..., they would figure it out in a few days.

A Warrior just had to get out there and kill a single monster. Claiming the experience from it was enough to complete their initial requirement.

Lazy bastards, Jeric grumbled to himself.

Now, he knew what they had to do for Battlefield Reclaimer. It just involved killing a bunch of rats until one of them worked and Sam could reclaim the aura from it.

He wasn’t going to let that go just because there were a few more of the things than he'd expected.

"Alright, here’s what we’re going to do...," he told Sam, as a plan began to unfold in his mind.

---

Not too long later, Sam began to sneak back towards the rats.

His ears were tilted for any sound that might come through the tunnels, but all he heard was the scuffling and angry chittering of the rats as they shoved at each other to get to the corpse.

They were still in the same spot. He crouched behind a large stone as he prepared an Aura Bolt.

In the future, he promised himself that he would learn a Fireball spell for situations like this.

Despite the challenge, his mood was good. He just had to be as fast as possible for their plan to work.

A crackling, crystal-blue bolt of aura shot towards the closest rat, followed by another as fast as he could summon it. Both of them were at double strength and the second was in the air by the time the first one landed.

His casting speed had also been accelerated by the Advanced boost from Essence Control.

Four points of aura drained away in an instant.

Aura: 9.

Without stopping, he summoned three more enhanced bolts as he began to backpedal.

Arcs of crystal-blue light tore the front rank of the rats apart, knocking them away from the corpse.

Aura: 3.

It was fast enough that the rats were just now beginning to spin in place, hissing and clawing at each other as they tumbled across the corpse. They weren't sure what was going on yet.

Hissss! Hisss...!

One of them gave a savage snap as another rat was thrown into it. It ripped into the injured rat's fur as it growled. The two tumbled across the floor in a thrashing pile of hairless tails and muscled fur.

Claws slashed and more hisses shook the cavern as the remaining bolts hit and rats were slammed against each other in a fit.

Screeeeeech!

Their first reaction was to attack the closest thing that was disturbing them.

The Aura Bolts alone weren't enough to guarantee a kill. Despite their low level, the rats were durable. It was probably how they survived down here.

After a moment, the rats sorted themselves out and turned towards the source of the attack, their red eyes glowing as they tracked the origin of the blue lights.

Then they surged across the floor in a dark wave, their bodies stretching and retracting as they charged.

Three rats were left behind, limping and hissssing as they tried to join in, but they were only able to drag themselves forward.

The remaining five raced across the ground, their claws skittering. Two were injured, their fur matted with blood, but they were still mobile. Their eyes were flecks of rage.

Sam turned and raced backwards, heading around the curve in the tunnel wall as he dodged through the rocks that were strewn everywhere. He was quick on his feet as his breath came in deep surges.

He needed to add more Agility if this was going to continue!

Five rats were more than he wanted, but they would make it work. The set point wasn’t much farther.

"Five!" He shouted out as he flew across it, signaling to his father. The rats were just a couple dozen feet behind him now.

As soon as he was across, a leather net sprang out of the rocks as Jeric hauled on it. It swept up in front of the rats as they slammed into it.

The leather straps bowed outwards as claws slipped through and fangs began to gnaw on the cording.

Sam had managed to drive anchors into the walls to hold the net, using Essence Control and his aura as a drill, but it wouldn’t last for long.

Even though the net was made from hardened rat hide, it wasn’t durable enough.

"Spear!" Jeric shouted as he kept his weight on the rope that was holding up the net.

He struggled to wrap it around a protrusion on the wall, but the flailing rats were yanking the cords back and forth, making it difficult to keep it steady.

They hadn’t been able to rig up a counterweight for it or it would have been easier.

Sam grabbed his spear from the wall and spun around, lunging forward as he stabbed through the holes in the net. He could barely tell what he was hitting, but he yanked the spear out and drove it back in again.

Then again, and again.

The strands of the net were fraying as the rats’ claws sliced through them. A rat’s head and shoulders burst through an opening as it half fell out.

Sam drove his spear into its neck, just below the skull, and jerked it out. Then he went back to his almost blind attack as he continued stabbing into the pile of rats. Their limbs and bodies were so tangled together that it was hard to tell what he was hitting.

The spear deflected off bone and he felt it being bitten as it was twisted to the side. He pulled back hard and swept it from left to right, tugging at it wildly until it came free.

Fortunately, the wood or whatever it was that the gnomes used for the shaft was durable.

The pile of rats slowly stopped their struggles as Sam stabbed a few more times, aiming for anything that was still twitching.

Jeric hadn’t managed to get the rope around the hook, so instead he had wrapped it around his body, turning in place to tighten it as he backed up.

As the rats stopped moving, Jeric released the rope with a groan and staggered backwards. The leather had dug into his arms, cutting white lines and leaving abrasions behind.

Despite that, he grabbed his spear and joined Sam in making sure the rats were dead.

"Let’s get the rest of them," Jeric said with a deep breath, once they finished them off. He was panting for breath and looked worse for wear, but his tone was full of confidence. "We need to make sure they don’t surprise us or call for help."

It didn’t take long to get to the cavern, and they found the last three rats on the way. Two were nearly dead and were sprawled across the ground with loose limbs. The last one had dragged itself into a corner and curled into a defensive ball.

They quickly finished them all off.

The large corpse at the center of the cavern was putting out a putrid stench that filled the air, so thick it was almost edible. It was nearly the same as the aura from the rats.

Sam gagged as he pulled a rag up over his nose. It was all that was left of his old shirt.

"Alright, let’s do it!" Jeric looked at his son and then at the rat they had just killed, his face brightening as he waited. He was tired and battered, but smiling.

Sam moved forward to the rat, bending down to touch it. It didn’t take him too long to find that oily aura again. It appeared in his senses with another new and unidentifiably disgusting flavor.

Perfume of subterranean rat.

His tongue curled, but he ignored it. There were far more important things.

The notification appeared with a silver chime in his mind.

You have encountered an unknown aura.

Do you wish to reclaim the aura (10% chance) or to attempt to identify it?

Identification will assist you in future attempts.

This time, he chose to identify it. There were eight rats, so hopefully it worked this time.

You have chosen to identify the aura.

The energy that was half real bumped against his hands as it dissolved into his body, the sense of it intensifying as it was somehow enhanced.

The smell of mushrooms, tunnel floors, urine left in puddles until it turned sour and dissolved, mixing with the chalk and granite....

He gagged as the flavor of it overwhelmed him, and that turned into a cough as he staggered, falling to one knee.

And then the aura was gone, dissolving as if it had never been there.

A bronze chime rang in his mind as a notification appeared to replace it.

The aura has been consumed.

Identification is 30% complete.

Then there was a pause, as if the World Law were evaluating something. The word "Identification" flashed at him, offering more information.

He selected it and information appeared, just like it did with some parts of his status sheet.

Your base Wisdom (+10) gives you a 10% chance to reclaim an unknown aura of a similar tier.

You are currently limited to Basic auras.

The attempt to identify an aura will consume it, but increase your chance to reclaim an aura of the same type in the future. Various factors apply, including your base Wisdom and the level difference.

And then it disappeared as the notification flashed out of existence. It wasn’t clear if the Identification was 30% complete or if his chance to claim the aura had jumped to 30%, but he was going to test it out.

"Thirty percent...," Sam forced out. He pushed himself to his feet as he absorbed the new information.

It seemed putting stat points into Wisdom hadn’t been wasted. He didn’t know if it was worth adding more yet, but it was something to think about. If there were a rare monster....

"I need a couple more at least," he told his dad as he looked towards the next one.

The smile on Jeric’s face widened as he nodded, his eyes moving to the next rat. He stayed close to Sam, his eyes roving around the cavern. He held his spear at the ready.

Sam knelt down by the next rat, already gritting his teeth as he reached forward to touch it. This time, he ignored the putrid aura as he pushed straight through to the notification.

You have encountered an unknown aura....

Once again, he chose to identify it, holding his breath as the flavor of it intensified and boiled through his mind. It felt like it was invading his meridians with a sense of choking corruption.

The aura has been consumed.

Identification is 55% complete.

Your chance to reclaim this aura has risen to 20%.

Well, that answered a few questions. It looked like identification was a separate process, but it could raise the chance to reclaim the aura, even before it was complete. The more he identified, the better his chance of reclaiming one.

"55%." Sam nodded to his dad as he pushed himself to his feet and headed for the third rat.

The aura has been consumed.

Identification is 80% complete.

Your chance to reclaim this aura has risen to 40%.

His face was pale and he nearly staggered as he stood up. He noticed that his aura had fallen to zero, and he swayed on his feet..., nearly falling over until Jeric caught him.

"Almost there," he muttered. His words were slurring together and it felt like he was chewing on the taste of the auras. "80%...."

"Time for a break," Jeric declared, as he wrapped one arm around Sam’s shoulders and helped him walk. He wanted Sam to succeed, but he wasn't going to let him hurt himself to do it. "Let’s get back to the other pile and we can find a place to rest."

Once they arrived, Sam slumped against the wall and his father pushed a water flask towards him.

"Drink," Jeric said as he wrapped Sam’s hand around it.

The flask of spirits followed, the burning tar of it charring Sam’s senses and clearing the taste of the aura from his mind.

"Tell me what happened," Jeric asked, once Sam was able to speak clearly again. His father was watching him carefully, making sure that he was alright.

"It...takes aura to identify them," Sam said, as he put things together. "Three rats...one point of Aura each. That was all I had left after the fight."

Jeric just nodded as he weighed the information, adding it to what he already knew.

"It takes you...what, about half an hour to regenerate a point?" Jeric asked, as he glanced towards the rat pile next to them. He was debating how long they could stay here without trouble.

There were five more corpses here, but that was two and a half hours just to identify them. What if it took even more aura to Reclaim one? They couldn’t stay here that long. They had no idea what was farther down this tunnel and that giant corpse was not a good sign.

"Let’s stay here long enough for you to get a point or two back," he suggested. "Then you can try again. Whether it works or not, we’ll drag a couple of these corpses back with us."

Sam nodded, as he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. The flavor of rotting things floated through his mind like a cloud.

---

About an hour later, Sam had recovered enough aura to try again. He only had three points back, but he wasn’t willing to wait any longer. He had eaten some roasted rat and mushrooms from his pack, which helped move it along a bit faster, even if he wasn’t sure why it worked.

The exact properties of aura escaped him, but he knew it was heavily connected to his vitality and stamina, even if it wasn’t exactly the same.

"Let me try again."

He was feeling a lot better now as he pushed himself back to his feet. Draining his aura made him feel completely worn out, and he reminded himself not to do it again.

No matter how tempting it was, it would be dangerous if anything attacked them.

There were five rats left, and at best they could drag three of them to their cave. He could take two and his dad could grab one.

That meant he had two to identify or reclaim here.

Jeric’s eyes were steady on Sam as he watched every move his son made.

If this worked...it would be the culmination of everything he had struggled so hard for.

Sam bent down to the closest rat, preparing himself for the taste of its aura, as he tried to connect to the energy running through it.

There was nothing there.

His eyes widened as he glanced from one rat to the next...and saw that none of them had any aura left at all. The dark energy had completely disappeared.

"Damn it!" He swore, as continued to stare. How could he have forgotten that?

He’d seen how fast it was dissipating on the earlier rats!

Now he’d forgotten to claim it before it evaporated!

Jeric couldn’t see it, but he could. He should have known to keep an eye on it.

"It’s...gone, dad," he admitted, as he stood back up. His shoulders slumped with regret.

"It dissipated.... It looks like it doesn’t last that long after they die. All of this effort..."

"Don’t worry about it, son." Jeric patted him on the shoulder, his hand heavy and familiar. A sarcastic chuckle escaped from him. "I wouldn’t expect anything less from the World Law after all this time. This just means we need to find another rat."

Jeric turned around, his mood much more stable than Sam’s as he looked down the tunnel towards the unknown. One rat now or one rat later...he was going to get his son what he needed. There was a clear goal in front of him. He would push through and make sure that Sam did too.

If the World Law wanted to make it difficult, so what? That had never stopped him before.

Battlefield Reclaimer 12: Discretion is the Better...

Sam wanted to continue and find another rat, but Jeric shook his head.

"We need to take the wiser course, son," his father said adamantly. "No matter how tempting it is right now. Let’s take these rats back. We need more food and we can make scroll parchment from them. It’s better to wait until we’re back to our peak before we head out again, especially now that we know what to do."

It was a struggle to accept. But..., in the end, his father was right.

Not to mention, his impatience was nothing compared to his father's, so he couldn't complain. His father had been dealing with this problem for fifty years. If he could bear to wait, then so could Sam.

"Alright," Sam said reluctantly, his shoulders falling for a moment. Then he straightened his back and took on a more determined look.

"Maybe we’ll find another rat on the way."

"That’s the spirit," Jeric laughed as he swung his pack onto his back. The net was back inside, so he could repair it later. "We’d be fools to wait so long for something and then ruin it because we didn’t take a nap first!"

Sam looked down the tunnel towards the unknown, taking a last look and grabbing the experience from the other rats before they headed away.

There had to be more rats down that way, as well as whatever that giant animal had been. It looked kind of like a pig, so ‘tunnel boar’ would be a decent name, until the Law told him otherwise.

His aura was low right now, and that was dangerous, but...he sighed as he agreed with his father.

Discretion was the better part of leveling.

There were a lot of preparations he wanted to do back at their cave, and his spirits went back up as they walked, as he thought about the three professions he had already. He just needed to work on them and he would gain experience towards his general level.

Once his class was unlocked...they should also give him class experience.

Spell scrolls would add a lot to their fighting ability, if he was able to make more. He had only tried one rune so far, and that had worked better than he’d imagined. If he had the materials, he was sure he could make something better than the Water scroll.

He glanced back at the two rats he was dragging. They didn’t weigh much, despite their size.

How many sheets of parchment could he get out of one? Maybe three or four, assuming they didn’t get too torn up on the way back?

He needed perfect pieces, so he could only cut them out of the center of the hide.

The goal to unlock his class was in sight, but his frustration with the World Law hadn’t diminished. He still blamed it for all the pain his family suffered.

Why had it ever given out these broken classes?!

The only silver lining would be if this actually worked out for them. He would build his family the biggest house in the entire village.

No, in the city!

They would have fancy clothes, ale with every meal, and guards at the door to keep visitors away unless they were invited.... His mind wandered as they walked, imagining all sorts of things in the future.

What he wanted the most was to help his family. They deserved better than they had received from the world.

Of course, beating up Boric would be nice too, if the guard still wanted to bother him.

But just once.

A weird grin stretched across Sam’s face.

He wasn’t thinking at all about how the village would take his new appearance. He’d completely put it out of his mind.

---

The hike back to the cave took a couple of hours, but it was faster than the trip out. They were familiar with the tunnels and felt comfortable pushing the pace on the way.

There was really only one main tunnel, at least in their section of this subterranean world. It had side caverns scattered around, like their cave, but other than that, it only ran in two directions.

It wasn’t too likely that something would show up on the way. If it did, it would have to come from behind them or from the gnome nest.

Fortunately, the journey back was smooth and uninterrupted, and before long they were back in their cave. They both got back to work.

Jeric occupied himself repairing the net with stray pieces of leather, while Sam tried to turn a rat hide into a spell scroll.

He prepared the piece of hide by scraping it, drying it, and infusing it with mana to smooth out any inconsistencies in its structure. Then, he rubbed it with a stone until it was as soft as it was going to get.

That took him about an hour.

Now, he was carefully tracing out the pattern of the support rune and the Water rune onto the scroll. He wanted to confirm his ability with this scroll before he moved on to something else, and they could always use it as a back-up water supply.

He hummed to himself as his hands moved carefully across the parchment. A few minutes later, he dipped the stylus into the mana pool and slowly traced the lines of the runes.

With Essence Control and Essence Scribe, it almost felt like he had a class. He knew what to do, there was useful work in front of him, and everything he put into it would be rewarded, either through experience or completed spell scrolls.

He didn’t know how his grandfather had been able to make spell scrolls as just an Arcane Scribe. Maybe he’d had something like Essence Control himself, or an artifact that helped him. Either way, he’d never shared his secrets with Jeric.

Before long, Sam drew the final line of the rune. The scroll shuddered in his hands as the mana surged through the design, testing the structure.

Sam waited, holding his breath as he stared at it.

Instead of settling down and humming with contained power like the last time, however, the scroll continued to shake. Silver-white ripples spread across the surface as the mana surged, stirring around in the lines of the rune.

The ripples increased and the scroll shuddered, sliding across the rock it was on until it fell to the ground.

When it hit the stone, the scroll rippled violently one last time and then slowly shattered as it separated into fragments, almost like a clay pot that hit the ground in slow motion. Each of those fragments broke away from one another, their edges lined with flames of silver-white mana that ate them.

And then the fragments crumbled away as well, as the remains of the parchment transformed into little tornadoes of water that spiraled across the floor.

Sam just stared at it, as he watched all of his hard work dissolve into nothing.

It had...failed?

What had he done wrong?

He’d been sure that his preparation of the parchment and the runic lines were even better than the last time, and his control over the mana input with his stylus was....

Well, it should have been fine.

Jeric approached from the side and looked down at the spell scroll with a frown.

"Why did that happen?" Sam asked, as he looked up at his father. "I thought I did it all perfectly...."

He’d been exceptionally careful.

"No, it wasn't a complete failure...." Jeric shook his head as he watched the tornadoes of water form runnels across the stone. "If you had really failed, it would have exploded like the first one.... I think the rat hide wasn’t capable of taking that much mana. It must not be as good as the salamander hide."

Sam drew in a deep breath as he stared up at the invisible sky.

He wanted to punch the World Law.

First, the aura had dissipated from the rats and now this....

Was it intentionally making things difficult?

He let out a long sigh as he adjusted his expectations and put himself back together. Jeric had told him spell scrolls required difficult to find materials....

"Well, no one said it would be easy, right?"

It was hardly the worst experience he’d ever had.

Sam turned to look at the pile of rats they had brought back, and then he mentally crossed them off his list of supplies.

"Let’s go find a salamander," he suggested, as he looked up hopefully at his father. "Maybe there’s a patrol coming this way by now? I can try to identify the aura on it as well."

"We need to check on the route to the nest anyway," Jeric agreed, after thinking about it for a moment. "They might have found the wall we collapsed. If they send too many patrols, we’ll have to leave, so bring everything with you."

Sam glanced towards the glowing mana pool and frowned. If they abandoned it, he didn’t think he’d be able to make spell scrolls as easily. Something about the concentrated mana was helping him out.

He would need to get the more traditional supplies of ink and everything else...and there was no place down here to acquire them. Maybe he could make ink by dissolving lichen or a mushroom, or try using blood, either from a beast or from himself..., but the likelihood of it working was low.

He pulled his gaze away from the pool and nodded. No matter how much he wanted to keep the mana pool, his dad’s safety and getting back home came first.

Hopefully, the gnomes would stay in their nest.

He just wanted a couple of them to experiment on.

---

About a hundred miles away, far past where Sam and Jeric had encountered the tunnel boar, a small team was walking through the area. There were five of them, four humans and a young dwarven girl who was leading the way.

Two of the humans were guards and flanked a pretty young lady at the back, who was dressed in an elegant white robe that flowed around her steps. The last of them was a magic user of some type, a middle-aged woman with a stern face, who constantly studied the area around them with slightly narrowed eyes.

All four of the humans were wearing thin bronze circlets on their foreheads that had lightstones embedded on them, small enchanted stones that illuminated the area around them as clearly as day.

The stern woman was the strongest of the group at Level 35, and she did not look particularly happy to be there.

The guards were both level 30 and had stony expressions on their faces, as if all the initiative in their lives had long ago been stamped out by duty. Still, from time to time, they glanced around the area and frowned, or looked towards the girl to see what she was doing now.

It wasn't a bad guard job. At least they had something to look at.

Those three together were a force to be reckoned with in the tunnels, but an air of fatigue radiated from them.

Compared to them, the dwarf and the younger woman were a strange contrast. The dwarf looked rather cheerful, in fact, perhaps because they were underground.

The young woman was the weakest of them all at Level 9, and the dwarf was only level 15. It was clear that both of them had their Class Day recently.

"Krana, you’re sure that the earthen mana pool is down here somewhere?" The young woman asked again, tilting her head as she examined the tunnel walls around her.

Her voice was pleasant and light, carrying on the air around her with a sense of in-born grace.

Whatever tiredness was affecting the guards, it didn't seem to reach her.

"I just need to access a pool of concentrated earth mana to finish my initial quest...," the girl sighed, as she thought about the unique class she'd received on her eighteenth birthday, which had only been two months before.

"Ayala, there’s no need to worry," the dwarf replied, reassuringly. There was a smile on her face as she shook her head. "I wouldn’t lie to my best friend, you know. I promised I would help you unlock your class and I’ve finally sensed the mana pool. It took a while, and we had to come all the way to the Abyssinian Plains of all places, but it’s very close now.

"It’s over that way." The dwarf pointed in the general direction of Sam and Jeric’s cave. "We should be there in a week or so, depending on how much the tunnels wind."

"Your Earth Seer class is incredible," Ayala replied, smiling at the dwarf as she tucked a strand of loose hair behind her head. "I can’t believe you can sense something like that from here, much less when we were all the way back in Osera. We had to travel for a month just to get here...."

She shook her head again as she thought about it.

"When I received the Earthwalker Mage class," she added, as she reached out to touch the dwarf’s shoulder, "my father had no idea what to do, but you came to the rescue. I’m so grateful."

"My elders aren’t sure why a human received an Earth class either." Krana grinned as she reached up a long way to pat Ayala on the shoulder.

"Perhaps there’s some truth to that rumor that the World Law is broken, but don’t let the elders hear me say it! Anyway...never fear, if it’s in the earth, I’ll find it for you."

The dwarf’s stout announcement stirred Ayala’s heart, making her wish that her father had been able to come as well. It would go a long way to securing his approval. She’d never been able to spend as much time with Krana as she liked.

"Earthen mana is the most subtle of all the elements and when it’s surrounded by stone like this, it’s even harder...," Ayala murmured. "I never would have been able to find this without you. You’ve put so much effort into it for me."

She was very grateful for Krana’s help, and ways to show that were on her mind.

She didn't pay much attention to the tunnels around her, except to exclaim now and then when they encountered something new.

Any rats and other small monsters in their way were simply wiped away by the guards, who barely blinked at them. Gleaming slashes from enhanced blades and the occasional Stamina-infused punch crushed everything they found.

"Your unique class is a blessing, young lady," the prim older mage interrupted, putting an end to the friendly discussion between the two girls. "You should be grateful that Sir Merrick had the resources to provide a solution for you, and to send me as your escort, as well as these guards."

She looked back at the guards and sniffed, dismissing their presence. Clearly, she didn’t think much of them, even if they were from the same organization as her.

"The Arestes Wizard Guild is as good as its word, even in a dank place like this. I’ll make sure you find that mana pool and get home again. Even with those damned acid worms on the surface."

The wizardess grumbled, clearly annoyed that she had to come to the Abyssinian Plains.

They were a relatively low-level area, but maddeningly dangerous if you weren’t prepared. It was hardly the easy position she wanted.

"If your father weren’t such a well-respected knight, it wouldn’t have been possible for him to contact the guild and acquire a contract with us...," The wizardess’s words were interrupted by a giant sneeze that threw the rest of what she was going to say out the window.

Ayala glanced over at the woman, grateful for small favors.

The wizard rubbed her nose and glared at the walls, as if blaming them for everything she hated in the world. Tunnels were at the top of the list.

"Now, please be silent and allow me to focus," the wizard added, despite the fact that she was the one who had been talking the most on their journey. "It’s difficult to meditate properly with all of this chattering. You never know what sort of vile demon we might find in these tunnels and I need to be prepared for it."

Battlefield Reclaimer 13: Speaking of Demons...

Somewhere...

Very far away from Sam, near the edge of Aster Fall’s dimensional barrier, a man and a woman were sitting across from one another in a room that faded out at the edges. Where the corners should have been, faintly glimmering stars were visible.

There was a shimmering, orange-red sphere between them that looked like a miniature sun, which was at the very center of the space.

Inside the sphere, strand upon strand of intricate sigils gleamed as they curled around each other, doubled-back, and traced out the pattern of an immensely intricate spell formation that existed simultaneously in multiple dimensions.

In fact, the entire room around the sphere was actually the outer layer of the spell. It was currently isolating the couple from observation at the same time as it protected them from the void of space.

The couple were wearing long, old-fashioned robes and they looked very similar to humans, but there were a few noticeable differences. The most important feature was their eyes, which were narrowed in concentration as they kept a steady gaze on the sphere.

Their irises were burnt orange with vertical slit-pupils, and they glowed against the backdrop of arcane light.

Their hands were pressed to the sides of the sphere as they continuously added new runes to it, but they were so used to this work that they were holding a casual conversation at the same time.

"How long have we been attempting to breach the seal this time?" The woman asked. Her voice sounded tired, but her eyes never left the sphere, even as her fingers shaped a glowing orange rune and flicked it into the center.

"This time?" The man replied, frowning as he thought. Finding the correct reference was difficult when you were dealing with multiple dimensions, but he was used to it. It only took him a moment to do the calculation.

"Something like sixty years, the way humans on Aster Fall mark it. Our efforts have no doubt been noticed by now. It's inevitable that we will have created an instability."

"Who cares if it's unstable?" the woman asked, a bit frustrated. "It's been so long I barely remember what real stars look like."

"Dimensional seals will cause that," the man agreed. "It’s hard to keep track of things in this prison."

"Why did I let you convince me...," the woman began, raising an old argument once more before she cut herself off. "Never mind, just keep working to access the core. We’re getting closer to the laws that have sealed us here."

---

Beneath the Abyssinian Plains

Father and son headed towards the monster nest as Sam led the way. His senses were an immense advantage in the tunnels, perhaps even better than those of the beasts that lived here.

The two had fallen into a standard pattern as their experience increased. Jeric still carried a torch wherever they went, but he followed several paces behind Sam, keeping the light out of sight past the curve in the tunnel wall.

He was the rear guard and close enough that he could jump forward to help if needed, but most of the time Sam was able to hear anything behind them even before Jeric did.

The tunnels near their cave were calm and empty, just as they had left them, but halfway to the collapsed wall, the sound of scuffling feet and high-pitched gnomish voices made Sam freeze.

He raised his hand and stepped back, signaling Jeric to halt. Then he crept forward, leaning around the tunnel just far enough to see what was going on.

The collapsed wall had covered about three-quarters of the tunnel when they made it, with rubble scattered across the remaining part. They had left just enough room to climb through, if they didn’t mind crawling on top of rocks.

Now, a wider path had been opened.

Two gnomes and their pet salamanders were picking through the rubble, investigating the area as they tossed rocks to the side. The salamanders were shuffling around, occasionally breathing dark flames onto bits of stone and chewing at them as they strained against their leashes.

One of the gnomes picked up a rock and showed it to the other one, his voice a garbled clashing of noise as it rose and fell. He gesticulated angrily, waving the rock in front of him.

The other one growled something back, picking up a rock of his own as he pointed at the wall.

Sam’s heart leapt into his throat as he caught sight of them. Had they figured out the collapse was deliberate?

Were they going to come looking for them?

If he and his father hadn’t come this way, they might have missed it. Then, the next time they left their cave...there could have been an entire army of them out there.

A moment later, the second gnome shook his head in disgust and threw the rock to the side. His expression was close enough to human that it was easy to read his features.

Sam slid back around the wall, but continued watching, only darting out a glance occasionally to see what they were doing. Hopefully, he was far enough away that they wouldn’t notice him.

The first gnome waved at the wall again and threw the rock to the side. He was not pleased, but he didn’t seem alarmed.

He pointed in Sam and Jeric’s direction as he stomped his foot.

There was another garbled exchange of voices. The first gnome threw his rock away as well. He grabbed his salamander’s leash and nodded.

Then, the two of them headed towards Sam.

He ducked back as quickly as possible, trying not to make a sound, as he went to warn his father.

He waved his hand and pointed back towards the gnomes, holding up two fingers on each hand.

Jeric understood immediately, swiftly covering the head of the torch with a salamander-hide pouch. There was just enough of a gap at the edge for air to reach the torch, but it doused nearly all of the light.

The salamander hide was a unique find. The flame couldn't burn it and maintained the heat at an even temperature, even when it was wrapped tight.

When Jeric was done, he readied his spear again and pressed up against the wall.

Sam moved to one side of the tunnel. The spell pattern for Aura Bolt was hidden on one palm as he held his spear in the other.

He wasn’t going to make the same mistake of draining his aura again. These two gnomes were too good of an opportunity to pass up.

One or two normal Aura Bolts should be enough.

A minute later, the shuffling sound of the salamanders’ feet was audible even to Jeric, along with the light stomps of the gnomes. They were heavy for their size and their feet echoed in the tunnel.

Sam floated in a strange state of calmness as he waited.

When had that happened? He was puzzled as he noticed it.

He’d never been a shy person, but he had been cautious most of his life, determined to plan and make something of himself. Now, he just felt ready for the next battle, even eager.

He realized, for the first time, that he actually felt confident in what he was about to do.

Two gnomes and salamanders were something they could handle.

Most of their fights up until now had been desperate or half-surprised, but they were gradually becoming more practiced. Their tactics were improving.

The salamanders were the first to come into view, shuffling around the curve.

As soon as they were close enough, Sam tapped Jeric on the arm and his father ripped the cover off the torch.

The heat had been preserved by the salamander hide and the instant it was removed, it flared to life, flooding the tunnel with light. The salamanders’ spotted hides reflected the light from tiny diagonal scales.

The salamanders and gnomes were habituated to darkness, their eyes gleaming with the tell-tale red glow of everything down here.

Shrieks rose up as the beasts were blinded by the torch. Dark membranes slammed down to protect their eyes as they staggered backwards into the gnomes.

Sam rushed forward toward all four enemies as an Aura Bolt blasted outward from his palm. It flew ahead of him in a crystal-blue streak until it crashed into the face of a gnome, cracking bone as it knocked its head back.

The salamanders were still scrabbling as he drove his spear down into the neck of one, twisting it savagely to the side before he ripped it out again.

Then Jeric was there, stabbing at the other salamander as he leapt into the battle, and Sam rushed forward, preparing a second Aura Bolt.

He jumped over the salamander as he threw it at the other gnome.

The surprise from the torch light was enough to give them an advantage at the start, and the ambush did the rest.

A few minutes later, all four of the enemies were dead, their bodies strewn across the stone.

Sam leaned on his spear and heaved a deep breath. He glanced over at his dad, only to see Jeric looking at him with an expectant smile.

They had succeeded.

"Well, son?" Jeric laughed, as he nodded towards the corpses. "It looks like we found you a few monsters."

His breath was coming more easily than it had in the last fight, and he looked proud as he stood over their fallen enemies.

"The basalt gnomes might come to investigate this," he added, "but if we’re lucky, they’re running out of patrols to send in this direction. Maybe they think one of those giant boars got them and will avoid the area."

Jeric shook his head, as he glanced between the salamanders and Sam. He turned to look behind him before he spoke again.

"If we’re unlucky, however, a big pile of them will come soon to see what’s going on. Either way, you should get started."

Sam nodded as he turned towards the salamanders. He had 11 points of aura left, so...he may as well start with them.

The only question was if he should identify their aura first or not.

He pressed his hand to a salamander’s mottled skin as he searched for the aura of dark flames that ran through its body. The illusory feeling was easier to find this time as he became more used to searching for it.

A bubbling, fiery darkness hissed through his mind. It was burning stone and sulphur, roaring with a barely contained fury. It popped and crackled as he touched it, filling his mouth with the taste of ashes and heat.

You have encountered an unknown aura.

Do you wish to Reclaim the aura (20% chance) or to Identify it?

Your Fire Affinity has increased the chance of reclaiming this aura by 10%.

"20% chance," Sam murmured to his dad, as a surge of surprise hit him. He hadn't expected that, but it was helpful.

Still, he chose to identify it.

The dark flames raged through his mind, burning at nothing as they brought with them the sense of crumbling earth and seething, molten pools hidden in the darkness. Flashes of eggs, mottled as dark as the salamanders’ skin, came along with it.

And then it was gone, fading away as if it had never been there. It left only the taste of char behind.

The aura has been consumed.

Identification is 50% complete.

Your chance to Reclaim this aura has risen to 45%.

Sam stood up slowly, stretching. There was an almost pleasant feeling in his body, as if his bones had been infused with liquid heat. It was dark and filled with struggle, but it was Fire.

It was like taking a hot bath that relaxed your muscles, but the water was scented with some deeply unpleasant herb.

Leaf of salamander.

He liked it a lot more than the corrupted taste of the rats.

"...50% chance to Identify and 45% to Reclaim," he said slowly to his father as he looked towards the next one, debating if he should just go for it.

His eyes were bright with expectation. The identification was much higher than he expected, and that meant he was very, very close....

"Your choice, son," Jeric replied, nodding as he watched. "The short gamble or the solid road."

A wide smile broke out on Jeric's face as he saw his son on the verge of success.

It was nearly a 50-50 toss.

A few more and.... They were so close that he wanted to shout to the heavens that he had overturned them. He barely restrained himself, just watching with anticipation as he let Sam make his choice.

Sam touched the next salamander, reaching for its aura as he weighed what to do.

There would be other salamanders, just like there were other rats, but....

He was too impatient.

The taste of charred soil and the image of stone walls melting away as they fell into magma filled his mind. The world was red heat and darkness, flooding every corner of the land.

You have encountered an unknown aura.

Do you wish to Reclaim the aura (45% chance) or to Identify it?

Sam made his choice.

The world shimmered around him as it was flooded with fire, magma moving through his veins. It felt like his skin was cracking and darkness was burning through his cells.

It filled every corner of his awareness. There was only a giant beast shuffling through his soul as it left flaming footprints behind. They burned into the stone and were filled with molten rock that seethed with wispy shadows.

He reclaimed it.

Somehow, the aura melted into his own, and he felt it retreat to a corner of his consciousness, calm and obedient as it hovered there, out of the way.

A gigantic, golden notification appeared. It was the largest he’d ever seen and it covered his entire awareness. It was so bright that he couldn't pay attention to anything else around him.

The borders were curling parchment and scrollwork that shimmered with light, as if stars were trapped inside. A thousand golden trumpets released a clarion call that shook the world around him as it echoed through his mind.

CONGRATULATIONS, DEFIANT! YOU HAVE RECLAIMED AN AURA.

AURA OF UMBRAL FLAME (BASIC).

YOU HAVE COMPLETED YOUR INITIAL CLASS QUEST!

His consciousness shook under the weight of the words. Powerful wellsprings of energy poured into him from somewhere unknown and spun through his body like tornadoes.

The energy ripped through his meridians, widening them as they passed, and gathered in his mind, spinning there as it continued to grow in strength. The winds from it spread outward through his consciousness.

He could feel the weight of new knowledge entering his mind.

Then the whirlwinds split into five distinct hurricanes that sped outwards to various parts of his body as they changed, transforming into something like potential.

The notification in his mind disappeared and was replaced with one that was of a more normal size, but still extremely ornate and archaic.

Congratulations, Defiant! You Have Completed Your Initial Quest and Unlocked Your Unique Class.

You gain 10 Experience for Your Class.

You are now a Level 1 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Your Evolution Path has been opened. Class Evolution will be available to you in the future as you grow in strength.

Your General Level Limit has been removed.

The Aster Fall World Limit (Level 399) still applies.

Your Basic class abilities have been assigned: Identify Aura, Reclaim Aura, Aura Storage, Imbue Aura.

You have access to one additional Class ability per tier (every 20th level) during your Initial Path (Levels 1-100, prior to your First Evolution).

As a one-time reward for unlocking a unique Class, you may choose one innate ability related to your class.

The notification hung in his mind as he stared at it, and a moment later, a smaller one appeared, listing the abilities he could choose from.

Choose From the Following Basic Abilities Related to Your Class:

Intensify Aura

Transfer Aura

Shatter Aura

Aura of Crystal Flame [Racial Class Ability. Requires Fire Affinity, Crystal-Grade Essence.]

As usual, there was no other information, and Sam could only stare in shock at the options in front of him. The notifications were too domineering for him to even look around as the trumpets continued to resound in his mind.

It felt as if the world was breaking around him.

He shook his head as he tried to focus, analyzing the options. He had to make the best choice possible, even when he didn't know what he was doing.

"Dad...," he muttered, but the echoes of the notification were so loud that he wasn't even able to hear himself speak. He wasn't sure if his father could hear him or not.

Still, he spoke anyway.

"We did it!"

There was no answer, or perhaps he hadn't really spoken, but he had tried to tell him.

He was forced to pull his attention back to the notification. His head was ringing and he wished he could ask his father for advice.

The World Law rarely explained itself. You either knew what it meant or you guessed.

This was where guilds and family experience would come in handy, to help him decide what to choose, but he was the only one who had ever unlocked this class, so that was of no help.

Initial Path had to mean levels 1-100, before his First Evolution...and his "Evolution Path" had to be the options that were available at level 100 to upgrade his class.

Or maybe the Path was the sequence of potential Evolutions, one after the other? If he could ever reach that high....

That was what it meant to wish someone 'great success on their Path,' as his little sister had on his Class Day.

But what was the World Limit that the Law had mentioned? Did the World Law really expect that he would be able to get to Level 399?

That was...insane.

Utterly and completely insane. It was higher than any dream he had ever hoped to have, even in his wildest imagination.

A level like that...a person would be a god walking through the world.

If there was something divine in Aster Fall, it definitely had to be at that level.

He shook his head as he pulled himself back together, pushing aside his shock to analyze the rest of what was in front of him.

The Basic class abilities were mostly what he had expected. The World Law had given him the two obvious ones in Identify and Reclaim, almost as if it were making them official, and then it gave him Aura Storage, which was obviously needed if he was going to collect them.

He hadn’t thought about that before.

The last Basic ability was the most interesting: Imbue Aura.

Would it work with Enchanting and Smithing?

He hoped so, because it would open an entire realm of possibility. What would a Battlefield Reclaimer’s enchantments be like, if he used auras in them?

Then there were the four options he could choose for the reward ability.... They floated in front of his eyes as he stared at them.

There was no doubt that they would all be useful somewhere. The World Law wasn’t very helpful in terms of information, but it didn’t give out useless things.

Especially not as class abilities.

Intensify Aura might have something to do with increasing the potential or the level of an aura that he gathered, but Transfer Aura was not at all clear. Was it different from Imbue Aura? Or could he transfer auras between beasts or his friends?

He shook his head, unclear on whether it would be helpful right now or not.

He was tempted by it, to see if he could transfer an aura to his father, but he doubted the World Law was going to allow such a thing. The ability was probably intended for some other purpose, even if he didn't know what it was.

As for Shatter Aura, it might be an offensive ability, or it might be something he could use to break down an aura and...separate it into parts? It sounded good.

The last one, however, was what stood out to him the most.

It was, by far, the most unique.

A Racial Class Ability?

It seemed like it was an evolution of his Fire Affinity.

As for Crystal-Grade Essence..., his mana and aura were crystal blue, but he didn't understand what that meant, or if it mattered at all.

So far, the most he had been able to do with his Fire Affinity was to create a bit of flame in his hands and to shield himself from the salamanders’ breath....

This looked like the World Law was offering something else, and it wasn’t clear if it was something he’d be able to get any other way.

Aura of Crystal Flame.

What was it?

Was the World Law offering to merge his Fire Affinity and his essence together somehow?

And were there upgrades to it later, at higher tiers?

Sometimes, he knew, if you missed taking a Basic Ability when it was offered..., you could never get it up to the highest tier. The World Law only assisted you with very limited opportunities.

There were some abilities that it was just too hard to research yourself. You had to have the World Law's help.

He had the feeling that if he didn’t take the aura now, and if it were still available at Level 20..., it would only be Basic there.

If he took it now, and had the option to upgrade it at 20, then it would become Advanced....

The difference between Basic and Advanced abilities was like night and day. There was simply no comparison. And then..., what if he got up to Expert or Elite?

He had no idea what that would look like, but he wanted to find out.

The other abilities were clearly something good, but they were all unknown. Hopefully, they would appear again at Level 20, or he could unlock them through his own efforts.

If he did, they would become Skills instead of Abilities. Abilities were innate and much easier to use. But....

He chose Aura of Crystal Flame without any more hesitation.

The whirlwinds that had settled into his body changed again and swept outwards, infusing him with power.

The first four were seamless, and he felt a strange, massive power similar to aura pour into him, dividing into four parts as it fused with the whirlwinds. One whirlwind was in his eyes, another in his heart, the third was in his abdomen, and the last one was in his hands.

Those places were just a beginning. Each of the winds was a seed that expanded throughout his meridians and his soul, integrating its strength into him as it faded away.

The last whirlwind was different. He could feel an immense, familiar force pouring into it, as its essence slowly turned to Fire.

From there, it turned blue, but a shade so intense that it was like looking into the heart of a water elemental. Then, the blue became brilliant and crystalline as it began to radiate with that strange, familiar energy.

It felt a lot like his own essence, but vastly more powerful.

The flames turned translucent at their edges and took on a deep, cerulean hue at the center, like the heart of a star.

And then it expanded, sweeping through his body and consciousness, as it burned away what he was and replaced it with what he would be.

"Dad...," Sam mumbled as he looked up, his head spinning....

The notifications all faded away, leaving him feeling isolated and overwhelmed.

He didn’t feel himself hitting the ground.

Or the arms that caught him.

Battlefield Reclaimer 14: Crystal Flames and Spell Scrolls

"Sam, are you all right?"

His father’s words came to him as he felt someone holding his head. The world was spinning and wouldn’t stop. The realization that he had unlocked his class filled his mind as his thoughts cleared. He could sense the difference in his body.

He tried to think about what that meant, but an ocean of crystal blue flames was surging through his awareness at the same time, crashing on the shore of his consciousness and ebbing again.

The flames were part of him, but the sheer amount of power in them was staggering, as if he were a tiny boat adrift on the waves. Their energy was intimately familiar, from the same source as his mana, but also not.

It felt different...unique. It also had some similarities to his aura, with the sense of potential that was Aura Bolt when he channeled it, at the moment before he threw it.

Was this his essence?

Shhuuushshhh, shuuuUUUUshhshh....

The waves crashed and fell. His mind wandered along with them, in and out of reality.

Whatever had just happened, the unlocking of his class was the most significant, but what had happened when he’d chosen the Aura of Crystal Flames?

"Sam! Wake up!" His father shouted again.

He could feel a hand tapping against his cheek.

"What happened? Are you alright? Did you unlock the class? Did that cause this? Wake up!"

The questions blurred together, running over each other. Eventually, Sam managed to pull himself back together and his eyes blinked.

"Dad, I’m...fine," he mumbled. His mind drifted away on blue waves for a moment.

He was being carried, slung over his dad’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes and bouncing there as Jeric walked. He wasn’t sure how long it had been.

They stopped moving, and Jeric slid him off his shoulder. He leaned Sam against the wall and let out a relieved breath.

"Sam, are you alright?" he asked again. His breath was ragged. He had been working hard to carry his son back to their cave.

Sam pulled himself together and focused on his father's face. He checked his status to confirm that what had just happened was real.

Sam Hastern

Level: 8

Class: Battlefield Reclaimer. Level 1.

Sub-Class: None.

Professions: Enchanter (Level 1), Smith (Level 1), Essence Scribe (Level 1)

Inactive Professions: Scholar (Level 1)

Race: Outsider (Aster Fall)

He skimmed down to see the new abilities.

Racial Abilities: (Str/Con + 4, CHA -4), Enhanced Vision (Special), Enhanced Senses (Advanced), Fire Affinity (Special).

Class Abilities: Identify Aura, Reclaim Aura, Aura Storage, Imbue Aura.

Racial Class Ability: Aura of Crystal Flame.

Spells: Aura Bolt.

Skills: Essence Control (Advanced), Mana Refinement (Basic).

Traits: Defiant (-2 CHA).

It was there, the evidence clearly recorded on his soul.

He was a Level 1 Battlefield Reclaimer.

The Class Quest at the bottom of his status had updated. It was no longer an Initial Class Quest.

Progressive Class Quest (Unique to Battlefield Reclaimer): Imbue an Advanced Aura.

The words tumbled out of him in a rush as he grabbed his father's shoulders.

"Dad, we did it! It worked! I’m a Level 1 Battlefield Reclaimer!"

Jeric froze as he heard the words that he had waited so long for.

"You...unlocked the class?" he asked, almost tentatively, as if he couldn’t bring himself to fully say it. Hope and old pain sprang up in his heart, twining together like the double trunk of a tree.

"I unlocked it," Sam confirmed, saying the words that his dad needed to hear.

Jeric looked down at his son, his mouth slightly open as he froze in place and the reality hit him. Crystal droplets appeared at the corner of his eyes as they went glassy. There was a lump in his throat that made it impossible to speak.

He swallowed, coughing, as he blinked the tears from his eyes. They started to run down his cheeks. His hands clenched into fists and relaxed again. Then he reached out and patted Sam on the shoulder, slowly. Once and then again. He left his hand there and his eyes slowly closed.

"Good work, son." The words were a low, intense utterance that rang out through the tunnel. A great deal of history was contained in them, said and unsaid.

Then Jeric pulled himself back together and patted Sam on the shoulder one more time, as he set it aside and looked to the future.

"There’s a long road ahead," he said, as a smile broke out across his face.

"We’re not too far from the salamanders yet. Let’s go back to get them, and you can tell me everything on the way."

---

As they collected the salamanders, Sam explained what had happened to his dad with the notifications and class abilities. There was a lot he didn’t understand, but the basic outline was becoming clear.

The class description finally made sense. Mostly.

The Battlefield Reclaimer is an ancient enchanter and smith who uses aura and essences from the elements, including rare ones like the sunset, aurora, or ocean light, to imbue items with rare and inexplicable properties.

It seemed he was supposed to focus on collecting auras from beasts, and perhaps the elements, and then imbue them into items. That sounded like a crafting class mostly, and all of the abilities it gave him were for crafting as well.

But it required battle to find the auras, which was a bit of a sticking point. What was he supposed to do if he weren’t able to collect the auras?

Sam frowned as he thought about it. He had to be there himself to collect the auras, and he probably had to participate in killing the beast too, just like he did for experience.

If he wanted to collect auras, it looked like he was on his own for combat abilities. Was that how the class was intended?

Fortunately, he had Aura Bolt and now this...Aura of Crystal Flame? He didn’t know what the new aura did yet, but he would experiment with it. It had been too tempting to pass up.

The crystal blue flames that had always been part of his Fire Affinity had changed, becoming more responsive, but he wasn't sure on the details yet or what it meant to use the aura.

The World Law had given him the ability, and it would probably work if he tried the right thing, but it hadn't sat down to chat with him and explain the best way to do it.

All he knew was that his Fire Affinity had become much more useful now. In fact, if he looked at himself in just the right way, he could see the crystal blue flames flowing through his body and meridians.

They were a deeper, denser color than before, but still as bright as crystal and translucent at the edges. Could they leave his body?

As soon as he thought the question, the flames surged out, responding to his will as they swirled around him.

Jeric jumped back with a start as the area was flooded with crystal blue light.

"Sorry, dad," Sam offered, as he pulled the flames back in and studied them for longer.

The way they were rotating through his body was similar to the dark flame that had flowed through the salamanders..., but much denser. He wondered what his aura would count as if he extracted it from a beast. Advanced? Higher?

The ocean of blue flame settled down as he told it to relax. It faded away, becoming almost unnoticeable. Since the World Law had offered this aura to him in place of a class ability, it couldn’t be bad.

Maybe it would help solve the combat problem? If not, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to kill things to get auras.... The question was bothering him, since it seemed like a glaring weakness in the class. Was there something he was missing or was he supposed to just tag along with warriors and throw one spell?

"Dad, how do you think I'm supposed to collect auras?" he asked, bringing up the problem.

"Well, you have both of the professions described in the class," Jeric answered with a beaming smile as they finished tying up the salamanders. As was usual by this point, they had lashed the beasts to the extra spears from the gnomes and then hung the gnomes’ armor and pouches of lichen from the end.

"It should all start to come together. You just have to practice with it." Jeric reached out and ruffled Sam’s hair when they were done.

"Hopefully." Sam smiled, setting the problem aside for a moment. Professions were important too. "Do you think I can learn about enchanting and smithing on my own, or do I need to find a teacher or manuals?"

"The guilds control all of that," Jeric replied. "At least for the more formal paths. You could look into joining one, but it won't help until we're back by a city."

He shook his head. He’d been considering this ever since Sam started with those two classes.

"Smithing is easier. It’s not as strictly monitored or as difficult to train as enchanting. We’d have to head to at least one of the bigger cities nearby to see about enchanting materials."

He rubbed at his chin, which was covered in a thick, salt-and-pepper beard now.

"Ideally, your Imbue Aura ability will help you with enchanting. You'll probably need more information and materials though, so at some point we’ll have to visit the guilds."

Sam nodded as he dragged his salamander, thinking of the future. He also had Essence Scribe as a profession, but he couldn’t tell if making spell scrolls was related to his class or not. Were the runes for scrolls and enchanting similar?

If they were, working on the scrolls would give him partial class experience. Even if it didn't, making the scrolls would be useful. Each of these salamanders could be turned into a few spell parchments.

He wondered...could he imbue an aura into a scroll? That would really be bringing his class and Essence Scribe together. He was curious what would it look like. He would have to try it out, along with everything else.

He would also have to figure out a way to help his dad see aura, so that he could unlock the class too. Maybe he could enchant some glasses for him?

Father and son continued dragging their gains home, as they thought of the future that had just opened in front of them, as well as all the work they needed to do.

---

When they got back to their cave, they dropped off their gains and then traveled quickly back to where the tunnel boar had been, keeping an eye out on the way. It was likely that the gnomes would investigate now that another patrol had gone missing, so they needed to see if the other route was viable or not.

The rats that had once blocked the path were gone and they moved fairly quickly past where the tunnel boar had been. After that, they passed through two more areas with caverns that branched off from them. A quick glance showed some rats inside, scavenging at lichens and mushrooms, but nothing else.

They carefully avoided them as they moved further down the tunnel. About an hour later, there was a sense of heat in the air that was quickly increasing. It was comfortable for Sam, but Jeric began to sweat in droplets that ran down his face.

A short while later, the heat intensified until they came to the edge of a deep chasm cutting across the tunnel floor. It was about twenty feet wide and it looked like it had been opened by a recent earthquake. At the bottom, a narrow line of red lava was visible.

Heat and light rose up from it, washing across the mouth of the chasm as it radiated out through the tunnels. Both sides of the opening were rough, with stones hanging in a loose tumble, which would make any effort to climb down or even to jump across extremely dangerous. They looked like they might give way at any moment.

Whatever earthquake had created this, it could have been just a handful of years or even longer, but the earth was still raw from it.

"That's too far to jump," Jeric shook his head slowly as he looked at it, keeping a careful distance from the edge. "At least for us. Maybe a stronger warrior could do it, if they could get far enough across that it didn't collapse on them."

"What about putting a rope on the ceiling and swinging across?" Sam suggested, as he looked towards the lava and then moved back again.

A burst of intense heat washed across his face, but it wasn't uncomfortable yet. He wasn't sure what the limit of his heat tolerance was, but jumping into lava didn't seem like a good way to test it.

"Maybe if we have no other choice," Jeric answered, shaking his head as he studied the problem. "A rope could burn in this heat, or we could slip off of it..., and we don't have much rope either. There's also the problem of attaching it."

His father looked around as the frown on his face deepened. "Let's head back for now. We'll probably have to head in the other direction after all, even if there are more gnomes."

The return to their cavern was fortunately uninterrupted as they pushed the pace. When they arrived, they blocked the wall with loose rocks and settled themselves in to do some intense preparation.

It looked like they were going to have to face whatever was in the other direction, including any more basalt gnomes. That meant Sam needed to experiment with his class and to increase his strength.

The early levels always came hard and fast, and it would give him a large boost if he could get them. Since he was a crafting class, all he needed to do was create the right things. It also meant there was no reason to leave the cave and risk themselves again, not while he could train with what was available.

They had enough food for at least a week, so they settled on a plan to fortify the cavern and focus on their growth until they ran out. Sam’s job was to make the most of his class and create some useful scrolls, while Jeric did what he could to create defenses at the entrance.

Now that Sam's class was unlocked, his general level could increase to 10 and above, and his professions could do the same. He could also choose a subclass, but that was such a major choice that he wasn’t sure what to do yet.

The obvious choice for a subclass was Enchanter or Smith. Of those two, he preferred Enchanter, but he needed to make sure it worked first.

"Don’t rush into it," Jeric advised him, shaking his head. "The main thing to focus on for a subclass is the abilities it gives you, and you don't know what you need yet. You'll get class experience from your professions already, so there’s no harm in waiting a little to see what happens."

Jeric continued stripping a salamander hide as he spoke, pointing out the meat for Sam to take and dry. The salamander’s protection from fire didn’t seem to extend to their inner flesh after they died.

Sam roasted the salamander pieces over his flames as he listened to his dad speak. It was a lot easier to summon them now. They curled around his body almost like he was a salamander himself, running along his skin in a swirl of cerulean depths that faded to translucent brilliance at the edge.

The salamander meat was roasted golden brown within a few minutes, and then he baked it drier, turning it into jerky.

His flames were also more efficient now. The Aura of Crystal Flame was drawing from both his mana and his aura to roast the meat, but it was barely noticeable.

"The best thing for us would be if you got a few class levels while creating some protections for this cave," Jeric announced, as he looked around the room. "It will also help us travel home."

"When should we leave?" Sam asked, frowning as he thought about how long they’d been away. He’d lost track of the days. Had it been a week now? Over a week?

How were his mother and Altey handling their disappearance? Was the village treating them well?

Surely, the village wouldn’t bother them for a little while..., but if they were here for too long, there was no telling what would happen. The rent for their small house would be due soon, and without his father’s income....

Sam glanced down at the stylus he had made, feeling the weight of his family’s future in it.

His mother was strong, but...it wasn’t easy to be alone. She wouldn't know what had happened to them. At least they knew she was there, waiting for them.

"We'll leave soon as we can." Jeric shook his head, heaving a deep sigh. "But not before we can survive the trip, no matter how much we want to. You saw that tunnel boar. Just one of those would crush us."

Jeric's hands clenched into fists as he struggled with his own helplessness. It was the thing he hated most in the world. His hands relaxed again as he told himself that Sam didn't have to deal with it any more.

"The gnomes are blocking us from one side and those are on the other. Even a large pack of rats or a few gnomish patrols would be too much for us right now. The best thing you can possibly do is get stronger as fast as possible."

Sam felt the weight of responsibility falling hard on his shoulders, and he straightened his back as he looked back at his dad.

"I’ll work as hard as I can," he promised solemnly. "I won't even breathe unless it does something that helps us."

Jeric reached out and patted him on the shoulder, hiding the pain in his mind as much as he could. He was supposed to be the one protecting his son, not the other way around.

Sam didn't notice his father's conflict. He just frowned as he finished drying the jerky and then turned towards the waiting pieces of salamander hide.

He was feeling the pressure now that his dad had always carried for him. It had been there before, but he hadn't been able to do anything about it.

Now, he could.

He had been young and headstrong before, but this experience was swiftly making him much more mature.

---

Sam’s stylus brushed over the prepared salamander hide, leaving a line of silver-white mana behind as it poured into the lines of the rune.

He was nearly done making a Water scroll. If it worked, it could be used to attack or just to create water. He wasn’t sure how much damage it would cause, but it should be considerable.

There was quite a bit of mana infused into it.

He’d checked the wall where the last one hit. The water had whipped into the stone wall strongly enough to leave gouges an inch deep, so it was at least as strong as his unenhanced Aura Bolt.

It should have a much better area of effect than his spell, however. The scroll released a sphere that expanded as it flew, turning into that whipping ball of watery tendrils he'd seen before.

It should hit at least two or three gnomes if they were close to each other.

He had managed to get seven blank sheets out of the salamanders. He was planning on making two of these Water scrolls with them. For the rest, he wanted to see what Fire would do, or perhaps one of the other basic elements.

His studies with spell scrolls so far only made him confident in making a scroll for Water, Fire, Earth, or Wind. They all needed the same runic structure. Only the key rune at the center was different.

The salamanders were Fire-aligned, and he already knew that their hide kept the same property, so if he made a Fire scroll out of their hide, what would happen?

It could either enhance it, strangle it, or do nothing.

He was better at remembering the runes than he was with scroll materials so far, even with the lessons from his father. There were just too many materials in the world and he didn’t know enough about them.

But he was hoping that it worked.

He drew the last lines of the Water rune at the center and carefully pulled his stylus away, barely breathing as he waited.

The scroll began to vibrate as the mana swirled around in it, testing the structure, but it was less violent than the last time.

A moment later, it subsided and the scroll began to gleam with a brilliant light.

Scroll of Water (Basic).

A prompt appeared as he looked at it, followed a moment later by the quiet notification that he had been waiting for.

Ding! It was a silver chime that was melodious and pleasant as it flooded into his mind.

For creating an item that is part of your Essence Scribe profession, you gain 50 profession experience.

Congratulations, Essence Scribe. You have gained a Level.

You are now a Level 2 Essence Scribe!

The notification immediately chimed again.

...

You are now a Level 3 Essence Scribe!

Experience to Next: 50.

It was the same calculation of experience as his general level, which made it simple. It would only take 200 total experience to get to Level 5.

At the same time, a series of other, very important notifications popped up into his mind. Those were the ones that he had been hoping for.

The first was a soft golden chime, a little sweeter than the silver one for Essence Scribe.

You gain 15 class experience. (30% contribution from Essence Scribe)

Then there was a much larger notification with golden borders.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have gained a Level in your Class.

You are now a Level 2 Battlefield Reclaimer!

Experience to Next: 25.

Your Aura and Intelligence have each increased by +1.

Since this is a unique class, you are also granted one free status point to assign.

And then the notification faded away, as quickly as it had come, leaving behind only the effervescent bubbles of leveling.

There was a surge of energy in his Aura and Intelligence as his stats increased, bringing him up to 14 in each.

He stared at the scroll as he thanked his lucky stars that he had a crafting class. A single scroll had given him enough experience to get two levels in Essence Scribe and one in his class!

The boosts to Aura and Intelligence were useful, since they were the core stats for his class. As for the free point, he wasn’t sure where to put it yet.

"Dad!" he exclaimed as he looked up. "I made Level 2!" He also added the rest of the details about what had just happened.

Jeric’s smile beamed back at him as he laughed in delight.

"Do all classes get free points?" Sam asked, as he thought about the notification.

"No, I've never heard of anyone getting three points before. It's usually two and they are automatically assigned." Jeric shook his head. He was surprised as well. "Don’t underestimate the value of a free stat point every level. Over time, it will be an incredible advantage."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, thinking about it.

It was just one point....

"Do the math, lad." Jeric chuckled. "If you’re Level 200 in your class, and you get three points a level while most folks only get two, then you’ll have 200 extra points that someone else doesn’t."

Sam’s eyes widened as he did the calculations in his head and saw what his father meant.

"That’s like having 100 general levels more than someone else." His voice was low, with a surging awareness of exactly how beneficial a unique class was.

He wasn't sure if it made up for all the hardship the class had caused, but it was definitely valuable.

"Levels only give a few status points," Jeric added meaningfully. "Every stat point is a heavy advantage. If you have 10 Strength, and someone else has 11, they’re roughly 10% stronger than you. I’ve heard it changes as it goes higher, but I don’t know much about that."

"Where should I put the free point then?"

"You have to decide that as you look towards who you want to be. Do you want to be stronger, faster, or a better spell caster?" Jeric described the possibilities, but he didn’t try to make the decision for his son.

He trusted that Sam would think it through.

Sam looked at his status sheet, and the various weaknesses across it. Everything was still low, so perhaps it didn’t matter too much..., but the main thing he needed right now was more Aura, to support his enhanced Aura Bolt and class abilities.

In the end, he added the last point there, bringing his Aura up to 15. His blood was still surging with bubbles of excitement as he turned back to the spell scrolls.

Battlefield Reclaimer 15: Preparing the Defenses

Before long, Sam had finished the second Water scroll. The silver chime of experience sounded in his mind and his Essence Scribe class jumped to Level 4, but he ignored it.

It wasn’t enough experience to level Battlefield Reclaimer and there weren’t any status point gains for professions. He just needed 10 more class experience. One more scroll should do it.

After all of these scrolls, he would max out the easy levels. Ignoring the little silver chime was going to become more common for him in the future, like a little bird singing in his ear.

He was feeling an immense determination to push forward and grow stronger. It was the only thing he could do right now that would help. While he was working, he had been turning over the idea of a subclass in his mind, debating what he wanted to do with it.

The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he was on the wrong track in planning on Enchanter as a subclass. The lack of combat abilities was bothering him. Class abilities were incredibly useful, which was why the correct subclass was such an important choice.

He already had Essence Control and Imbue Aura. Did he need anything else to enchant an item? If not, he would waste his subclass spot by putting Enchanter there, and it couldn’t be changed until Level 100. Too bad there was no Enchanter around to ask.

Maybe Imbue Aura was enough? Or was there a skill he could learn to cover a gap? The names of combat classes floated in his mind as he debated what to do.

Warrior, Paladin, Knight, Wizard, Mage, Summoner, Priest, Druid, Blade Dancer, Archer, Songweaver, Sorcerer.... All of them came in a dozen different varieties. If he took one of those as a subclass, it might give him the abilities they needed.

The problem was that some subclasses were rarer and more powerful than others, and he didn’t know much about them, much less how to unlock them. He only knew the basic names.

If he were going to get a combat class, he needed one that worked with his current abilities.... Ideally, it would benefit from the stats of his main class. That meant something like a Wizard, right? Or was there a combat class that was melee mixed with casting?

His prime stats were Aura and Int, but as far as he knew, only a few classes used aura in their First Evolution. Mostly druids and nature classes. He needed all the help he could get to protect himself and his dad on the way out of here. After that, they still had to get across the Abyssinian Plains, which were hundreds of miles from home.

If he could get a really good combat class, his ability to gather auras might improve too, fixing the weakness he'd identified in the class. Maybe that was what was intended.

"Dad," he asked, as he brought up the thoughts that were on his mind. "What do you know about the abilities for Enchanters and for combat subclasses?"

"Hmm...," Jeric looked over, his eyes studying his son. It felt as if he could see straight through him to what was on his mind. "So, you’re wondering if Enchanter is going to do anything for you as a subclass, right?"

Jeric rubbed his hand against his beard as he thought. His eyes narrowed in concentration.

"Well, I can’t answer that part of the question, but there's an easy way to find out. Just try to enchant something as a test and see what happens. If you can figure it out on your own, you don't need the subclass." Jeric frowned, as he thought of the options they had available.

"Why don't you try with the water crystal, once you’re done with those scrolls? If you can figure something out, you should be fine choosing something else as your subclass. That crystal won’t last much longer anyway."

The water crystal was swiftly fading. Unless Sam managed to fix it again, it would break in the next few days. If that happened, they were going to need more salamanders to turn into Water scrolls to keep up their supplies.

"Hmm...," Sam unconsciously copied his father’s hum, as he reached up to rub his own chin. Jeric saw what he was doing and chuckled, but he didn’t say anything.

"As for combat subclasses," Jeric continued, "I imagine you already got the Basic proficiencies for Warrior, Guard, Spearman, and such, right?"

Sam nodded an affirmative. Combat subclasses went under proficiencies instead of professions and weren't worth much experience. The ones he'd picked up were all inactive. He’d gotten them shortly after demonstrating Basic proficiency with a spear and dagger.

"The thing with those common subclasses...," Jeric added thoughtfully, "is that it’s not advisable to take them unless you’re desperate. The abilities they grant are nothing special. What most people do when choosing a combat subclass is to try for one that is even better than their main class, since it’s the only one where they have a choice. For example, a Warrior who is subclassed as a Spell Knight."

"How do you get those?" Sam frowned as he thought about it. If Warrior wasn’t going to be a good option, then what else was there?

"The number of subclasses is extremely large." Jeric shook his head helplessly. "A guild would offer you some options to study, and the academies in the cities would focus on helping you to unlock specific ones, but we don't have access to any of that."

He was silent for a bit as he continued to think. After a little while, his eyes brightened as he thought of something.

"What you need to do," Jeric concluded, "is to try and unlock a Racial Class, and take that as your subclass. You’ve heard of special classes that some races have, like Dwarven Battleguard?"

Sam nodded. It was one of the more famous legends of the dwarves that everyone had heard about. Their Battleguards were the elite forces of their legions and almost as strong as the Dwarven Royal Guards.

The only Human Racial Classes he’d heard of, however, were Tower Academic and Tempest Barbarian. There were stories about both of them, but neither was something he wanted or even knew how to get.

"Maybe your...new race, has something similar," Jeric suggested. "The thing with Racial Classes is that they’re much, much better than generic ones, and they’re not so hard to get. The main requirement is just to be that race and to have professions that match. The Dwarven Battleguards are one example, as are the Siren Songweavers. For those, I believe you just need to be a Dwarven Warrior or a Siren Singer first.

"For humans, well... Scholar and Wizard professions together usually unlock Tower Academic, and Druid and Berserker usually unlock Tempest Barbarian. But I don't think either of those is suitable for you."

"How do I unlock it if I don't know what it is?" Sam asked, as ideas began to run through his mind.

If he could have a Battlefield Reclaimer main class, and then...what would be a racial class for an Outsider (Aster Fall)?

"I’m not sure. Have you tried accessing all of your racial abilities while fighting yet? If you do, now that you’ve unlocked your main class, you might see something appear."

Sam shook his head as he thought about it. The racial abilities he had tried to use in a fight.... Well, actually, he was surprised to think back and realize that he had used most of them. Enhanced Vision, Enhanced Senses, and Fire Affinity were all very natural for him.

But even if he had met any requirements, he hadn’t received the notifications while his class was locked. The only new ability he had was the Aura of Crystal Flame.

Maybe he could get a class based on that. If so, what would it be like? The idea of incinerating an army with crystal-blue flames spun through his mind.

They’d get home, make sure their family was safe..., maybe he’d burn Boric’s hair off, and then Nasya would throw her arms around him and declare he was the strongest of them all! After that, the dream fell apart a bit.

He pushed the idea out of his head and went back to work on the next spell scroll, while ideas of combat subclasses floated through his mind.

Getting home safely would be enough.

---

"Do you think I can make a healing scroll?" Sam asked his father, drawing in a deep breath as he broached his next idea.

He was nearly done with his third scroll. It was focused on Fire this time and he was thinking about what to make next. If he could create a healing scroll, then he could heal any wounds they picked up on the way out. It would be a life-saving treasure.

"No," Jeric replied immediately. He shook his head as he thought about the idea and continued repairing his net.

"Healing magic is complicated, especially the arcane version, and it’ll take an Advanced-level skill to create it, at the very least. Maybe when you get the profession up more. You’ve seen the runes for it. You should know how much more complicated they are than what you’re using right now."

Sam frowned as he looked back at the parchment. He had seen those spell circles and they were easily three times as complex as this..., but he was still tempted to try.

After a minute, he sighed and put the idea aside. He didn’t have the scroll materials to waste on failures. He was planning to finish the spell scrolls, and then work on the water crystal, but after that he would try out Imbue Aura and see what happened.

He only had one aura so far, the Aura of Umbral Flame (Basic). He wasn’t sure what to do with it. Apparently, he was supposed to imbue it into something. He had the feeling that whatever he did, it would consume it, so he would have to choose carefully.

He let the ideas work at the back of his mind as he carefully drew the last runes on the Fire scroll. As he moved, crystalline blue flames licked around his wrists, almost teasing as they touched the stylus and retreated again.

They were an expression of his attention, following along wherever his mind went. It wasn’t any effort for him to keep up a constant flow of the flames across his skin and they didn’t burn anything if he didn’t want them to.

So, at the moment, he was providing light for their cavern. It was a pleasant blue color, bright and clear, and a great improvement over the smoky torches they had before.

They had made those out of dried mushrooms and beast sinews wrapped with leather, and they hadn’t worked well. There were a couple left, but Jeric was saving them.

The crystal flames licked along the stylus again, and as Sam watched them, an idea suddenly struck him. His class ability was to Imbue Aura, right? And he had this new Aura of Crystal Flame....

What if he could imbue his own aura into something? He didn’t say anything for a while, as he continued to work on the Fire spell, but the idea simmered.

A little while later, he completed the Fire scroll and golden notifications began to chime in his mind.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have gained a Level.

You are now a Level 3 Battlefield Reclaimer!

Experience to Next: 45.

You have gained +1 Aura, +1 Intelligence, and have one free status point to assign.

The notification faded away again. As soon as it did, Sam debated where to put the free point. He had put the last one in Aura, but now he wasn't as sure what to do, especially as he looked down at the crystal flames.

This Aura of Crystal Flame was his essence. That meant it was a combination of aura and mana. If he put the point in Aura, it would put him at 15 Intelligence and 17 Aura, but if he put it in Intelligence, they would balance at 16 and 16.

The disparity bothered him, so in the end he put it into Intelligence and balanced the stats at 16. He had the feeling that essence was much more important than either his aura or mana individually.

He set the Fire scroll to the side as he went back to work. There were still four parchments left.

---

A little while later, there were two more completed Fire scrolls in front of Sam. He wasn’t sure how well they would work, but they should be at least as good as the Water one. Maybe better, if the salamander's Fire alignment helped out.

The two scrolls gave him another 30 experience for his class, putting him very close to Level 4. One more scroll would do that. Essence Scribe had also gone up to Level 5.

"Are you getting more familiar with them?" Jeric asked as he looked over.

"It’s making a bit more sense," Sam agreed. The spell scrolls were definitely becoming more understandable, at least in their Basic form.

"Keep working then," Jeric nodded at his son. "I’ll see what else I can do to this entrance...."

Jeric rubbed his chin again as he looked up at the rocks that he’d slanted above the hole that led into their cave. There was a broad pillar of stones there now, with the top leaning towards the opening.

The edge of it was propped up by a few gnomish spears that he’d driven into the ground and a narrow ledge on the wall. It was a little precarious, but it would make a decent deadfall if they needed to block the entrance the rest of the way. If he ripped out the spears, the top would collapse, followed by the other rocks.

What they would do after that..., well that was a different question. Perhaps it would stop one of those boars for a bit and they could dig themselves out later.

Sam nodded as he turned back to his work. He still had two blank parchments. He would use one for something familiar, to make sure he leveled up, but on the last one, should he try out his idea for imbuing Aura of Crystal Flame?

He frowned as he set a sheet in front of him. There were two Water scrolls and three Fire ones so far. What if he tried to make an Earth scroll with this one?

Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind were the simplest runes, followed by Wood and Metal. Lightning, Cloud, Fog, Ocean, and others were after that. It should be possible to make an Earth or Wind scroll, in the same way he had made these first ones.

They were surrounded by Earth here, and the salamanders were also creatures of Fire and Earth. So, if their hide worked to enhance any elements, it would be those two. Maybe it would be useful to collapse a wall or open a passage, if it worked the way he thought.

He tapped his fingers on the table, amid dancing blue flames like faerie lights, as he decided to try. If he failed, he’d just use the last parchment to try again.

He dipped the stylus in the mana pool and began tracing out the support rune he would need. As the mana flowed into the runes, the scroll vibrated happily beneath his hand, almost as if it were eager to be born.

---

Sam let out a short groan as he stretched and rubbed at his back. It had taken him a bit longer than expected to make the Earth scroll. It felt strangely intense in his hands, but it was now humming peacefully as it lay on the rock table. Behind him, the silver-white mana pool shimmered.

Had he missed something when he made it? The scroll seemed stronger than the others, but he couldn't pinpoint why. He shook his head as the golden chime he’d been waiting for appeared. Bubbles of wild, enthusiastic energy surged through his blood.

The feeling wiped away his tiredness in an instant. It felt as if he’d just climbed out of a relaxing bath, or when he had been swimming in the moonlit pond near the village on a crystal-clear summer night.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have gained a Level.

You are now a Level 4 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Experience to Next: 100.

You have gained +1 Aura, +1 Intelligence, and have one free status point to assign.

He studied his status sheet as he debated where to put the point.

Health: 150

Aura: 17
Mana: 17

STR: 14

CON: 15

AGI: 12

WIS: 10

INT: 17

AUR: 17

CHA: 4

He'd decided to keep his Intelligence and Aura balanced, but even if he put 10 more points into each of them, how fast could he cast Aura Bolts? What else would help them get out of the tunnels the most?

He suspected that a pure wizard would get +2 Intelligence per level from their class, and then they would assign most of their free points from their general level to Constitution, in order to increase their lifespan and make themselves a bit more durable, with a small scattering left over for Strength, Agility, or Charisma.

Constitution was something to consider. It wasn't something he could neglect in the long run. His Charisma was terrible, but being more attractive probably wasn’t going to save their lives, so he ignored that one.

His Wisdom was a matter for another day as well. All it seemed to do was boost his chance to reclaim an aura. He’d rather just kill more monsters for now.

In the end, he put the point into Strength, bringing it up to 15. He was still fighting with his spear and traveling through the tunnels. He might need to be stronger to help them get home, or even to carry his dad.

He turned his attention to the last spell scroll, as crystal blue flames surged down his arms. This one, he could experiment on.

So..., how exactly should he use Imbue Aura? And would it work to imbue his Aura of Crystal Flame?

Battlefield Reclaimer 16: Enchantment

The last parchment sat in front of Sam as he tried to connect to Imbue Aura. It was the first time he’d ever used it, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He remembered the whirlwind of the ability settling into his body, so the capability should be there, but it hadn’t come with any other information.

It was supposed to just...work? Were all class abilities so obscure? He would have expected at least a little help. He frowned at the spell scroll for a moment, before he decided that it might be better to try on something more replaceable first.

He walked over to their pile of extra supplies and grabbed a couple of the gnomish spears before he returned to his seat. He set one to the side and arranged the other on his rock table as he examined it.

It made more sense to imbue the Aura of Umbral Flame first, since that was what Imbue Aura was supposed to do. If that worked, then he’d try it with his unique aura. His fingers twitched as he tapped along the length of the spear, debating how to infuse an aura into it.

He could sense that the Umbral Flame was floating in a special space in his consciousness, almost like a bag on his shoulder. He reached out, calling to it.

A roiling sphere of dark flame with orange highlights slowly faded into existence in his hand. It had a little bit of weight to it, as if it were made of water, and he could taste the sense of charred stone and molten lava rising from it.

With his other hand, he brought the spear closer, until the two parts were side by side.

"Now, how do I Imbue this into that...," he asked himself out loud.

Jeric was working on the deadfall and glanced over. He nodded before he turned around again. Whatever it was, he trusted that Sam would figure it out.

Sam could feel the aura radiating from the sphere in his hand, but as he brought it closer to the spear, there was a sense of rejection, as if the spear weren’t compatible with it. He didn’t know why, but there was a sense of something missing.

Maybe it was his class ability giving him an instinct for things? They were supposed to unlock part of your senses or add something to your soul, so that you were a bit different than before. Fire Affinity and his senses had also been instinctive.

He set the spear aside and picked up the blank spell parchment instead, bringing it closer to the sphere as his senses wrapped around both. He wanted to compare it. This time, as he sensed the compatibility between the aura and the material, there was less resistance.

The spell parchment felt...permeable, for lack of another word, as if it were something he could pour the aura into. It wasn’t clear if the feelings were part of his Imbue Aura ability, but it gave him an idea.

Since a spell scroll needed to be prepared first, ...what if the spear needed something similar? A scroll didn’t work unless it was carefully infused and the correct runes were on it. It wasn’t like an Enchanter just tossed a rune onto a random item, either, based on the little he knew.

He was missing a step. Hadn’t Essence Control been described as a core skill for his class, back when he had gained it? What if he needed to use that first, to prepare the material, like he did for a scroll?

The sphere of Umbral Flame faded back out of existence, returning to the strange storage space he had acquired for auras, and he set about preparing the spear.

It was about five feet long and he ran his hands down the length, feeling for irregularities as his essence poured into the structure. He could sense the grain of the material, which was something between wood and stone. It wasn't clear if the gnomes had grown it or found it.

As his essence poured into the spear, crystal blue flames began to twine around it, pouring into the interior and rising back out again. He could feel twists and curves in the material, including some areas that doubled back on themselves or were broken from damage.

Just as he’d done with Mana Refinement, he let his instincts guide him as he poured his intent into the spear and imagined what he wanted from it. He wanted it to house an aura, to be an enchanted item.... His flames began to burn more intensely, darkening to a deeper blue as they poured into the material.

That twist needed to be straightened out, and that channel reopened.... That bump needed to be smoothed down and the dip over there needed to rise. He followed along with the flow of the material as he let his Essence permeate it.

He wasn’t sure what to do exactly, so he was just treating it like an oversized, spear-shaped spell scroll as he smoothed out the irregularities and opened the internal channels to allow for the easy flow of mana.

It was almost the same as infusing a spell scroll, but the spear was a lot larger. He felt his mana and aura decreasing as time passed. All around his hands, an aura of intense crystal blue flames burned like a miniature sun as they poured into the spear, reshaping it to his will.

Before gaining Aura of Crystal Flame, his Essence Control had done the same thing, but in a much more understated way. His mana had always been crystal blue, but now it was merged with fire.

His mana, aura, will, and emotion...maybe even his soul all seemed to be part of the flames, as if those were all one thing. He wasn't even sure how to describe it, but there was a unity to it. It was uniquely him.

What exactly was the Aura of Crystal Flame and what had the World Law done when it gave it to him? It felt like everything about him had become one with the crystal flame.

He wasn’t sure how long it took, but when he finally lifted his hands away, the surface of the spear shone like a polished mirror. There was a gleaming, crystal light radiating from it, and all the defects and cracks had been removed.

His mana and aura had dropped by 13 points, leaving him with only 4.

Sam tilted the spear to the side and then back again, as he examined it. It was a fraction shorter than it had been, but it was barely noticeable. The material had probably been used to repair the other sections.

If he weren’t wrong, preparing an item like this was a basic skill for an Enchanter, just like preparing a spell scroll was for a scribe. It still didn’t feel finished, but it had potential now. He brought out the sphere of Umbral Flame again, holding it next to it, and he could tell that the resistance had disappeared. Now, it felt like the spear was a container with holes.

He couldn't put the aura into it in this state.

He gave a thoughtful hum as dismissed the Umbral Flame and tapped his fingers along the material, debating what to do next.

What if he added some runes?

Umbral Flame was aligned with Fire and Earth, and maybe Darkness. The base material of the spear also had something to do with Earth, or at least Stone, so...it should be complementary if he used similar runes.

Darkness was too complicated of a rune, so for now he could only use Fire and Earth. That should work better with the base material too. He wasn't sure what the best pattern would be, and he didn't have any manual to help, so he decided to continue treating the spear as if it were a giant spell scroll.

The idea didn't set off any problems with his new Imbue Aura instinct.

Sam pulled out a piece of chalk as he began to doodle spell patterns on the side of the spear, altering them here and there where it felt like they didn’t fit. Instead of a perfect circle on a spell scroll, he was going to have to swirl the pattern around the haft....

He could even use a spiral pattern to make it all connect.

He added one chalk design to the spear and then erased it, followed by another as he came up with something better. Meanwhile, his aura and mana continued to regenerate.

A couple of hours later, he was ready to try the next step.

He’d settled on a double braid of runes near the base and the tip of the spear, as well as an oval pattern on the spear point itself. Down the haft, there was a swirled helix of inscribed runes that connected with the patterns at the end.

It was a variant of the Basic support structure from spell scrolls. He’d had to use three copies of that pattern, repeating it over and over as he joined the runes together up and down the haft. In the key focus points at the center of the pattern, there were runes for Earth and Fire.

On the spear tip, the outer edge of the pattern connected with the last inscription on the haft, tying everything together. On the flat of the point, the runes for Earth and Fire were again laid into the center.

Sam let out a deep breath as he looked down at it. It was by far the most complicated pattern he’d ever created, even if it was basically just three spell scroll patterns tied together. He hoped it worked.

He might have gotten a bit carried away with this idea. Perhaps he should have tried to infuse the aura first, instead of doing this pattern. He gave himself a minute to catch his breath and then he got back to work, dipping his stylus into the mana pool as he began to infuse the runes on it.

He wasn’t sure what would happen when he finished, but he was looking forward to finding out.

---

The level in the mana pool never seemed to change, even as Sam dipped the stylus into it for perhaps the hundredth time. There had to be an incredible amount of mana in there. No matter how many times he recharged the stylus, it didn’t disturb the level at all.

He was swiftly coming to realize that he had vastly underestimated the value of the pool when he’d first seen it, and that was saying a lot. This mana pool was the single luckiest find in their entire stay in the tunnels.

His father said it was as valuable as molten gold, but that was just a quick comparison to give him a reference. Spell scribes had to infuse their ink with their own mana, which took them a lot longer. He was using what the earth had given him, and everything was moving along very quickly.

He was very glad they had been dropped next to the mana pool. He’d have to figure out a way to take some of it with him. He shook his head as he pushed the thought out of his mind and went back to working on the spear.

The inscriptions were nearly complete, but it was taking even longer than it had to make three spell scrolls. Perhaps it was because of the material or how he’d prepared it, but it was absorbing a ridiculous amount of mana.

One stylus could only infuse about an inch of the lines he’d traced, and sometimes he had to go over an area three or four times to make sure it was fully charged. Without the pool, it would have taken ages. Days or even weeks if he only relied on his own mana regeneration.

The act of creation was pleasant in its own way, but even with the help of the mana pool, the time it took was eating at him. He needed to get stronger and he still wasn’t sure if this was the right path.

He glanced toward his father, who had rigged up a few ropes next to the deadfall. If they needed to bury the entrance, yanking on those ropes would pull out the spears and cause the rocks to tumble down.

"Everything’s fine, Sam." Jeric saw him looking over and nodded at him. "You keep working and I’ll keep an eye out for anything coming this way."

Sam looked from his father to the dark hole of the tunnel on the other side of the rocks, and mentally added a pair of enchanted glasses to his list of things to create, or at least a rock that could give off light. His father needed something better to see in these tunnels.

Could he take the aura from a gnome’s eyes and use it to give his father better vision in the tunnels? It was something else to think about later. First, he needed to see if this spear worked

A couple of hours later, he finished infusing the runes and set the stylus down. As he did, the energy in the runes connected together and began to flow. His hands hovered above the spear as he tried to sense everything that was happening.

It was different than the spell scrolls, and as the mana began to connect through the runes, he felt a sudden surge of demand from it. The crystal blue flames that he’d infused into the spear flared outwards, reaching for him.

There was a need in them, a hunger for more energy. His mana and aura were full, so he answered it, and crystal blue light flared around him as a surge of flames shot back down, pouring into the spear.

As soon as the flames touched it, his mana didn’t change, but he felt his aura begin to drop like a rock. One point, and then another disappeared in an instant..., and then five were gone, six....

As it fell, he realized what had been missing and he cursed himself for a fool. He could have been channeling his aura into the spear this entire time. He was using Essence Control to help him control the runes and balance the energy inside the inscriptions, but there was only mana in the pool. He needed to add aura to balance things out.

His aura continued to sink, dropping swiftly towards one, and he forced himself to pull his hands away before it could take the last bit. The spear had already absorbed 16 full points. That was enough to incinerate a couple of gnomes....

He tried to freeze the runes in place, stopping the flow of mana through them, but it wasn’t possible. The spear was acting on its own as the inscriptions came to life. The haft began to shimmer as all of the runes connected. They gleamed with a translucent blue flame that ran on top of the silver-white lines of mana.

The support structure lit up first, surrounding the haft and filling in the double braids on the ends, and then it blazed into life, spreading down the double helix that covered the haft. It was more silver-white than blue now.

The connections lit up, one by one, and then the energy poured towards the key runes at the base, the end of the haft, and the point. Silver-white and the last threads of blue infused the runes for Fire and Earth, twisting around them.

The mana began to change color, taking on a bright, fiery red hue when it poured into the Fire rune and an intense, golden yellow when it merged with the Earth rune. The transformation continued, lasting much longer than it would for a spell scroll, and the material of the spear began to change.

The grain of the haft brightened as its brownish-grey color became dark crimson with yellow highlights running through it. The point changed from dark basalt to the same color, its edge shimmering as a golden band of runes lit up.

And then the inscriptions flared brightly and began to disappear, sinking into the structure as they became one with it. A moment later, the runes were invisible. Only the crimson-gold spear was left behind. Except for the color and the strangely perfect shape, it looked almost the same as before.

The crystal flames he had imbued into the aura disappeared, fusing into the spear somehow. A notification appeared as he analyzed it.

Spear of Earth and Flame (Basic)

[Enchantment of Earth and Flame: Adds Basic Elemental Damage to Attacks. Adds +1 STR, +1 CON to Wielder. Estimated Duration: 3 weeks.]

Then shimmering silver and golden notifications appeared, one after the other, as a clarion of multi-toned bells sang in his mind.

Congratulations, Enchanter. You Have Made Your First Enchanted Item.

Your success in creating this item was boosted by your Essence Control (Advanced) and your class abilities.

The duration is based on the amount of Aura infused.

You gain 300 class experience. (100% contribution from Enchanter).

...

You are now a Level 5 Battlefield Reclaimer!

...

You are now a Level 6 Battlefield Reclaimer!

Experience to Next: 400.

You have gained +2 Intelligence and +2 Aura. You have two free status points to assign.

At the same time, his Enchanter Profession jumped directly to Level 5, similar to Essence Scribe. The spear lay in front of him, gleaming, as Sam stared at it.

Jeric happened to look over at that same instant. His eyes widened as he took in what was happening.

---

"It looks like that answers your question, Sam," Jeric finally said, as the two of them stared down at the spear Sam had just enchanted. "You should be able to take a combat subclass after all."

Sam just nodded silently as he too stared downwards. This was more than he had expected.

He also knew it had only worked because his Essence Control was a tier higher than the item he was trying to create. It meant the mana and aura never went out of control, which gave the enchantment time to stabilize.

The Spear of Earth and Flame (Basic), as Sam’s analysis described it, was definitely better than what they were using so far, but why would it only last for three weeks?

The duration limit was something he hadn’t expected. He’d had the romantic idea that once something was enchanted, it would just last forever. He should have figured that out from the water crystal, which was already about to break down.

It seemed like an enchantment was only as good as the amount of energy infused into it. That meant they would either need to be maintained over time or...they were basically all temporary items. Was that just at the Basic tier or did higher ones have similar limitations?

Was this what the Enchanting class was all about? No wonder they were always making money!

In some ways, the spear was very similar to a spell scroll, but its energy was released over time instead of all at once. It was also larger, so it could hold more mana. At least it would last longer than the water crystal.

He'd realized something important from this too, which was that mana was the power of enchanted objects, while aura was what gave them their stability and duration.

"It looks like the Enchanter class does have some ability similar to Essence Control," Sam said as he frowned. "Or maybe it’s a direct Aura Infusion ability. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to manage the duration of enchantments."

"That seems most likely," Jeric nodded in agreement. "Whatever it is, though, it looks like you can do it yourself. You did good work here. I’m surprised you figured it out so quickly."

"It wasn’t any different than a spell scroll." Sam shook his head as he continued looking down at the spear. "Just bigger. The two professions must be complementary."

Jeric nodded again, as he reached out and patted Sam on the shoulder.

"Good work on it. It’s something that will help us get out of here."

Sam looked up, meeting his father’s eyes as he was reminded of what he was really doing. They needed to be as strong as possible to get out of here.

"I’ll get to work on the next one," he said at once, pushing the other thoughts out of his mind as he looked towards his work table.

"I'm proud of you," Jeric said, as he nodded at him, before he turned and headed back to the deadfall.

There was a tightness at the corner of his eyes as he blamed himself for not being strong enough, but that wasn’t something he needed to share with his son. Sam let out a breath as he stared at the spear, and then he walked over and handed it to his father.

"You can use this, right?" He asked, his voice determined.

"Yes," Jeric agreed. He'd never had the money to buy enchanted weapons, but he knew the theory. "Enchanted weapons are easy to use as long as you’re at a similar tier. I can use a Basic one like this. Mana Control will help add energy to it as well. They get better if you can infuse them with your own mana."

"Good, then I'll make another one," Sam replied, as he headed back to work.

He was happy he’d figured out the basics of Enchanting, but it wasn’t enough yet. One spear wasn’t going to change their situation. They needed more.

---

The two levels brought Sam up to 19 for his mana and aura, and this time he added the two free points to those stats as well, raising them both to 20. It kept the balance and if enchanting was going to take his aura, he needed it there.

He picked up the second spear, running his hands down the haft as his crystal blue flames surged through it, sensing the internal structure. As he worked, he glanced towards the cave’s entrance and his head tilted, listening for any stray sounds. It was something he’d started doing constantly, in between other things.

A day had passed and there was no sign of the gnomes, but he had the feeling that things wouldn’t stay peaceful for long. They had killed too many of them. He’d proven that he could enchant something, but one spear wasn’t going to change the outcome of a large battle....

A subclass might. So, what should he choose? And what was available to him as an Outsider?

His frown deepened and his fingers drummed out a steady beat on the spear as crystal blue flames danced along its length.

Battlefield Reclaimer 17: Aura of Umbral Flame

Preparing the second spear proceeded swiftly as Sam’s aura recovered. His flames swirled through it, correcting its internal structure and smoothing the way for enchantment.

Well, for Imbue Aura this time. He’d intended the first spear to be the base for Umbral Flame, but he had ended up enchanting it instead.

He wondered if that was the first time something like that had ever happened to an Enchanter. It probably shouldn’t have worked, but his Essence Control was at the Advanced tier and his class ability must have guided him.

There was also a strong correlation to spell scrolls, and he had a good education in that. His class description said he was an ancient Enchanter and a Smith. It seemed he was good at enchanting.

What was the difference between temporary and permanent enchantments though? Perhaps the temporary aspect had something to do with it. The only other enchantment he’d seen was the water crystal and that was definitely temporary. He shook his head. He needed more information.

"Dad, have you ever seen a permanent enchantment?" he asked, turning to look toward where his father was standing. "Do you know what goes into them?"

Jeric was standing by the entrance, studying the tunnel beyond. He frowned as he thought about the question.

"I visited an enchanter’s shop once in Tower Reach," he answered slowly, as his eyes searched through the darkness beyond. He spoke over his shoulder to Sam.

"That’s the city where I was born, and it’s a long way from home. I don’t remember many of the details after all this time, but I do recall that beast cores were a component of the enchantments there."

"So, you think that if I had the right beast core..., the enchantment could become permanent?"

Finding a beast core would be a problem, plus he didn’t know what to do with it. Maybe if he embedded it somehow?

"It’s possible, but I doubt it’s that simple," Jeric replied, shaking his head. "There’s almost certainly a different runic inscription to incorporate a beast core, and then there’s the problem of quality. Beast cores don’t come from low-leveled monsters. You would need one that’s at least Level 20 first. They don’t form before that."

"So, it’s not something useful right now," Sam decided. He would have to look into it later. It probably took longer to make them anyway.

Right now, he was barely getting started with enchantments and there was no chance he could get a high-level beast core to experiment with. If there were anything like that in the tunnels, it would eat them.

The idea of a beast core explained a lot, however, if that was how permanent enchantments worked. Cores were like a heart, almost, of a beast or monster, except they were the center of their mana and aura. Some people suggested they were the beast's soul too.

They could be extracted after death and used for many different things, but Sam had never even seen one. The village wasn't strong or wealthy enough to have people walking around with beast cores.

Maybe a core was needed to contain the mana and aura in an enchanted item..., or more likely, he suddenly realized, the core managed the aura, maintaining the stability of the enchantment while the wielder was required to input mana.

That seemed to be the sticking point for enchantments, like the one in the water crystal. Duration was linked to the amount of aura it had. Half-complete diagrams of how such a thing could function flitted through his mind as he considered it.

Actually..., he glanced down toward the spear in his hand, debating what would happen when he imbued the Aura of Umbral Flame into it. The Umbral Flame was an aura..., so would it become permanent?

After a minute, he shook his head. He doubted it would work that easily.

Aura was somehow tied to the soul, even more than mana was. The beast core probably needed its own inscription to restore its aura, and he wasn’t sure what that would look like. He doubted there was enough energy in the Umbral Flame to maintain an enchantment forever.

He would experiment with the idea later, if he got the right materials once they were out of here. He turned his attention back to the spear that he was infusing. He was pretty sure he knew what had gone wrong the last time.

He’d infused the inscription with mana from the pool, which had empowered the runes directly, rather than using the Umbral Flame to do it.

He was going to try it the other way with this spear, once he finished inscribing it. He would replace the last step and use the Umbral Flame to infuse the runes. Maybe that was what Imbue Aura was really for, ...converting the aura’s energy into the enchantment.

His fingers tapped out a thoughtful beat on the haft of the spear as he worked. He was going as quickly as he could, but it was a slow process. The runes were the same as the last time. Hours slipped by as crystal blue flames burned across his work table and the inscriptions on the spear slowly took shape.

This time, he also remembered to infuse his aura into the inscriptions as he worked. The practice allowed him to keep an eye on his aura regeneration, and he figured out that it was returning at a rate just under three points an hour.

That was better than it had been a few levels ago, when it was only two points an hour. It meant he regenerated a percentage at a constant rate, something like 14% an hour. That meant it would take around seven hours for him to regain all of his aura.

It would be nice if there were a way to make it go faster. That sort of regeneration was far too slow for long battles. Thinking of that brought him back to the problem of his subclass again. The idea of what he needed it to be was taking shape.

He needed a class that relied on Intelligence and Aura, which meant a spell caster probably, but one that also had close-combat abilities. He also needed some type of ability to regenerate his aura and mana or to reduce the usage. He didn’t know if a class like that existed.

Finding potions or aura crystals that could restore his energy might work too, but he didn’t have any. He'd heard of mana crystals, but he wasn't sure if there were aura crystals too. As he thought of the problem, an idea occurred to him, and he glanced toward his status sheet with a frown.

If the subclass he wanted didn’t exist, was it possible to create it?

Where did classes come from? Were they the patterns of the World Law itself or were they models that someone had developed and trained once, that perhaps were remembered by the Law?

The World Law said he was Defiant, which implied that you could cooperate with it or go against it, whether or not it worked. If the class he wanted existed, fine, it would save a lot of trouble, but if it didn’t, could he defy the World Law and create what he wanted...or force it to give him the right one?

He'd never heard a legend of someone doing that, but there were legends of people receiving rare classes during extreme moments, if they somehow met the requirements.

Some of those classes had never been heard of before, which was why legends had popped up around them. Things like that happening were why some people thought the World Law was a god and created churches to it.

There were even classes like Paladin of Law and Priest of Law, and they were popular in the cities. They celebrated the ecstatic surge of leveling and called it the World Blessing.

To them, what Sam had just asked was a heretical question and they would burn him at the stake if they heard it. He didn’t care about any of that. Any reverence he might have felt for the World Law had been dislodged by his family’s situation, and his transformation into an Outsider was only making him question the World Law more.

His race was proof that there were other powers out there and that the World Law was not infallible. If it couldn’t even stop external energy from changing him, then how powerful was it really?

It was a thought that he hadn’t even brought up to his father, but just by asking the question, it was clear that his title as Defiant was more than appropriate.

It was also proof that his mood was becoming increasingly severe the longer they stayed in the tunnels. Even on his worst day back in the village, he’d been kind and respectful, rarely harming anything despite the hand he’d been dealt.

Now, his thoughts were focused on how to become stronger and on how to kill anything that stood between him and his family. The question of the World Law’s authority was a troubling one on many levels, including what the Law really was, but that wasn’t what interested him.

The only thing that did was whether or not it was possible to force the Law to do what he wanted. And how to do it.

---

Around half a day later, Sam finished with the preparations for the spear and summoned the Umbral Flame into his hand. He had designed the inscriptions exactly the same way as the first spear, with runes for Earth and Fire swirling across it.

Now, it was time to test out his class ability.

He brought the sphere of Umbral Flame closer to the spear, sensing for a connection. With all of his work, the spear had become a much better base and he’d also infused it with close to 36 points of aura. He would have added even more, but he wanted to be at full strength in case Imbue Aura needed it.

As the Umbral Flame came close to the inscriptions, he began to feel a drawing sensation, as if the inscriptions were reaching for it. He focused on the sense of that as he touched the first line with the aura.

As soon as they came into contact, the aura began to ripple, almost as if it were resisting. Sam clamped down on the sphere with his will and a surge of crystal flames wrapped around it, holding it in place.

Despite that, the sphere continued to ripple as if it were water being pushed away by a strong wind. There were even waves forming on the surface of the sphere. It felt like there was some force blocking the two from combining easily. Sam frowned as he considered the problem.

When the aura had been part of the salamander, it had flowed around its body. Maybe he needed to create a similar pattern here, so that the aura would fit better? Holding the sphere next to the inscription, he began to pass it along the surface, moving it across the inscription as if it were a stylus.

The resistance began to decrease, turning into a flow of energy as a wisp of dark flame lifted off the surface of the sphere and brushed against the inscription. It sank into it, and the runic line where it touched turned dark, taking on the same color as the sphere.

That seemed to work. Slowly, he continued to brush it along the surface, almost like he was painting the runes. It was similar to using his stylus, but he didn't need to push the aura out. It was doing it on its own.

Another wisp of dark flame flowed out of the sphere and sank into the inscriptions, and then another. Sam continued, moving along the surface of the spear, as time fell away again.

It had taken him a couple of hours to imbue the first spear, but this one was a little faster because he didn’t need to dip his stylus into the pool so many times. Slowly, the sphere in his hand decreased in size as wisps flowed out of it and entered the spear.

He tried to make sure that the aura was spread evenly throughout the entire length, but it was dwindling quickly. Perhaps he should have tried it on a dagger instead. Something smaller. By the time the spear was half done, the sphere had completely disappeared.

Maybe he should have started with two Umbral Flame auras. Sam frowned as he switched to the stylus and began to imbue the rest of the lines with mana. It was something he’d have to remember. Hopefully, it still worked.

It took him about an hour to finish. When he set the stylus down, the inscriptions on the spear were a mottled mix of dark flames and silver-white mana. The spear began to shake as the runes lit up, connecting to one another.

It was a strange contrast to see the dark against the white, almost as if day and night had come together in the spear. He watched closely as the lines filled with dark aura connected to the ones with mana. As soon as they did, something unexpected happened.

The aura lines began to burn. Dark flickers rose up from them, as if they had met a fuel source, and they began to consume the mana they touched. Streaks of dark energy licked over the top of the silver-white, swiftly growing.

All along the length of the spear, it happened again as the lines he’d imbued with the Aura of Umbral Flame met the ones imbued with mana.

The spear became covered in inch-high dark flames that ran from one end to the other, circulated around the tip, and burned as they consumed the mana. It released a halo of dark light as it sat on his work table, as if it were a salamander being born. The lines that had been silver-white were slowly converted to Umbral Flame, until the inscriptions along the entire spear turned dark.

When it was finished, the flames didn’t stop. They continued to roar up and down the length of the spear. At the same time, Sam felt an intense demand for energy reach out towards him again and he began to pour in his aura.

One point...five...ten..., he continued until he had infused it with 19 points of aura. He only kept one in reserve. The spear slowly took on a deeper shade that resembled obsidian. Flickers of brilliance reflected from its surface as it started to look glossier and more deadly.

As soon as he cut off the flow of energy into it, the color stopped deepening and the spear stabilized. A notification appeared.

Spear of Umbral Flame (Basic)

[Enchantment of Umbral Flame: Adds Aura-Based Elemental Damage (Basic) to Attacks. Adds +1 Strength, +1 Agility, +1 Constitution to Wielder. Estimated Duration: 2 Months.)

It was almost the same enchantment as the other spear, but better. Before he could study it in more depth, ornate notifications rang out in a cascade of silver and golden chimes.

Congratulations, Battlefield Reclaimer. You Have Created Your First Aura Enchantment.

You gain 500 class experience.

...

You have gained a Class Level. You are now a Level 7 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Experience to Next: 700.

You gain +1 Aura, +1 Intelligence, and have one free status point to assign.

...

You have gained a General Level. You are now Level 9.

Experience to Next: 1750.

You gain two free status points.

You now have three free status points to assign.

For a moment, the dual level notifications were confusing, but he sorted them out. The first one was for his class and the second one was for his general level, which mattered less, except for the two status points.

As he got up higher, his general level and his class level would certainly merge together as the required experience continued to increase. Bubbles of joyful energy surged through his body, making him feel a bit happier with how everything was going. He enjoyed it for a moment, taking the boost of optimism for what it was worth.

It didn’t change their situation, but it was a sign of progress, even if he had his doubts about the World Law.

His Aura and Intelligence jumped to 21 with the new class level, and he added two free points to make them both 22. He put the last free point in his Strength, bringing it up to 16. Then he let out a long breath as he stared down at the spear in his hand.

Jeric came over, resting his hand on his shoulder as he looked at it too.

"This one looks a bit different," his father remarked as he took in the gleaming, obsidian hue of the spear. There were even little flickers of flame playing inside, running through the depths and across the spear point.

Sam rolled the spear in his hands, examining it from every angle, as he took in the changes. He hadn’t expected that the Aura of Umbral Flame would be able to consume the mana. Maybe that was one of the differences between aura enchantments and regular ones.

In the future, he would either need multiple auras or a high-quality mana source to supplement them, if he wanted to enchant a large object. There might be other requirements too.

"It worked better than I expected," he replied, holding it up to show his dad. "It’s a little stronger than the other one and will last for two months. You should use it instead."

Jeric shook his head and pushed it back to Sam.

"No, I’m just fine with the other one and you should use what you've created. You keep this one. Hopefully we’ll be home before the other enchantment runs out."

Jeric’s voice was quiet, as he recognized the difficulty of what he was saying. Even if they escaped from the tunnels today..., how long would it take them to walk home?

"If not," he added with a grimace, "maybe you can increase the time on that enchantment for me."

If that were necessary, it would mean they’d been gone from home for at least a month. Jeric didn’t want to think about how hard Aemilia and Altey would take that or how much they would worry.

Sam held out the spear for a moment longer, but his father continued to refuse. Eventually, he set it down on his work table again.

"It’s an Enchantment of Umbral Flame," he said, as he filled in his father on the other details. "This has to be what our class is all about..., using auras to enchant things."

"I think you’re right," Jeric agreed, his expression changing to a smile as he forced himself to ignore his worry and focus on what Sam had created. "You’ve accomplished what no one ever has before."

"We just need to get you to unlock the class now," Sam said, looking up as his dad as he considered how to do it. "It has to be possible..., maybe if I can show you where the aura is on a beast, you could gather it?"

"We’ll definitely try, son," Jeric said, as he patted Sam on the shoulder. "We’ll definitely try."

Jeric had his own doubts about whether or not that would work, but he kept them to himself. No matter how much he wanted to unlock his class, he could be content that Sam had.

Sam, however, was thinking of aura and how to get his father to see it. His hands tightened on the edge of his table, the knuckles turning white. He wasn’t going to stop until he figured it out.

Even if it took breaking the World Law to make it happen.

Battlefield Reclaimer 18: Gnome Marauder

Somewhere...

The two Outsiders with orange, slit-pupiled eyes continued to focus on the sphere of flames between their hands as they added new sigils to the formation inside.

"Even if we access the core of the World Law, Aster Fall itself will still be an obstacle," the man spoke up again. He was unbothered by his partner's irritation with their rate of progress.

"We’ll deal with it," the woman answered, looking annoyed. "The humans there are limited to their third evolution, so it’s not much of a problem."

"Perhaps more than you think," the man replied. Nonetheless, he put in a bit more effort. Two new orange runes spun out of his hands and into the sphere.

"Even though it suppresses them," he continued, "the World Law there assists the humans with knowledge and training. There’s a chance that some of them will be a fluke and break through their third evolution. When that happens, we might have a problem on our hands."

He fell silent for a while, before picking up where he’d left off.

"They are part of the seal, after all. Their existence maintains it as part of a constant cycle of energy. Tampering with the core system like this is making it more likely for something to go wrong, even when we’re only on the outer edge."

"I don’t care if we have to break the entire world in half," the woman muttered, as she channeled her frustration into another rune and flung it at the sphere. Despite her anger, the placement was perfect.

"It’s just a suppressed world that has been stuffed into the seal, so it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things."

"If we break the world, the astral guardians will certainly come after us again. Then we’ll end up back here or in some other prison. It won’t be the first time that Aster Fall has been shattered and rebuilt when a prisoner escapes. The best thing to do," the man concluded, as he added another rune, "is to sneak our way through."

"You think that’s not going to break the world?" The woman laughed, her voice mocking. "You’re at what, your fifth evolution? I’m at my fourth! The world can’t support that level of essence traveling through it. It’s designed to shatter if we try, which will alert those guardians you want to avoid so much. Breaking it is inevitable!"

"There’s always the easier option." The man managed to shrug his shoulders, despite the adept movement of his hands that continued to work on the formation. "We could just serve out our time and be released in another...4,612 years. I have plenty of resources hidden away that will be fine until then."

"This is all your fault!" the woman shot back angrily, as she glared through the sphere towards him. "There is no way I’m spending another four thousand years here!"

"Well, in that case...." The man’s slit-pupiled eyes narrowed as he caught her glance through the sphere. "One broken world doesn’t matter much, does it?"

---

Beneath the Abyssinian Plains

After completing the spear, Sam turned to the water crystal. He wanted to see if he could repair it or make another one, which would solve one of their main problems.

Before he could do more than glance at it, however, he heard the sound of hard feet echoing through the tunnels and the bark of a gnomish command.

"Dad!" He whispered, as he sprang up. A surge of alarm ran through his body. "Gnomes!"

He grabbed his new spear and one of the Fire scrolls as he headed to the entrance. The other scrolls were by his work table, where Jeric could get them if he needed to.

As soon as he spoke, Jeric’s head shot towards the entrance and his face went hard. He had been waiting for this to happen.

Now that it had, he felt a sense of impending doom. He started to call Sam back.

"Sam...," he whispered.

They needed to bunker down and wait this out.

"I’ll be right back!" Sam replied, before his dad could say anything more. He moved carefully around the deadfall as he slipped out, making sure not to hit any of the spears supporting it.

The crystal flames that were always around him now retreated back into his body and their light disappeared.

The tunnels were long and narrow, and the stone walls made sounds carry for a long distance. He hoped the gnomes were not too close yet. It would be best if he had heard them first.

He was planning to see how many there were and then return before they caught sight of him. The curve in the tunnel wall had made it possible to ambush gnomes before. He would have to get pretty close..., but he wanted to know what was coming.

The number of gnomes would change all of their plans.

Questions boiled in his mind.

They had just been talking about the spear back in the cave. Had the gnomes heard them?

Had they come with an army?

Sam moved quickly and quietly, dodging around rocks and loose material. His boots were flexible leather wrapped in cord, with soles of the same material that were just a little thicker than the rest. The low quality worked in his favor this time as they brushed soundlessly across the stone.

It didn’t take him long to find the gnomes. They were only a hundred yards down the tunnel. He was able to track them by the sound of their footsteps.

He slowed down as he got closer, hugging the wall. He was trying to be careful and only expose part of his head as he slipped around the curve.

They saw each other at the same time.

The gnomes were on guard and the loud, guttural krraAAAcck! of a shout rose up as he took in the scene.

There were six gnomes, but no salamanders. Five of the gnomes were normal, similar to the ones he’d already fought before, but the one in the front was different.

It was a foot taller than the others and its muscles bulged outwards, almost larger than its head. It was so muscular that it looked more like a rock golem than a gnome.

Basalt Gnome Marauder (Subterranean).

The prompt came and went as Sam ducked back around the wall and began to jog backwards, hurrying back towards the cave.

This was what they'd sent to deal with them?

The gnome marauder was the one that had seen him. Its senses were excellent. It also looked strong enough to rip a hole in the tunnel wall.

Instead of a spear, it had a hammer in each hand.

Behind him, he could hear the angry shouts of the gnomes continuing to rise, but he wasn’t sure how much they knew about him. He’d only exposed his head.

Did they even know what he was? According to his dad, his eyes glowed blue in the dark. He’d been trying to keep his flames down, but the gnomes had still seen something.

Maybe they had only seen his eyes?

He tried to place himself in their position as he quickly considered what they would do. To them, he was an unknown thing that had appeared in the tunnels, so they would proceed with caution....

Right?

The sound of guttural, rocky howls tore through the tunnel, rising higher than before as they echoed from the walls like an avalanche. A stampede of small, hard feet slammed into the stone as they rushed after him, like a cascade of rocky drum beats.

Never mind.

The gnomes had some sort of society, but it seemed their first instinct was to attack anything they saw.

Sam reached the mouth of their cave at the same time as the howls got closer, and he realized he’d forgotten a very critical point.

He only had one point of aura left.

He’d spent all of the rest on the spear that was still in his hand. There would be no Aura Bolts in this fight.

"Sam!" Jeric shouted from inside the entrance as he stood near the ropes. There was a torch in his hand that lit up the area as he scanned the darkness for his son. Sam's flames were already surrounding him again as he approached, making it easy to spot him.

"Get in! We’ll collapse it!"

"There's only six!" Sam shouted back. "We can't collapse it, we'll bury ourselves! I can do this with a scroll!"

His mood was dark and the idea of forcing the World Law to give him a combat subclass ran through his mind. He wasn’t going to allow these gnomes to make him afraid all of the time. He’d had enough of it already.

Before his dad could answer, Sam spun around with his back to the entrance as he raised the Fire scroll in his hand. The gnomes were a bit slower than him and hadn't rounded the curve yet, which gave him enough time to activate it.

He had the scroll and his spear. He didn’t have aura, but he did have mana, which could also power his Aura of Crystal Flame.

It didn’t matter if the gnomes had sent a special patrol or the vanguard of a larger army. It was their problem to not send overwhelming force from the beginning.

It was also time to see if he could unlock a combat subclass.

His thumb touched the activation point on the Fire scroll, infusing it with a thread of mana.

He’d never used a Fire scroll before, so he wasn’t sure what would happen. If it didn’t work, he’d have to hide in the cave after all.

The scroll vibrated as the mana stored in the rune began to heat up. The key rune at the center turned yellow and its color deepened, quickly changing to bright red. A lick of flame sprang into existence at its heart.

The flame began to spread. All across the surface, the lines of silver-white mana started to burn, igniting as the central rune took over. Brilliant arcs of crimson fire flared outward.

As the final support rune lit up, the page turned brighter as it incinerated itself, becoming a sphere of flame as large as Sam’s head. Just like the Water spell before, it hovered in his hand, ready to be thrown.

At the same moment, the gnomes came into view as they ran around the curve.

It was a dark red sphere like a miniature sun, with wisps of flame that rose from the surface in roiling loops before falling back in. It sped forward from Sam’s hand, expanding in size, as it headed toward the gnomes.

He had waited just an instant for them to all come into view, trying to get all six of them in the radius of the blast.

The sphere went from the size of his head to three times that as it soared forward and slammed against the chest of the gnome marauder in the lead. Then it exploded outwards, flashing into a much larger sphere that completely hid the golem-like gnome from sight.

BBbooOOOMMM!

Waves of flame washed backwards around the point of impact, filling the area with boiling heat and a deep, crumpling sound as the explosion rolled backwards through the group.

The gnomes screamed, their gravelly voices resonating like a saw hitting stone. Their figures were vaguely visible amongst the flames as several of them fell to the ground and began to roll.

A moment later, the flames faded away as the mana burned out, leaving only wisps behind.

The large gnome at the front was still there, an expression of shock on his face changing to rage. The entire front of his body was seared red and blackened with ash, but he wasn’t dead. His arms were just now rising to cross over his chest, the double hammers still in his grasp.

If he had been a rock golem before, he looked like a lava golem now. His basalt hide was half-molten and charred.

Around him, three of the smaller gnomes had collapsed to the ground dead, their bodies resembling charcoal.

The remaining two were a bit farther back and still standing, having been sheltered from the main blast by the others. Their arms were crossed in front of their eyes, trying to block the explosive light that had consumed the world in front of them.

As Sam watched, they started to move again. They raised their spears to throw.

ThuuUUnnNkkk!

Just at that moment, a spear flew from the cavern entrance and took one of the smaller gnomes in the chest, hurling it back a few feet as it pierced it through.

"SAM, get back!" Jeric shouted. His voice was a roar. A moment later, he was in front of Sam, sprinting forward into the battle.

The newly enchanted spear was in his hand. The one he’d just thrown had been extra, from their pile inside the cave.

Sam shook his head as he charged forward too, raising his own spear as he lunged towards the larger gnome. There was no way he was going to leave his dad here to fight alone.

Together, the two of them attacked.

It wasn’t clear what level the marauder was, but he moved quickly to meet them. The Fire scroll hadn’t been enough to take him down. His twin hammers rose as he blocked Jeric’s spear and kicked out at the same time.

He wasn’t as short as the others, perhaps four-and-a-half feet tall, and the kick came up like a battering ram.

"Dad, careful!" Sam shouted automatically, but it was too late. He could only half turn and reach out towards his father.

Jeric let out a short grunt of air as the kick took him in the side and hurled him across the tunnel. He fell against the wall with a dull thud and his face paled, his breath exploding out from him.

Sam’s vision went crystal blue.

A surge of intense, crystal flames rose from his body, consuming his mana as it built into a blast that shot towards the marauder. It was somewhat unfocused, but it was powerful.

Sam’s mana dropped by nearly five points in an instant.

The flames formed into a bright, rippling wedge that billowed outwards on the sides as they approached the gnome marauder.

The marauder reacted with incredible speed as his hammers crossed in front of his body, joining together before the flames could arrive. A pale, yellow barrier flashed into existence around him. The color radiated with an Earth affinity.

The wedge-shaped blast hit the shield in nearly the same instant as it formed, crashing against it and flowing around to the sides. The crystal flame was a unique existence, but it was still blocked, even as little chips of yellow energy crumbled away from the shield.

The last remaining gnome behind the marauder was not as lucky. It had survived the Fire scroll, but this time its body eroded like a sand sculpture as the blast from the front washed over it.

It slowly fell to pieces as the flames tore it apart.

Only the marauder in front was left. As the flames around it faded, it started to lower its arms.

Whatever it was, it seemed the gnomes had sent it out because...it didn’t need help. It was some type of elite warrior.

Was this the army they had expected, and Sam had been fooled because it was only one?

Did the gnomes have more of them?

Based on the kick, the strength in its rocky body had to be at least two or three times higher than Sam’s, which meant it might be near Level 20.

Or higher.

Sam shot a pale look towards his dad as the crystal flames dissipated, but Jeric was still slumped against the wall. Slowly, he shook his head, trying to get his bearings. It wasn't clear how badly he was hurt, but that kick might have shattered his hip.

Sam moved forward, charging at the marauder with his spear in hand.

His physical stats were much better than when he’d first entered the tunnels and the Enchantment of Umbral Flame boosted them more, but he could already tell that it wasn’t enough to meet the marauder head on.

A swirl of crystal blue flames moved with him, spiraling around his body as he stabbed towards the gnome. His spear shot towards its abdomen, heading low, but a hammer was already swinging down to block it.

The gnome's reactions were faster than his.

When the marauder's hammer hit the haft of his spear, the longer weapon was thrown to the side and it took Sam with it, sending him into an ungainly spin. At the same moment, the second hammer swung toward his head.

Sam's flames responded, concentrating into a barrier that rippled with cerulean arcs as flames ran through it. Two points of mana flowed away, leaving him with 15.

The hammer slammed into the shield with a craaashh that sent cracks running through it, but it held. A brilliant light exploded outwards and the gnome stepped back, blinded by the unexpected flare.

Sam spun on his left leg and caught his balance as he stabbed forward again, pressing the assault. His flames continued to swirl around him in a reflexive use of the Aura of Crystal Flame.

Mana flowed from his hands into his spear as the Umbral Flame in it came to life. The tiny flickers of dark fire that had been hiding inside surged outward, creating a halo around the haft and point.

The spear punctured the marauder’s right side, digging into rock-hard skin with a hissss of searing heat, but it felt like hitting the tunnel wall, dense and hard.

The point only sank in two inches. If the enchantment hadn’t been there, it might have just glanced off. The gnome’s Constitution had to be incredible, on top of whatever racial trait it had for defense.

Crystal flames surged down the spear, wrapping it in a spiral, as Sam tore it out and attacked again. Three more points of mana were consumed as his spear and aura hit the gnome together.

The marauder shrieked this time, its voice rising to a high-pitched metallic grinding sound, and its eyes finally cleared.

Twin hammers swung down.

The first one slammed into Sam's spear near the point, knocking it to the side, as the second barreled towards Sam’s right arm.

The hammer slammed into a crystal blue shield right above Sam's skin. It blocked most of the impact, but he wasn’t fast enough to stop all of it.

Sam felt himself spinning as he was knocked to the ground.

There was enough force behind the blow that he rolled three times before it dissipated, and by the time he looked up, all he could see was the marauder looming over him.

At the same instant, a familiar spear swung out of the dark, the haft slamming into the side of the gnome’s head.

But it wasn't enough to knock it down.

Battlefield Reclaimer 19: Misspoken Words

The gnome marauder staggered two steps to the side as Jeric’s spear thudded into its skull. The strike came with the dull sound of wood hitting stone, low and muffled.

The gnome’s hammers rose into the air with a reflexive jerk. It was stunned for an instant as it shuddered and tried to recover its balance.

"Sam, get up!" Jeric roared, as he faced off against the marauder. "Go back to the cave!"

His face was as pale as a sheet, but he was standing there, wobbling on his feet as he protected his son. He raised the spear again.

There was no way he was going to let this gnome hurt Sam, not while he was still breathing.

Sam rolled out of the way and jumped back to his feet at the same time as the gnome started to move again.

This time, the marauder ignored him and swung around to attack his father, its hammers rising.

There was no time to go back to the cave and Sam knew his dad was only saying it out of an instinct to protect him.

What they needed to do was to kill the gnome.

Running right now would only make it worse and give the marauder time to recover.

He only had 9 points of mana left, but hopefully it would be enough.

He should have brought another spell scroll from the cave..., but it wasn’t clear if it would have even worked on this marauder. The Earth shield it had was very powerful.

Based on the amount of damage it had already taken and its strength, ...it might even be over Level 20. It had to be a key figure in the gnomish nest that had been sent out here to deal with whatever was killing the patrols.

The gnomes hadn't sent an army because they thought that this would be enough.

They had it flanked now. His dad was attacking from the front, while Sam was on the opposite side. If they could take advantage of that to pin it down.... Crystal flames surged around him as he attacked, driving the spear point down towards the back of the marauder’s neck at the same time as Jeric attacked from the front.

Somehow, the marauder sensed him. It spun in place as one hammer lashed out toward his father and the other toward him. The movement threw it off balance just a bit. It was enough that Jeric managed to dodge the hammer coming his way.

Jeric poured his mana into the new spear as he stabbed again, causing the enchantment to flare to life. A dark, magma-like glow surrounded the point of his spear as it pierced through the marauder’s ribs, stabbing deep into its chest.

Still, the marauder completed its spin, the second hammer swinging out toward Sam and driving him back, before it completed the turn and jerked its body away. Dark blood welled around the wound as it started toward Jeric again.

At the same time, Jeric roared with rage as he saw the gnome’s hammer brush past Sam. The attack had come too close to his son. He raised his spear and charged at the gnome, both of his hands wrapped around the haft.

At the same time, Sam poured all but one point of mana into an attack, splitting it between the spear's enchantment and his crystal flame. He stabbed forward, aiming for the center of the marauder's back.

An enormous spiral of crystal flame curled down the haft of the spear, combining with the enchantment that rose from the spear itself. The point became searingly bright.

In front, Jeric had dropped all of his defense in order to attack. He was facing the marauder head on as he stabbed straight at it. The marauder’s hammer headed for Jeric’s chest at the same time as Jeric’s spear pierced through its heart.

An instant later, Sam’s spear slammed into the back of the marauder’s neck, driving inward half a foot with explosive force.

Unfortunately, the gnome's hammer continued on and slammed into Jeric's chest. He bent around the blow, his right ribs caving in as he was flung across the tunnel and into the wall for the second time. He crashed into the stone wall and slumped to the ground with an agonized groan.

The marauder stood frozen, two spears standing out of it. Jeric’s was embedded in its heart, the long haft dragging on the ground, and Sam’s was through its neck. Slowly, like a wall collapsing, it began to lean....

Then it toppled to the side, falling to the ground where it could only twitch as it died.

Sam ignored it, rushing toward his father as fear filled him. It was a tidal wave that crashed in his heart, his eyes widening.

"Dad!" he shouted. The spear dropped out of his hands, forgotten, as he was halfway there. He fell to his knees beside him, reaching out to feel his chest.

He knelt in front of his father, trying to see how bad it was. The gnome had hit him twice now...the first time when it kicked him and now again. The hammer strike had to have been even worse.

His dad’s hand reached up, trembling..., and slowly...patted Sam on the shoulder.

"You’re...alright," Jeric said faintly. His eyes were only half open. "...Good."

He coughed, painfully. Half of his chest was dented inwards, his right ribs bent from where the hammer had struck.

"Dad!" Sam called again. It felt like it was all he could say as he stared at him.

His eyes were wide and frightened.

Time compressed. An instant turned into an hour as father and son looked at each other.

Jeric's gaze grew increasingly calm. He let out a breath of air that stabbed at his lungs as he patted Sam on the shoulder again. He had rushed out to save his son, and he'd succeeded.

That was what was important.

He looked down at his chest, which was bent inwards where the hammer had hit. It was a mess of blood. Something was broken. He wasn't sure what the result would be, but...there was something he needed to tell Sam, in case he couldn't in the future.

"Remember...," Jeric said, as the words came in short, gasping breaths. "I'm proud...of you. And never...let your mother...be sad."

"You’re going to be okay," Sam promised, as he fumbled at his belt for his stylus. There had to be something he could do. "I’ll...make a healing scroll."

Jeric slowly shook his head, his hand still on Sam’s shoulder. There was a whistling sound as he breathed, which was not good. Bubbles of blood started to form on his lips.

"I want...to make sure...you...get home...." He said, as he started to pass out. His eyes were closing. His words were faint, barely audible.

Sam’s hands wrapped around his dad’s shoulders and just...stared. He didn't know what to do.

He held the stylus in his hands, clenching it, turning it from side to side as he tried to figure out what to draw...how to help.... If he hadn't run out of the cave...or insisted on facing the gnomes....

Hot tears cracked from his eyes and ran down his face.

"NO!" Sam finally shouted, as he stared upwards. He couldn't accept that his father was hurt. He was glaring toward the World Law.

It had left them with a broken class in the world. Because of it, they were weak, powerless.... He had never hated it as much as he did in that moment.

His idea to defy it mixed with his desire to make it heal his father right now.

"HELP HIM!" he shouted at it, hoping that it really was some god or divine being that could reach down through the heavens.

There was no response. Just the echoing silence of the tunnels, as solemn as a temple bell.

For all of his father's life, the World Law had suppressed him, harmed his family, and ruined their chance to make something of themselves. Now, his father was injured and almost....

Sam had thought that life was turning around, that it would all work out, ...but the World Law had never cared about them. He tried to pour his crystal flames into his father, making sure they didn’t burn him.

Maybe he could heal him, like when he purified the spear.... But the flames caught on to nothing, flowing through Jeric's body and back out again, as if his father were not even there.

Healing was not a part of his abilities. He wished that he’d just been a Farmer, or a laborer, working with his dad in the fields day after day.

Poor, sad, desolate..., none of that mattered. He just wanted his father to be there, step by step with him as they walked through the world.

He wasn't sure how badly his dad was hurt, but he didn't want him to die. Not from one mistake that he'd made....

Denial turned to anger. Rage boiled through him, flowing with an intense, crystal blue as he found a target to blame.

"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

He yelled at the World Law, his voice echoing through the tunnels. If it had just given his father a chance...a class that worked.... Or if he'd had enough time to help him unlock his class....

Sam's thoughts converged to a point, blaming the World Law for everything that had just happened. If it was a distant, unemotional thing, ...then it deserved to be broken.

Whatever the truth of that superstition was...he would make it come true. He would shatter it so completely that it would never harm anyone again.

"A BROKEN SYSTEM DOES NOT DESERVE TO EXIST! PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT!"

The silence of the tunnels took on a thick, dense aura, as if it had suddenly become more than it was before, as if it were listening to him.

"HOW COULD YOU ALLOW THIS? I'LL BREAK YOU THE REST OF THE WAY!"

This time, something answered.

It was familiar, but not. He had heard it only once before, back in the ruins.

Attention, Outsider of Aster Fall.

Your Threat to Harm the World Law Has Been Recorded.

You Were Warned.

Back then, it had come in the form of notifications. Now, he was hearing its voice from all around him.

Sam remembered that the World Law was watching him.

It was a sudden, abrupt shock to hear the voice speaking to him. The distant, authoritative tone was so loud it was filling the world.

It stunned him into silence. What was happening?

There was a pause, as if the World Law were thinking. Notifications had popped up as well. They said the same thing as the voice. What was going on?

Then he realized what he'd just done.

He'd forgotten that the World Law had promised to keep an eye on him, back in the ruins after the Outsider formation teleported him. In fact, it had warned him not to do anything that damaged it. Now, ...he'd just threatened to break it.

He'd been a bit out of his mind, but he'd meant it. His mind cleared a little as he looked down at his dad. Jeric was still alive, but his head had fallen forward onto his chest.

Sam didn't know what to do. Could his dad breathe like that? Did he need to be moved? Why couldn't he have been a healing class?

His attention was fixed on what he could to do help his father, even as the World Law spoke again.

Authorities of Law Have Been Notified and Will Be Dispatched to Your Location.

Then there was a pause, as if the voice were considering something very important. He could feel the World Law analyzing him. The Law was flowing through the entire world around him, with a sense of presence that was everywhere.

The Situation Has Changed.

Instability in the Core Law Suggests Outsider Interference.

An Unknown Force Has Accessed the Outer Layer of the Core.

There are Flaws in the Seal.

...Your Existence Matches with that Threat.

A flow of energy ran through reality all around Sam as the World Law weighed something else. Finally, it announced its verdict, in the same unemotional tone.

The Possibility of Your Existence Damaging the Seal is 59.7%.

Your Threat Level Has Been Reclassified from Unlikely to Moderate.

...Insufficient Local Resources to Resolve an Outsider Threat at This Location.

The Alert to the Authorities of Law Has Been Canceled.

For just a moment, a surge of hope hit Sam, as he waited to see if the World Law would let it all go. There was a pause, as if the World Law were deciding something extremely important....

Alarm bells began to flash in Sam's mind as an instinctual warning hit. He glanced up just as it spoke.

A Threat to the Seal Cannot Be Allowed.

A Warrant for Your Imprisonment in the Aster Fall World Seal Has Been Issued.

An Astral Guardian is Arriving.

Sam only had time to wonder what was happening and what an Astral Guardian was before the tunnel disappeared.

The world froze as time stood still.

---

Somewhere...

On the edge of Aster Fall's dimensional barrier, the orange sphere of spellwork between the two Outsiders flickered. A long arc of runes flared out from it, shuddered, and fell back in.

The sphere shrank slightly, its size decreasing. It almost looked like it was afraid.

The man gave the runes a long glance and frowned, as a series of intricate and insanely fast sigils flickered out of his hands.

He felt a bit alarmed, so he actually worked at his full speed now.

"Our tampering has been noticed." His frown deepened, traces of lines appearing on his forehead. "We should not have pushed forward so quickly. The World Core has become alarmed and is moving to counter us."

The woman scoffed, as her hands also sped up and flicked new runes into the formation, helping to bring the sphere under control.

"What can the World Core do to us here? We're already inside its prison."

"It's true that the Astral Guardians can't come here," the man agreed, "but it's unfortunate that we were noticed so quickly.... I wonder how that happened."

"There are Outsider ruins all over Aster Fall by this point. You know how many times we've tried to establish a base there. Maybe one of them caught its attention and it scanned itself."

"It's possible, but..." The man frowned. He didn't find that reason to be particularly compelling. "Let me check something."

His hands flickered again, and the sphere changed shape, flattening until was similar to a mirror.

Runes flared on the surface, as his slit-pupiled eyes stared into it.

"...Ahh." The man was silent for a moment before he spoke. "I was able to access some of its recent activity. It seems our tampering has caused the World Core to give out inaccurate classes, with Evolution paths that are not standard for Aster Fall.... Very few of them are even possible to train there."

"Why does that matter?" The woman waved her hand through the air. She was focused on the sphere and on her intent to escape. These minor issues didn't interest her at all. "Does it have something to do with us?"

The man waved his hand and the sphere returned to its shape, before he looked across it and into her eyes.

There was an unaccustomed emotion on his face that she couldn't pinpoint.

"A World Forger has been born." His voice was solemn as he answered. "It's not to that Evolution yet, but it has stepped onto a possible path."

"What...!" The woman's shock spoke volumes as he finally got her attention. "That's the class that created the Seal. How could it have been born on Aster Fall?"

The man was silent again, his hands folding back into his sleeves as he stared at the sphere and then towards her. Finally, he spoke.

"Because we created it."

Battlefield Reclaimer 20: A Threat to the Seal

Hours lost their meaning and days were an obscure cloud in his memory. Sam tried to look around, but he couldn't move. Or perhaps...there was nothing to move.

He couldn't tell where he was.

...

Where was his dad?

Was he alright?

...

How long had he been here?

...

His questions floated around him, spreading outward in the midst of nothing, ...the single sign that he was still alive.

He couldn't tell if he had been here for an instant or an entire lifetime.

His thoughts began to run together, one after the other, as they became tangled.

There were no references for him to use, nothing to stop the confusion that was spinning through his mind.

Then, at some point, it began to change.

Reality turned flat and distorted, cracking at the edges as starlight poured in.

It was a strange light, beautiful and serene, but deadly at the same time as if it existed in a universe that was so perfect it would cut you like a blade.

There was no more tunnel, no more dead marauder on the ground.

Where was his father?

Sam tried to turn around to look for him, but he couldn't move.

There were only the stars stretching in front of him.

He felt the weight of a gaze on him that seemed to see through his secrets, riffling through his memories, hopes, and dreams.

It saw his father.

And the threat that he had made.... Had that been just now or a long time ago?

Then there was a light sigh. The weight of attention lifted off of him, becoming something that allowed him to breathe.

He hadn't realized until it did that he had been frozen under the force of that gaze, his existence...compressed until even his thoughts were unable to move.

The presence seemed to weigh something, evaluating him, before it spoke.

"You're in quite a bit of trouble, Sam Hastern."

It wasn’t clear if it was a man or a woman, or something else entirely. The voice had the sound of stars humming in their spheres, the musical cadence of the universe chiming in tune with it.

"Thank you for the compliment, but it’s just a filter to keep your mind from disintegrating. The power difference is too great for you to comprehend what I really am.

"I can't stay here for long or it will disrupt the seal, so let's move on to more important things.

"I know you don't understand all of what's going on, so I will make it simple. I’m going to explain something and offer you a choice.

"And you can speak. I’ll hear you."

"What do you mean by a choice?" Sam asked automatically as his thoughts stuck back together and his mind started working again.

"Can you help my father?"

He had no idea what was going on. Had the World Law started speaking to him?

What was the...guardian...it had mentioned?

He was going to a prison?

Why? For being angry at the World Law? He pushed those thoughts out of his mind as he focused on the only thing that he wanted.

Where was his father?

The tunnel was gone. Where was he standing and why did it look like...stars?

It reminded him of the trip he'd taken out past the edge of Aster Fall's world barrier when the ruins had tried to teleport him.

Were Outsiders here again?

"Please stop that," the starry voice said, with the sound of suns humming as they spun. "You will have to gather your thoughts and be more precise. While I can read your mind, your thoughts are scattered and you are making it difficult.

"As for your father, he is the same as how you left him. Time is frozen here. More specifically, we are speaking much faster than the flow of time in Aster Fall. I wouldn't be able to visit here without that...., spending too much time here would disrupt the seal. As it is, I am acting through several filters and with the assistance of the World Core.

"...Let me try again. Reading your thoughts is making me almost as chaotic as you.

"I'll put it this way....

"You, Sam Hastern, are in a unique position to cause trouble. So, I will give you a choice, but I need to tell you a little bit of what's going on first, so that you can make an informed decision.

"If you can stop time..., can you also help my dad?" Sam focused on a narrow thread of hope as he asked again.

He heard what the voice was saying, but there were parts he didn't understand.

What was this about a seal?

It sounded like it was much too big to be related to him.

The voice sighed.

"Sam, listen to me. You have been classified as a threat to Aster Fall. Your unique race and that...class...you have, are a flaw in the seal. In your words..., just think of that as the entire world of Aster Fall.

"The World Law noticed the threat from you at the same time as it recorded activity from somewhere else. I can't trace what that activity is yet, but something is tampering with the seal.

"That tampering is why you have a class that didn't work...until now.

"Your race is not what it is supposed to be. You're not really an Outsider, but you're also not human any more. You have gained some of their ability to manipulate essence directly, which has merged with your class to create a problem for Aster Fall.

"A threat like that is a very bad thing for our star system, and it's why the artifact spirit, the World Law, is paying attention to you. It couldn't handle that on its own, so it called me. Doing so took more resources than you could imagine in your wildest dreams. That's how important this is.

"Do you understand so far?"

"Not really," Sam admitted honestly. He was in shock from the quick shift away from the tunnels and wasn't processing everything.

The time when he'd been stuck in nothing was already fading from his mind.

So, he focused on what mattered the most.

This...voice said that his father was still in the same shape..., and when he'd left, his dad was still alive.

All he really understood was that he’d gotten in trouble for yelling at the World Law and now some...part of it...was talking to him.

But if the World Law wanted to talk to him and if it was offering him a chance to help his father, then he would definitely listen to it.

"I can see you won't pay attention to anything else, so let's talk about that first.

"It is possible that I can help your father, but I can't heal him directly. If you make the right choice, I'll do what I can, okay?"

"Okay," Sam agreed instantly, as hope blossomed in his heart. "What choice do I have to make then? Just tell me what it is and I'll take care of it."

A sense of relief surged through him at the idea that it was possible to heal his dad. He hadn't messed up too badly.

He missed part of what the voice was saying until it called him back to the present.

"Listen closely, Sam.

"I came here to fight you and then to put you in a very nasty prison. A threat to the seal is not something that I can allow.

"The only reason I am speaking to you is because I was curious how someone as weak as you could have disturbed the seal, so I read your memories.

"I understand your situation better than you do.

"Let's go back to the choices. Time is running out."

"Just tell me what you need me to do."

Whatever the price was, he would pay it.

He couldn't imagine a world without his father in it. It wouldn't be Aster Fall anymore.

He should have listened to him and stayed in the cave.

"I cannot tell you what to choose. It has to be of your own free will.

"Now, listen, you are at a crux in your life, which can go in two directions.

"In one direction, you stay on your current path and become a threat to Aster Fall. Your power grows and you eventually break the seal. That is the future I cannot allow.

"However, imprisoning you in the seal is the same as executing you, so I’ll offer you another choice...a temporary stay of your execution.

"You are born of Aster Fall and are part of the seal. Your existence does not disturb its equilibrium. At the same time, you are a flaw in the system.

"You should not have access to the class or the abilities that you do. Together, they represent a significant threat to Aster Fall if you use them incorrectly.

"If you use them correctly, however, you could be a great help.

"That is why you are in a unique position and why I am speaking with you.

"What are the choices?" Sam asked, as a frown ran across his face. He had no idea what was being asked of him.

How could he possibly be a threat to the world?

The World Law, ...a seal, ...Aster Fall.... He understood some of those things, but this was more complicated than he was ready to deal with.

He really just wanted the voice to hurry up and heal his father.

"I'm almost out of time. Here are your choices, as simply as I can lay them out. My apologies for being blunt, but...

"Work for me...or you will die."

It was said in such a way that he felt no animosity from the Guardian. It was just something that was going to happen.

"I'll work for you then," Sam agreed. It wasn't much of a choice.

"And you'll heal my dad?"

"I'll definitely do what I can," the voice agreed.

"There are a few final things you need to know."

"By choosing to live, you will give up some of your freedom. In return, I will allow you to stay on Aster Fall. You will dedicate your life to protecting the seal here and preventing Outsider intrusion. You will be...my servant, basically, doing what I can't."

That sounded almost too good to be true. Sam didn’t mind if he had to work for this voice, or if he had to give up some freedom.

As long as it could help heal his father, it was a fair price.

"I agree."

"Let me finish.... Choosing to live means putting aside all your defiance and hatred for the World Law and becoming its protector. Aster Fall is an incredibly important and delicate world. Maybe one day you will understand just how much.

"I cannot allow it to be harmed.

"The catch is that doing this will change nothing about your Defiant trait, it won’t change how Protectors of the Law see you, and it won’t change your race back to human. I don't have the ability to reverse what the World Law has done with you. Basically, you will be taking on a thankless job, guarding a world that still won’t like you.

"You need to grow much, much stronger, if you want to live up to the task. If you fail in that, you will inevitably end up in the prison.

"If you fail in an even worse way and the seal is breached, your father and everyone else on this world will die.

"Wait..., how?" He was getting confused now. How could the whole world be destroyed?

He didn't really understand what the seal was all about yet. It was...part of Aster Fall?

"Sam..., we're out of time. I'll engrave all of this into a contract and bind it to you. It will not force you to do anything. It will only relay information. You'll have plenty of time to study it later.

"Remember this: just as you have the potential to break the seal, you also have the potential to repair it.

"If the seal breaks, the world will go with it.

"That is what I need you to do. Work on Aster Fall to repair problems in the seal from within.

"Now, do you understand?"

"I agree."

If he had to protect the world, that was fine. His family was on it and his father would be alive. He wasn't going to let anything touch them.

If he couldn't blame the World Law, well..., wasn't the World Law sort of helping him right now? After that part about throwing him in prison, at least.

He had just said he would do anything....

He would protect it if he had to.

"Very well. Let’s set our contract."

A portion of the starry area around Sam seemed to rotate, pressing down onto him like a vast weight. A thousand colors flowed together and concentrated into a brilliant, sparkling point.

The symbol of a nine-pointed star took shape in the air, before it settled onto the back of Sam's right hand.

"That is the symbol of the contract. You will find the conditions listed when you touch it.

"It will notify you of problems to fix from inside the seal, like the alert the World Law put out when it noticed you.

"If you ignore it..., you will place your family and the entire world in danger.

"Now, for my side of the bargain.... A choice for your father and a sub-class for you. You will need it and more. You proved it in battle just now, and it's something else you were willing to break the World Law over, so I'll include it as part of your...

"Reformation, let's call it, why don't we?"

The stars swept away, crossing in front of Sam’s vision in a blur, as the world changed, returning him to the tunnels.

---

"I wanted...to make sure...you...got home." Jeric’s hand rested on top of his son’s shoulder, as he felt a crushing pain in his chest that made it difficult to say anything else.

He heard his son calling to him, but the world was fading out.

Then time began to flow strangely, like a thread stretching into the distance...farther and farther as it pulled toward the edge of the universe.

Sometime, in the midst of that flow, a thread of starlight touched his head, and a voice spoke. It echoed strangely.

"Jeric Hastern, do you swear to protect Aster Fall from outside forces, even if you are never recognized for your work? If so, I will help you."

"Can you help...my son...get home?" Jeric mumbled in response. Somehow, despite the pain in his chest, his mind was clear again.

He forced out the words past a bubble of blood.

"No. But you will become stronger and can protect him. The price is that you will have to give up much of who you are."

"I accept," Jeric said at once, his agreement clear.

If he could keep going and protect Sam, he would. The rest of it wasn't important, as long as they got home.

"Do it!"

"Very well. Brace yourself. You are about to lose all of your accumulated experience, skills, and professions. Your class will be removed and replaced with another."

Time hung still for an instant.

A surge of boiling pain hit Jeric like a star had been born in his stomach, flaring through his body as it spread down his meridians, through his arms and legs, into his eyes, and out to every corner of his existence.

He had enough accumulated experience that he could have made it to level 32 if he’d ever been able to unlock his class.

He also had many professions and proficiencies that he’d gathered over the last fifty years.

All of that strength was suddenly ripped out of him in a surge of pain that was greater than anything he’d ever felt.

A large part of his existence, the value of all those years, was burned away, converting to pure energy as it flowed out of him.

He felt his stats and levels falling away, as if he’d never had his Class Day.

A wave of extreme weakness flowed through him, so intense that he couldn't even speak.

As the energy boiled away, he could feel a little bit of it being used to seal the wounds in his body, stopping the bleeding and reinflating his lung, but it didn’t fully heal him.

"I need you to touch that corpse next to you."

Jeric’s hand somehow fumbled out, falling against the marauder corpse that was lying in the middle of the tunnel.

A notification chimed into his awareness.

Congratulations, Defiant! You have unlocked a rare class!

Henceforth, you are an Earthen Marauder!

Initial Class Quest: Consume 100 points of Earth mana to empower your body and class abilities.

"Take the experience from the corpse too," the voice advised. "It will partially make up for what you lost, but at best it will be a quarter of what you had."

Just before the voice faded, there was a quiet phrase, although neither Jeric nor Sam heard it.

"...Like father, like son."

Battlefield Reclaimer 21: Not Dead Yet

When the world reformed around Sam, he was still kneeling in front of his father. He blinked as his eyes refocused. His father’s hand was still on his shoulder. Jeric’s other hand had fallen on the gnome marauder to the side.

"Dad!" he called out, as he leaned forward, inspecting his father for wounds. Sam didn’t know if the voice he’d just heard was real or not, but it had said it would heal his father. Well, that it would do what it could.

He didn't know what the threat to the seal was all about or how he could possibly be one, but the Guardian's words hung in his mind. What was going on and how could his class be such a problem?

He was still confused by it all. He'd gotten in trouble for threatening the World Law, but it seemed like it had worked out. What had the Guardian meant when it said someone was tampering with the World Law? He shook the questions out of his mind as he focused on his father.

He didn't want to think about all of that right now. What was important was right in front of him.

Jeric looked incredibly weak, thinner than before. He'd lost a lot of the weight from around his middle, which made him seem like a completely different person. His rathide tunic had been ripped in half by the force of the blow that broke his ribs, giving Sam a clear view of his chest.

The hole in his ribs was gone, sealed over by new, pink skin. It also looked as if his ribs had been put back into place, although there was a massive bruise across them, along with mottled swelling. Jeric’s face was pale, but his breathing was steadier.

"I’m not dead yet." Jeric chuckled, weakly, as he patted Sam on the shoulder again. "I don’t know what just happened, but...maybe it’s true that the World Law comes to those in need."

"It was a...Guardian...? Or...part of the World Law or something." Sam shook his head, barely remembering half of the details. It had been a very strange experience.

"It said it could heal you if I agreed to work for it. So, I did." He was oversimplifying, but he needed some time to process everything the Guardian had said.

Jeric listened to what Sam was saying and then shook his head. He didn’t understand it either.

"I’m just glad you’re alright," Jeric said, running his hand through Sam’s hair. "And that I’ll be there to keep an eye on you. Help me up now. We need to drag that gnome into the cave and bunker down for a while."

Sam nodded and helped his dad stand up. At the same time, he filled him in on the details he remembered. The nine-pointed silver star shone on the back of his right hand, proof that it had happened. Also, the fact that his father was alive, which was the most important thing.

They weren’t very far from the cave, so he helped his dad into it, with Jeric’s arm wrapped around his shoulders.

"Help me over by the mana pool, Sam," his dad said, as he leaned heavily on his son’s neck.

"Then grab that gnome, please, and bring it here. I think I’ll be able to absorb its experience. You should grab the experience from the others and see about their auras."

Sam nodded as he helped Jeric sit down. The exact meaning of his dad’s words didn’t quite make sense to him, since he’d thought his dad’s experience was maxed, but he wasn’t going to worry about it. He could have all the gnomes he wanted.

Sam went back for the gnome marauder and dragged it into the cave. Then he headed back for the five regular gnomes. He’d almost forgotten about them. As he walked back to get the auras, he had a moment of panic as he remembered that he'd been almost out of aura during the battle.

He wouldn't be able to get them. Again! But when he checked, his aura was full. At the same time, his mana was at 2. That had only regenerated by a point.

Whatever strange effect there was when the Guardian pulled him into that...space between time...it had refilled his aura. There was a strange idea floating unformed at the edge of his mind, related to aura and time...and why the World Law thought his class was a danger, but it flitted away again a moment later.

He didn't have enough information to unwrap it.

He touched the first gnome and searched for its aura, trying to get it before it disappeared. He didn’t know what the aura would be like from a gnome, but after seeing how useful the Umber Flame was, he wanted more of them.

The aura was still there, which meant it hadn’t been very long, less than ten minutes. It felt like a lot longer, but he wasn't going to think about that right now.

He’d never been able to reclaim an aura from a gnome before. The taste of dust and compressed stone filled his mind, the pressure of ages weighing down on him as it settled, silent and still. Then it shifted.

A sense of destruction cracked through it, and the flavor changed to heat and almost the taste of Umber Fire as the stone split apart. The stone shattered, shards splintering through his mind. It fell, settling into place again as the pressure returned.

You have identified an unknown aura.

Do you wish to Reclaim the aura (10% chance) or to attempt to Identify it?

There were five gnomes, so he chose to identify the aura for the first three, one after the other.

Identification is 85% complete.

Your chance to Reclaim this aura has risen to 40%.

It was tempting to try and reclaim the fourth, but he shook his head and identified it as well. Who knew how many of the gnomes would attack in the future? Were they still going to send an army? Maybe the identification would help him with that, somehow.

He needed to start taking the longer view. The short gamble or the solid road, as his dad called it. His dad...had nearly died.

The fight with the marauder proved Sam was being too rash. He needed to think more before he jumped into things. He should have stayed in the cave and listened to his father. Maybe they could have held off the gnomes with spell scrolls, without collapsing the deadfall or risking themselves as much.

Of course, the marauder had that Earth barrier.... Sam shook his head and pushed the thoughts out of his mind. He was just grateful that it had worked out. He would be more cautious in the future.

Other thoughts were also floating through his mind, including what the Guardian told him and what had just happened, but he would deal with that as it came. It didn't look like the strange star on the back of his hand was going anywhere.

The aura on the fourth gnome burned away, leaving behind only the pressure of age-old stone and steady silence beneath the earth.

Identification is Complete. Aura Identified.

Aura of Basalt.

Your chance to Reclaim this aura has risen to 50%.

Sam looked at the notification and frowned. Apparently, 50% was his best chance to reclaim an aura, even after he’d identified it. Maybe it would go up if he got more Wisdom.

As for the aura itself..., apparently it was an Aura of Basalt. It made sense, of a sort, since they were basalt gnomes.

On the fifth gnome, the notification he was hoping for appeared as the aura swirled through his consciousness and gathered in a dark grey, fist-sized sphere. Loops of misty energy swirled out of it and back in.

You have Reclaimed an Aura.

Aura of Basalt (Basic).

The basalt sphere shot into the pocket area near his shoulder, which somehow existed in a separate space. Was that a different...dimension? He’d heard of dimensional pockets, but that was a very high-level Wizard thing.

Sam shook his head as he seized the experience from the gnomes and gathered their spears and other equipment. It worked, and he could figure it out later. He needed to get back to his dad. A lot of the gnomes' armor was damaged by the Fire scroll, but he managed to get a couple of complete sets.

It seemed he'd figured out that Fireball spell he wanted against the rats, even if he needed to make a scroll first. As he finished with the last one, a silver notification appeared in his mind, surprising him a little.

You have employed your Enchanting abilities in battle.

You gain 500 Class experience. (100% contribution from Enchanter.)

Experience to Next: 200

It was class experience...rather than general experience. Sam paused for a moment as he looked at the notification, his forehead wrinkling as he frowned. He’d never heard of someone getting Enchanting experience from battle before....

It had to have been because of his Aura of Crystal Flame. He had mostly used it to enchant, but...he’d also attacked the gnomes with it. He'd sent that wedge-shaped blast at the marauder and the last one.

But for the rest of these five, he’d used a spell scroll, so he wasn't sure why he got class experience for all of them. Did it count because he’d used Essence Control to make the scroll and then used that to kill the gnomes, or was it linked to Battlefield Reclaimer and that he’d gained auras from the battle, so it had all gone to his class experience?

As he was trying to figure it out, something happened that he hadn’t expected at all. A strange, ornate notification appeared. It was silver with crystal-blue edges that looked a lot like his Aura of Crystal Flame. The corners were marked with nine-pointed silver stars...that were burning as if they were really there.

A new sub-class option is available to you.

Scion of Crystal Flame.

Do you wish to accept this sub-class?

(Be advised: You will not be able to choose a different sub-class until your next Evolution.)

At that moment, Sam remembered one of the last things the Guardian had said to him. It was going to offer his father a choice and then something about a sub-class for him. There was no other information besides the name.

He had just promised himself not to be rash, so he shoved his desire to grab the sub-class immediately into the back of his mind. It would still be there in a bit. He finished gathering the rest of the items from the gnomes and then he went to talk to his dad.

---

When Sam arrived back at the cave, Jeric was sitting next to the gnome marauder. It had only been a few minutes and he waved Sam over. He was thin and pale, but he seemed to be in high spirits.

"Sam, come get the aura from this one if you can!" Jeric called out. "I’ve been waiting for you. Hopefully, it’s still there."

Sam nodded quickly as he dropped the rest of the loot on the side of the room and came over, touching the marauder as he searched for the taste of basalt. It was faint, but the aura was still there, like the taste of the tunnel floor.

You have encountered an aura: Aura of Basalt (Basic).

Do you wish to Reclaim this aura? (50% chance)

He chose the option as soon as it appeared. The weight of basalt pressed down on him again. It felt like his blood gelled under the pressure, the heavy density of the earth lying on top of him. Then it was gone, as a fist-sized sphere of aura flew into the dimensional storage pocket.

"I got it!" He called out, almost surprised. That was better than he’d expected. Two 50% chances in a row.

He’d thought the gnome was Level 20 or higher, but the aura was still Basic. Maybe it took a little while for the aura to change?

"Good!" Jeric just smiled at him, before he patted the ground next to him. "Have a seat. We need to talk about a few things."

Sam felt a sudden sense of dread as he wondered if his dad was going to yell at him.... His head dropped a bit. Instead, fingers lightly brushed through his hair as his dad rubbed his head.

"We’re alright," Jeric said, letting out a deep breath.

He had been going over the details that Sam had told him on the way into the cave, about the Guardian and the rest of it. He didn't know why the World Law had threatened to imprison Sam, but it was obvious it had something to do with a threat from Outsiders, which was his son's new race.

As for why the Guardian appeared..., he had some ideas. He remembered the World Law telling them back in the ruins that the authorities had been notified. Apparently, they had shown up. He also thought Sam might know the rest, even if he hadn’t realized it yet.

What mattered the most to him was that the Guardian hadn't treated Sam badly, and it had helped him. It had even offered him a new class, fixing what had gone wrong so long ago. So, whatever else it might be, it was alright in his book.

"Right. The first thing...," he finally said, as he pulled his thoughts together. "Whatever you did, son, it’s given us a new chance at life."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, surprised, as he looked up. He'd nearly gotten them killed. His dad wasn’t angry?

"That...Guardian...made me an offer I couldn’t refuse," Jeric explained, as he looked between Sam and the marauder's body. "That’s why I look like this and why I asked you to bring the gnome over here."

Jeric took a moment to compose his thoughts as he looked steadily at his son. There was a bright light in his eyes that hadn’t been there for a long time. Not since...he was still 17.

"He offered to change my class."

"What?!" Sam’s eyes widened as his head shot up and he stared at his father. All his thoughts about being scolded disappeared.

"That...!"

"Exactly." Jeric smiled, as he ruffled Sam’s hair again. "It was something you did. And now I can protect you better."

Sam was 18 now, but he was still his son. Jeric wasn't going to stop keeping an eye on him. Sam’s eyes were stuck on his father as the meaning of what he’d just said roared through his mind. It pushed out almost everything else that had happened.

"Then you can level!" Sam nearly shouted. "You won’t get old and die!"

"Haha...," Jeric laughed. "Even adding constitution won’t keep someone alive forever, but I hope it might be better now, yes."

He ruffled Sam’s hair again. He didn’t mention to his son that he’d had to give up all of his experience, skills, and abilities. It would only make Sam feel a bit bad. To his mind, it had been more than a fair trade. The Guardian had even saved his life at the same time.

"So, I want you to watch as I absorb this experience and unlock the class," Jeric said happily.

"Like a new Class Day, but the right way around this time."

Even more than his son, he had hated the World Law for a long time. He had just hidden it a lot better, bowing his head and scraping through the world as he made a living, trying to hold all the pieces together as they fell apart one by one.

The idea that he could have a new class.... It was the same as giving him a second life. There was a green aura that looked a lot like hope curling around his heart, loosening the bonds of that old hatred and making him question what it meant to be Defiant.

The World Law and this Guardian might be the same thing or not..., but something had finally started to go their way. The part about nearly dying wasn’t something he cared about at all. He’d already almost forgotten it.

He’d protected his son and got a new class. Life was finally going to work out. They just had to get home. With this class, that might actually be possible.

With one hand on Sam and the other on the marauder, Jeric reached for the thread of experience that was waiting there, and then he froze.

Wait! Something in his instincts shouted at him.

He was missing something incredibly important first. If he absorbed the experience from the gnome now..., it would only go to general experience. His class was still locked. He looked at the Initial Quest for it again.

Initial Class Quest: Consume 100 points of Earth mana to empower your body and class abilities.

Then he looked towards the silver-white mana pool that was next to him. The connection was obvious. Had the Guardian known the pool was here and that was why he’d given him that class? He shook his head. Of course the Guardian had known. Who was he kidding. Still, he hesitated.

Just touching that pool would have been like sticking his hand into a volcano before. It would have dissolved him and torn apart the pieces. Was his new class enough to stop that? He read the description of the quest again as he shuddered for a second.

Well, he’d have to test it out, but he definitely wasn’t going to start by drinking it.

"Sam," he said slowly, "can you...take out your stylus and pick up a drop of mana from the pool? Bring it over here."

"Umm, alright," Sam replied, puzzled. He wasn’t sure what his dad wanted him to do, but it was easy enough.

Did he want to draw something on the gnome?

Sam drew up a drop of the intense silver-white liquid, trapping it on the stylus with his aura. Then he brought it over to his dad.

Jeric looked down at his withered body. He was skeletal now, thinner than he had been in years. Even at 17, he hadn’t been this thin. It wasn't a good type of thin either. He eventually pointed to the tip of his smallest finger.

"Drop it on the end there," he instructed Sam, bracing himself for what might happen.

"But..., isn’t it going to burn you?" Sam protested. This seemed like a very bad idea.

"Not if the class I just got works the way it’s supposed to." Jeric grinned back at Sam as he pushed aside his own worry and replaced it with confidence.

"Go ahead." Inwardly, he prepared himself for his finger to melt off.

Dealing with liquid mana like this went against everything he had ever learned. Human physiology should not be able to handle liquified Earth mana. The difference in potential energy would be explosive.

Humans had no good way to channel that energy immediately, not without a runic formation or something special about their meridians...and the result would be ugly when the mana reacted. Maybe it would just be the tip of his finger? He could handle that.... He didn’t use the tip of his little finger that much.

"Go on," he encouraged Sam, making sure none of the worry entered his voice.

Slowly, Sam released his hold on the mana and a brilliant, silver-white droplet started to gather at the tip of the stylus. The droplet of mana ran down to the end, hanging there against the silver background and the dark cave floor like a star that heralded the beginning of a new life.

Or a harbinger that marked the destruction of the old. Then it fell.

Battlefield Reclaimer 22: A New Life

The shining droplet of mana fell towards Jeric’s smallest finger. When it touched him, a bright yellow aura shone out from his skin, forming a layer that received it.

Pliiinkk.

The drop of mana rang like a bell as it struck the yellow aura and sank straight in. The mana was a little heavier than a drop of water and it disappeared with a ripple, as if it were striking a pond. A bright silver chime appeared in Jeric’s mind.

You have consumed one point of Earth mana. You still require 99 points to unlock your class.

Then it flashed out of existence again.

The mana didn’t stop there, however. Jeric could feel a strange, powerful force radiating through his finger. As he watched, the white skin around his knuckles began to grow less pale, and it almost seemed like the finger became...more muscular?

Well, it looked better at any rate.

"It worked then." Jeric let out a deep breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding, as he nodded at Sam.

"What class did you get?" Sam asked, his excitement flaring as he watched the mana act so strangely. He was very glad it hadn’t hurt his father.

"It has to be something Earth-related, right, if the Earth mana here is acting like that?"

There were many varieties of elementally-aligned classes in the world, but the Dwarves’ Earth classes were the ones he’d heard about the most. They had combined racial classes with a major element to make an entire series of them, and they were incredibly successful with it.

If his dad had got an Earth class...!

"Earthen Marauder," Jeric laughed, a bit helplessly as he thought of the name. Somehow, the enemy who had nearly killed him had ended up helping him instead.

"Definitely a combat-oriented class.... I had to give up Battlefield Reclaimer for it, but I’m very content with that."

In fact, Jeric was ecstatic. He had hated his old class and how it had ruined his life. Even unlocking it would have been bittersweet, like doing a job that he had never liked. He’d done enough of that. This combat class suited him much better.

He was looking forward to taking out a lifetime of pent-up aggression on unsuspecting monsters.

"This is fantastic...!" Sam laughed as a sense of relief hit him. He had been so worried about his dad’s class that it had been driving him crazy.

Now there was a future for them both.... They would just have to get home and take care of his mom and Altey. They might be able to actually work for a living, and get real jobs, and...everything now.

They could buy the materials for his mother to level her class as a Historian and then when Altey had her Class Day.... No matter what class she got, whether it was from their dad’s side or their mom’s, he would make sure it worked out.

He was trying to ignore the mark on the back of his hand with all of his might, but for just a moment it hung there, shining in his vision. He was slowly realizing that his life had changed and that the mark was going to be a large part of it.

He pushed the negatives of it out of his mind for now, as he focused on the positives that were right in front of him. With his dad's new future right in front of him, his hatred for the World Law was starting to fade away as it was replaced by hope.

It wasn't...entirely wrong to change his mind about it. It was almost like the World Law had finally noticed the problem with their class and corrected it.

Sam was a little puzzled as he debated how much the Guardian had really known about him. He...it...whatever, had said he had read his memories, but...had the Guardian known Sam’s mind would start to change, after he helped Jeric?

Or had it been something he’d done accidentally, which had just worked out for the better? He couldn't quite comprehend what the being was..., but he got the feeling that the Guardian saw a lot more about things than he did.

The Guardian had told him he had to give up his hatred, but just telling him to do it wasn’t as effective as fixing what had caused it in the first place. That was what he had done, even if it only affected the future and not the past.

He almost felt grateful to the being. By fixing his dad’s class, as well as saving his life, the Guardian had gone a long way towards making Sam much more willing to work for him. The being had also said something else was causing the problem with the World Law and their class, which meant perhaps he'd been blaming the wrong thing.

But all the other details of his potential imprisonment, a seal, the world being destroyed.... Was that really related to him?

Sam shook his head. The proof was right in front of him, but he had a hard time believing it. The nine-pointed star on the back of his hand flickered, almost as if it were laughing at him, and some of the negative aspects flared back into Sam's mind.

A warrant for his imprisonment in the Aster Fall World Seal. Death. The world being destroyed and his family along with it....

He took a deep breath and let it out again. He’d have to figure out what that was all about at some point. The star was a reminder that his business with the Guardian wasn’t finished, even if he didn’t really understand it yet.

It wanted him to do what? Fix flaws in the seal or something? He had spent the last week cooking rats while stuck in a cave. Perhaps it was overestimating him.

His dad’s voice pulled him back to more immediate things, pushing all of those thoughts aside again.

"Sam, grab some more mana for me?" Jeric said, as he looked up from where the last drop had fallen. His voice held a tone of excitement in it now.

Sam nodded immediately and headed back for the pool. He hadn’t put much mana on the stylus before, but he could probably hold about three drops if he went all out. This was supposed to unlock his dad’s class!

Plliiink.

A drop of mana was absorbed into Jeric’s hand. They did it in the same spot at first, waiting to see if anything strange happened.

Plink.

Jeric’s hand started to look healthier. The skin became tauter and fuller as the muscles and veins in it firmed up. His hand began to look like that of a craftsman, or a warrior, someone who used their muscles day in and day out.

"Let’s keep going," Jeric said as he stared down at it. He had been strong enough before to harvest fields and work with tools..., but never so much that his hand looked like this.

Pliiiiiink.

It was starting to feel like his hand was hot now. It was almost starting to swell. Waves of energy began to leak out from it into the rest of his body.

"Try the other hand."

Pliiink.

They dripped mana onto his other hand, and when that was proof that it still worked, they started on his chest where the wound had been. The bruising there was still pretty ugly.

As the droplets of mana hit Jeric’s broken ribs, there was a splintering pain in his chest as he felt them move back into place. The mana infused the area around his ribs and stabilized them, holding them in place. They weren’t fully healed, but they were better than before.

You have consumed 7 points of Earth mana. You still require 93 points to unlock your class.

Then Jeric’s skin color began to improve, brightening to a healthy golden glow as if it were being painted into existence drip by drip. The swelling faded, becoming less noticeable.

Sam went back for more mana.

You have consumed 15 points of Earth mana. You still require 85 points to unlock your class.

It took over twenty points of mana to fully infuse Jeric’s chest, and with each drop, the transformation continued. Not only was the wound stabilized, but his muscles began to grow.

His chest expanded into hard planes with masculine curves, as if he’d spent half his life working on them. His abdomen became rippled and defined.

Sam’s eyes widened as he continued to bring more mana. The marauder had been enormous for a gnome...and packed with muscle. Was that part of the class? Was his dad going to look like that?

...You still require 71 points to unlock your class.

The transformation of Jeric’s musculature stopped when he was whipcord lean. Everywhere the mana touched, the remaining bits of flab disappeared, along with his paleness and frailty. His muscles were clearly defined, each of them visible against his skin, but he didn’t have the mass that the marauder had demonstrated.

From there, they moved on to Jeric’s arms, letting the mana infuse them. Like his chest, they took on the same healthy, golden tone. His biceps got a bit bigger, the tendons obvious.

...45 points

Then his legs, where the same process continued to take place. His muscles began to look like those of a warrior or gladiator, each of them swelling and clearly visible.

...21 points.

Finally, his head, where the mana dripped onto his face and hair. By this point, they were no longer worried that it would harm him. The silver-white intensity of the Earth mana finished infusing Jeric’s entire body, anointing him on the forehead as the transformation completed, as if it were holy oil.

Or the blessing of the Earth.

Jeric’s hair became darker and longer, a wild tangle past his shoulders. He’d worn it cut short for most of his life, but it was almost the same as Sam’s now. Sam gave him an extra leather strip to tie it back. His beard was still there, but much fuller as it almost touched his chest, dark with a few scattered silver streaks.

...He looked like a powerful, veteran barbarian who had just stepped off the plains and decided to visit the city. And heaven help any tavern in his way.

Finally, the notification that Jeric had been waiting for appeared. It arrived with golden light and a chorus of brilliant chimes as a massive surge of strength filled his body.

Congratulations, Defiant! You Have Completed Your Initial Quest and Unlocked Your Rare Class!

You Gain 10 Experience for Your Class.

You Are Now a Level 1 Earthen Marauder!

Your Evolution Path has been opened. Class Evolution will be available to you in the future as you grow in strength.

Your Basic Class Abilities have been assigned: Twin Hammers (Ambidextrous), Enhanced Physique, Earthen Shield, Earth Vision (Subterranean), Earth Sense.

As a One-Time Reward for Unlocking a Rare Class, You May Choose One Basic Class Ability to Upgrade to Advanced.

Make Your Decision Now.

The brilliant explosion of sound and notifications chimed through Jeric’s mind, bringing with it a rush of joy that he hadn’t felt in an age. Bubbles of effervescent happiness surged through his blood. It made him feel like a new man.

It was the road to a new life.

Jeric let out a deep breath of air as he took in all of the information and the changes in his body. The final notification was taking up his entire field of vision, demanding his attention.

He remembered that Sam had been given the option to choose an additional ability when he unlocked his unique class. It seemed that rare classes were also given a reward, but it was to upgrade one of the abilities they already had, instead of getting a new one.

It wasn’t a hard decision for him to make.

He cared about one thing above all, and that was protecting his family. He needed to take care of Sam and get home to his wife and daughter. He also remembered how durable the marauder had been when the spells hit it.

He wasn’t entirely sure if Earthen Shield was the same thing as that yellow Earth barrier that had protected the marauder, but it was a solid guess and he chose to upgrade it. It was the single most likely ability to help him protect Sam and get home in one piece.

He could feel a whirlwind of energy flowing into his body and sweeping through him. It was an intense wave of change that remodeled him from the inside out. At the same time, information on his class abilities filled his mind, showing him what they did and how to use them.

The notification slowly faded away, and Jeric looked towards his son. A smile broke out across his face like a new day dawning.

"May you have great success on your Path, dad," Sam wished him earnestly. His voice was low and fervent, his eyes wide.

"I can’t believe this finally happened!" Jeric reached out and, as always, patted Sam on the shoulder, as he laughed. His hand was hard and strong, and it hit Sam’s shoulder like a boulder. There was joy in his voice.

Maybe the World Law wasn’t so bad, Jeric decided, as his mood swiftly shot upward to even better heights. The Guardian had fixed the problem the World Law had caused! The new class didn’t fix the history of what had happened before, but it definitely balanced the scales for the future.

Jeric and Sam spent a little while celebrating, but before long their attention was pulled back to the present. Jeric needed a little more time to familiarize himself with his new changes, but there was one that he could activate now.

Earth Vision.

As he did, a bright red glow began to spread from his eyes and the world of the cave sprang into sharp relief, in far more detail than had ever been possible with the torches or Sam’s light. Jeric laughed again as a wave of relief hit him.

Finally, he could see down here! There was a sting of pain from his ribs, reminding him that they weren't fully healed yet, but it was nothing compared to what had been there before.

With that, the two of them calmed down and their mood moved back towards planning. The real celebration of Jeric’s class would have to wait until they got home.

There was still the problem of getting out of the tunnels, and the gnomes might send more forces after them, so they weren’t in the clear yet, but it did look a lot more optimistic than it had before.

"Right, now for this gnome!" Jeric declared, as he reached out towards the marauder. "We can’t let that get away from us. It’s too important."

Jeric touched the marauder and pulled the massive thread of its experience toward himself.

The last notifications for his class change had just happened, and now a series of new ones appeared. Fortunately, the World Law chose to summarize this time, even as an enormous surge of energy hit him.

Ecstatic bubbles surged through his blood like champagne as he broke through to a higher level than he had ever been before. What he gained from the gnome was almost exactly 25% of the experience he’d had. The Guardian had been right. But that didn't matter, because the effect was far more than he had ever had.

You have gained 30,525 Class experience from battle.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have gained 16 levels.

You are now a Level 17 Earthen Marauder.

Experience to Next: 4,475.

You gain +1 STR and +1 Con per level. (+16 Str and +16 Con).

...

You are now General Level 17.

You have 32 free status points to assign.

It took quite a while for the notifications and clarion bells to fade away. Jeric just stared at it.

Then, slowly, he shook his head in disbelief.

He knew that he’d had enough experience to get up a way, but.... He’d thought it would never happen. He did the calculations in his head as he turned towards Sam, a smile breaking out on his face.

With that much experience..., it meant the marauder had been around Level 22.

"Sam," he said, as he looked at his son and laughed again. "...I am seriously considering going to that World Law church when we get back to the village."

Sam laughed as well, the sound of relief pouring out of him as he realized his father could still joke around. Jeric had many times promised to never step into that church.

"The one you said would make us fools if we trusted it?"

"That’s the one. If all of this really just happened, I might have to change my mind." Jeric’s thoughts were turning over in a tumult as his perspective of the world began to shift. It was true that the World Law didn’t care about them, but the Guardian had.

Now he just had to figure out how to get Sam home and keep him out of...prison?

Battlefield Reclaimer 23: Contract Mark

Jeric gave Sam a steady look as he considered the ramifications of everything he had just learned about this seal and the Guardian. There were still some things he needed to ask to make sense of all this. Sam hadn't told him everything yet.

"Wait..., Earth Vision is obvious," Sam interrupted, pulling Jeric's attention away from the more serious matter. "But what about the other abilities?"

Jeric’s eyes glowed with a bright red now, similar to the gnomes. He was able to see clearly in the darkness of the tunnels. He had just explained all the details of his new class to his son, but it wasn’t clear to Sam what the abilities did.

"Twin Hammers, Enhanced Physique, Earthen Shield, and Earth Sense." Jeric nodded, smiling as he let Sam’s enthusiasm pull him away from the real questions for a moment.

"Twin Hammers is the ability that let the marauder use those two hammers so easily at the same time," he added, thinking over the information he’d received about the class. His class had come with a lot more information on its skills and abilities than Sam’s.

Fortunately, Battlefield Reclaimer wasn’t broken for Sam any longer, and since it was a unique class, he didn't have to worry about Altey inheriting it from him. Only Sam had to deal with it.

Children didn’t always inherit their parents’ class, especially if the parents had wildly different ones. Altey could be a Historian like her mother, an Arcane Researcher, or something that hadn’t even existed in their family before. It was most likely that she would be some type of arcane class, given their history.

Aemilia's family had a strong line of Visionaries in it, which was a class similar to Seers, but they were more focused on long-distance sight and communication. There hadn't been one of them in the last generation, but...it was always possible it would reappear. He pulled his attention back to Sam's questions and his new class.

"Enhanced Physique is...well, you can see the difference," Jeric said, as he tapped himself on the chest. All of his muscles were well defined now.

"Earthen Shield is the one the marauder used to block the spells you cast at it, and it’s mostly good for that exact purpose. It can block other things too, but that is what it’s the best at."

Jeric rubbed at his beard thoughtfully as he considered the last ability.

"And Earth Sense...." He frowned. "That’s...basically a special awareness of what's around me while I'm underground or when I’m standing on the ground. It’s probably how the marauder spotted you so quickly. It should be useful in a fight for sensing what’s around me. I think dwarves have something similar, in a few of their classes."

Jeric waved the question away. He could think about it another day.

"There’s a chance for all of them to evolve into higher tiers," he finished. "But right now, we should talk about that mark on your hand."

Sam was too excited by the changes in his dad to be pulled back to that less pleasant topic so easily. As soon as he heard about Twin Hammers, an idea spun into his mind.

"I have two Auras of Basalt...," he spoke up suddenly. "And there are those two hammers from the gnome. I’ll see if I can enchant them for you."

"That would be helpful," Jeric agreed, but he wasn't so easily distracted, even by the idea of two new weapons. "Let’s block off the door and then we can talk about a few things."

Sam could only nod this time as he helped pull his dad to his feet. He tried to think of other delays, but nothing was coming to mind.

Jeric dusted his clothes off and rearranged the fragments of the rathide tunic, before he nodded. He felt pretty good. There were still those 32 free status points, but it only took him a few moments of thought to decide where to put them.

His base stats had changed with the new class and his entire focus was on physical strength now. That made it simple. After the Earth mana infusion, his Strength and Constitution started at 12. The levels had added 16 more automatically, putting both of them at 28.

With the free points, he added a dozen more to both Strength and Constitution, bringing them each to 40. He put the last eight into Agility.

He had been whipcord lean when he’d unlocked the class, but after gaining all that Strength and Constitution, the muscles across his body swelled with crushing force.

His physique changed to that of a powerful warrior, muscled in every part. He could also feel his skin hardening as it became denser. Much denser. Some of the silver streaks faded from his hair with the injection of vitality, making him look younger, perhaps in his mid-thirties.

His ribs itched as the new Constitution began to speed up his healing. The crack that was still in his hip did the same as it began to fuse together at an extremely quick pace. With a Constitution at 40, minor injuries wouldn’t last for more than a couple of days. Broken bones would fuse together in three or four, as long as they were set properly.

The infection from the rats was no longer something he needed to worry about. It was also unlikely their claws could do more than leave a white line on his skin. He pulled up his status sheet to check everything.

Jeric Hastern

Level: 17

Total Experience: 30,525.

Experience to Next: 4,475

Class: Earthen Marauder (Rare). Level 17.

Class Experience: 30,525.

Experience to Next: 4,475

Sub-Class: None.

Professions: None.

Race: Human

Health: 400

Aura: 10
Mana: 10

STR: 40

CON: 40

AGI: 18

WIS: 10

INT: 10

AUR: 10

CHA: 8

Racial Abilities: None.

Class Abilities: Twin Hammers (Ambidextrous), Enhanced Physique, Earthen Shield (Advanced), Earth Vision (Subterranean), Earth Sense.

It was definitely more than he’d ever expected to have. The Agility should be enough to deal with most things down here. His Agility had only been 10 before and the marauder hadn’t been that much faster than him.

With his Charisma so low, he probably looked wild and ferocious, something to scare children with to make them behave. That didn’t matter much, but it did remind him of a potential problem when they left the tunnels.

"Sam, make sure to bring your Charisma up a bit," he suggested. "I’ll probably be fine with 8, ...but you need a bit more there. People are going to react to your transformation, and it would help if they find it charming rather than shocking when they see you."

Hopefully, Sam could get a few more levels before they made it home, so they could smooth that out.

"Alright," Sam agreed easily, shrugging as he made a note to do something with it in the future. He could always add a few free points there later, ...once they weren’t nearly dying in every fight.

"Don’t forget," Jeric warned him, frowning. "You remember how much Outsiders startled you, before we came down into the ruins? No one will know your Race is an Outsider, not unless they have a Seer-type class, but your appearance fits with some legends of demons...and those are definitely an Outsider."

It was true. Outsiders were terrifying and if Sam had seen someone who looked like him before.... Well, he would have either run the other way or tried to kill it. He was still thinking of himself as human most of the time, but the villagers wouldn’t even know it was him, would they? As soon as someone saw him, they'd probably think he wanted to eat them.

"Don’t forget!" Jeric repeated. "Your mother and Altey are going to see you too. We don’t want to shock her too much. ...I still don’t know how to explain it to her."

"...Alright, dad," Sam sighed, as he gave in to the inevitable. He would have to save some points for it, and then maybe his appearance wouldn’t startle people. There were stories of good-looking demons out there, right?

The nice type?

Still, he didn’t have any points left right now, so it would have to wait until later. He pushed it to the back of his mind.

"Right, now let’s block that entrance," Jeric said, as he started to move towards the opening. He could see everything clearly now, including how badly constructed his deadfall was. He shook his head in disbelief as he curled and uncurled his hands, testing out the strength in his new muscles.

He could do better than that.

---

Sam and Jeric moved quickly to block the opening, piling it full of loose rocks and then sliding some larger chunks of stone behind it on their side, making it look like a cave in. There were still gaps for air in the walls, so there was no need to worry. They could always dig themselves out if needed.

The work proceeded quickly with Jeric’s new strength. He was able to move boulders like they were toys, and when a chunk of stone got in the way, one or two blows of his hammer shattered it to pieces.

Actually, that old hammer was starting to look a bit battered. Sam was going to have to do something about that. Whether it was his father’s new strength or the Twin Hammers ability, as soon as Jeric had a hammer in hand now, it blurred through the air.

If they’d tried this a few days before, it would have been much harder. Now, they didn’t have to worry so much about being trapped. They could always dig their way out in another direction.

It wasn't clear if the gnomes would come back with more forces, so they decided to take a couple of days to make sure they were at their best before facing them again. The blocked entrance would give them enough time to prepare if something came by.

Before then, Sam needed to work on some enchantments and they also needed to reconsider their tactics with Jeric's new class. After that, they’d make sure Sam got a few more levels on the way out.

A grim smile spread across Jeric’s face as he looked towards the basalt gnome nest. He had unfinished business there, both to pay back the monsters for almost killing him and to see what was on the other side.

Hopefully, that was the route to the surface. If not, they would have to explore the other direction and find a way over that chasm of lava.

---

When the opening was buried, Jeric turned toward Sam and gestured for them to both have a seat.

"Let me see your hand," he said, nodding towards the star that Sam had there now.

Sam had been hoping to avoid this conversation for a while longer. He hesitated, feeling conflicted, but eventually he forced himself to sit down and hold out his hand to his dad.

The World Law was apparently not what he’d always thought. He’d also nearly gotten himself thrown in prison for yelling at it.

If what the Guardian had said about Aster Fall being a seal were true and that the world would be destroyed if that seal broke.... Well, he understood why being Defiant could be a bad thing now. If you defied the World Law, you were sort of damaging the seal.

He had been trying to ignore all of that and what the star meant by focusing on his dad’s new class and the hope for the future. Now, it seemed like he couldn’t put it off any longer, so he let out a deep sigh, feeling defeated.

He was only 18, and his view of the world had been limited before this. All of these new realizations and the idea that he could somehow...fix or break the world...were not something comfortable for him.

All he’d ever wanted was to have a class that worked and to help his family. A clear path, a little bit of power, some friends to hang out with, and.... Well, spending some time with Nasya back in the village would have capped it off for him.

The excitement about his class and being able to enchant was wonderful, but he’d really only seen it as a quick path to money and success. And it was fun. Unfortunately, he was going to have to grow up a lot more quickly than he’d expected.

"It’s a nine-pointed star," he finally said, shaking his head as he showed the mark to his dad. He forced himself to think about what had happened as he explained more of it.

"It’s the mark that the Guardian left there. He said it was a contract."

Now that he had to remember it, the feeling of the nothing that he’d been trapped in came back to him, as well as the overwhelming pressure from the Guardian. That cold, authoritative voice of the World Law had resonated through all of reality. It had condemned him without even a trial.

Then, he'd had to promise the Guardian that he would protect the World Law. It was the price for healing his father and for saving his own life, so he was willing to do it. He’d do it again in an instant, ...but he still couldn’t bring himself to like it.

Not yet. Even if it weren't the one who caused the problem, it still hadn't tried to help. The Guardian had done that. His father was much more forgiving than he was.

"A contract mark?" Jeric asked, as he held Sam’s hand between his own and studied the star on the back. "Tell me everything."

Jeric’s hands were larger and stronger than they had been before. He’d even gained a few inches in height. With his new physique, he was an imposing presence, but still reassuring.

Sam was caught in the midst of his thoughts, as he struggled to make sense of everything in a way that he could accept. There were hard truths about life. Some were things he could change and others were things he could do nothing about.

The mark on his hand was one of the things he could do nothing about. The Guardian’s words came back to him. "I’ll offer you another choice...a temporary stay of your execution."

That was what this mark really represented. Death. The threat of imprisonment. A bit of hope.

"Let’s focus on the most important thing first," Jeric suggested, as he gave Sam a steady, serious look. He wanted direct answers this time, rather than the scattered bits Sam had mentioned before.

Slowly, Sam began to explain, from the beginning to the end, as his dad asked questions to pull out more.

"What is the threat you present?" Jeric asked, confused, before Sam had got to the end.

"Why did the Guardian help us? The World Law almost sent you to a prison. Why would he, or they, give you a way out?"

Jeric was confused as well. From his perspective, the idea that his son was dangerous to the world was...ridiculous. Sam wouldn’t even hurt a stray cat.

When Sam had mentioned the Guardian before, he’d just said that the person had saved them. He hadn’t given Jeric all of the details.

The more Jeric thought it over, the stranger this entire bargain seemed, both because the Guardian saw Sam as a threat and because he had then helped them. He wasn’t clear on what Sam could offer in return.

"He wanted my help," Sam replied, as he thought back to the details of their bargain. "It’s true that he could have been a lot worse to us."

Now that Sam had more time to think about it, the Guardian could have just killed him and solved the problem that way. It seemed he hadn’t wanted to do that. It would have been simpler. He should probably thank him, if he ever talked to him again.

"He wants me to work on the seal from the inside...," Sam explained, but he couldn’t say very much because he didn’t understand it himself.

"The contract mark is supposed to tell me what to do." He looked down towards the star on his hand. "The Guardian left information inside it."

"Can you access it?" Jeric asked, frowning.

Whatever help the Guardian wanted from Sam, it had to be worth the risk...and the effort he’d put into it. That meant that whatever Sam could offer, it was something very important.

On top of that, it sounded like the Guardian was dealing with something pretty serious when it came to this seal, and that he was willing to do whatever it took to protect it.

"Yes," Sam answered reluctantly, as his hand brushed across the top of the star. As soon as he did, a string of silver-starred notifications appeared, stretching out in his mind. They detailed the entire conversation he'd had with the Guardian, including a few things he’d forgotten. One by one, he read them to his dad.

When he got to the part about the seal being a death sentence and the Guardian offering a temporary stay of execution, Jeric interrupted.

"What?!" Jeric shouted, turning furious. No one was allowed to harm Sam! He didn’t care if it was the World Law or this Guardian. Jeric growled as he pulled himself back together and focused on the fact that Sam was still fine.

It seemed like the Guardian was the one helping, so he tried to think of a way to make it all sound better, so Sam wouldn’t worry about it too much. He would do the worrying for him.

"Don’t worry about it, son," Jeric said, as he wracked his brains for a way to make sure everything worked out. "What is life besides a temporary stay of execution anyway?"

Jeric shook his head. It was obvious the Guardian wanted to fix the problems with the World Law and the seal. He just couldn’t. That was why he’d asked Sam to be his servant instead, like his hands in the world. Perhaps saving Sam was all he could do.

At first, Jeric had only known that the Guardian had saved him, but now that Sam had explained the full story, it was clearly much more complicated than that.

"It sounds like this Guardian is...sort of like a town guard then, but the town is too big for him to manage." Jeric tried to put it all together as he mused. "Except that the town is all of Aster Fall, and it is...also a seal that is keeping a bunch of terrible things in a prison, or blocking them from entering it, apparently.

"We're stuck on that world, in the middle of it all, and somehow, you're able to do what the Guardian isn't, which is to fix the problems that occur here. Perhaps it has to do with those resources he mentioned, that it took to call him, or that you're on the world while he can't come in.

"Then there's the idea of these Outsiders.... From the way the World Law treated you, the Outsiders are a threat to the seal. If that matches with the legends that describe Outsiders as evil, and with what the Guardian said..., then the Outsiders might be the things inside the seal. There might even be other groups of them that are still trying to get into Aster Fall.

"When you threatened it, the World Law thought that you were like those Outsiders, so it summoned the Guardian to deal with you. That's why he came to fight you and put you in the prison." Jeric paused to think as the idea started to become clearer in his mind.

"That means the World Law is constantly on the watch for Outsiders in the world..., just like it was when we were in the ruins and it spoke to you. They must be a threat somehow, and that's what the Guardian wants your help to deal with. Perhaps he wants you to stop them from coming into the world, or to fix the flaws in the seal that allow them to enter.

"Instead of fighting you and throwing you into prison, though, he read your memories and found out that you didn't have any idea about all of this.... So, he let you off, if you agreed to help him do his job."

"It may not have been much of a choice...." Jeric shook his head as he thought about it. "But it was more than some people get and he also helped us out of a bad situation."

Life was not kind to people without power or influence. If the Guardian had been a normal guard..., he probably wouldn't have even asked a question before throwing Sam into that seal. Then, both he and his son would be dead.

The Guardian had been nicer to them than he needed to be, even if it raised questions about why he had treated Sam that way.

"In the end, he could have just killed you, but he didn't," Jeric concluded. His temper rose again at the thought of it, but he pushed it back down. Sam was fine.

"He gave you a way out, and perhaps he even went against the World Law for you to do it. He also told you exactly how important the job was, and that the world depended on it. That can only be because he saw something useful in you that would help him.

"That contract star..., it sounds like it will tell you what to do, whenever it decides to activate." Jeric frowned again as he looked down at the star on Sam's hand.

"I still don't understand everything about this seal, or how the world is part of it, but...if there is something threatening Aster Fall, then saving it is also good for us. It's just like when we work with the other villagers to protect the walls from beasts. It's something that we have to do together."

"The best thing to do now..., is to think of it as a job." Jeric summed it up as he looked steadily at Sam. He was trying to make all of this simpler for his son at the same time as he processed it for himself.

"It seems to me that you got hired as a town guard, even if it's a very junior one..., and that star is the sign of your status. As payment, the Guardian kept you out of that prison, gave me a new chance at life, and even gave you a subclass. That doesn't sound like a bad deal overall. We may not know the rest of what's going on, but I imagine that the star will tell you when the time is right."

"I still don't know how I can help with any of this," Sam protested. His head was tilted to the side as he considered his father's words. It was similar to what he had been thinking, but more complete in some areas.

"How could I possibly fix the seal if the Guardian can't? All he said was that it's related to my class and my race."

"I don't know either," Jeric replied as he shook his head. It was a lot to take in all at once, but whatever was going on with the world and this seal, and with all the other strange things that they’d both just learned about, one thing was very clear to him.

"But I do know one thing." Jeric looked steadily at his son as he made him a promise. "Whatever happens, I’m not going to let you do it alone."

Battlefield Reclaimer 24: Hammers of the Earth

Sam had murder on his mind as he looked at the two hammers in front of him.

That marauder had nearly killed his dad. He was going to make sure that when they faced the gnomes again, they were as strong as possible. It wasn’t going to be easy to deal with the monster nest, but they had to do it if they wanted to get home. Even if they just tried exploring the other direction, the gnomes could chase them.

They had to get stronger. They had barely been able to kill one marauder. What if there were more of them in there, or something even worse? Sam pushed the problem of the nine-pointed star off for another day as he focused on what he was good at.

Enchanting.

It was a new thing to be able to say that, but his class said he was an Enchanter and a Smith, so...he might as well decide to be good at it. He glanced at the star on his hand, just to make sure it was still quiet.

It wasn’t doing anything. The Guardian had said he needed to get stronger in order to help, so maybe it wouldn’t bother him for a while? He forced himself to ignore the star as he turned his attention to his new project.

His stylus hovered over the head of the first hammer as he debated what to do with it. The Aura of Basalt should be an Earth aura..., so it wasn’t too different from the spears he’d made before.

The shape of the hammers was going to require a different pattern though. He could put a spiral down the handle..., and runic braiding along the face of the hammer, with the bands near the ends....

After a minute, he switched out the stylus for a piece of chalk and began to experiment with designs. He only had the basic rune structures for spell scrolls, which seemed to work well enough for enchantments, but he had the feeling that he’d also lucked out with that. Or at least his class instincts had helped a lot.

The simple rune structures might be the same between scrolls and enchantments, or similar enough for it to work, but what about the more advanced ones?

There had to be other patterns out there for temporary and permanent enchantments, and maybe ones streamlined for different weapon shapes. There should be a way to control the outcome, to enhance or limit elemental effects, and so on....

It didn’t seem like the best idea to just slap a rune on one and go, but that was basically what he was doing. He wasn't sure what the result would be with anything he did.

He also didn't know what would work for him and what wouldn't. It was like how he was an Essence Scribe, not an Arcane Scribe. Those two professions sounded similar and it was working so far, but would it always?

He had the feeling that his version of Enchanting might be similar. Should he call himself an Essence Enchanter then, or an Aura Imbuer? He shook his head.

It was simpler to stick to the same word. It was also what his class used, but the difference in his skills was making him wonder how similar he was to the Enchanters who were already out there. The Guardian had saved him so he could work for it. That was linked to his class, and his class was unique.

Despite his plans to visit an Enchanters’ guild in the future, he had the feeling he might be spending a lot of time developing his own way to do things. Who knew if their ways would even work for him?

Especially at the more advanced stages. Still, he would get all of the information he could. Then he could experiment with it.

Sam’s chalk designs on the hammer gradually became more complex as the swirling bands of runes turned into a pattern that covered the surface. As he worked, crystal blue flames swirled around him and poured into the hammer, preparing it for the final enchantment as they removed flaws in the base material and attuned it to mana and aura.

Now and then, he’d have a new idea and draw it out, testing to see how it linked to the other runes around it. Sometimes, he would erase it and start over, and other times he would leave it and move on.

Every time he created a connection or a branch that wasn’t familiar to him, he could feel it settling into his memory. There were starting to be quite a few runic patterns there.

He was still using the basic support structure from spell scrolls, but it was becoming more ornate as he practiced. The tie-ins between the bands, the durability runes on the corners.... Sam hummed happily to himself as he continued to draw.

He connected two bands together and created a connection symbol that he thought would work. He studied it for a moment, then erased part of it and redrew it. It was similar to a rune he already knew, but it had two more branching points.

He didn’t notice the notification that popped up, telling him he’d learned a new rune, or the brief surge of experience that followed.

Time stretched out as he focused on the work.

---

The bright, silver chime of a notification popped up in Sam’s mind and little bubbles of delight hit his bloodstream, startling him into a pleasant awakening.

You have gained 250 class experience for creating a Basic Enchantment.

...

Congratulations, Defiant. You have gained a Level.

You are now a Level 8 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Experience to Next: 1500

You gain +1 Intelligence, +1 Aura, and have one free status point to assign.

The chime faded away in a musical cascade. For a moment, Sam blinked, his mind still focused on his work, as he wondered why the World Law sounded happy. Then he wondered why he was thinking that.

It was true though. He hadn’t put it together until now, but the World Law definitely sounded more cheerful in its notifications when he got a level. Maybe it liked people leveling.

That raised questions about the world and the seal, and why it would like leveling, but Sam shook his head as he cleared it of random thoughts.

The design for the first hammer was mostly done. He just needed to add the center runes now. The experience notification was unexpected, since he’d only finished the basic support structure for the hammer. He hadn’t thought he would get a notification until it was done.

It had to be because the hammer’s design was the most complicated thing he’d made so far. He’d spent quite a while working on this one, reforming the support structure several times until it felt right. It also looked a lot better than the early draft he’d started with.

The runic pattern swept across the surface of the hammer in thick bands that followed the edges, leaving the face on each side open for the focus runes. At the corners, there were ornate swirls of transfer and durability runes.

A spiral pattern swept down the handle and connected it to the head, binding it all together. For the final touches, on the empty face on each side of the hammer, he added an Earth focus rune.

The one on the bottom was the most complicated, since he had to work around the handle, but he managed it. A final Earth rune went on the butt of the handle itself, on the flat end, which was where the swirling design ended.

There were seven Earth runes in total now. That was a lot of focusing power, and when he imbued it with an Earth-aligned aura and that Earth mana.

If it went as he predicted, this hammer would be even stronger than the spears. Sam grinned as he thought about it. The hammer almost looked like something a dwarf would make!

Even if that was a bit too large of a compliment to himself.

Dwarves were superb craftsmen and the duration of their apprenticeships was legendary. Sam had only ever seen one dwarven-worked item in his life. It was a dagger in the hands of a travelling merchant.

The fellow had been down on his luck and tried to sell it in the village, and then been laughed out of it again. No one there could afford something like that. Still, it had stuck in Sam’s memory as the most beautifully crafted item he had ever seen.

The hammer wasn’t that handsome, but it was pretty good. Sam hummed again as he switched to his stylus and began to engrave the lines properly, now that the design was finished.

Enchanting was relaxing. For the last few hours, he’d been able to forget all about the star on his hand and the difficulty of getting home.

While he was working on the hammer, his dad was busy reconstructing the deadfall, turning it into a much more complicated and efficient device. It looked like he was trying to make two thin support pillars for it, rather than the spears. These would have to be knocked out with a hammer, instead.

But that.... The old hammer blurred in Jeric’s hand as it slammed into a boulder, reducing it to fragments. ...wasn’t going to be a problem.

---

Engraving the lines on the hammer took Sam a couple of hours, as he used the stylus to etch them more deeply into the surface than he had for the spears. He had to infuse the tool with a bit of his essence, until it glowed with a crystal blue flame, but then it cut right into the stone.

The hammer was made of the same dark basalt as the daggers and spear points that the gnomes used, or maybe a variant of it. It was heavy, smooth, and had black highlights with a nearly invisible grain. It was extremely heavy and looked almost like metal.

Now that he’d reached the final step, Sam let out a slow breath as he pulled out the first Aura of Basalt. The misty grey sphere undulated in his hand, rippling with a slow movement like waves as the taste of stone filled his mind.

Sam bit his lip as he slowly brought the aura closer, until it was just touching the runic lines. He could feel a drawing sensation from the runes as it got closer. Grey wisps of energy began to rise off of the aura and flowed down towards the hammer.

Slowly, as if he were painting the runes, he began to imbue them with the aura, drawing the sphere across the surface as he traced the lines. Bit by bit, the sphere in his hand shrank as wisps flowed off of it and entered the runes.

The hammer wasn’t that large, but it did have a lot of runework on it. The sphere made it through about sixty percent of the hammer before it finally dissipated. He switched to his stylus and went to gather Earth mana from the pool.

He was thinking more about the connection between elements, and this particular item was much too obvious in that regard. He hoped the combination of a stone base, Earth mana, and multiple Earth runes worked out, but he wasn't sure what the result would be.

As he moved towards the mana pool, he paused, remembering that he’d earned a level earlier and had a free point still. That level had brought him up to 23 in both Intelligence and Aura. He needed to decide what to do with the free one,.

His dad had told him to focus on Charisma a bit, but there were so many other things he needed to do. They still hadn’t fought the gnomes. He sent his dad a stealthy look as he stuck the point into Constitution.

They might get injured and his regeneration was still terrible. He had to be able to recover. There would be plenty of time for Charisma later. It wasn't like they were going to meet anyone down here.

He pushed it out of his mind as he turned his attention back to his work. Over the course of the preparation, he’d already infused close to thirty points of his Aura into the hammer, and he continued to do so as he returned to it.

It took another couple of hours to finish imbuing the lines with mana. The mix of misty grey aura and silver-white mana swirled across the surface of the hammer, filling the runic structure. With a careful flick, Sam’s stylus connected the final line and activated the runes. Instantly, the runic bands began to surge as the energies inside reacted.

Connecting the runes was like injecting lightning into them. One by one, the aura and mana swelled inside the lines, increasing in brightness as their strength was unleashed.

Waves of almost liquid energy washed through the runes as the misty grey aura began to grow. It surged upwards, expanding as it consumed the mana. At first, it was just the edge of the silver-white mana that grew darker, and then it was a finger’s width.

The brilliant Earth mana was swiftly consumed as the Aura of Basalt spread across the surface of the hammer, spiraling down the handle. The seven focus runes lit up, one by one, with a deep, resonant thhrrummm as the aura hit them. It was an almost happy sound.

Each of the runes created a note that was just a touch different than the others around it, like voices in different octaves as they sang together in a chorus.

THHrrRRRuuuuUUUUmmMMM.

The misty grey light surged upwards as the entire hammer let out a deep song. A brilliant silver chime sang in Sam’s mind at the same time, resonating with the hammer, as information on it appeared.

Hammer of Seven Earths.

[Enchantment of Seven Earths: Adds Aura-Based Elemental Damage (Earth, Basic) to Attacks. Adds +2 Con and +2 Str to Wielder. Estimated Duration: 4 Months.

Added Effect: Song of Seven Earths.

Repeated blows of this hammer against a hard surface will add increasing resonance as the hammer sings, stacking minor sonic damage over time.]

The notification faded away, replaced by the shimmering chime of experience.

You have created an Enchanted Item (Basic).

You gain 400 Class experience.

As this item has an Added Effect, you receive bonus experience.

You gain 100 Class experience.

Experience to Next: 1,000.

The chime of Enchanter rising to Level 8 sounded in his mind, but it wasn’t too important. Sam focused on the hammer he’d just made, lifting it off the stone table as he examined it. His eyes were wide.

He’d expected something to happen when he lined up that much Earth affinity, but this was awesome. Now, whenever his dad hit something with it..., and the more he hit it..., the more damage he would do.

He wondered if the effect would help with digging through the walls..., but increasing the vibrations in a stone wall could cause all sorts of trouble, so he pushed the idea aside.

Anyway, it was great!

"Dad!" Sam shouted as he held it up, eager to show it off. "I made you a new hammer!"

Jeric looked over from the deadfall, where his bulging muscles were shining with sweat. His red eyes glowed in the cave as a smile broke out across his face.

---

"Sam, I think you should accept that subclass," Jeric announced, as he walked over to where Sam was working on the second hammer.

The deadfall was coming along well as he rebuilt it, and he’d been thinking about the topic for a while, ever since Sam told him what had happened.

After giving him the first hammer, Sam had remembered to tell him about getting the subclass, and how the Guardian had said he’d already proved it in battle. The fact that he’d gotten experience for using his crystal flame on the gnomes....

Jeric shook his head in disbelief. Sam didn’t know how lucky he was that using his Aura of Crystal Flame in battle added to his class experience. It solved one of the major dilemmas that people faced in the world, which was how to get experience for their main class for everything they did.

Since Sam could use his Enchanting skills in battle to accomplish that, ...it was going to make things a lot easier for him.

Normally, combat classes leveled the fastest and were the highest level of all, as long as they were willing to fight constantly. Crafting also gave experience, and it was safer, but it was a slower trickle over time, even if it was very reliable.

The problem was that not everyone had a class and profession combination that worked well. For example, if a Warrior wanted to subclass as a Smith and spend his time on that instead..., his general level would increase, but he'd never level his main class, and that meant he would never Evolve.

Or if a Smith wanted to fight instead of crafting, he could subclass as a Warrior, and he would get the abilities for it, but all the experience from battle would only go to his general level. His Smith class wouldn't get any of it.

Most people planned for their entire lives, or had their families plan it for them, just to line up everything to maximize class experience and push them toward higher Evolutions. It was easier for combat classes, but not everyone wanted to fight all the time to Evolve.

Before this, they hadn’t been sure how to use combat experience to level Sam’s class, but it seemed taking Aura of Crystal Flames had brought everything together.

A Racial Class Ability.... Apparently, it allowed his racial traits to count as part of his class, in terms of experience gain. Now, Sam could just use his crystal flame in battle and get experience for Battlefield Reclaimer.

"Scion of the Crystal Flame," Jeric repeated the name again, slowly, thinking about what it could be as he waited for Sam to notice that he'd come over. His son was working on the second hammer, adding another series of intricate runic swirls to it, and Jeric just shook his head.

He'd taught Sam some of that, but...the connections he was making between those runes were already beyond what he'd given him. Eventually, Jeric coughed, which got Sam to look up from the hammer.

"I’m proud of you for waiting to take the subclass, Sam," Jeric announced, "and for talking it out with me. But I think you should take it."

Subclasses were extremely important, and it was nearly impossible to change them once selected. You only got a chance to do that during an Evolution. Still, he’d given the matter a lot of thought, and he didn’t think there was anything else available to Sam.

"Right now, especially, you and I both need to select our subclasses before we hit 20," Jeric added.

It was extremely important to do that, since a subclass couldn't level on its own. If he had it now, when he hit 20, he would get the option to upgrade one ability from Basic to Advanced. If he missed it, or added the subclass after 20, there was no way to get that opportunity back.

That was why he wanted Sam to take the class and also why he needed to choose something for himself. He was just stuck on what he should take.

He didn't have a lot of options right now, since all of his old proficiencies and professions had been wiped away. He'd gotten a few from working on the deadfall and such, like Miner, but that one wasn't something that interested him. He needed something that would help out Sam and their family.

Maybe...Merchant?

He frowned as he thought about it. If Sam was going to be a craftsman, he needed someone to sell his products, and it could help support them all. Merchant was also a very easy subclass to take, and popular throughout the world.

Its paths were well known. He had a combat main class now, and one of the oddities of Merchant made it work well with that combination.

If he won a negotiation or persuaded someone to trade with him..., some of that experience would go to his class for it. He wasn't sure what it would be for Earthen Marauder, but it should be around 20%.

There were other subclasses he would have considered, if he weren't so limited by the current surroundings, but right now, that one might be the best to get. One of a Merchant's abilities was Persuade. That could be important to convince the villagers that Sam's current appearance was not something to worry about.

Healing would have been nice too. Healers were always in demand and it would secure their family's place in the village, or even in the city, but there was no chance of getting that subclass down here.

To do that, he would have to demonstrate some type of proficiency with magical healing first. That was the basic requirement to set it as a subclass.

If a subclass had a crafting focus, you also needed to set it as a profession, like Enchanter for Sam.... Otherwise, you wouldn't get profession experience for it and it would be hard to get the skills past Basic.

He could try to be an Illusionist perhaps, to hide Sam's appearance...? Jeric pushed the thoughts away as he looked at what his son was making. He didn't know how to get that either. There were only so many options.

Sam was staring at the hammer again, probably planning his next step, so he patted him on the shoulder to get his attention.

"Oh, right...," Sam struggled to pull himself away from the hammer to focus on what his dad was saying. The runic lines were swirling through his mind like dragons curling through the clouds. It was...nice.

"You remember how a subclass works?" Jeric prompted him, calling him back to the present. "This one should be connected to your Aura of the Crystal Flame, right?"

"I think so, but I still don’t know what it does," Sam protested, as he gave his dad his full attention.

Sam was trying to be prudent when it came to the subclass, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to wait any longer. He wanted to find out. Sam’s attention wandered away again, as the name of the subclass resonated in his mind.

Scion of the Crystal Flame.

His mind traveled down a very cool path filled with explosive blue energy and lots...and lots...of dead monsters. He was not going to forgive them for hurting his dad.

---

Meanwhile, in a not-too-distant part of the tunnels...

"Ugh!" The wizardess grumbled as she peeled a chunk of tunnel boar off of her arm. "I can't stand tunnel boars. Disgusting things."

Ayala and Krana exchanged a look, but then wisely decided to keep their silence. The wizardess was the one who had just blown the tunnel boar apart with a Kinetic Force spell. It was her own fault.

As soon as Ayala had noticed what the woman was casting, she ducked behind one of the guards, which blocked most of the spray. Krana, on the other hand, just summoned a bright yellow shield in front of herself as she shook her head. The chunks of the boar splattered against it.

The dwarf muttered something to herself that sounded like "A darned shame," but only Ayala and the guard were close enough to hear. The wizardess had already continued forward.

In Krana's opinion, it was just wasteful to blow apart a tunnel boar like that. It was much better to eat them. The wizardess probably wouldn't have waited for her to cook it. The last week of moving through the tunnels had only made her more irritated than she had been at first. The Earth mana pool was still clear and bright in Krana's senses.

It wasn't very far away at all.

In the beginning, she'd sensed it in a straight line and hadn't thought it would take them too long to get here, but the impression had been a bit deceptive. These tunnels wound around a lot and it was taking them a while to close the distance.

"It's just ahead of us now." She smiled as she reassured Ayala that it was still there. "Let me lead the way."

Krana moved past the wizardess and took the lead again, her eyes bright. A pool of Earth mana.... It was practically a legend. Even if you were able to find a location where such a sacred thing could form, it took almost a thousand years to get enough to fill a cup.

Krana shook her head as she thought about it. She had never heard of a class that required bathing in the stuff, like Ayala's did, but she knew one thing for sure. After coming into contact with a substance like that, no one would ever be the same.

She was very much looking forward to her friend's transformation.

Ayala came up to walk with her, towering head and shoulders over the dwarf.

"Ismela is just angry because she's not the one leading," Ayala laughed as she whispered in Krana's ear. "The guards are a bit happier though. They've picked up a level already, and that's on top of their pay, so they're in no real rush. I know you'll find it."

"Tunnels take time," Krana said as reached up and patted her friend on the shoulder. "There's no point in rushing the Earth. If you do, you only end up stumbling over your own feet." The dwarf was the most relaxed of them all.

"You have to respect her," Krana added, smiling up at Ayala. "If you do, you never know what you may find the next time you go into a mine. You might even hear her sing."

The two friends fell silent for a while as the party of five continued on.

"You'll see, when you get your class," Krana added. The powers of her Earth Seer class activated as her eyes turned silver. Her expression was distant and thoughtful.

"I get the feeling that once we find the pool, nothing will ever be the same."

Battlefield Reclaimer 25: Scion of the Crystal Flame

"Scion of the Crystal Flame," Sam murmured to himself as he thought about the subclass the Guardian had left for him. It had been on his mind constantly, in between working on the hammers.

His father was standing by his shoulder, waiting for him to accept it. There was a sense of building excitement as he thought about the subclass and what it could be. The name was a hint, of course, but...what exactly had the Guardian created?

Taking a subclass was a serious decision, but there didn’t seem to be a better one available to him right now. It wasn't like he wanted to be a Guard.

He could subclass as a Wizard, but the basic abilities for a Wizard were worse than what he already had. It wouldn't give him any new spells to use in battle, just basic class abilities for mana use and meditation.

Meditation as an ability could be useful, but the skill for it was nearly the same and he already had that. Only a more specialized Wizard class would have worked as a subclass, and he didn't have access to one. Sam shook his head.

Did he have the qualifications to question the Guardian's choice for his subclass anyway? Now that his dad approved, the last bit of hesitation in Sam’s mind disappeared.

He glanced toward the nine-pointed star on his hand. Then he focused on the notification that was still waiting for him. It appeared again, an ornate notification with silver stars burning at the corners. He had never seen a notification like it.

As for how the Guardian was able to influence the World Law and create a notification..., he didn’t know, but the two were definitely connected.

There were a lot of things he still needed to figure out, including why his class was so important to the Guardian. The Guardian had said it wasn’t the World Law’s fault that his class was broken before this..., that it had something to do with Outsiders interfering with it.

Sam frowned as he recalled that detail. Perhaps the Guardian had wanted him to forgive the World Law, but he didn’t have enough information to change his mind so quickly. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind as the notification floated in front of him. Then he did what he had wanted to do ever since it popped up. He accepted it.

The starry notification transformed, rippling in a cascade of celestial light. That strange whirlwind of the World Law’s force appeared again. It was the same vast energy that had infused Sam when he accepted his class, but this time he could feel it better, as if he were more in tune with it.

An enormous amount of energy gathered as it began to swirl around his body. It was half there and half illusory, and he could feel traces of both mana and aura in it, as well as something else. It was almost like essence, but much more refined.

This was the World Law’s energy, the power that infused all of Aster Fall. The whirlwind gathered more intensely, focusing on him as its speed increased. At the same time, the notification demanded his attention.

A pure, crystal chime rang out, like the peal of a star being born. The energy wrapped around him, hugging him tight.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have discovered a Unique Subclass.

You are now The Scion of the Crystal Flame.

This Subclass grants you the following Abilities: Crystal Focus, Flame Strike, Essence Shield, Combust Aura.

As a Subclass, The Scion of the Crystal Flame grants no additional experience or status points, nor does it have a level of its own.

All experience earned from the subclass will be directed to your Class or General experience, as appropriate.

You may select one Subclass Ability to advance at each Tier of your primary Class (Levels 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100).

Your Subclass cannot be altered until your First Evolution. At that time, it may be replaced with another.

Unique Bonus: As this is a Unique Subclass, you may choose to Evolve it at the same time as your primary Class, if you meet all the necessary requirements.

And then the notification faded away, replaced by the swelling power of the World Law as it intensified. The force increased until it felt strong enough to obliterate him. Inside the energy, he could sense the World Law’s intent, including a thread of that distant awareness that had spoken to him before.

This time, however, it was helping him.

He could feel it scanning his body and soul. It was almost as if the World Law were sensing what he was and making a plan for how to alter him. It hung there for a moment, wrapping him in layer after layer of energy. The energy began to intensify, the layers turning liquid under the pressure.

ThrummmmmMMM....

ShHHuuuuUUUuusSHHHH.

The World Law commanded and all of that energy suddenly swept into Sam’s body. He felt like he was at the bottom of a whirlpool as a massive amount of energy poured into him, changing him from the inside out.

The world’s force infused into every part of his body, wrapping around the Outsider transformation and...

TooooOOOnnnnNNgg....

There was a clear, bright noise, like a gong ringing in his mind as the sound rippled through him. He hadn’t been sure what the subclass would do, but as that sound rang out, he suddenly felt...as if the world were a slightly better place.

It was a hopeful sound.

The world’s energy combined with the Outsider transformation that had infused him, ...and completed it. The two strands wrapped together to make something unique.

Then all of those thoughts were driven out of his mind as the energy swirled into parts again and fused into him, incorporating the unique signatures of new abilities. He could feel knowledge and capabilities entering his mind, all of them centered around his Aura of Crystal Flame.

The flames throughout his body had been easy to control ever since he'd accepted that Racial Class Ability. They were an innate talent. But, suddenly, he knew how to use them better than before, as if his understanding had advanced by an immeasurable amount.

Jeric, who was watching closely, had to step back and shield his eyes as the cave around Sam exploded into crystal blue flames. Waves of flame surged toward the roof of the cavern and then outwards, crashing against the walls.

Somehow, it avoided burning anything, but at the same time it was everywhere.

ShuuUUUUshhhhShh...

ShuuuSHHSHSHHHhhhh.

There was only flame. Sam’s eyes were a radiant, crystal blue at the center, but nothing else was visible.

The ocean of crystal flames roared through the cave and swirled with a hurricane’s force before they all suddenly gathered together and poured back into Sam’s body, revealing him again.

All around them, the cavern returned to peaceful silence. Sam let out a deep breath, exhaling a stream of blue flame that faded away into the world.

---

"That...," Jeric mumbled as he pulled his arm away from his face and stared at his son, "was not a normal subclass."

Sam looked down at himself, checking to see if anything was different, but as far as he could tell, he looked exactly the same. Not even his clothes were burned.

In his mind, there were four new abilities, each of them represented by a distinct blue flame. This time, there was a little information for each of them, which was more than he usually received from his class. He stood there for quite a while, his eyes unfocused as he looked inward, until his dad came over.

"So, what did you get?" Jeric asked, with some concern in his voice, as he patted him on the shoulder. "Something helpful?"

Thankfully, all of the flames had gone out, and Sam’s skin was only radiating the low heat that it always did now. His dad sounded curious and worried, as if something strange had happened, but Sam wasn’t sure why.

"Crystal Focus..., Flame Strike..., Essence Shield..., and Combust Aura," he murmured in response. As he touched each of the flames, he tried to wrap his mind around what the subclass was all about.

"Are they useful?" Jeric prompted, waiting for Sam to fill in more details. At the same time, he let out a deep breath, since it seemed Sam was alright. "That sounds something like a specialized battle wizard might have, but half of it is strange. Hopefully it’ll help us deal with those gnomes."

"It’s...a consolidation of what I was starting to do with the Aura of Crystal Flame, but better," Sam answered. "The Guardian must have taken that idea and built the whole subclass around it."

Two of the abilities were very similar to what he’d tried against the gnomes, but more refined.

"Like that flame attack you used?" Jeric asked, pushing for more information as he studied Sam.

"Yes, Flame Strike and Essence Shield are similar to the attack and crystal flame shield I used before...," Sam agreed slowly as he finished looking through the abilities.

"But these are much more complete," he added, as a grin started to spread across his face. "They’re also more efficient on mana and aura."

His aura was able to use either energy, but it would be better if he used them together. That was how essence worked.

"Crystal Focus is...a lot like your Earth Sense, I think," Sam explained as he turned his attention to the third ability. "It enhances my awareness within a certain radius. I think it’s about twenty feet around me right now."

Jeric nodded in approval. He was already benefiting quite a bit from his Earth Sense. It had been helping him out as he rebuilt the deadfall and scanned for enemies outside. He could sense if anything was moving on the opposite side.

"Good!" Jeric said. "Sensory abilities are important, and they can be useful for crafting too."

Sam nodded. He had already been using his flames to sense things inside the hammers as he enchanted them.

"I think I might be able to upgrade it later to increase the range," he added thoughtfully, as he turned his attention to the last ability, Combust Aura.

His ears perked up as he studied it, and he grinned, feeling like a little kid who had just gotten into a candy bowl. The Guardian had improved his strike and shield, making them official..., but this one was the best.

Sam rubbed his hands together and his short talons clicked as they struck little flames from each other in passing. With his transformation, his grin this time was definitely shading a bit more towards evil.

"The last one lets me burn an aura I’ve collected and convert it into either mana or aura."

"Good!" Jeric laughed as he patted Sam on the shoulder. "It sounds like the Guardian turned the Aura of Crystal Flames into a proper combat class. That is exactly what you needed."

Jeric pushed the strange scenario with the flames out of his mind, since he didn’t know what was going on with them. He was just happy that the subclass had worked out. Sam was fine, and that was enough.

Sam looked up with a grin of his own, as he pulled himself together. If he’d had this subclass earlier, these abilities would have been helpful against the marauder. His dad wouldn’t have been injured so badly.

There was another idea running through his mind as he studied the abilities too, but it was both troublesome and promising. On the one hand, maybe working for the Guardian wouldn’t be so bad? On the other hand, by giving him a combat class....

Well, how much fighting did he expect him to do, exactly?

"Alright, let’s get back to work." Jeric was cheerful as he patted Sam on the shoulder again. "We can see about those gnomes once we finish up here."

Sam nodded in agreement, as the new abilities floated through his mind. They were definitely going to be useful. The Guardian hadn’t harmed him with the subclass, which made him feel better disposed towards him, but what did he want him to do to fix the seal, exactly?

That question would have to wait until the star notified him. Sam gave the abilities a last look before he returned to his work table. The second hammer was waiting for him.

As he leaned forward, crystal flames burned softly around him, sometimes moving in intricate swirls, like a phoenix flying through the air.

One that had just been born.

---

It took Sam the better part of the day to finish the second hammer. He infused it with as much aura as possible from the second Aura of Basalt and then finished the runic lines with mana from the Earth pool.

This one was an almost exact copy of the first, only the color was slightly darker. When he finally connected the last runic line, it snapped into place with a soft click.

The energy in the runes surged as the Aura of Basalt began to consume the mana around it. Sam watched intently, tracing the progress of the aura, as he looked for insight. The more he could understand this process, the more it would help him in the future, especially when he didn’t have the mana pool around.

Liquified mana was not common in the world. He wasn't sure exactly how rare it was, but he knew that much. He wasn’t sure what he would be able to use to replace this once they got back to the village.

He might have to spend a lot longer infusing enchantments with his own mana, until the runes were at a similar level.

The misty grey light of the aura swelled as it consumed the mana. It entered the first Earth focus rune, and then the next....

ThrummMMmmMmm.

HhmmUUUmmMMMm.

Just like the first one, the hammer began to sing, its notes low and vibrant as if it were rejoicing to be born. An instant later, Seven Earth runes sang in harmony, and a prompt appeared in his mind.

Hammer of Seven Earths (Basic).

Enchantment of Seven Earths: Adds Aura-Based Elemental Damage (Earth, Basic) to Attacks. Adds +2 Con and +2 Str to Wielder. Estimated Duration: 4.5 Months.

Added Effect: Song of Seven Earths. Repeated blows of this hammer against a hard surface will add increasing resonance as the hammer sings, stacking minor sonic damage over time.

The hammer glowed with the force of the enchantment, its hum subsiding as the runes powered back down. He hadn’t been sure if it would work the same as the first one. Fortunately, it did.

It also proved that the enchantment pattern was stable and could be placed on other items. Or at least on other stone hammers. He wasn’t sure if it would function the same way if he put it on a steel sword.

The spears had been his first enchantments, but in a very important way, he felt more connected to these hammers, as if they were the first real creations he had ever made.

This enchantment was unique and it was his.

A silver chime of experience rang in his mind as a thousand joyful bubbles of delight hit his spirit, swirling through him with an effect that did a lot to boost his mood.

Congratulations, Defiant. You have crafted an Enchanted Item with an Added Effect.

You gain 500 Class experience.

...

You have gained a General Level.

You are now Level 10.

Experience to Next: 2,000.

You have two free status points to assign.

At the same time, Battlefield Reclaimer jumped upwards, very close to Level 9. He only needed another 500 experience to get it there. Unfortunately, he didn’t have another aura to make a third hammer, and he was also starting to get restless thinking about the gnomes.

The two free status points were important to their upcoming battle, so he only thought about it for a moment. He put them into Aura and Intelligence, keeping his essence balanced. It brought him up to 24 in each.

He was an Enchanter and a battle wizard of sorts now, so he needed to make sure he had the energy to use his skills. Combust Aura was going to be a big help in the future, but he didn’t have any stored auras left.

As he looked up from the worktable, he noticed his father was heading his way. Did his new class still have the same ability with Mana Control? He knew some of his father's skills had changed, but he didn't know all of the details. If needed, he would help him relearn it.

Melee classes used Stamina most of the time, which was a force that arose from their combined Strength and Constitution, but for enchanted items, they still needed mana.

"Dad, your other hammer’s ready!" he called out with a grin. He liked the sense of progress from creating things and showing them to his dad.

As he thought about the hammer and the future, he decided to voice a question that had been on his mind. He had a subclass now, but his dad still needed one.

Jeric had told him about his idea to take Merchant, and it seemed like a good idea, but he didn't know much about it. He knew they focused on persuasion and buying and selling things, but he wasn't clear on the exact abilities they got.

"Dad, what abilities does a Merchant subclass get?"

---

"Hmm," Jeric hummed thoughtfully as he walked over to Sam and looked down at the second hammer. This hammer looked even more refined than the last. His son was becoming more mysterious with his enchantments and Jeric wasn't sure where it was all coming from.

Was Sam teaching himself these new patterns?

"The basic abilities are usually Assess Item, Persuade, and Sacred Trade," Jeric answered the question as he considered his subclass choices. He had to choose soon and he hadn’t come up with anything better yet.

"Sometimes there’s another ability or two as well. Merchant is a common class, but it has a lot of variants," he added. "When we say ‘Merchant’, we’re actually referring to the entire group at once. Some of the variants are Trader, Shop Owner, Negotiator, Factor...."

"Sacred Trade?" Sam asked, interrupting the list. His eyes were fixed on Jeric. He didn’t seem to realize it, but there was an aura of crystal flame swirling all around his body, looping here and there.

Fortunately, it wasn’t burning anything.

"It’s a contract watched over by the World Law," Jeric answered as he ignored the flames. He was getting used to doing that.

"If you break it, the World Law judges what you’ve done and penalizes you by taking some of your experience away. It’s one of the only ways to lose experience in the world, and it’s a very well-known skill. Nearly every important deal is made with it."

Jeric rubbed his beard as he thought about the subclass again. He was feeling a lot of pressure to just take it. Their battle against the gnomes was coming up and if he hit 20 during it, it would be a huge waste to not have a subclass.

Merchant was also the best bet for helping their family out...at least that he could come up with here. Sam could make the items and he could sell them.

Now that he had a class that actually worked...risk and reward in the world came hand in hand, and let out a soft sigh of admiration. It was something he'd never had before and had always wanted.

Before, it had only been risk. He’d never had the ability to grow stronger by leveling his class, nor to get the abilities associated with a class. Now that the barrier was removed, he felt an incredible sense of drive pushing him forward.

He was going to make a better life for all of them.

The Merchant subclass would help with that, and it might also help with protecting Sam and shielding him from negative attention.... Merchants had persuasive abilities, and no matter where you were, money always talked.

He nodded to himself as he decided to go for it.

"Wait right there for a moment, Sam," he said as he turned back towards the mana pool. "I'll be back for the hammer."

He knew a few basic ways to get a Merchant profession. At the same time as he was offered the profession, he could set it as a subclass. One of the easiest ways to get it was to complete a high-value transaction.

He’d told Sam the mana pool here was like liquid gold..., would it work to try and trade some of it for the hammer?

Battlefield Reclaimer 26: Trader of the Earth

Jeric headed towards the silver-white glow of the Earth mana pool as his idea for how to get the Merchant subclass ran through his mind. His idea to trade it for the hammer should work, but you couldn't always predict how things would go.

One of the most basic ways to get the Merchant profession was to complete a high-value transaction. Additionally, he also had to try and be a good merchant if he wanted to get it, which meant trying his best to be persuasive.

The more he could use the skills associated with the class, the better his success would be. Assess Item, Persuade, and Sacred Trade.... He nodded as he put it all together and the plan solidified. As soon as it was offered as a profession, he would set it as his subclass.

It should work. Even if he felt like a bear in a spice shop when it came to being persuasive. With his new build, it was more likely that he’d intimidate customers into buying things, but perhaps that was a form of persuasion too.

He stopped next to the mana pool and looked down into it, his thoughts tumbling over what this mana pool really meant as he tried to get himself into the right frame of mind.

What was its value to him? In many ways, it was the source of his new class. It had been this liquid energy from the Earth itself that had infused his body and made it possible for him to step into this new life.

It was a liquid of change, of hope...

He sank into a trance as he stared at it, communing with the source of the power that had transformed his body.

What was the pool to the Earth...? Was it a grace it offered to the world? He felt his thoughts changing as the silver-white aura of the Earth mana radiated around him.

A sense of peace and silent weight came over him. He knelt down by the side of the pool, slowly scooping up a handful of the brilliant liquid, letting it roll around in his palm. He had no fear of this mana any more. It was part of the Earth and it had changed him. It wouldn’t harm him.

As an Earthen Marauder, the Earth was his mother, or at least a goddess who had blessed him.

The mana was hot and intense in his hand, but also relaxing, its energy seeping into him like a sun-warmed rock. Light, silvery wisps rose off its surface, radiating away into the world as a tiny fraction of the power contained in it evaporated.

As the mana burned there in his hand, he was overcome by a sense of something holy....

The mana was liquid hope, power that rose from the deep earth and rolled through the world as it gathered strength, rising into the crushing force of the mountains and falling again into the silent depths, something offered to the people of the world, if they could only find it.

Why would the Earth offer it to the world, if not to help?

This pool was sacred. It was the concentrated blessing of the Earth itself.

He had intended to only imagine the mana as valuable, but now that he was holding it, he realized that he had vastly underestimated the meaning of this pool. It was far beyond what he had thought.

The bit of meditation he had just done on it had helped him to see that. His new class had changed him, as well as his perception of the world. Was this his Sense Earth ability bringing him into touch with the Earth's mana?

Jeric shook his head in wonder as he slowly stood up, cradling the mana in his palm as he carried it towards his son. He wanted to get the subclass, which meant that he had to trade the mana, but he was almost reluctant to part with it now. It was a pleasant existence against his hand.

Was this mana even rarer than he had thought? It felt incredibly precious to him.

The idea of a trade had been a game at first, but now it felt as if he were actually trading away a part of the Earth itself, as if it were something to be protected. To be respected, and never something to joke about.

His face became calmer, and much more serious, as he looked towards the hammer Sam was holding out and tried to assess its value.

First, its base. It was a dark basalt hammer, made of strong stone. That was also part of the Earth. It was a solid material, and one of value to him personally, which added intrinsic worth. The hammer would help him bring out the best of his class.

Then there was the enchantment that Sam had just added. The pattern he had inlaid was a beautiful piece of work, both to look at and to use. Runic bands swirled across the face of the hammer and down the handle. Any imperfections in the material had been purified as Sam worked on it, reshaping the basalt until it was the best of what it could be.

That enchantment added an incredible value on top of the base, especially when they needed to fight their way out of here.

He needed a good weapon. This hammer was the perfect item to acquire. The added effect of the Song of Seven Earths on it made it even better, like it was designed specifically for him.

In terms of the value of the trade, now. The hammer had been crafted with pure Earth mana like what was in his hand, as well as the aura of a monster aligned with the Earth, the one who had this class before him.

Jeric slowly nodded as he confirmed the value. He could almost feel information on the hammer flickering into his mind as he continued the assessment. It was a good trade.

In fact, he was getting the better of the deal.

"Son," he asked slowly, his words solemn. "Would you like to trade me that hammer you just made for this liquid mana, a part of the Earth herself?"

He did his best to be persuasive as his attention was split between the hammer on the table and the sacred mana in his hand.

"It is a good trade," he added, as he nodded to Sam, trying to push his will outwards to convince him, to Persuade him.

"It will help you advance your class and make more items, and the hammer will be very useful to me. Do you accept this as a Sacred Trade, one watched over by Aster Fall herself?"

"Yes," Sam agreed as he held out the hammer to his father. His eyes were wide. "I accept the Sacred Trade."

In Sam’s other hand, a sphere of crystal blue flames converged, creating an Essence Shield that could hold the mana. Jeric looked towards the flaming sphere and nodded. As he poured the mana into it, his hand tingled. He felt a bit of regret.

"Then it’s a trade," Jeric agreed, his words formal. "Our sacred transaction is complete."

Jeric accepted the hammer from Sam, wrapping his other hand tight around it as he felt how well it suited him. As soon as the trade was complete, a silver chime that sounded like the earth humming vibrated in Jeric’s ears.

A notification appeared, far more ornate than he’d expected.

Congratulations, Earthen Marauder. You have a new Profession and Subclass available.

Jeric smiled as he looked at the notification. It was strange that it was so ornate, but it was there! There was a strange feeling of solemnity still floating through him, and his gaze moved from the mana in Sam’s sphere to the mana pool, and then down to the hammer in his hand.

It felt as if.... Had something gone wrong? Why did it feel so strange? There was an odd energy surging all around his body. He opened the notification to see what was going on.

It unfurled like an ancient parchment, as deep-throated trumpets resonated and the humming of the Earth turning in her path filled his mind. A deep, low gong sang to him.

Congratulations, Merchant. You have completed your first Trade.

You have done so in a unique way, which has changed the nature of the profession you gain.

The very first item you ever traded was blessed mana from the Earth herself, which you offered in exchange for an item that you hoped would save your life.

You made the trade with respect, acknowledging the sacred value of the Earth at the same time as the intrinsic worth of the item you received.

Additionally, your primary Class is Earth-aligned, which creates synergy with your action. You have shown gratitude for the Earth’s grace that helped to shape you.

By doing this, you have shown how greatly you value the Earth herself, at the same time as you proved your dedication to your Profession.

In return, Aster Fall blesses you with a unique variant of Merchant for your Subclass.

Blessed Trader of the Earth

Do you wish to accept this Subclass?

As he read the notification, Jeric’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. He hadn't expected that this would happen.... He hadn’t even known such a thing was possible. His eyes were drawn to the mana pool and then towards Sam, before he returned to staring at the notification.

The mana pool was not what he had thought. It was far, far more valuable. Sacred mana from the Earth? What...had they been doing with it up to now?

Jeric looked down at the hammer in his hands and slowly raised it up, his eyes scanning across it.

Wooooshhh. He let out a deep breath as he realized they hadn’t....exactly...wasted a single drop of the mana. Everything they had used it for had been to save their lives, to craft weapons for survival, and to recreate his new body.

That was...acceptable.

His hand trembled as he slowly reached out and accepted the subclass. The voice of the World Law resounded comfortably in his ears.

Congratulations, Earth Blessed.

You are now The Blessed Trader of the Earth.

Earth Alignment: You have an Earth-aligned primary class. This subclass works in tandem with it. Your Sense Earth ability has blended with this class, giving you the specialized sub-ability Prospect Earth.

You Gain the Following Class Abilities: Prospect Earth, Assess Item, Sacred Trade, Persuade, Blessing of the Earth.

Unique Bonus: As this is a Unique Subclass, you may choose to Evolve it at the same time as your primary Class, if you meet all the necessary requirements.

You have gained the Trait: Earth Blessed.

Regardless of whether or not you keep this Subclass in the future, the trait will remain. You will never be directly harmed by the Earth.

This does not render you immune to spells, but lava, Earth mana, and other natural forces of Aster Fall will not hurt you.

The whirlwind of the world’s force gathered all around Jeric as his subclass began to settle into his mind and body.

At the same time, a thread of silver-white mana from the Earth pool rose upwards of its own accord, curling around him as it infused itself into his body and the Subclass.

He had shown a sacred respect for the Earth.

And the Earth blessed him.

---

A moment earlier.

Sam watched his father’s face change as he stared at the mana pool, but he wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

The hammer was done and he was just waiting for his dad to come back over and get it. Hopefully, he could get the Merchant class he wanted too. It would be a big help to their family. Sam was looking forward to making things that his dad could sell.

If that didn’t work, maybe he could take Merchant as a profession? He frowned, since he wasn’t sure how well that would work with his new appearance. It was probably better to let his dad do it.

Jeric seemed oddly solemn as he carried the handful of shining mana back over to Sam and held it out to him. His words about the transaction resonated in Sam’s ears, with a hum like the hammer that was still singing on the work table.

He had thought his dad would joke around with this subclass and then get it, but it looked as if he were serious. Whatever was happening, it felt like something he shouldn't interrupt, or it might mess everything up.

After they agreed on the trade, Sam wrapped up the mana in a sphere of crystal flames and handed the hammer to Jeric. As soon as he took it, Jeric’s face suddenly went distant.

"Did you get the subclass?" Sam asked, but his dad didn’t hear him.

All around the cave, there was a building hummmmm as the stone began to vibrate. The sound increased, and it seemed to be coming from the mana pool itself. Sam’s eyes widened as he looked towards it, at the same time as the entire cave began to sing.

ThrummmmMMMmmmMmm

HraaAAAmmmmmAAmmmmm.

SssuuuuUUUhhhmmmMMM.

It was a lot like the Song of Seven Earths from his hammer, but much greater. It was a thousand different notes all singing and reverberating at once.

It felt like it was shaking the entire world, but it didn’t damage the walls or collapse their cave on top of them.

All of that sound swept towards Jeric and swirled around him, at the same time as a stream of silver-white mana rose from the pool and wrapped around his dad’s body.

There was a moment where the mana hung there, singing as it flowed around his dad. It slowly sank into him and Jeric's skin took on a silvery-white gleam.

Then the light and the sound subsided and everything returned to normal, including his dad's appearance. The Song of the Earth faded away and the vibrations settled down, returning the cavern to a peaceful state again.

A few of the rocks in their blockade tumbled to the ground, rolling away from the pile. Jeric blinked his eyes as he opened them again, but then he just stared at nothing.

"Dad...," Sam asked as he looked around the cave, consternation written onto every line of his face. "What...was that?"

Jeric shook his head as he refocused, looking at Sam.

"I got a unique subclass," he said, looking shocked. His voice was quiet as he filled Sam in on what had happened.

"What?!" Sam gave his dad a huge grin as he heard what had just happened. He couldn't help letting out a happy laugh.

He was even more excited about his dad’s subclass than his own. He would have felt terrible if after all of these years, his dad hadn’t gotten something really good to make up for it.

"Congratulations!" he cheered as he stood up and gave him a hug.

His dad's new class and subclass were fantastic! What was even better..., the Guardian hadn’t had anything to do with this. That meant it didn’t come with any strings attached. This was all his dad.

Sam looked up at him, proudly, as he got the chance to ask the same question his dad had asked him a little while ago.

"What do your new abilities do?"

Jeric laughed, his eyes still a bit wild, as he scanned through the information he’d received. One by one, he listed them for Sam.

"Assess Item is an identification ability. It will work on Basic things right now, but not as well on Advanced ones until I get it up.

"Persuade is a Charisma-based ability..., it lets me convince people to trade things or to believe what I’m saying. The higher the tier, the more convincing I become. It can only influence people to make a decision. It can’t completely change their minds.

"Sacred Trade is what I told you about before, but it’s also only at a Basic tier, so the level of contracts I can oversee with it is limited. All three of those are very common skills for merchants."

Jeric paused as he considered the last two abilities, while Sam waited expectantly.

"But those other two...," he said slowly. "Prospect Earth is a sub-ability of Sense Earth. It will let me sense valuable materials in the earth around me, like metals, minerals, or gemstones. I believe Miners and Prospectors get an ability like that. It means I might take a similar profession for those in the future, but I don’t know yet. It could be a way to find materials for you to Smith or Enchant, or just to sell.

"As for the last one..., Blessing of the Earth is very special. It’s a recognition of how I was offered this subclass. Basically, it only works when I’m trading items that come from the Earth, like metals or even this sacred mana pool....

"The higher the value of the item I trade, the more my Persuade ability increases. If the total value of the trade is high enough, it can boost my Persuade ability up by three tiers. It's a way of protecting the value of the items, really...to make sure they are sold for what they're worth."

Jeric shook his head again as he thought about the subclass he’d just earned. It was far more than he’d dared to hope for.

With these abilities, he could get a job as a Miner or Prospector, or just as a Merchant dealing specifically with Earth-based items. It was like seeing a future filled with gold and gemstones. Maybe this was how a dwarf felt in a mine.

He laughed as he thought about it, still in disbelief. Then he shook his head again and set it all aside for another day. Things were looking promising, but they still had to get out of here.

"Alright," he said, as he patted Sam on the shoulder and shifted the conversation to a different point.

"We have our subclasses and we’re all healed, so let’s break down that blockade and go see what those gnomes are up to. Maybe we can get you some more levels and Charisma."

Battlefield Reclaimer 27: First Vengeance

It didn’t take Sam and Jeric long to pull apart the blockade. They tore down most of it in less than an hour, and then they paused to take care of a few last matters before they headed out.

Sam divided up the spell scrolls they had left. Three went into his belt pouch and the other two went to his dad. They each had a Fire and Water scroll, and Sam had the extra Earth scroll.

As he was putting everything else into his pack, Sam’s attention was drawn to a crystal sphere sitting on his work table. He wasn't sure what to do with it. It was the Essence Shield he’d used to accept the mana from his dad, when he'd traded him the hammer.

He hadn’t been sure the shield would work to hold the mana, but he’d done it reflexively, like stretching out his hand. The Aura of Crystal Flame and his subclass had already become a significant part of his awareness.

When the Earth mana poured into the shield, the outer edge of it had crystallized. It had turned into this sphere. He could feel the liquid tumbling inside when he picked it up. The mana was too dense to slosh, but it definitely slid back and forth as he tilted it.

His dad had filled him in on the details of his subclass. It seemed the pool was far more important than they had thought...and it was incredible that part of it had crystallized, creating this sphere.

Was this what his dad had done by Trading it with him, something from the World Law? Or was it an effect of his Essence Shield? It wasn’t a lot of mana, just a handful or so. Maybe enough to fill a small cup.

A Sacred Trade.... Sam shook his head again as he put the sphere away in his pack.

They couldn’t waste the Earth mana here, since that would be disrespectful to his father's new life, but maybe it would be possible to take some of it with him? If the Earth had offered it as a blessing to the world, ...shouldn't it be used to improve things?

He could make a lot more weapons and enchantments with it. He headed over to the pool, with crystal flames already surging around him as they built into an Essence Shield.

He studied the silver-white liquid for a minute, and then reached out with his senses to see if it felt alright to take some.

There was only a calm silence from the world.

It didn't take long for him to experiment and scoop up some of the mana, cradling it inside a similar Essence Shield sphere. He looked towards his father to check that it was alright, but Jeric just nodded and let him do it.

The Earth had let him take what he needed before. She didn't mind a little more. He just needed to use it well and respect it.

Almost as soon as the mana touched the Essence Shield, it began to harden, eventually sealing itself into a new crystal sphere. He did it again, testing it out.

He was able to draw up about a cupful of mana each time. It was enough to fill his stylus...at least a hundred times. There were perhaps 300 drops in each sealed sphere.

There wasn't much room in his pack, but the crystal spheres looked durable. He was able to pack ten of them into the bottom, one against the other. Then he added a couple more.

Then he filled up the bottom of his dad's pack too.

They didn't have a lot of things to carry besides that, just some salamander and rat jerky, dried mushrooms, and a few things that were left from their original gear.

The only problem with the spheres was that they were very heavy for their size and they radiated a brilliant heat. He had the feeling that if too many of them were gathered, they would act like embers in a fireplace.

He took a few pieces of salamander hide and wrapped them around the spheres, both to insulate them and to keep them from sliding around. It wouldn't be good if their packs caught on fire. Even then, the packs were heavy and the straps strained. The mana spheres were as dense as gold.

After that, they packed up everything else they needed. Despite the week or two they’d spent down here, there wasn’t much to take. There was a pile of gnome spears and other equipment on one side of the cave, but Sam incinerated everything else.

They weren’t going to leave anything essential behind here, not when they could end up separated from it. If they were lucky enough to find the exit from the tunnels, who knew if they would be able to come back?

After that, Sam spent a little bit of time investigating the water crystal. The structure of the crystal was still good and the Water rune was extremely simple. He could probably make one of these himself, just like he had made the Water scroll.

With his new experience in enchantment, it didn’t take him long to infuse more aura into it. That was all it needed to last longer. Whoever made it the first time hadn’t put in much. It was a disgrace to the profession.

He wasn’t sure if the crystal would shatter when the aura ran out, but it seemed unlikely. Maybe it was designed to be refillable, once it was taken back to an Enchanter? Then they could charge you based on how much aura they used to empower it again.

The thought raised a few questions in his mind. What did enchantments cost in the world, and were they more expensive based on how much aura was in them?

Maybe it was something the Enchanter’s Guild did to control the price and bring people back. It was something he was going to have to figure out if he wanted to make a living. He put the crystal away in his dad's pack, saving the thoughts for later.

After they regained their mana, they moved the last few rocks out of the way and headed out into the tunnels.

---

The long, curving tunnels stretched to the sides, like the belly of an earthworm. The stones were rippled and dark. It felt like he hadn't been here in ages, but it had only been a couple of days.

The tunnels had seemed incredibly dangerous at first..., but now they could both see down here and their levels were much higher.

It almost felt normal.

Sam grinned as a pulse of energy rushed through him. He gripped the Spear of Umbral Flame in his hand a bit more tightly. He was on an adventure with his dad..., the way things should have gone when he turned 18, if everything had been normal.

Fragmentary legends of intrepid wizards and knights floated through his mind for a moment. Then he laughed at himself and pushed it all aside. It wasn't like they would meet the Earth Dragon of Sarolten or the Boreal Dryad down here, but it did make him think about how he had changed since his Class Day.

He wasn’t the same Sam who had gone down into the ruins, his head full of dreams and despair. Even with the threat of imprisonment and the Guardian's star on his hand..., life had changed for him, moving onto a new path, if he just had the strength to keep going.

It had changed for his entire family. He was excited to see what he and his dad could do now. They turned towards the basalt gnome nest, their senses scouting ahead.

Crystal Focus was part of his aura now, active even when his flames were hidden. He was constantly aware of everything within twenty feet of him, from the flow of air to the lichen growing on the walls. His mind wandered through the structure of the walls and felt the density of the stone beneath his feet.

The ability was an unconscious thing that blended with the rest of his enhanced senses, as if the world had simply become a little more transparent to him. He could even feel the flow of mana through the earth, like a slow trickling stream as it headed toward their cave.

The mana pool had to be at the center of a vast network threading through the earth.

The heart of it.

Perhaps that was why they had ended up there, like a ball rolling downhill to the lowest point.

Beside him, his father was a red-eyed mountain moving silently through the dark. His Earth class and new trait made him at home here. The new hammers were at his belt.

Sam nodded as he turned his attention back to the front. He was looking forward to getting some payback from the gnomes.

---

It didn’t take them too long to reach the wall they had collapsed a few days before, about halfway to the gnome nest.

This time, there were no patrols investigating it.

As they got closer, the high-pitched clashing of gnomish voices echoed down the tunnel, along with the soft shush-tap-click of the salamanders’ feet. They had flexible pads except for the claws on the end.

Sam exchanged a glance with his dad. They pressed up against opposite sides of the tunnel wall, continuing forward carefully.

They had come to find gnomes. They weren't going to turn around now.

The voices barked again, like gravel clashing as it rolled downhill. It sounded like there were several of them.

Was it another foraging party, like the early gnomes and salamanders, or was it a bigger group?

Flickers of flame curled around Sam’s hands as his heart picked up speed. He looked towards his dad.

His dad gave him a steady look back and nodded. They edged forward, sneaking around the corner.

When they caught sight of the group, it was twice the size of a foraging party.

Four of the small, normal gnomes were digging away at a wall where a reddish liquid was running down the stone. It looked like they were trying to harvest it. The two salamanders were on leashes next to them.

There were two more gnomes that were bigger than the others, but they weren't as big as the marauder had been.

Sam didn’t have much time to study them before he ducked back around the curve in the wall, but it was enough to see the basic details.

Basalt Gnome Warders (Subterranean).

The prompt came and went in Sam’s eyes.

Those two were strange. It was some type of new gnome class that he hadn't seen before. There was a runic sigil on their foreheads, but it was one he didn’t recognize. Spell casters of some type?

A fleeting thought passed through Sam’s head as he saw that. It made him think of his own runework. How skilled were these monsters? From everything he'd heard, monsters could have intelligence, but they were also invariable bloodthirsty and would kill any civilized race that they saw.

The gnomes' fangs were definitely not just for crushing rock. Monsters could kill humans and absorb their experience by eating them, which was why there was a constant battle with them. They often invaded human areas and destroyed villages for that purpose. Perhaps that was why the gnomes had attacked them in the first place.

At any rate, it was time to start their revenge. He traded a nod with his dad.

Then they attacked.

Jeric sprinted around the curve toward the enemies at the same time as Sam jumped out into clear view. His left hand gleamed as the blue runic circle of Aura Bolt built on his palm.

His new subclass should be much stronger than his old Aura Bolt, but he wasn’t as confident in its abilities yet. He went with what he knew.

His aura was at 24 now, but he needed to save some of it to reclaim the monsters' auras. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

Ssssiiiiishhhh.

A crystal blue bolt flashed through the tunnel, empowered with two aura points. It was like crystal lightning as it struck against the closer warder. Another followed an instant later, striking at the second one on the heels of the first.

The warders had just enough time to see a flash of blue, and the runic sigils on their heads shone. A dim yellow barrier sprang up around them, but it was too late to be effective.

Half of the Aura Bolts’ energies broke through the still-forming barrier and exploded against the warders’ chests, leaving smoking craters behind.

The impact flung the casters back a step. It wasn’t enough to take them down, but it was enough time for Jeric to arrive.

His father slammed into the two warders and pushed them back farther. The twin hammers in his hands sang with a low resonance as they slammed toward their heads.

At the same time, crystal flames soared around Sam as he switched to his new abilities. The flames wrapped around the spear in his hand and spiraled along its length, before they formed together into a head-sized sphere of radiant, crystal blue.

Arcs of contained energy rose off the sphere's surface as Sam poured two points of mana and two of aura into it, keeping the energies balanced.

His dad’s assault had pushed the two warders back even more, separating them from the rest of the mobs, and that left Sam an opening against the others.

The remaining four gnomes and two salamanders were just starting to turn toward him. Their reactions were quick as they spun to face the source of the attack, but only quick enough to catch sight of the sphere heading their way.

It was his first time using Flame Strike.

He’d been able to use the Aura of Crystal Flame to create a fire attack before, but the version the Guardian had reshaped for his subclass was far more refined. This sphere was only one of the varieties he could use with it.

The sphere burned with his will, roiling like a small, liquid sun in the air as it sped towards the gnomes.

BbooooOOOOMMM!

The sphere collided with the middle one, striking it in the chest. Then it exploded outwards with a whistle of compressed energy that engulfed the gnome in an instant.

The resulting fireball grew larger as the flames tore a path outwards, expanding in concentric rings from the point of impact. The flames were half liquid and half ethereal.

They burned through the gnomes as if they were barely there. Their dense, basalt skin slowed them down for an instant, but then it cracked and ran, turning molten.

The blast wasn’t too large, only about three feet across at the most intense point, but the explosive force was enough to instantly kill the target and two other gnomes that were the closest to it.

The fourth one staggered back, trying to shield his eyes, even as the two salamanders crouched low to the ground and charged. Their handlers had dropped their leashes, which meant it was time to attack.

The beasts were short enough that most of the blast had passed over their heads, but their eyes flicked closed with dark membranes to shield their vision. They raced toward Sam as their claws dug into the stone for traction.

It would be a good test to see if his flames worked on them, but he wasn’t going to place all of his bets on it. A reliable Aura Bolt sped towards one at double strength, piercing through its skull in an instant.

The attack knocked it backwards and for a moment it didn’t realize it was dead, its legs still moving in a blur. Then it tumbled head over heels and crashed into the wall, rolling to a stop in a pile of disorganized reptilian limbs.

A moment later, an arrow made out of crystal flame flickered into existence with a pure, translucent gleam. It speared through the head of the second. The second salamander dropped to the ground as well, falling near the other.

Sam had infused one point of both aura and mana into the arrow. It was more efficient than the fireball for single targets. At the same time, a whistling sound approached, grabbing his attention, as the last gnome threw its spear.

He had just enough time to summon up a flaming shield in front of him before it crashed against it.

The spear bent at an angle, shooting away to strike against the wall. Then the shield faded, replaced by another crystal flame arrow that tore through the last gnome's chest. It exploded out the other side, nearly ripping the monster in half.

Sam was down to 18 mana and 14 aura. The shield had taken two points of each, but the arrows only one.

He spun toward where his dad was facing off against the warders, but Jeric didn’t need the help. The two warders had already been smashed into the ground, their skulls half crushed. Jeric was standing next to them, looking towards Sam as he waited.

"Come finish them off," he suggested calmly, as he looked over the battlefield. "I wasn’t sure if you’d get class experience for these two, so I waited for you."

Jeric’s attitude was completely different than the dad Sam remembered. He had always been confident in his own way, but it had shown only in his smile and his persistence.

Now, those same qualities were radiating from his body, combined with a much greater build and more prominent muscles. The twin hammers were steady in his hands. Every line of his posture was graceful death.

Sam stared at him for an instant before he remembered to close his mouth.

"Hurry up then!" Jeric called, with a slight grin. "Come get this gnome!"

He had always wanted to take his son adventuring and to look after him. Now, he’d finally got the chance.

Sam just grinned back at him as some of his worries flew away. As long his dad was around, things would be fine.

The thought didn't bother him, even if he was 18 now. He could take care of things himself..., but it was nice to have his dad around. They would deal with whatever came up together.

He headed towards the gnomes as two more crystal arrows formed in the air above his hand.

KRriiiissShh.

KRRiissSSh.

The arrows shot forward and slammed through the heads of the gnomes, finishing them off.

His dad had a point. He wasn’t sure if using Aura Bolt would count towards his class experience or not. Maybe it would, since the whole battle was within the range of his Crystal Focus ability. It was something to test out later, when it didn’t matter.

"You take the experience from all of these," Jeric suggested as he walked a few steps away and looked towards the nest. He took up a watchful pose. "We’ll see how many of them are in the tunnel as we go forward. When our levels are closer, we’ll take turns. You can still do a lot of quick growth right now."

Sam nodded as he bent down towards the gnomes. This time, he chose to get the experience first, as he reached out for that twisted thread of energy that ran through the monsters. The silver chime of experience rang in his mind, shimmering with a high-pitched note.

"Sam, don’t forget about the Charisma!" Jeric called to him. He sounded very emphatic about it.

Sam gave an internal sigh as he mentally regulated a couple of future points to that...useless stat. Before he looked at the notifications, he went back and gathered the experience from the regular gnomes and salamanders too.

The silver chime sounded again, ringing out happily at the same time as sparkling chimes of positivity flowed through his bloodstream, boosting his mood. The voice of the World Law rang out in his mind.

You have used your Class abilities to slay your enemies.

You gain 9,950 Class experience.

Congratulations, Scion! You have gained five Class Levels.

You are now a Level 13 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Experience to Next: 3,350.

...

You have gained three General Levels.

You are now Level 13.

Experience to Next: 1,050.

You gain +5 Aura and +5 Intelligence. You have 11 free status points to assign.

The World Law summarized all of his gains with the final sentence and the notifications faded away. The surging chimes of energy in Sam’s blood continued to build, pouring new strength into him as he felt his stats rising. His Aura and Intelligence went instantly from 24 to 29.

The experience was far more than he had expected to get from the gnomes, and for a moment he was stunned into silence. Was this what it was like to level by fighting all the time? No wonder combat classes were the highest.

This time, the World Law had said nothing about using his Enchanting abilities in battle. It simply said he’d gained experience for using his class abilities to slay his enemies. Whatever had happened with his sub-class, it was definitely giving him full class experience for using it.

The salamanders and regular gnomes were only 50 to 100 experience each, and Sam did the quick calculation to figure out what that meant about the warders.

He had a better understanding of the experience requirements up to Level 20 now, after he had compared notes with his dad. He also checked his status sheet to see what his total experience was.

As he did, he adjusted his status sheet and moved a few things around to make it more obvious how he was progressing. It was like mental chess, but he was figuring it out. It seemed the World Law didn’t mind how you accessed the information.

General Level 13: 14,950 / 16,000.

Battlefield Reclaimer, Level 13: 12,650 / 16,000.

Now, his status clearly showed how much total experience he had and what was needed to the next level. Level 14 would take 16,000 experience. As he adjusted it, he realized that he had just barely managed to get to Level 13 in Battlefield Reclaimer. That took 12,500.

Monsters usually gave you about half of their total experience..., which meant the gnome warders had been around Level 12. That level required 9,500 total experience, which was almost everything he had just earned.

There was a bit of experience for the other enemies, but they were so much lower that it barely mattered. It looked like the next few levels would be 3,000 experience or more each. Sam shook his head as he thought about it.

The difference between that and the first few levels he’d picked up in the tunnels was staggering. If it continued to scale past that, how much experience did it take to get to Level 100? Or even Level 50?

No wonder all the crafting classes in the village were only around level 20-something. There were only a few who were even close to 30. Surtek, the village Smith, was the highest at Level 30 or 32. People didn’t always share their level information with you freely, but it wasn’t that hard to figure it out, even if only the Seer-type classes could see the details.

His father’s words were still ringing in his mind as he decided where he should put the points. He sighed as he assigned four of them to Charisma, pushing it back up to 8. That should be enough, right? That’s what he had before the Outsider transformation.

He looked towards his dad, who had 8 Charisma, and how fierce he seemed.

If Jeric got back to the village looking like this.... Small children would either run up to him and hug his leg, because they hadn’t developed fear yet, or there would be a new legend of the terrifying Marauder who would steal you from your bed and turn you into a midnight snack.

After crushing you into pulp.

Maybe 8 Charisma wasn’t enough. He looked like a demon, after all. What was his mother going to say when she saw him?

He grimaced as he put two more points into Charisma, bringing it up to 10. It wasn’t Charisma keeping him alive right now, but he had decided to be more responsible. Even if that was more than half of the free points he had gained.

He felt his appearance shifting slightly, with a hum of energy that ran beneath his skin. Certain areas grew hot for a moment and others shifted infinitesimally, making his features more symmetrical and refined. There were a few other changes as well, but he couldn’t see all of them. He just felt his body itching.

When it finally stopped, he felt a bit more comfortable in his own skin, but it was hard to pin down what had changed. He turned his attention towards the remaining points.

He added two each to Aura and Intelligence, bringing them to 31, and the last one to Agility, bringing that to 14. Agility would at least help him move faster if he needed to dodge something.

His Class was something like a Wizard, but he needed almost every attribute. Aura and Intelligence were his main stats, Constitution was for his lifespan and defense, Charisma was for making people accept his new appearance. He might even need more Strength for smithing, since that was mentioned in his class description.

Agility and Wisdom were the only ones that were somewhat optional, and those had major benefits too. More Wisdom would help him reclaim auras, and Agility was needed to keep up with fast-moving battles.

Sam shook his head, with the taste of hard choices on his tongue. Maybe investing in Charisma was another one of those things he couldn’t change, like the star on his hand. Hopefully, 10 would be enough.

At any rate, he needed to gather the auras before they dissipated.

Battlefield Reclaimer 28: Path of Vengeance

There were six gnomes and two salamanders scattered across the tunnel.

Sam’s energy was higher than it had ever been after a battle, which made reclaiming the auras from them much more likely. With the added seven from the new levels, he had 21 points of aura left.

He bent down next to the first gnome, his hand hovering over its skin as he searched for that half-real thread of energy. After a moment, it came to him, rising up from the creature's rocky hide.

The taste of stone and dusty passages, compressed under the weight of the earth....

You have encountered a familiar aura.

Aura of Basalt (50% chance).

Do you wish to Reclaim this aura?

Now that the aura was identified, the only option was to reclaim it or not.

He failed on the first attempt, but succeeded on the second and third. Then he failed again on the fourth and fifth, but succeeded on the sixth.

In the end, he had three new Auras of Basalt.

He moved on to the salamanders.

The Aura of Umbral Flame was the first aura he’d ever reclaimed. It was almost nostalgic.

He had never fully identified the salamanders, and he waited to see what the prompt would tell him.

You have encountered a familiar aura.

Aura of Umbral Flame (50% chance).

Do you wish to Reclaim this aura?

It was just like the gnomes.

Apparently, once he reclaimed it, it was automatically identified.

As he seized the energy, the taste of dark fire and ashes filled his mouth, rolling through the world with the heat of flame and molten stone.

When he thought about it, he realized that the sense of this aura had been in his memory ever since he reclaimed it. Its particular flavor was a part of him.

Perhaps it would be useful to skip identification at some point, but right now, he planned on identifying all of the auras he encountered before he tried to reclaim them.

The chance of reclaiming directly was too low and only wasted the effort. If his Wisdom had been higher, it would have helped, but he didn't have the points to spare.

From the two salamanders, he succeeded in reclaiming both of the auras, and he had to grin.

He might not always win the gamble, but this time it had worked out.

It took eight points to reclaim all of the auras, leaving him at 13, but he still had 25 mana left.

From this one battle, he had gained five auras, which was far more than he’d expected.

Combat was also...different than it used to be.

He glanced towards his dad, who was looking toward the gnome nest.

They had both changed down here.

They'd become stronger and more sure of themselves.

He felt more like an Enchanter who was fighting, but his subclass had turned him into a competent battle wizard.

He was tempted to try Combust Aura on one of his new gains to see what happened, but it wasn’t worth wasting it.

It was better to keep them for an emergency, or to enchant something in the future.

He had the feeling he could get 5 to 10 aura or mana points from one, unless it failed somehow.

As he stood back up, he looked towards the red fluid on the tunnel wall that the gnomes had been trying to gather.

It was a thick liquid, almost like blood, but a bit shinier. There were streaks of yellow and something darker in it.

"What is this?" He reached out towards it, his hand hovering just over the surface.

"Phosgor Lichen Fluid, apparently," his dad called back. "I assessed it a minute ago. It doesn’t look useful. I think the gnomes were going to eat it."

The gnomes had been trying to put it into a jar, which was lying on the floor nearby.

"Maybe it’s a spice or something...," Sam muttered as he pulled his hand back. It looked extremely sticky.

There was no reason to take it except curiosity, so he moved toward the warders instead, examining the rune on their foreheads.

The base of the rune was broader than the top, but the sides couldn't be called straight. It had a wobbly, triangular shape overall, with two broken edges at the peak. There was a half-completed swirl at the center, like a river cut in half.

It was somewhat similar to an Earth rune, but only in the general idea of a mountain peak. Most of it was different.

Maybe it was a rune for these gnomes, or for the warder class? Or was it part of a rune that would be completed in the future, if they leveled up more? Sam frowned at the rune, memorizing it, before he rejoined his dad.

"Let’s keep going," he suggested. There was a lot to do still, if they wanted to see what was on the other side of the gnomes.

Jeric just nodded and gave him a quick smile. His thumbs were hooked behind the hammers on his belt. The hammers that Sam had made for him.

Sam grinned as they moved off again, heading down the tunnel.

This was how it was supposed to be.

---

They ran into another group of gnomes halfway to the nest. Unlike the last group, which had been foraging, these were clearly stationed as guards. They had set up a barrier of sorts that was made from boulders and chunks of stone, creating a low stone wall. It was very new.

Killing the marauder must have warned them. They had changed their patterns and there were stronger classes in the tunnels now, acting as defenders. They had been lucky before that they hadn’t encountered any of them.

At the beginning, it had just been the foraging patrols. They must have felt safe back then, or perhaps they had never had many enemies in the tunnels. Sam and Jeric had interrupted that.

This fight was going to be more difficult, and Sam rubbed at his chin as he and his father ducked back around the curve. There were at least ten gnomes behind the wall. It was hard to tell if more were hiding behind the boulders.

Basalt Gnome Warder (Subterranean)

Basalt Gnome Marauder (Subterranean)

He couldn’t see all of them clearly, but it looked like there was one marauder, two warders, and a double handful of regulars. It was a strong defense. He frowned and exchanged a look with his dad, but Jeric only nodded at him. He was radiating confidence.

Sam took a deep breath and let it out again, quietly. They couldn’t give up the opportunity in front of them, especially if the exit was on the other side....

There was a whispered exchange of ideas and planning, and then they nodded. Sam turned towards the gnomes with a grim smile.

He pulled out an Aura of Basalt from his storage. Crystal blue flames almost leapt out, trying to flicker around it as he mentally reached into its interior, but he suppressed the light. They were too close to the gnomes to make that type of display.

He could feel that the Aura of Basalt was unique to itself, a singular existence aligned with the Earth, but if he shifted it just a little, he could convert it into something else. Perhaps it was something made more from essence than either mana or aura..., or perhaps it was stranger than that.

Right now, he could only tell that if he pushed a little, he could make it change into something useful. The aura started to warp as he used Combust Aura. It melted in his hand as it converted to a more refined form that flowed into his body.

His aura jumped from 13 to 22.

Sam frowned, debating if he should combust another one.

His dad nodded at him, almost as if saying, "We’ll get you some more..."

There was a pang of regret as he pulled out another Aura of Basalt and did the same thing, converting it to pure aura. His aura rose to 29. Then he sighed and combusted the third Aura of Basalt as well, converting it to mana.

His mana rose from 25 to its maximum at 31, and he felt a thread of excess energy pouring away from him, from the part of the aura that he hadn't been able to hold. He nodded at his dad when he was done.

Now they were ready.

It was time to be a Scion of the Crystal Flame.

---

Sam’s mind was focused as he stepped around the curve in the tunnel and into full view of the gnomes. His movements were slow and graceful, almost meditative.

All around him, a massive wave of crystal blue flame was building, rising out of his body as it rippled through the air. His attention was focused as he poured more essence into it.

The gnomes started to shout, their voices echoing as they spotted him. Spears rose, pointing in his direction. But they didn’t have enough time.

Twenty points of aura and mana poured into the crystal flames, causing them to surge so high that the tunnel ceiling began to melt where they touched it. The flames swirled, spinning into a tornado that became more focused and smaller. Finally, they condensed into a blade-like, triangular wedge in front of Sam.

It was almost like two swords had been laid next to each other, their tips touching at the front to create a triangle, but the back was left open. It was a deep, sparkling blue and shaded towards translucent at the edges.

An ethereal wave of crystal flame hung in the tunnel like an aurora, flaring behind his back, as the spell left his hands.

Kkkrrrriisssshhhh....

Then the wedge blasted forward, tearing through the tunnel as it headed for the gnomes’ barricade.

It was a variant of Flame Strike. The new ability was not as limited as Aura Bolt. With his Essence Control at Advanced, and since it was part of his Aura of Crystal Flame..., he could shape it into almost anything he wanted. The strength just depended on how much mana and aura he used.

For this one attack, he had poured in more than two-thirds of his combined essence. It was stronger than ten of the fire spheres put together.

The fastest gnomes responded, throwing two spears in his direction, and he saw the warders begin to turn as the rune on their heads shined. Their defensive shield had just enough time to form. At the same time, the marauder crossed its arms in front of itself and a yellow Earthen Shield sprang into existence.

Then the Flame Strike hit.

Hisssskkkkrrr...

The crystalline wedge cut through the stone barricade as if it weren’t even there and continued on.

The regular gnomes were near the front, followed by the Warders, and the marauder was at the back.

BOOOOOOOOOOOmmmMMMM!

The spell exploded in the middle of them all, flames cascading outwards from it in a liquid wave that sliced through the regular gnomes in an instant. The energy splashed against the warders’ shields, denting them inwards as they began to billow outwards, pushed back by the force.

The shields only lasted a moment. Then the blast ripped through them with a krrrisshhh sound as it washed over them.

They stood there for a moment, almost still under the force of that blast, as flecks of their skin began to disintegrate from the heat. A moment later, their bodies crumbled apart, the top halves blown away as the blast continued past them. The force of the spell was many times greater than the shields they had summoned.

The marauder to the back put up the best defense, his Earthen Shield buckling around him as he was forced back step by step. On the second step, his shield bent inwards as it began to fade away, unable to resist any longer. It held just long enough for the force of the blast to wash around him, and then it disappeared.

The barricade and other gnomes had already absorbed some of the energy, so the marauder had the easiest time of it.

But it didn’t matter.

An instant later, Jeric was sprinting towards him as the twin hammers in his hands sang with a deep thrummm. He was there before the gnome could react, moving in.

Sam ran in just behind his dad, and as he did, the remnants of the crystal flame rolled away from his father, clearing a path for him. As long as the flames were within range of his Crystal Focus, they were still part of Sam’s aura. They had left that range when they hit the gnomes, but now they were back inside it.

Jeric’s hammers slammed down towards the marauder. It moved reflexively to block, trying to pull its own hammers from its belt, but it didn’t make it.

CrraaAAAcck.

DrruUUUnnngg.

The first hammer struck it in the chest and the second slammed down onto its shoulder, sending it staggering back as its dense, muscular body shuddered. Its Constitution was so high that it was almost like Jeric had hit stone. Cracks spread across its skin and massive dents were left behind.

Jeric didn’t stop there. His hammers began to sing.

RrruUUUMMmmmm.

Craaaccckkkk.

SsuuuUUUUummm...

BbrraaaAACK!

A similar marauder had nearly killed them before. Sam didn’t even have to do anything else, although a crystal flame arrow floated next to his hand.

His dad took care of it.

Dddddraaaannggg!

Jeric was working out some of that pent-up aggression from the many years he’d been stifled with a broken class. Stamina-infused strikes surged around him as he poured his energy into the battle, using the melee abilities that he’d earned with his class.

Stamina was an almost magical condensation of physical force that could be used by melee classes. It came from Strength and Constitution. It was Jeric's first time putting it to use in battle, holding the twin hammers that his son had made for him.

The Hammers of Seven Earths sang their song.

ShhhuUUmm...

TOOOOnnnGGG....

The marauder shuddered as each blow sent it staggering back.

It was a good song.

---

Jeric hammered on the marauder for a while before it finally collapsed. The gnome had a very high Constitution, which enhanced its defense, but its defeat was a given from the beginning.

Sam’s initial attack had wiped out nearly all of the opposition, even if it had taken most of his mana and aura. He’d only kept back enough for an emergency. It was an astonishing look at how powerful a battle wizard could be.

Although..., perhaps he shouldn’t call himself that. He was really more of a crafter who got to use his abilities in battle.

His Scion class was unique.

He had the feeling that using essence was doing something strange to his spells, compared to the shields that the warders had summoned. They had more cutting force than mana alone would have, especially against the defensive shields. Maybe that was why the Guardian was so concerned about essence from the Outsiders, and about Sam's class on Aster Fall.

But that wasn't the only reason his spell had won the contest. It was also because he’d used so much power from the beginning, and the gnomes’ defenses hadn’t been very good.

Spells were dangerous. They were the instant output of a vast amount of energy.

That was why it was so important for his father to keep improving his Earthen Shield. For himself, he had Essence Shield, which would last as long as he had the energy to sustain it.

Jeric's breathing was a little heavy and his skin was flushed red from the exertion, but there was a new confidence in his stance as he stood above the dead marauder and looked around the battlefield.

He’d taken revenge on one of the monsters who had nearly killed him.

It was a confirmation of his new life.

"Sam, you collect the experience from these again," Jeric said, waving his hand at the corpses.

"You don’t think we should split it?" Sam asked, frowning as he looked around. "There are...eleven of them here."

"We’ll talk about it after." Jeric shook his head. "Put some more into Charisma too. I know you added some already, but...it’s an uphill battle there. I need to add more as well, if I want to make the most of my subclass."

Sam hesitated, looking between his dad and the gnomes. He didn’t want to take all the experience for himself, now that his dad could use it too.

"Sam, you need it, so take it," his dad said, when he saw him standing there. "Also, your Scion class...well, you saw what it can do just now. It’s only going to help us out."

"Alright..., but we'll share after that?" Sam protested.

It wasn’t about the experience really. It was about making sure that his dad didn't sacrifice everything for him again. He’d done that too much in his life already.

Jeric just nodded at him and turned away again, looking towards the gnome nest as he scanned for more enemies.

After a moment, Sam bent down to gather the experience, going around to all of the gnomes one by one. As he did, an enormous surge of experience hit his body, turning into a thousand waves of delightful bubbles surging through his blood, like the world’s best wine.

Bright silver notifications rang out in his mind, chiming with crystal and golden notes.

You have used your Class abilities to slay your enemies.

You gain 33,850 Class experience.

...

Congratulations, Scion. You have gained six Class Levels.

You are now a Level 19 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Total Experience: 46,500 / 47,500

...

Congratulations, Scion. You have gained seven General Levels.

You are now Level 20.

Total Experience: 48,800 / 54,500

You gain +6 Aura, +6 Intelligence, and have 20 free status points to assign.

Sam stared at the notifications as the experience surged through him. He had jumped so many levels in just two battles!

He knew that the levels were quickly going to start scaling in difficulty, but...the day before, he’d only been Level 10 in general experience and Level 8 in his class.

Now he was almost Level 20 in Battlefield Reclaimer. He was just on the edge of moving into the Advanced tier.

"Sam, add some more to Charisma," his dad called back again. There was a content smile on his face as he looked back towards Sam.

"You still look terrifying...," he added, shaking his head, but the smile never left. "And don’t forget about the auras."

Sam pulled himself back together and stood up again.

Where should he put all the new status points? He knew experience wasn’t always going to be as fast as this, so he had to plan for the future.

If he were able to get even a couple more levels before it scaled up, he’d be surprised. There was a reason a lot of people got stuck in their 20s.

Was this what life was like for a combat class? Battles and instant levels all the time? He shook his head as he looked at his status sheet.

Battles were dangerous. Levels were fantastic, but they often added more to your offensive abilities than to your defensive ones, unless you invested heavily in Constitution. That was why the marauder had been harder to kill than the other gnomes here.

Should he put more in Constitution? It was something he’d have to consider as he arranged his stats.

He looked towards his dad and then at his Charisma stat, and he sighed as he added five more points to it, bringing it up to 15.

That had to be enough for Charisma now, right?

After that, he added four points to his Constitution, bringing it to 20. It would be helpful to put it higher, but he also had Essence Shield. Right now, it was primarily for healing and resistance to infections.

One point went into Agility, bringing it to 15. He wasn’t having any difficulty keeping up with battles yet. Maybe Crystal Focus would cover for some of that too.

He split the last ten points between Aura and Intelligence. The level boost had brought him up to 37 in each, and the new points made it 42. Those were his main stats and the source of all his abilities.

At some point, he was going to have to add something to Wisdom, but a 50% chance to reclaim the auras on these gnomes was fine for now. He glanced over the total before he confirmed the changes.

STR: 16 (+1 Spear of Umbral Flame)

CON: 20 (+1 Spear of Umbral Flame)

AGI: 15 (+1 Spear of Umbral Flame)

WIS: 10

INT: 42

AUR: 42

CHA: 15

He felt his body changing, becoming more comfortable again as his skin itched. It was almost as much of an improvement in his Charisma as the last time. At the same time, his mind expanded and the flow of aura and mana became more intense as it surged through his meridians.

"Better," Jeric agreed as he looked back towards his son and studied the differences. "You’re not exactly a charming demon yet..., but it’s getting there."

There was a slight grin on his face as he said it. He was teasing him. It made the transformation seem almost normal, like a bad haircut.

For a moment, Sam both wanted to laugh and cry over his appearance, ...but then he pushed it aside. Without the transformation, he would have never unlocked his class. They both would have died down here.

His dad had also never been bothered by the way he looked, even when Sam had been much more...frightening than he was now. His dad was just worried about how people would see him.

Jeric returned to watching the tunnel as Sam gathered the auras.

He’d been down to 9 mana and 7 aura after the barrier-breaking form of Flame Strike, but the levels had added back 11 each. It was plenty to reclaim these auras.

From the eleven gnomes, he got five Auras of Basalt. He nodded as he stored them all away. More would be better, but this many.... It would be enough for what came next.

They sat down to meditate, recovering their energy as they kept an eye on the tunnel that led toward the gnome nest.

Battlefield Reclaimer 29: Breaking the Gnome Blockade

There was another gnomish wall blocking the exit from the tunnel, but it was twice the height of the last one. It was also much more imposing, making it clear that the gnomes had put a lot of effort into it.

It was practically a fort. There were large, stable boulders at the base, and it was tall enough that Sam couldn’t see what was on the other side. It was blocking the only way down into the cavern that held the basalt gnome nest and their potential route out of the tunnels.

With these defenses..., how many gnomes could be left inside? The nest hadn’t looked that large before. Sam frowned as he studied the barricade and moved back again. It wasn't going to be easy to break through that.

Hopefully, the gnomes would continue to hide inside their barricade while they came up with a plan. It was much better to be the hunter than the hunted. They pulled back far enough that it was safe to have a conversation.

"We’re going to have to get a little more inventive," he suggested, looking towards his dad. "That wall can probably block my spells better, and we can’t see what’s on the other side this time."

The wall was so thick that his new barrier-breaking spell might not cut all the way through it..., or if it did, it might not hurt the gnomes on the other side much.

He could use two of those blade spells, but it would take a little time to summon the second one and then he'd be completely out of energy, which was dangerous. He needed a way to both break the wall and surprise the gnomes, without leaving himself too exposed.

What if there were more on the other side than expected? They could retreat back to the cave, but that would put them back in the same spot they'd been in before, waiting for the gnomes to come to them. It was better to keep moving forward and hope that they could break through.

"We’ll need to get through it somehow," Jeric agreed as he patted him on the shoulder. "The last couple of fights were a bit lucky, and it’s good that you got so many levels. It’s no surprise it’s a bit harder now."

Jeric turned to look through the stone towards the gnomish wall.

"We must have frightened them by killing the marauders.... Now they've decided to fortify their nest. Dealing with monsters at a similar level is always dangerous, especially if they're smart." Jeric shook his head as he gave Sam a smile.

"That’s why your enchantments will be important going forward. It will make a difference."

Sam nodded as his mind raced, thinking about what he could do. If the wall was just what it looked like, he could probably break it open, but if there were a lot of gnomes on the other side and the fight dragged out, it would mean consuming the auras he had gathered already.

If more gnome reinforcements came after that, things could get dicey. It was obvious why combat classes leveled the fastest and also why they had the highest death rates. They really needed a proper healer and more support if they wanted to do this. Their duo as a melee and caster was working out, but it wasn’t perfectly balanced.

They could have used a support caster to help funnel the mobs and control the battlefield, and then another support class to help erect defenses.... And another melee or two to work with his dad.

Sam frowned. They definitely didn’t have access to that. There was that Earth scroll in his belt pouch. It still had that sense of being much stronger than it should be. It could probably rip apart the wall, but he didn’t want to waste it if he didn't have to.

Making another one was an option, but he didn’t want to take too much time right now. Who knew what the gnomes would do when they found out about the last two battles? They were already building these walls, if they built more of them, or if there were more than they'd expected....

They might never be able to get through. They couldn't give them a lot of time to prepare. His talons clicked as he tapped them against each other.

"We’re just going to have to push forward and hope for the best." Jeric shook his head, as his thoughts traveled in a similar path. "At worst, we’ll collapse the tunnel and retreat. Save the Earth scroll for that."

Sam frowned, his thoughts running quickly. He didn't like the idea of pushing through without more backup plans. He wasn’t going to risk a blind fight where his dad could die again. What if they’d underestimated the enemy?

So, what could he do with what he had available? Auras of Umbral Flame and Basalt, the Earth mana, but he was planning to save that....

"I think I have an idea," he said eventually, as his talons fell silent.

He needed a rock.

---

It took him about half an hour, but Sam was humming as he finished inscribing the last rune on the fist-sized rock he had chosen. It was filled with them. Most of the runes were Fire, but there were a few Earth on it.

It definitely wasn't the prettiest enchantment in the world, since he'd had to rush through it, but overall he pleased with how it was turning out. He just hoped that it worked.

There had been an idea in the back of his mind for a little while now, as he debated how useful it would be to infuse an aura into something like a spell scroll.

This rock was the result. He had chosen it because it was the right size to absorb most of the energy from an aura.

After that, it hadn’t taken him long to purify it and inscribe it with a dozen runes, all of which were connected in a spiralling band along the surface. Hopefully, the Earth and Fire alignment of the Aura of Umbral Flame would work with it.

He pulled out the aura and began to imbue the lines, his hand moving swiftly. The taste of dark flame spreading beneath the earth covered the rock, flowing into the lines in shadowy wisps as if it belonged there.

The enchantment was crude, and the runes were not very stable. He could feel the aura twisting through them as if it wanted to escape, but he forced it to follow his will. It only needed to stay in the lines for a little while.

This rock was a variant of what he had done on the spell scrolls. It wouldn’t last long, but it had a significant amount of energy inside, most of which came from the Aura of Umbral Flame, which was melting away in his hand.

When the aura was gone, he added twenty points of his own mana and aura to the rock as well, pouring all of it into a stability rune that was linked to the activation point. It was even more energy than he’d put into his last barrier-breaking spell.

Stability runes were strange things. They could absorb a lot of energy, depending on how well they were drawn, and then they just held it there until something happened. They could be used to buffer unstable formations.

He was using this one for the exact opposite. It was a power source.

Less than half an hour passed before the last runic line snapped into place. As it did, the entire rock turned as dark as the salamanders’ hide, a scintillating ebony with slow swirls of flame that seemed to be flowing just under the surface.

The enchantment was terrible, but that didn’t matter if it worked. He looked up at his dad, who was guarding the tunnel ahead, and nodded.

They waited just long enough for his energy to recover.

---

KrRRiiiiisssshhh.....

A crystalline blade of blue flames cut through the air, heading for the gnomish blockade. It was the spell Sam had invented for the last battle, a condensation of twenty points of mana and aura. He decided to call it Essence Blade.

It was the strongest spell he could summon and, with his current stats, it was about half of his entire essence pool. Thinking of his mana and aura separately was fine sometimes, but it was simpler if he thought of them together as essence.

He had the feeling that his Essence Control would need to go up to a higher tier before he could put more than 20 points into this spell. It was interesting that he could put so much more energy into this one than he could into Aura Bolt. Maybe that spell had built-in limits, while his Aura of Crystal Flame didn’t.

The Essence Blade hissed through the air as it headed for the gnome blockade, leaving a streak of crystal blue flames behind it.

This time, he’d prepared it just around the curve, so the gnomes couldn't see what was happening. They’d probably noticed the light and sound as he summoned it, but they didn’t have much time to react.

The triangular spell sliced into the base of the wall, splitting the boulders in half as it left a sheer, molten trail behind. As it cut inward, its structure began to collapse.

BbooOOOOOOmmMMMMMM!

A moment later, it exploded, unleashing all of the contained energy against the wall and the area immediately next to it.

It was an enormous blast that shattered apart the boulders and sent fragments of stone flying in every direction, but a lot of the energy was absorbed by the wall. The giant stones the gnomes had used for the base began to melt from the heat, giant chunks falling away from them where the spell hit.

In the resulting gap, he could see gnomes moving as they gathered themselves. The blast had broken the wall, but it hadn’t harmed too many of them. It had only knocked them around. They began pulling themselves up from the ground.

Basalt Gnome (Subterranean)

Basalt Gnome Marauder (Subterranean)

Basalt Gnome Warder (Subterranean)

There were two marauders this time, four warders, and a handful of regulars. Sam stood there, watching them calmly from behind an Essence Shield, until the timing was just right.

As soon as the rubble settled, he was running forward, with his father next to him. Jeric's steps were sure and light, his attention focused on the gnomes. Dust from the tunnel floor flew up around their boots as they slid to a stop fifty feet from the remains of the blockade.

A small, dark rock flew through the air, arching through the gap in the wall. Sam's Strength and Agility made his throw extremely accurate, and perhaps Crystal Focus helped as well.

Unstable energies built around the rock as the runes reacted with the essence Sam had infused. At the heart of the stone was a broken Fire rune, one that he’d deliberately drawn incorrectly.

The activation point and the stability rune with the 20 points of essence was at the end of the rune spiral. It was already pouring that energy into the other runes. As each rune came to life, the energy flowed along that path towards the flaw at the center.

The sphere of dark flame swelled in size, wrapped in flaming shadows as it became more menacing.

CrruuUUUmmmMMPPPP.

There was a dull sound as all of that contained energy hit the center rune. The sphere expanded and then expanded again, forming a second and then a third ring of dark flame. With each expansion, the sphere doubled in size.

It expanded again.

In the end, five concentric rings of umbral flame formed, all of them hanging there as the rock finished its flight.

WhooooOOOssshhhh.

There was the sound of air being drawn inward, sucked into the sphere. Then it exploded.

BooooOOOOOOmmmMMMMM.

The sound of the first two rings barreling outward deafened the area, turning everything in the tunnel into a rolling cascade of thunder.

One after the other, the remaining three rings of dark flame blasted outwards, joining the first two in successive tidal waves of power. There was a corrosive, biting energy to them as the darkness element ripped at everything around it.

Umbral Flame was normally a balanced aura, or the salamanders wouldn’t have been able to survive. By feeding it into a flawed rune formation, Sam had turned it into something else.

An umbral fireball with a fuse. There was a grim smile on his face as he watched it explode.

The darkness element in the Aura of Umbral Flame was what made it function. Darkness was an inherently unstable element that didn’t like other things next to it. When it found them, it tried to consume them.

Pouring extra Fire and Earth runes on top of that aura was adding fuel to a fire, especially when the central Fire rune was flawed and couldn’t manage the flow of energy. The waves washed over the gnomes, ripping at their bodies as they were knocked across the interior of the fort.

The regular ones couldn't take it and they disintegrated in the wash of energy. Yellow Earthen Shields from the marauders and warders shone in the darkness, but it was hard to tell how well they were standing up to the blast.

"Now!" he shout to his dad, as he started to run forward. They had to follow up on the blast while the gnomes were distracted, especially if there were more of them in there than they expected.

A crystal fireball formed between his hands, shooting forward into the mix and adding its explosion to the rest of the chaos. It blasted outwards in a wash of crystal blue flame, casting an eerie light across the tunnel.

He was down to half of his essence, and he didn’t want to risk burning it all on one more big spell, so he held off on casting another Essence Blade. Hopefully, what he'd done already was enough.

His dad ran next to him, keeping the pace easily. The hammers in his hand hummed as the air flowed past.

He was hoping that the double attacks had cleared out the inside of the fort, but when they arrived at the edge of the wall, he saw that the four warders had joined together to combine their shield into a smaller, stronger one.

It was gleaming with a brilliant golden hue. Behind them, the two marauders were standing ready, mostly unharmed. The runes on the warders’ heads were flickering weakly, as if they were on their last legs, but they hadn’t failed yet.

Another crystal fireball appeared between Sam’s hands as he compressed his essence into it, shaping it with quick gestures.

The gnomes started to respond. The warders lifted their heads and stared straight at him, their blank, dark eyes locked onto his body. If the runes on their foreheads hadn't been empty, they would have attacked in that instant.

Behind them, the marauders didn't have the same problem. They were still in excellent shape. They raised their hammers and their skin began to flare with the golden gleam of stamina as they caught sight of Sam and Jeric.

KhiisssSSTtttt.

BooooOOOmmm!

Sam's fireball shot forward, slamming into the shield, which crumpled as it bent inwards. After taking all the other damage, it was the final straw for it.

The following explosion ripped apart the four warders, scattering their scorched bodies across the ground, and slammed against the Earthen Shields around the marauders. The shields buckled, but held.

Jeric charged forward as the flames dissipated, following up on the opportunity. He slammed into the marauder on the right, his hammers singing as he drove it back.

As soon as the marauder moved, its Earthen Shield flickered out of existence. It looked like they could only use them while standing still. Perhaps that was the difference between Basic and Advanced for the shield, since Jeric could move in his.

The marauders must have focused on their Enhanced Physique, if they’d had the same option to upgrade. The warders had been taken care of, but now they were facing two nearly full-strength marauders.

That meant the one on the left was all Sam’s. Crystal Focus brought everything around him into stark relief, almost as if it were moving in slow motion. His slitted pupils narrowed to thin lines as he focused on the gnome and pulled the spear off his back.

He couldn’t face a marauder one on one in terms of strength, but the enchanted spear was still a powerful weapon. It already had one marauder to its name.

At the same time as the spear settled into his hand, ethereal crystal light billowed up around him, wavering at the edges. The flames licked at reality as he poured ten points of his essence into it.

Starting from his feet, his aura condensed into a twisting spiral of blue flame that wrapped around his body and the spear in his hand, outlining him in stark relief.

It was a nearly solid spiral of crystal flame, already condensed to make it faster to use, and as soon as it was formed, a crystal flame arrow separated from it, shooting towards the marauder. A tenth of the energy went with it.

The marauder froze as it saw the approaching spell, raising its arms instinctively to summon its shield. The shield was Stamina-based, rather than mana, but it didn’t seem to matter when the arrow struck.

The crystal flame arrow bit into the barrier like a drill, exploding against the surface, and it rippled as if a hammer had struck it.

Sam took advantage of the delay to show the marauder why it was a bad idea to stand still in front of a battle wizard. The spiral of crystal flame around him split apart into a storm of crystal arrows. They broke off one at a time, heading for the marauder.

KhiiiiSSSSTTttt...

KhhiiisSSTtttt...

Its shield held for the first three, and then it shattered to pieces. One by one, the remaining six arrows ripped through it. Two more started to form as Sam condensed them from new essence, but they weren’t necessary to finish the job.

The marauder collapsed, its body riddled with holes. When it did, Sam turned instantly towards his father’s battle. The arrows hummed in the air as he launched them.

They exploded as they ripped through the marauder’s side and leg, sending it tumbling across the ground. Jeric’s hammers slammed downward, finishing it off with rapid blows, and then he looked over toward his son.

His breath was coming in ragged gasps, but there was an air of confident satisfaction around him as he looked over the battlefield. The gnomish fort had been broken and the enemies inside were defeated.

Sam let out a deep breath as he looked around, taking in the scene of devastation they had just caused. He was down to only 6 essence now. Even with the help of the Umbral Fireball, the fight had drained nearly everything.

His breath was also coming in rough waves. If there had been just one or two more gnomes, he would have been forced to use the spear.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, a gravelly scream of rage roared up from below.

SCRRReeEEEEEKKKekkkKKk!

It was louder and deeper than anything he’d heard before, like an avalanche of pebbles shrieking through the tunnels. A sense of looming danger crashed down on Sam as he spun to look towards it.

He'd forgotten a very important fact. From this side of the wall, the nest was in clear view below.

Whatever was down there, it definitely wasn't happy with them.

Battlefield Reclaimer 30: A Meeting Among Gnomes

Somewhere in the Tunnels

"We’re getting very close now." Krana turned to speak to the group following her. "If nothing else happens, we’ll be there sometime today."

"After so long...," Ayala smiled, as her mood started to look up. It had taken the better part of two months, but it looked like she would finally be able to unlock her class!

She just had to reach the Earth mana pool and they were so close to it now. She smiled as a sense of hope filled her. Her father had always been so distant, only paying attention to her when he noticed she'd received the unique class.

Still, it hadn't been enough to really get his attention. His work kept him too occupied, defending the city and dealing with invasions from strange, powerful beasts. That was life at the Second Evolution, she supposed.

He was a World Knight..., and so distant from her it that was practically like asking for attention from a star. She pushed the thoughts out of her mind again as they continued forward. There was nothing new there and she'd gone over it many times.

At least her father had agreed to let Krana help and had arranged this escort.

She was walking next to her dwarven friend at the head of the party. It was a habit she’d picked up over the last week as she tried to distance herself from Ismela, whose mood was swiftly becoming worse the longer they spent in the tunnels.

The guards behind her were expressionless, but the wizardess was grimacing as a spark of lightning flared around her fingertips.

There had been a series of weak basalt gnomes in the tunnels recently..., and Ismela had been blasting them with a lightning spell she was practicing.

"Lightning in tunnels is a bad idea," Krana whispered. The dwarf shook her head as she thought about the trouble it might cause.

There were too many things in tunnels that attracted lightning, whether it was stone or metal. The spell could easily go out of control, despite the wizardess's assurances.

Dwarves grew more slowly than humans and had their Class Day at 30, and that had been enough time for her to learn a lot about mines and tunnels.

On top of that, it was not a good sign that there were basalt gnomes here. They were a terrible nuisance and often formed into colonies or nests, taking over entire sections of a tunnel. They lived off of stones and metal that had been infused with Earth mana, almost like elementals.

As a species, they were almost as bad as goblins, but they lived much deeper in the earth. As long as there was some Earth mana in the rocks, they could find a way to survive.

The things were a plague on dwarven mines and her people routinely eradicated them whenever they were found. Still, they always returned, like bad mushrooms....

One of the problems with basalt gnomes was that their population grew extremely swiftly. Another was that as they matured and continued to consume more Earth mana, they naturally became stronger. Their race had a lesser evolutionary feature that was particular to some monsters...which meant that their classes changed as they got older.

They’d only encountered the smallest of the gnomes so far, the younger ones, but if the gnomes had been here for long enough..., there could be some very dangerous versions up ahead.

If there was a gnome nest in the way of the Earth mana pool, it could be difficult to get past it, even with the Arestes Guild’s team.

Just as she was thinking about that, a premonition from her class abilities struck her, and her eyes turned silver. She wasn’t a very powerful seer yet, but she could sometimes catch a glimpse of the near future.

This time, it was far more than that.

A looming sense of the future stretched out like a thread in front of her...and it teetered precariously.

Aster Fall...their world and all the lives on it.... Stars were falling through the night as the earth ruptured....

Dwarven homes crumbled to dust as the foundations shattered....

Six-eyed monsters with shadowy arms reached through rifts in her kingdom’s border wall, breaking the rune-carved stones....

The images crashed down on her, pressing on her mind with an enormous weight of dread.

She froze, her boots stomping to a halt as the feeling overwhelmed her, ...and then the silver light faded from her eyes as they returned to normal. Krana drew in a ragged breath, her face pale as she stared at the tunnel in front of her.

She didn’t know what was causing it..., but she knew that the next few minutes would determine whether they all lived or died in the future.

SCRRReeEEEEEKKKekkkKKk!

Ahead, a blood-curdling shriek of gravelly rage echoed through the tunnels.

---

Now that Sam and his dad were through the wall, there was a clear view down into the nest, including of the thing that had just screamed.

In the middle of the nest where that small hut had been, there was a giant of a gnome. It was easily twice the size of a marauder. If those resembled a small rock golem, then this was the real thing.

The thing was the size of a wagon and its muscles were like boulders. Its eyes were red pits, glaring towards them across the distance. There were vague runic symbols all across its body, almost like swirls in its skin.

As it looked towards them, the high-pitched scream that sounded like gravel hitting a saw echoed through the tunnels again.

Basalt Gnome Warlord (Subterranean)

They had made it angry by destroying the fort.

The warlord commanded so much attention that, for a moment, Sam didn’t notice the two other gnomes flanking it. They looked a lot like warders, but they were bigger and more powerful. Even from here, he could tell that the rune on their foreheads was complete.

They were surrounded by billowing yellow Earth energy.

Basalt Gnome Shaman (Subterranean)

There were a few more scattered normal gnomes in the nest, but fortunately nothing else.

Thuudddd.

Thuuuudddd.

As the scream faded, the warlord was already moving, racing towards them across the stone. It steps slammed into the rock.

Despite its size, it was fast.

There was no time to retreat now, if the warlord would have even allowed it. It would only chase them through the tunnels, and it was probably faster than they were in a straight line.

Perhaps they’d made a mistake by assaulting the nest without more preparation....

On top of that, he was almost out of essence.

They had about thirty seconds before the warlord arrived. The shamans were trailing behind it, but they were nowhere near as fast.

"Sam, grab the experience and the auras closest to you!" His dad shouted, as he bent down to touch the marauder next to him. Two of the warders were also close enough for him to speed towards them, right after that.

"Grab it all and get ready to fight! I’ll hold it!"

There was no time to waste, so Sam did the same as his dad. Crystal Focus slowed down everything in the world as he touched the marauder in front of him, absorbing its experience and then its Aura of Basalt.

He was lucky enough to reclaim it.

He ran as fast as possible to the two warders, and grabbed their experience as well, but both of their auras slipped through his hands, leaving him with just the ashy taste of regret and the thought that he should have invested more into Wisdom.

Not that he knew where the points would have come from.

Still, he got one of the three, and that left him with one Aura of Umbral Flame and six Basalts as he spun back to look at the warlord that was closing the distance as fast as a galloping horse.

Notifications sang in his mind with their joyful silver chimes, but it felt like nothing was moving fast enough.

You have used your Class abilities to slay your enemies.

You gain 43,275 Class experience.

Congratulations, Scion. You have gained four Class Levels.

You are now a Level 23 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Total Experience: 89,775 / 90,500

You may now choose one Basic Class ability and one Subclass ability to upgrade to Advanced.

Unique Bonus: You may also choose from one of the following Class abilities for this tier.

Intensify Aura

Transfer Aura

Shatter Aura

Congratulations Scion. You have gained four General Levels.

You are now Level 24.

Total Experience: 92,075 / 107,000

You gain +4 Aura, +4 Intelligence, and have 12 free status points to assign.

Sam waved the windows away as he frantically chose three options. He focused on what would help them the most right now, since it looked like the gnome warlord was as durable as a mountain.

For Battlefield Reclaimer, he upgraded Aura of Crystal Flame to Advanced. For Scion of the Crystal Flame, he upgraded Flame Strike to Advanced.

For the extra ability, he grabbed the first one, Intensify Aura, since he had no idea what any of them did. He hurriedly made the rest of his choices as the warlord approached.

The levels brought him up to 46 in Aura and Intelligence, and he evenly divided the 12 new points between those as well, taking them to 52. It added 10 points to his essence pool.

He felt the new energy filling his body, but it still only brought him up to 16 points.

He had just enough time left to grab two auras from his storage and combust them, raising his mana and aura to 23 and 25, before the gnome arrived.

The warlord collided with his father at the mouth of the tunnel like a mountain striking a boulder.

---

A Moment Earlier

Jeric’s head whipped toward the nest as the gnomish scream sounded in his ears. It was echoing with rage. For a moment, he berated himself for being a hasty idiot. They’d forgotten to check for reinforcements!

His desire to get out of the tunnels had led them into another problem. Then he pushed that thought aside, since there was nothing he could do about it. Below, he could see the gnomish warlord and the two shamans heading their way.

"Sam! Grab the experience!" he yelled, as he bent down towards the marauder and chunks of warder that were next to him. "I’ll hold it off!"

The warlord was already running, its steps thudding into the stone as it raced towards them. They didn’t have long, but it was enough for him to make a couple of fast choices as he pulled the experience into himself.

You have used your Class abilities to slay your enemies.

You gain 42,175 Class experience.

Congratulations, Earth Blessed. You have gained five Class Levels.

You are now a Level 22 Earthen Marauder.

Total Experience: 72,800 / 76,000

You may now choose one Basic Class ability and one Subclass ability to upgrade to Advanced.

For reaching the Advanced Tier in your Class, you gain the Class ability: Reverberating Blow.

[Reverberating Blow: Allows you to harness Stamina more efficiently for a strong attack.]

...

You have gained five General Levels.

You are now Level 22.

Total Experience: 72,800 / 76,000

You gain +5 Strength, +5 Constitution, and have ten free status points to assign.

As soon as the options appeared, Jeric immediately upgraded Enhanced Physique to Advanced, followed by Persuade. Enhanced Physique might help him in the current battle, and Persuade would be important in the future if they survived this.

As he made the choices, Jeric felt his body swelling with energy. Information on what Enhanced Physique did poured into his mind.

The Basic tier of the ability had changed the way he looked and given him a little bit of extra Strength and Constitution, but it had only been a starting point for what was to come. The Advanced tier was much stronger.

Instantly, his Strength and Constitution rose by 10 points, and his Agility went up by 5. His appearance didn’t change much, but he could feel a massive amount of strength and vitality infusing him.

His skin and bones became sturdier, able to deflect about ten percent of damage that he was dealt. His stamina use also became more efficient by ten percent. He didn’t have time to admire the changes as he split the ten free points he had between Strength and Constitution.

Before these levels, he’d had 40 in each. The level jump had added 5 directly, and the skill and free points added another 15. It left him at 60 in both stats.

The twin hammers in his hands added another +4 on top of that, pushing him to 64. It was an incredible amount of Strength and Constitution, but it wasn't clear if it would be enough against what was coming.

The gnome was massive, easily the size of two or three marauders put together.

His bones crackled with force as he tightened his grip on his hammers and prepared to defend. He would either hold here, or they would both die before they could see home again.

He refused to let Aemelia and Altey live without him, and he wouldn't let anything harm Sam.

To the side, he could see Sam grabbing the experience from the other gnomes. Hopefully, it added enough energy back for him that he could do something to stop this warlord.

His son was inventive, and that might be the only thing that could help right now.

The new information about Reverberating Blow built in his mind as he channeled his stamina around himself, strengthening his body further.

Stamina was a lot like mana, but it came from Strength and Constitution together. It was what fueled his Earthen Shield, as well as his other abilities. It was the average of the two attributes.

Right now, he had 60 base points in it, and he called up as much as he could to meet the gnome’s charge.

A bright yellow Earthen Shield sprang up around him, ready to absorb the impact, and the hammers in his hand sang as he poured mana into them.

At the same time, stamina flowed into the new ability he’d just learned, and ten points of stamina instantly formed a bright golden gleam around the hammers.

Jeric only had time to run forward to the edge of the tunnel before the gnome was on top of him. Reverberating Blow and Earthen Shield met the marauder with a clash like the world was collapsing.

His bones creaked in pain as he was slammed backwards, his feet digging a trail into the stone as he slid across the ground.

---

A ringing sound echoed out across the tunnel as Sam saw the gnome warlord collide with his dad.

Jeric was surrounded by a bright yellow shield that seemed to be defusing some of the impact, but his feet cut a furrow in the ground as he was pushed backwards. The stone was curling up around them like a knife pressing into butter.

"Dad!" Sam called, as he felt himself beginning to panic. He couldn’t let that gnome hurt his father.

How could they have forgotten about the nest?!

If he’d been thinking more, it would have been obvious that if there were multiple marauders, then there was probably something even stronger behind them!

The warlord was enormous, head and shoulders taller than his dad and twice as broad. Its head was smaller than its arms, and its skin looked as hard as the basalt for which it was named.

It was far more deadly than a marauder.

He didn’t know if it was a higher class, or if it was an evolution. Sometimes, monsters evolved earlier than Level 100, as part of a natural growth cycle, in what was called a lesser evolution. When they did, their classes could change.... He'd heard of the idea, but he'd forgotten it until now, since he'd never dealt with anything like that before.

Maybe that was what was happening with these gnomes. Were the small ones the youngest, and the warlord at the top of their evolutionary path...?

Sam shook his head, pushing those thoughts aside as a spiral of crystal flame began to condense around him, outlining his body with an intense, cerulean aurora that wavered as it roared higher.

What he needed to do now was kill the gnome. He’d failed in that task once before and his father had nearly died. He wasn’t going to let the same thing happen again.

There were five auras left in his storage and he grabbed them, combusting them one by one. It took his mana to 37 and his aura to 45. It wasn’t a lot, but it was all he had to work with.

"Sam!" Jeric yelled, as his feet dragged on the stone. "Hit it with something big!"

The gnome’s initial charge was starting to wear out and somehow his father was still standing, even though his shield was flickering on the edge of failure and his face was white.

The gnome’s face was a bluff snarl of rage, its eyes deeply set pits of red that blazed outward. The runes on its skin began to surge, dull yellow lines of energy connecting one to the next as the warlord started to use an ability.

Behind it, the two shamans were still running forward, halfway to them now. They would be here in another moment or two.

Crystal flames surged, turning the world around Sam into an ocean of cerulean light that rippled across the walls as he condensed another Essence Blade. It was the first thing he could think of and his most powerful spell. The crystal triangle of the spell built up, condensing again and again on itself as he poured more energy into it.

"HaaaaAAAARRRRRRrrrr!"

A strange shout from across the nest got his attention, and Sam glanced up as a new sense of dread filled him.

Were there more gnomes?

---

Krana ran forward around the curve in the tunnel, her hand grabbing for the warhammer at her belt. A sense of deep, instinctual panic was flooding through her body.

She didn’t know what was going on or what that vision had been about, but she knew that if she didn’t get to whatever was ahead of her, there would be a severe price to pay in the future.

One that Aster Fall itself couldn’t handle.

She had never had such a powerful premonition of doom before. She was new to her class, and visions like that should only have come to the most powerful and eldest of Seers.

The fate of the world...how could that have something to do with a dwarf as young as her?

But it didn’t matter anymore, because whatever it was, it was right in front of her and the choice was simple. She could either help or not.

Her boots kicked up dust in heavy clomps as the hobnails on the bottom echoed against the stone and her grip tightened on her hammer. The vision had come to her, and that meant she had a role to play. There was something she could do to help.

Whatever it was, she was going to make sure it didn’t harm Aster Fall.

"What’s wrong?!" Ayala cried out as she ran along after her. The young woman was at her side, keeping pace. Her voice was concerned. She’d never seen Krana panic like this before.

A moment before, the dwarf’s eyes had turned silver as her Seer abilities kicked in and then she’d gone as pale as a ghost.

Ayala didn’t know what was happening, but she wasn’t going to let Krana face it alone. The dwarf was her only friend down here and they’d been together since they were tiny children, when their fathers had met up to discuss the defense and trade that ran through Osera.

Ismela and the two guards trailed behind.

"Stop! Where are you going?!" The wizardess had a look of consternation on her face as she yelled at them.

The lightning she had been playing with was frozen into a ball in her hand as she gripped it, her alarm growing. A sense of deep-seated aggravation and disdain for the tunnels was also thick in her mind.

Now, her charge was endangering herself and running ahead without her. What would she tell the World Knight if his daughter were injured?! Desperation and anger combined to put her in a very foul mood as she sprinted after Ayala.

The two guards joined in, running along behind Ismela. Their faces were as indifferent as ever, and it was hard to tell if they even cared about what was happening.

They were just thinking about a mug of ale and a bed back home, after they killed the rest of the things in the tunnels and completed this mission. After this one, there would only be another of the same, so they didn’t feel any great urge to comment on it.

At least this one hadn’t been very dangerous so far. The gnomes and tunnel worms were the strongest things they’d encountered, and the fragments of experience they’d picked up so far were worth the trip.

It was hard to find monsters like this near the city. They kept well away from the borders. When they did appear, they were routinely slaughtered to protect the citizens.

If this dragged on for long enough, they might even get another level out of it, and with each point of Constitution they gained, that was another few years of life. Years to spend on ale and good food in their retirement.

Krana sprinted around the next curve in the tunnel wall and Ayala was right behind her.

A large cavern opened up in front of her, covered in small huts that had to be the basalt gnome nest. The huts were crude and made of stone that had clearly been chopped from the walls. It was an embarrassment to every form of masonry she'd ever seen.

At the center of the nest, a Basalt Gnome Warlord was sprinting towards the opposite side, his heavy footsteps thudding into the ground and shaking the stone floor. Stones fell away from his shoulders, marking the remains of a small hut where he must have been sleeping.

Just behind him, two Basalt Gnome Shamans were starting to run as well, heading in the same direction. Her gaze followed them, tracking the path towards their destination.

Their targets were on the opposite side of the cavern, slightly uphill at the mouth of a tunnel that opened onto the area. She could see the remains of a blockade there, which had probably been built by the gnomes.

It had just been broken apart. Smoke and scattered gnomish bodies decorated it.

In front of that scene of destruction, there were two humanoid figures that instantly drew her attention. Her eyes went silver as she examined them, her Far Sight ability kicking in as it helped her to close the distance. She could see them as clearly as if they were standing in front of her.

One of them was a muscular human who looked a lot like a barbarian or some type of wild, muscular shaman. His hair was long and in disarray, which combined with his muscles to make him unkempt and terrifying, like something out of a story from the beginning of human civilization, when they had fought for their lives against wild beasts with nothing but sticks and stones.

At the same time, there was a sense of stability that radiated from him, as if no matter what happened, he would be there to face it.

Her Analysis ability kicked in a moment later, telling her that he was an Earthen Marauder and Human, as well as some of what he could do. The trait Earth Blessed glowed from him, making her eyes widen in shock as she saw the silver-white shine of Earth mana entwined through his aura.

It made her instantly like him. No one that the Earth had blessed could be a bad person. If he came to any dwarven city, he would be a respected guest. She had never seen a human or a dwarf with his class before, but she had seen a basalt gnome with it.... She just didn't understand how that could happen.

What in the world was going on here?

Her eyes shifted to the figure next to him and her breath froze in her lungs as she nearly jumped backward in shock.

It was a tall, lean demon with long, black hair flying behind his head like writhing shadows as it came free from a leather braid. Sharply curved horns the size of her hand rose up on either side of his forehead, giving his entire face an angular, devilish appearance.

Fierce, crystal blue eyes with slitted pupils gleamed like two stars in the night, trapping her attention. For a moment, it seemed like the world faded away, turning into a distant starscape of sparkling worlds that stretched out across a galaxy filled with crystal blue suns and twisting flames.

Her Foresight ability drove a cold spike of importance into her mind as she saw him, letting her know that this...being...was at the center of everything she had seen earlier.

She could see the demon’s mouth moving as he shouted something, and a swirl of crystalline blue flames roared into existence all around him, creating a spiral of energy around his body as he began to shape a spell.

She analyzed him, and her breath froze again as she saw his class and race. Battlefield Reclaimer...Unique...and an Outsider whose origin was...Aster Fall?

How could he look like that and be from this world?

There was a moment of indecision as she wondered if he was good or evil, but there was a look in his eyes that told her he cared fiercely about the older man next to him and would sacrifice his life for him in an instant...and that made the decision for her.

Whatever he looked like, he was standing with a human and facing monsters. Combined with her Foresight, that was more than enough. She couldn't allow him to die here.

For an instant, she wondered if she were supposed to kill him instead, but she pushed the idea out of her mind at once. She didn't feel any sort of threat from him..., just a massive sense of necessity that seemed to flow around him, as if he had the attention of the entire world and it was waiting for him to do something extremely important.

Somehow, the fate of the entire world hung on him.

The warlord finished crossing the distance and slammed into the barbarian at the front of the tunnel, driving him back across the stone. The golden sphere of stamina shielding him faded quickly, its color wobbling as he was forced backward.

It was clear that, if nothing changed, the gnome would overwhelm him in a moment.

Behind the warlord, the two gnome shamans were still running across the cavern, heading to join the battle. There wasn’t long to decide what to do, but she knew that if she didn’t do something, both the man and the demon would die.

Before she could even think of a plan, Krana felt herself shouting out a dwarven battle roar as she surged forward. Her eyes were bright silver as she raised her hammer and headed towards them.

"HaaaaaAAAAAARRRRRRrrr!"

Battlefield Reclaimer 31: Divided by Battle

The spiral of crystal blue flame around Sam compressed into the triangular point of an Essence Blade as he shaped the spell as quickly as possible. He had to take down that warlord before it could harm his dad.

The Earthen Shield around his father was already flickering on its last legs as it tried to absorb the overwhelming energy of the gnome warlord’s charge. The monster’s momentum was running out, somehow, as his father continued to block it, but the runes on its body were becoming brighter.

Whatever ability it was going to use, he had to stop it.

The Advanced levels of Flame Strike and Aura of Crystal Flame that he had just gained were making his spell form much faster than before, and he could feel a new intensity in it, but he still wasn’t sure it would be fast enough.

Hopefully, it would be able to damage the warlord.

As the spell continued to form, he looked up quickly, searching for the source of the shout that he had heard a moment before. What was it? Was there another type of gnome in the nest that was attacking too?

What he saw instead was a short, well-muscled dwarven woman wearing darkened scale mail. She was rushing through the cavern from the opposite side with a warhammer in her hands. Her eyes were pure silver pools, shining with some type of vision ability.

The shout was coming from her, and she looked incredibly fierce. He didn’t have time to look much more closely than that, but he could tell that she was heading for the shamans.

A surge of relief struck him at the thought that she might be able to help.

He didn’t know where she had come from, but if she was going to lend a hand here, they might be able to get out of this. If she could at least distract the shamans for a few minutes....

Behind her, he caught sight of more people. There was a young woman in blue and white clothes who was followed by three more humans a bit farther back. It almost looked like they were chasing her as she tried to keep up with the dwarf.

One of the three looked like a mage or wizard, since there was lightning sparking around her hands, and the other two were clearly some type of melee classes. They were wearing chainmail and had swords at their belts, which they were just starting to draw.

It seemed there were adventuring parties in the tunnels after all. As the young woman entered the cavern, he saw her freeze as she took in the scene around her.

"Get the shamans!" he yelled out, but that was all the time he could spare. Hopefully, they would lend a hand, because these gnomes would be too much otherwise.

He finished compressing his crystal flame and the double-bladed triangle of an Essence Blade formed in front of him. His target was the runic pattern on the warlord’s side.

Whatever skill it was using, the glow of the runic energy was strongest on its torso and if he hit it there, maybe it would disrupt it. If he were even luckier, it might cut right through it.

The yellow Earthen Shield around Jeric flickered and died at the same time as Sam released the spell.

KRriiiiIIIIsssshhh!

The crystal blue blade shot forward from his hands with a hissing sound of roiling energy as it cut through the air. A cloud of swirling blue flames roared back from the edges and it left behind a trail of crackling heat.

Even with the Advanced abilities, the spell was still 20 points of his essence, but the result was much stronger than the Essence Blade he’d used to crack open the gnome barricade.

The intensity and cutting force of the flames had increased dramatically, along with his control. There was a sense of connection with the spell after it left his hands that hadn’t been there before. It felt like he could make it turn in midair, if he needed it to, even after it left his aura.

The radius of Aura of Crystal Flames had also doubled, jumping from twenty feet to forty. The range of Crystal Focus had expanded along with it.

If he’d hit the barricade with this Advanced version of the spell, it would have cut right through the wall and the gnomes on the other side without any trouble.

Still, he wasn’t sure it would be enough against the warlord. The gnome was enormous and the runes on its skin were clearly enhancing it somehow. He had to break them if he could.

He didn’t know what level it was, but it was probably in the mid 30s at least, on top of whatever evolution it had gone through to upgrade it from a marauder.

Down in the center, the shamans were starting to turn towards the running dwarf at the same time as his Essence Blade hit the warlord.

BoooOOOOMMMmmm!

The crystalline blade slammed into the side of the warlord’s body with a sound like an exploding volcano. It cut a foot deep into the warlord’s side, ripping apart the curls of runes that were still gathering power, and picked it up off the ground.

Then it flung it across the nest.

SLLLaaAAAAAMMMMmmmm!

GoooOOOOOnnnnNGGGGG!

The warlord became a blue-flamed meteor as it sailed through the air for two hundred feet and crashed into the ground in a rolling explosion of sound. It was like a giant had just struck a massive gong that echoed through the entire cavern.

Whatever else it was, the warlord was not immune to pure force.

Sam’s spell was capable of breaking apart a stone fort. Sending a much smaller rock flying was completely within the realm of its power.

There was a smoking crater where the warlord landed and for a moment, everything around it was still. Even the gnome shamans and the new party turned to look towards it, their eyes wide.

The warlord had struck the ground with incredible force.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep it down.

A rocky hand the size of a dinner plate reached up, gripping at the edge of the crater, as the giant gnome hauled itself free from the rubble. Its body was covered in stony debris that fell off as it shouldered its way back to the surface.

When it came into full view, there was a clear, black hole that had torn through half of its side, removing a good chunk of the creature’s entire torso.

His Essence Blade had broken the runic pattern there, disrupting whatever the gnome had been trying to do, but it wasn’t enough to kill it.

The warlord was as strong as its name. It slowly levered itself out of the crater as it climbed back to its feet.

---

Ayala was trying her best to keep up with Krana, but her friend was fast. Much faster than she had thought. She didn’t know what had gotten into her as the dwarf ran around the curve in the tunnel and suddenly let out a terrifying roar.

Was there something attacking?

Ayala followed right behind her as they came out into the large cavern. She could hear Ismela and the two guards, Yeres and Lesat, sprinting after her.

"Stop! Where are you going?!" The wizardess was cursing as she tried to call Ayala back. The sound of the guards’ equipment clashing as they ran echoed sharply from the stone walls.

Ayala ignored them as she followed her friend into the cavern. Whatever Krana was doing, she wasn’t going to let her do it alone.

As the area opened up in front of her, Ayala could see the remains of small stone huts and a few of the strange basalt gnomes that the guards had been fighting in the tunnels. Was this where they had all been coming from?

Krana was sprinting across the ground towards two of the basalt gnomes at the center of the area, but Ayala frowned as she tried to decide what to do. She hesitated at the entrance, looking to see what was going on first.

She was only level 9 and her class was still locked, so she didn’t have any good abilities, but she did have some scrolls and a few items that she had collected before she left home....

She hadn’t needed them yet, but it seemed like this might be the time.

BoooOOOOOOmmmm!

An enormous explosion suddenly caught her attention, dragging her gaze towards a large rock that was flying through the air. It was huge, covered in blue flames, and struck the ground with an earthshaking roar, creating a deep crater on one side of the nest.

As she followed the flaming trail back to where it had come from, she saw two very strange figures.

One was a muscular barbarian of some type who was holding onto two hammers. His face was pale and he was covered in sweat, but he was staring out across the cavern toward where the rock had landed.

The rock that...was now starting to move.

It had to be another gnome of some type, but it was a lot bigger than any of the ones she had seen before. Her gaze was dragged back to the second figure.

"Aaahh!" She couldn’t help screaming when she saw what he looked like and her breath whoooshed out of her as she paled, scrambling backwards.

He was surrounded in swirling blue flames that looked like crystal. They went from deep, dark blue to a more translucent flicker at the edge, and there were a thousand different shades in between. It was one of the most beautiful flames she had ever seen, but it didn’t stop her next reaction.

A demon!

An Outsider!

One of the evil things her father was always complaining about, on the rare occasions she got to see him. He spent more time talking about Outsiders than he did about her.... He had scared her with stories of them when she was a child.

She shuddered as she saw the being, an instinctive reaction to meeting something she had been afraid of for her entire life. There was also a thread of jealousy, because this figure had more of her father’s attention than she did.

She didn’t know a lot about them, but she knew Outsiders were a threat and were constantly attacking.... Fighting them was what took up most of the attention from the higher-Evolution people in the world.

She was frozen in indecision as she stared between Krana, the gnomes, and the demon.

She didn’t even notice Ismela coming up behind her or the sharp intake of breath as the wizardess caught sight of the demon.

---

Sam looked down towards where the warlord was starting to climb out of the pit and frowned. He was down to 17 mana and 25 aura. If he scraped every ounce of energy out of his body, he might be able to hit it once more, but that would leave him a useless wreck for at least a few minutes.

A new spiral of condensed crystal flame began to surge around him as he reached for his belt pouch and grabbed at the scrolls inside.

"Dad, use the scrolls!" he yelled to his father. "Fire first!"

He wanted to bombard the gnome from afar, hopefully slowing it down or killing it before it could get back up to them.

His dad was pale from the collision with the gnome and his Earthen Shield had still not returned. His stamina had to be almost tapped out now. He shouted an acknowledgement as he grabbed for his own scrolls.

They activated them at the same time.

The runes on the sheet in Sam’s hand ignited, flaring with energy as the lines began to burn. In an instant, the sigils came to life, twisting into real flames that began to consume the mana around them, and then the entire scroll ignited into a flaming sphere in his hand.

To the side, he could already see a similar fireball leaving his father’s hand, and as soon as his was formed, he hurled it toward the gnome.

BooooOOOOoommmMM!

BooOOOOOooMMMmm!

Two thunderous explosions of flame rocked the area as the Fire scroll spheres impacted the gnome warlord, striking it on the chest in a rolling echo that followed one after the other. They had originally been filled with Earth mana, and they were far stronger than a normal Basic spell scroll.

There was no Earthen Shield surrounding the gnome, and the strikes were powerful enough to hurl it back into the pit that it had just climbed out of. Whatever else the Essence Blade had done, it had definitely broken its runic defenses.

The warlord's dark grey surface started to char, turning red in areas, as the flames washed over it.

A sense of hope was filling Sam’s body as he turned towards the two shamans. The dwarf was about to reach them, but it didn’t look like she had the ability to fight them both at once, and if he wanted to win this, he had to take them out.

He threw a crystal fireball at each of them, one after the other, as fast as he could form them. Another four points of essence flowed away as the spells struck.

Bright yellow shields surrounded the shamans right before the spheres struck, which were swallowed a moment later by the crystal blue explosions that erupted around them. The impacts knocked them backwards, but as the flames faded away, it left them looking only a little worse for wear.

The dwarven woman was approaching them now and there was a gleaming, silver light shining all around her as she raised her hammer. She seemed to be shouting something. The head of her weapon shone brilliantly, like a shimmering diamond in the cavern, as energy gathered around it.

She struck down with her hammer and somehow the shield in front of her shattered, falling apart into shards of light. At the same time, the shaman raised its hand and lunged toward her, with a dull, yellow spike flaring around its fist.

Before he knew what he was doing, Sam was racing towards her, as the spiral of condensed flames around him separated out into a dozen crystal flame arrows. It was almost all the essence he had left and it dropped him to a single point of mana and 9 of aura.

Fortunately, his arrows were a lot stronger than they had been an hour before.

Kriiiiisssssh.

Kriissssshhh.

Four of the arrows left his hand at once, flaring as they soared across the cavern. Trails of sparkling aurora-like flames surged behind them, like comets in the night.

The arrows struck the shaman whose shield had just shattered and pierced through its right arm, ribs, right leg, and its head with sharp, hissing impacts. For a moment, it seemed like the gnome just hung there, frozen in the air.

Then the arrows ripped through to the other side, exploding into roars of hissing flame as they shattered apart its body in an intense eruption. Pieces of the shaman’s corpse went flying in every direction.

The dwarf was stumbling backwards, her hammer raised to block, and there was a scorch mark on her armor where the shaman had hit her, but she was alive. She spun to stare in the direction fom which the arrows had come and for a moment, her eyes and Sam’s met.

All Sam saw was a silver light that stretched on for eternity and that slowly swirled with possibilities. And then he was moving again, turning back toward the warlord.

Whoever she was, the young dwarf was helping them, and that made her a friend. He was glad he’d been able to save her.

The warlord was starting to stand up, its skin a muddled red from the heat of the Fire scrolls that had just scorched it. He grabbed at the Water scroll, activating it as he aimed at the gnome.

From above, he could already see a crystalline sphere of Water shooting down toward the gnome, from where his father was standing.

Hopefully, the combination of hot and cold would shatter it.

As soon as Sam’s scroll finished converting into a sphere of roiling water, he hurled it at the warlord. His father’s Water sphere was already there, crashing into the gnome’s hide in an explosion of sharp, whipping tendrils and explosive hissing steam.

ShhiiiIIiiiSSSSsss!

CraaaAAACcckk!!

The gnome’s skin was already beginning to crack apart. As Sam’s sphere struck it, the second Water scroll added an even greater explosion of steam and cutting force. There were more whistling hisses and the sharp pops of exploding stone.

The cutting blades of the Water spheres ripped at the gnome's body, gouging deep lash marks into it. The cloud of vaporized water around the warlord grew thicker, until he couldn’t see it anymore. It was only a blur of darkness at the center.

The dwarf was running towards the second shaman, which wasn’t far from her, and he saw her strange breaking spell appear again, ready to crack the shaman’s shield.

He wasn't sure how she would take the shaman down besides that. It was almost as if she knew he would follow up....

As soon as she struck, Sam was there, four more of the crystal flame arrows flaring through the broken surface as they tore the shaman apart.

Unlike the warlord, the shamans were almost defenseless without their shields. He didn’t know what skill the dwarf was using to crack their barrier, but without her help, it would have been impossible to deal with them so easily.

He didn’t want to know what other spells they were hiding. They had to be a lot stronger than the warders from before. It looked like they were stronger versions of the same evolutionary path.

There were only four arrows left floating around him. He was on the dregs of his essence as he turned back towards the warlord.

At that same moment, his father sprinted past him, heading down from the tunnel above. His hammers were raised above his head and surrounded by the golden glow of stamina as he channeled some new ability.

An echoing reverberation surrounded him, joining together with the humming vibrations that rose from the Hammers of Seven Earth in his hands. The runes on the sides of the weapons glowed as his mana poured into them.

Just as Jeric reached the warlord, his hammers started to sing. He leapt into the air, bringing them down in an enormous double blow at the warlord’s head.

The hammers slammed downward as the hammers' notes intensified, the humming vibrations shaking the air around him. The outer layer of the gnome’s skin shattered as they landed and chunks of stone exploded outwards.

The gnome warlord staggered, barely keeping its feet, as the hammers came down again. It had an incredible amount of endurance, but the repeated blows stunned it. Sam had already broken its runic defenses, and the combined scroll attacks had ripped off huge chunks of its skin.

Now, blow by blow, Jeric's hammers built into an echoing beat like the war drums of the earth had come alive.

The Song of Seven Earths began to shake the cavern, shuddering from the walls as the sonic force of each strike concentrated on the warlord.

The four crystal arrows next to Sam hummed as he waited for the right moment, his hopes hanging on his father’s attack. If they could just take care of this warlord..., everything would be alright.

Just a few moments longer and his dad should be able to break through its defenses and kill it.

The stacking damage from the Song of Seven Earths was continuing to build and there were minor vibrations shaking apart the surface of the warlord’s body.

At that instant, an actinic light filled the air, along with a furious shout from one of the new adventurers that Sam had forgotten about.

A cobalt-blue blast of lightning shot across the cavern, heading straight for him.

"Outsider Devil! Die!" Ismela screamed as she sent the lightning bolt flying towards Sam.

"No!" The young dwarf’s shout rose through the air as she tried to stop the attack, but she was too far away to do anything.

Her eyes grew wide with panic as she watched the bolt fall.

Battlefield Reclaimer 32: Allies and Enemies

The blue lightning streaked across the cavern, heading directly towards Sam. It was a glowing, cobalt blue bolt of force with trailing tendrils like fingers that stretched across the ceiling.

It was accompanied by the dwarf’s panicked shout and the furious scream of the wizardess.

A flash of rage hit Sam as he saw it coming. The adventurer could have attacked the warlord, or helped to defend the dwarf from the shamans that had just died, but instead she had decided to attack him....

Whether it was hatred on sight or some form of cold-blooded murder, it was clear she was trying to kill him in a single blow.

All of that was clear in an instant.

The lightning was moving just a hair slower than his thoughts as Crystal Focus sped up his reactions. If she had been using real lightning from the heavens, it might have been a different story, but this was mage lightning.

It wasn’t a lot faster than other spells, no matter how much it tried to mimic the real thing. What it did have was a biting force that was well-known for chewing through shields.

All but one point of his mana and aura fused into an Essence Shield as he threw it up over his head. The Essence Shield formed into a crystalline dome all around him.

He needed to keep a clear mind and that was impossible if he fully drained his energy. He was hoping the shield would be enough to direct the force of the lightning down into the ground, but he wasn’t sure how well it would work. He’d never tried it before.

At the same time, he flung the four crystal arrows that were floating next to him towards the wizardess. It was a reflex that he barely noticed as he reached for the Earth scroll at his belt.

If there was anything that would be a strong enough defense against the lightning, it would be that scroll. He got it into his hand, but he didn’t have enough time to activate it before the lightning hit him.

He heard an enraged roar from his father at the same time as the world turned actinic blue. The force of summoned thunder slammed into the dome around him.

Drifting electric sparks floated through his mind as he felt his arms burning. The world was a rush of overwhelming, sharp light. He could feel the taste of charred ash and stone on his tongue, somehow similar to the Aura of Basalt from the gnomes.

His Essence Shield was holding off the lightning, but it was cracking already, flaking apart as the energy continued to bombard it. Balls of lightning and wispy, brilliant specks drifted on the far side as the mana reacted with the world, gathering together in a wave that waited for it to fully shatter.

The attack was based on mana and it was having a harder time than usual chewing through his shield, but it would break through in another instant. His mind was still partially functioning, but half of his world had already turned to pain and blue light.

The Earth scroll was in his hand and he felt for the activation point on it, fumbling at it with numb fingers. He pressed a thread of his mana into it and he felt the scroll shifting. The rumbling sound of the earth moving rose up all around him.

A thick, earthen wall grew from the stone below his feet and surged upwards, surrounding him as it flowed around his Essence Shield and encased him in a grounding dome.

The energy from the lightning that was sparkling all around his body drained away into it, leaving his mind wispy and drifting...like a cloud spiraling across the skies.

---

Jeric saw the bolt of lightning shoot across the sky towards Sam and a bolt of pure, unadulterated rage hit him as he realized what was going on.

One of those adventurers had just attacked his son!

He’d known that people would react strongly to Sam’s new appearance, but he hadn’t thought it would be so severe that they would try to kill him on sight!

His hammers were still slamming down into the warlord, ringing with the resonant, multi-toned song of the enchantment Sam had added. He looked toward where the lightning had gone to see if Sam was alright.

His stamina and mana were nearly drained, but the stacking sonic damage from the hammers continued to increase, shaking the warlord apart piece by piece as he hammered away at it.

He saw the crystalline glow of Sam’s Essence Shield blocking the lightning, which splashed against it like liquid, and then a huge wall of the earth rising up all around his son as the stone at his feet surged upwards.

He let out a quick breath of relief as he saw that Sam was aware enough to activate the Earth scroll. That...would hopefully be enough to block the spell.

He couldn’t let up on the warlord right now, not when it was almost dead. Otherwise, who knew what it would do when both he and Sam were exhausted. The stacking vibrations from the enchantment were slowly but surely shaking it apart and if he stopped, the monster’s Constitution would definitely help it regenerate.

As he saw the earthen wall safely surround his son, it gave him the assurance to continue attacking it. Sam would be alright..., he had to be.

As for those adventurers..., Jeric’s attention was caught by the trail of four crystal arrows as they surged through the air towards the wizardess who had just cast the spell.

He’d missed the beginning, but Sam must have thrown them when he saw the lightning coming. They ripped across the air of the cavern in a blazing stream of light, not much slower than the lightning.

He spotted them just in time to see them close in on the wizardess who had attacked his son. She was still furiously staring after the lightning she had cast, as if waiting for the result.

He didn’t know what was going through her head, or if she just didn’t notice the arrows approaching, but if she had a shielding spell, she didn’t have time left to summon it. She was either overconfident or a fool.

A stray thought crossed Jeric’s mind as he wondered how much Constitution the wizardess had. It was probably a lot less than the gnome shamans.

Whoever she was...and for whatever reason she had attacked Sam, it didn’t matter anymore. When the arrows hit, she was ripped apart into a rain of exploding chunks that sprayed across the wall behind her.

A sense of satisfaction surged through him as he returned to hammering on the warlord, even as he realized what a disaster it was to kill her. She was clearly a wizard and part of an adventuring party, and probably part of one of the guilds.

If word of her death got back to whatever town she was from, it would only make things even worse for him and Sam.

At the same time, her death was proof of the old saying that levels don’t matter as much as a strong ability. In fact, any given attack could kill someone many levels higher, unless they had the majority of their points invested into Constitution, which almost no one did.

Spells were especially good at it. It was why the first thing he’d done was to take Earthen Shield to Advanced.

A wizard might have 100 points in Intelligence, but unless they had just as much in Constitution and a strong defensive ability to go along with it, it was unlikely they’d be able to resist their own spells.

The wizardess clearly had nothing of the type. Perhaps she’d been focused all on offense, or maybe she was relying on some enchantment that failed to activate, but whatever level she was, it wasn’t enough for her to resist Sam’s counterattack. She was probably only in the Advanced tier at best.

He saw the young girl who had frozen at the edge of the cavern whip around, staring at where the wizardess had been. Her face turned as pale as a sheet when she saw the scattered corpse that was left behind.

The two guards also stood there, their faces changing as they realized what had just happened. Then they drew their swords as they charged forward, heading for the stone wall around Sam. Their expressions were ugly.

"Stop!" The dwarf lass shouted again, but neither of them was paying attention to her. "You can’t kill him! He’s important!"

Jeric agreed with her, although he had no idea how she knew anything about Sam. Whatever she was trying to say was lost on the guards, however, as they continued to run forward. They were enraged now and wouldn’t stop easily.

That meant he had to finish this battle with the warlord and get over there.

The warlord was half-slumped in front of him, its shoulders and arms sticking out of the pit it had made when it landed. Jeric continued to pound at it, adding even more force to the building reverberation of the enchantment.

He only had two points of mana left and he infused the last one he could use into the hammers, splitting it between them as he made the effect even stronger.

SuuuUUUUuuuuUUUmmmm.

CraaaAAACCCKkkkk!

The Song of Seven Earths was singing, accompanied by the shattering sounds of the hammers striking stone. Huge basalt flakes began to lift free from the gnome’s body. The runes on them were broken and twisted, indistinguishable now.

All through its body, there was a multi-toned vibration so strong it twisted Jeric’s teeth just to be next to it. It was painful even when he wasn’t the target and it made it difficult for him to focus. The area around the warlord seemed to be blurring and twisting together.

It was nearly dead already from the combination of Sam’s spell, the four spell scrolls, and the damage he had already piled onto it, but the thing was tenacious. He didn’t know exactly how much Constitution it had, but it had to be over a hundred. Maybe even more than that....

There was no way it would have survived this bombardment otherwise.

Without Sam’s hammers, he wasn’t sure they would have been able to kill it, even if they’d kept blasting it while it just stood there. The stacking vibrations were doing most of the damage now.

A series of cracks finally shot through its body as he slammed the hammers down again. Then again. Its shoulders went first..., the massive joints cracking as the gnome shuddered beneath the rain of blows.

He didn’t have enough Stamina left to use Reverberating Blow again, or he would have added it as well. The new ability took 10 points and he was down to 4. At the same time, the mana he’d infused into the enchantment was beginning to fade as the runes consumed it.

Fortunately..., the repeated blows of his hammers was enough to finish the job.

The warlord below Jeric’s hands finally began to shudder in its death throes as a giant craaack split its head in half and ran three-quarters of the way through its body.

A moment later, its shoulders fell apart into enormous chunks of stone like slid to the ground like pulverized boulders. Its arms crumbled into three different rocky sections..., and the rest of its oversized body slumped down into the crater.

In the end, it was a half-slumped pile of stone decorated with swirled and broken runes that was barely recognizable as a monster.

The crater would be good enough for its grave.

For all the damage they had done, it was the stacking sonic damage from Sam’s enchantment that finally finished it off.

Jeric reached down and grabbed the experience from it, pushing the notifications aside as he threw everything into Charisma. He was going to need to convince those guards to leave Sam alone, whatever it took. He jumped away from the body and sprinted towards his son.

As he did, the notifications he’d just ignored rang in the back of his mind.

Congratulations, Earth Blessed.

You have reached the maximum experience you can absorb at once, based on your level.

You gain 100,000 Class experience.

You have gained five Class Levels. You are now a Level 27 Earthen Marauder.

You have gained five Levels. You are now General Level 27.

Total Experience: 172,800 / 173,000

You gain +5 to Strength, +5 to Constitution, and have ten free status points to distribute.

For slaying an opponent twenty levels over your own and reaching the experience limit, you gain the Trait: Dauntless.

[Dauntless: Adds +2 Constitution, +2 Charisma.]

The new trait raised his Charisma from 8 to 10, and all ten of the new points went into it as well, bringing it up to 20. With his Persuade ability at Advanced now, hopefully it would be enough.

Across the cavern, he could see the dwarf and the young woman running forward as well.

Everyone was heading towards Sam.

---

Sam’s mind floated in the ether, sparkling with burning pain and overloaded meridians. It felt almost like he was drunk again, but in a much worse way than he’d ever experienced before.

The burning feeling was not the comfortable sensation of heat that he was used to, but an electric, scorched feeling that left his nerves tangled and broken. The smell of his own burnt skin hit him and a surge of nausea rose up, flooding through his mouth as he nearly retched.

His mind spun and the world was a chaotic vertigo of blurred sounds and overloaded sight.

The Earth wall had pulled the remains of the lightning away from him, grounding it out before it caused too much damage, but a streak of cobalt blue was seared into his eyes, an afterimage of the lightning that had just hit.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but he could feel the protective shield of the Earth wall all around him. He realized he wasn’t standing after all...he was leaning against the stone wall, slumped against it. It was so tight that he couldn’t have fallen down even if he wanted to.

Somehow, there was still air inside to breathe, and he felt the small flow of a breeze from a hole at the very top.

Had he done that? He didn’t remember.

Slowly, the world began to stabilize, shuddering all around him as his mind slowly returned.

His Constitution was only at 20, and it wasn’t enough to resist a lightning bolt like that. He didn’t know how strong the mage was, but if that spell had hit him directly, it would have killed him. Only his Essence Shield and the superpowered Earth scroll had been enough together to deal with it.

Where was that wizardess now? He had to stop her from attacking again. What if she tried to attack his father?

And...why had she attacked him? The memory of her last shout returned, engraved in his mind.

"Outsider Devil! Die!"

It wasn’t eloquent. It was a phrase filled with loathing...the culmination of pure hatred and terror poured into a shout. He didn’t know why she had reacted that way, if it was just his appearance or if she’d had some other experience in the past that made her hate him, but it didn’t matter.

Was that what he was to people now, that they would attack him on sight?

There was a lesson there, and even a suggestion for what to do in the future..., along with a worry for what would happen when they returned to the village, but right now he needed to deal with the present.

He had to get out of this dome and stop her.

His awareness was still around him and he could feel the connection between his essence and the Earth wall. He had activated the scroll and some of that connection to it was still there, just like when his flames were still part of his aura. It was waiting for him to tell it what to do.

If he tried, he might be able to open it back up. He wasn’t sure if that was the best thing to do, but he also couldn’t stay here forever.

At the same time..., his essence was down to one point, just on the edge of nothing, and he didn’t have any more auras to combust. He was basically defenseless.

Still, he refused to let his father face everything outside alone. They would figure it out together. He could still summon one more crystal arrow if he had to, or an underpowered Aura Bolt, even if it meant using the last point of his essence.

Could he delay them enough that he could get another point or two back? He doubted that would be enough to kill the wizardess, but...maybe the arrows he’d thrown had scared her off? It had been a reflex when he saw her attacking.

Whatever the result, he wasn’t going to find out by staying in here, even if it might be safer for him. He was injured, but his mind was clearing enough that he should be able to cast a spell if he had to, and that was better than being a turtle in a shell while his father was still outside.

He reached out through the connection to the Earth wall and pulled it apart, separating it into two halves so he could stumble out. He nearly fell through the opening, slumping against the side of the stone as he grabbed at it.

He was weaker than he’d thought.

As he did, he felt two strong, unfamiliar hands grab him, supporting him as they helped him to stand back up. His head spun and the world was an uneasy blur of color, a mix of mana, aura, and the life energy of strange people.

What was going on? Was this the adventure team that had just been attacking him? Where was the wizardess?

Where was his father?

The scene around him slowly resolved into something that he could understand. The young dwarf woman was standing next to him, and it was her hands that were supporting him. Her eyes were a cheerful golden brown, although strained at the moment as she kept a careful eye on him.

The silver light that had been there before was missing. Whatever ability she had used, it was no longer active. He still wasn’t sure how she had broken those shields or why she was helping him.

Across from him, his father was standing in front of the two guards, looming in a very threatening manner that Sam had never seen before. He was clearly enraged, the emotion radiating from him and twisting the air like red heat around his body.

His posture was straight and his back was to Sam, making it clear that he’d put himself between the two guards and his son. His hand was wrapped around one of the guard’s fists.

It looked like the guard had tried to attack and his father had grabbed it. There was a paleness to the guard’s face that suggested he was crushing it.

His father was sweaty, streaked with stone dust, and covered in red bruises, but at the same time he was alive and immensely intimidating. His clothing was barely there. It was just the shreds of the old rathide tunic hanging off of his broad shoulders and the old, tattered pants he had worn down into the ruins, cinched much tighter now. One of the hammers was at his belt and the other was in his free hand.

It looked like he had been yelling at them. There was an unfamiliar force emanating from him that Sam could feel, but he wasn’t sure what it was, which was somehow creating that red aura around him. It felt like his father’s personality had been magnified somehow.

Behind those two guards, the young woman who had frozen at the edge of the cavern was hanging back. She had just said something, and the guards were turning to look at her, their expressions a mix of anger and fear.

The conversation finally reached his ears, while the dwarf stayed by his side. She looked protective, concerned, and nervous of him all at the same time.

"If you take one step closer to my son, I’ll break both of you into tiny, tiny little pieces." His father’s voice was laden with the strongest threat and protectiveness that Sam had ever heard.

"How is that your son!" the guard on the left shouted as he looked back towards Jeric, his voice rising to a fever pitch. "It’s a demon! It killed Ismela!"

Jeric glanced over his shoulder toward where Sam had just come out of the earth wall, and a look of sudden relief passed over his face before it hardened again and he turned back towards the guard.

"She attacked him first and tried to kill him. She earned her death. He never harmed her before that."

Wait, the wizardess was dead? Sam was confused. When had that happened?

"I told her to stop, as well as all of you," the dwarf next to him spoke up, her voice a soft roll of resonant vowels and consonants that was pleasant to listen to. "If you’re not going to listen to the Seer who’s with you, you get the result. I don’t know why she reacted so badly, but that’s water under the bridge now."

"The Arestes Guild isn’t going to let this go!" The second guard was shouting now, the one who’s fist was still trapped in his dad’s hand. "She was a well-known adventurer! That...demon...isn’t worth half of her!"

"Stop...." The young woman behind the two guards finally spoke as she walked forward. She seemed hesitant and only glanced at Sam once before hurriedly looking away, her face paling.

She looked towards the dwarf woman before she spoke up again, her voice gaining a bit of firmness.

"Ismela attacked without orders, against a group that was facing monsters. She broke the common agreements between all guilds, and the contract she signed. The Arestes Guild can argue with my father about it..., if they dare."

"It’s a demon!" the first guard shouted again. "It doesn’t count!"

"Enough!" Jeric’s voice carried the weight of a much older, formidable man, and it came down on the two guards like a load of bricks. Their postures visibly sagged as they leaned backwards and their faces paled.

"You will go and sit over there," Jeric ordered, nodding towards the far side of the cavern. "Otherwise, I’ll kill both of you right now."

Based on how easily Jeric was crushing the guard’s hand, his father was at least half again stronger than him and his body was much broader. It was not an idle threat. Whatever else Enhanced Physique had done for him, it had definitely pumped up his intimidation factor.

Slowly, the guards nodded in response, their bodies slumping again as they pulled back and went to sit on the other side of the cavern. They weren’t happy, but it looked like they had been cowed.

The young woman stayed where she was, hanging there indecisively as she looked between Jeric, the guards, the dwarf, and then Sam. Her expression changed, moving from uncertainty to fearfulness and then back again as she hesitated once more.

The dwarf next to him had never left his side and as she saw Sam looking around, she suddenly spoke up.

"Well..., thank the Mother, but it looks like you’ll survive after all. You can call me Krana. We’re going to be good friends."

The world blurred around Sam again as he barely held himself upright, his nausea returning. At the same time, he forced down the crystal flames that he’d been ready to summon, since it seemed that...they weren’t needed?

What did they mean that the wizardess was dead and...what in the world was going on?

Battlefield Reclaimer 33: A Camp Divided

Sam was staring around the area, his thoughts muddled. The two guards settled down on the opposite side of the cavern and were muttering to themselves, but they stayed out of the way.

It created a clear division between the two sides.

Only the shocked girl was still undecided, but she continued to stand next to Jeric, staring blankly into the distance, as if she didn't know what to do. From time to time, she looked at Sam and then quickly looked away again, trying to conceal a shudder.

"It's fine...," Jeric was saying to her, his voice low and calm. It seemed like he was repeating himself. "That's my son, Sam. He's not a demon."

Just then, the dwarf...Krana..spoke up again, drawing his attention back to her.

"You should loot those two gnomes before anything else," she suggested, nodding towards the two shamans that were on the ground not too far away from them. "Getting a level or some more Constitution could help you heal up. Ayala is just adjusting her view of things. She'll be alright. I'll stick with you for a bit, since otherwise the guards might try something."

Sam looked down at himself and took stock of his injuries. There were streaks of black char all along his arms and hands, his rathide tunic was little more than shreds of burnt cloth, and most of the skin that he could see was reddened and covered in cracks. Through the cracks, he could see seared, clotted blood.

If he hadn't looked like a demon before, he probably did now.

Sam nodded as he let Krana help him towards the shamans. Healing would be good..., and gaining more Constitution would help speed that along. He also needed to get a few more auras..., if he could. He was entirely out and they were life-saving resources, as well as the source of his enchantments.

When he got to the corpses, he bent down and touched the two shamans. A moment later, silvery chimes sang in his ears as notifications appeared. He felt the surging joy of new levels bubbling through his blood, bringing with it a rush of new energy that helped to clear his mind.

Congratulations, Scion. You have used your Class abilities to slay your enemies.

You have reached the maximum experience you can absorb at once, based on your level.

You gain 100,000 Class experience.

You have gained six Class Levels. You are now a Level 29 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Total Experience: 189,775 / 200,000.

You have gained five General Levels. You are now Level 29.

Total Experience: 192,075 / 200,000.

You gain +6 Intelligence, +6 Aura, and have sixteen free status points to distribute.

He had never heard of maximum experience before, but he just accepted the notifications as he moved on. The new Aura and Intelligence added some essence, which also made him feel a bit better.

The shamans had to have been in their mid-twenties, at least, to give him 100,000 experience together. You only got half the experience from a monster and Level 25 had required 107,000 total to reach. So, they must have each been close to that.

He pushed the thoughts out of his mind as he searched for the auras, trying to get to them before they dissipated, and then he paused...debating if he should add anything to Wisdom first. It would help him get more auras in the future, and at the moment he was realizing that he needed a lot more of every attribute. That wizardess had tried to kill him on sight.

The gnomes here were already at a 50% chance to reclaim the auras, and he wasn't sure if a few more points in Wisdom would help much right now. Being attacked on sight also drove home the fact that he needed more Charisma and Constitution.

He sighed as he put five points in Charisma, six into Constitution, and the last five into Wisdom anyway. It brought him up to 20 in Charisma, 26 in Constitution, and 15 in Wisdom. He felt the changes spreading through his body, pouring new strength into his damaged nerves and muscles.

It felt like the Wisdom was expanding his world view, as some things became clearer to him. It felt a little easier to accept the existence of the Guardian’s star on his hand and the reality of what had just happened. Was that the effect of Wisdom?

The Charisma brought its customary itch as his body readjusted. This time, it was accompanied by the vigorous rush of new Constitution. The points he'd just added were more than 25% of what he'd had before, and as they flowed through his body in a surge of vitality, his injuries improved. He could also feel his body becoming more durable and his regeneration increasing.

As he hit 20 in Charisma, he felt a strange force all around him that was part of his Aura of Crystal Flame as well as his mind.... He wasn’t sure what it was, but it felt like there was a sense of personality in his energy now.

Was this the red aura his father was using against the guards? That had to have been the Persuade ability..., but it relied on Charisma too.

He couldn’t tell for sure, but it felt like the Charisma was somehow enhancing his essence. It wasn’t a lot, probably only as much as a single new point of Intelligence and Aura, but it was more than had been there before.

He still didn’t like putting his points into Charisma, but if he wanted to live in the world.... The attack just now had proved it was going to be difficult if people attacked him at first glance. Hopefully more Charisma would help, but he had the feeling he was going to have to find some type of disguise. The adventurers' reactions to him had been too severe.

As for his Intelligence and Aura, which built up his essence reserves..., they weren’t nearly as high as he would like, but he didn’t have the points to raise them anymore. He would have to collect enough auras that it didn’t become a problem, and always keep a bunch of them on hand for emergencies.

It was eating at him right now that he’d used them all up.

His aura had recovered to eight points with the new levels, which gave him enough energy to reclaim the auras around him. The aura from the first shaman floated into his hand and then towards the storage space with the familiar taste of dusty basalt and the pressure of the ages.

Despite the gnome’s level, it was only a Basic aura, which left him puzzled. It was the same thing that had happened before with the marauders.

Did he need to get his Reclaim Aura ability to Advanced before he could get the higher form of auras? Sam shook his head internally as he turned towards the next shaman. That was the most likely reason.

Another point of aura disappeared as he searched the second shaman. Unfortunately, this aura slipped out of his hands and left only an ashy taste in his mouth.

He’d just upgraded his offensive abilities and if he wanted to get Reclaim Aura to Advanced too..., it was either going to have to wait until Level 40 or he’d have to train it the old-fashioned way.

With a lot of practice.

He turned towards the warlord’s corpse, heading there next. He trudged across the room with Krana’s help, heading for it. The dwarf was a good assistant, steadying him with one hand, as the Constitution he’d just added continued its work.

Adding new Constitution gave you a faster increase than waiting to regenerate, and he was already feeling a new sense of energy pushing away his fatigue. He bent down towards the warlord, searching for its aura, and as he did, an unexpected notification appeared.

Congratulations, Scion. For slaying an opponent twenty levels over your own and reaching the experience limit, you gain the Trait: Dauntless.

[Dauntless: Adds +2 Constitution, +2 Charisma.]

A burst of new strength infused him as the Trait was added, further accelerating the healing process. The new Constitution brought him to 28 and the Charisma to 22.

That was...unexpected. How strong had the warlord been? He’d been level 24 before, which meant it had been at least 44. That was a huge difference.

Had his father met with the same experience cap from this one? He was the only other person who should have been able to loot it. Puzzlement flashed through his mind.

Why was there a maximum experience gain...? And what was happening to the rest of it? Was it just not possible for a person's body to take in that much energy at once or was the World Law taking the experience for some other purpose...?

Experience was a form of energy, after all.

The questions didn’t have a good answer, so he set them aside for later. The warlord's aura slipped into his hand and then into his storage. Fortunately, it was a success, even if it was still Basic.

He supposed he couldn’t get everything all at once. He’d have to train the ability on a lot more monsters to upgrade it. At some point, he should be able to reach a new level of understanding and it would start to work.

What sort of an enchantment could he make with an Advanced aura? Would it just increase the attributes on the item or do something else too?

He turned again and headed back through the nest, up to the remains of the fort. It really hadn’t been very long, so hopefully all of the auras would still be there.

Krana stuck with him, both as a guard and an assistant, as she kept a protective eye on him. He wasn’t sure why he was so important to her or why she was so sure that they would be friends, but her steadfastness was already making him like her.

He’d always admired the dwarves for their culture and crafting skills, but she was the first one he’d ever met. She was making him feel that the old legend about a dwarf being the greatest friend in the world was true. There was a steadiness to her pace beside him that never faltered.

Now that she’d made up her mind, it was clear she wasn’t going anywhere.

The auras from the other gnomes were still there, the ones that he hadn’t been able to grab when the warlord attacked them. From the eight corpses left in the fort, he ended up with four auras. There had been one more, but he’d had to combust it to get enough points to grab the others.

He had six Auras of Basalt now, which was almost as many as he’d had before the fight. It made him feel a bit better. They were a reassuring presence, each of them standing in for some potential aura or mana.

As he was heading back to the group, the words from the conversation he had overheard while he was coming out of the Earth wall finally hit him, and he realized that he’d killed the wizardess who had attacked him.

Somehow.

Apparently, those crystal arrows he’d thrown had taken care of her.

He felt a trace of surprise that it had been so quick. What sort of wizard didn’t try to defend herself? Or had her enchantments not worked against essence-based spells? Maybe she’d had a shield that was only attuned to mana?

Either way, it didn’t matter anymore.

He asked himself if he should feel guilty about it, but a moment later, he pushed the thought out of his mind. She had tried to kill him, and that was enough for him to be glad that she was dead. His father might have told him to be more considerate of the ramifications of his actions, but for right now he was still limping from the lightning bolt she’d thrown at him.

Sympathy could wait.

When he returned to his father's side, the other girl, the one wearing a white and blue dress, was sitting down next to Jeric. Her expression had eased up a bit, based on whatever his dad was saying to her. As he approached, their conversation carried to him.

"I don’t know why Ismela didn’t try to summon a shield...," Ayala was murmuring. She sounded forlorn, almost lost. "She knew them..., but all I had time to see was that she was staring at that lightning, waiting to see what happened. I don’t think she even saw the arrows coming. She was...always overconfident, I guess...."

Sam just nodded as he overheard it. The same arrows that had hit the wizardess had also just taken out a Level 25 gnome shaman, which probably had much more Constitution than her, and his upgraded abilities at the Advanced tier also had done significant damage to a Level 45 or so gnome warlord.

A Level 35 wizardess without much Constitution and who couldn’t even remember to summon a mage shield was...not a significant opponent. She was the classic glass wizard who put everything into offense and ignored her defense.

Arrogance had killed her, more than anything.

Well, alright..., he had killed her, but he didn’t feel particularly bad about it, since she had been attacking him.

It wasn’t the same outlook on life he’d had two weeks ago. He’d changed more down here than he’d expected.

Perhaps it was also the new Wisdom that was making him more self-reflective than before. Whatever else might come from her death, and it was probably nothing good..., it was a marked realization of the strength of his spells.

Both his Aura of Crystal Flame and his Flame Strike abilities were at the Advanced tier now, and the effects definitely stacked. He was going to have to keep control of his temper and how he used them.

He also had to be careful not to become a glass wizard like she had been. He had to practice with Essence Shield more and get it to Advanced too.

Along with Reclaim Aura, and Imbue Aura..., and the rest of his abilities. There was a lot of training to do to if he wanted to make himself more capable. Whatever the Guardian wanted from him, it had told him in very clear terms to hurry up about getting stronger or he would be in severe danger.

Krana kept him company as they reached his father and Ayala, and the four of them ended up sitting down across from one another. Krana took up a position next to Ayala, her hand on the girl's shoulder as she whispered something in her ear. After a moment, Ayala relaxed a little.

It looked like the two of them were friends.

"Sam...," Jeric turned to look at his son with clear relief in his eyes. "You’re alright. Good."

"Everyone here is a friend," Krana spoke up then, looking around at the three of them. "We just met, but...I’m an Earthen Seer. I can see this, as well as the need for all of us to work together in the future."

It was a very heavy sentence from the young dwarf, but she said it with deep meaning. Somehow, Sam felt the words resonating in his mind, as if he knew they were true. Was that a function of the Seer class, when they spoke about their prophecies?

What had she seen to make her so intent on all of them working together, and to support him so instantly from the beginning? That was what had to have happened..., the reason that she'd been so friendly to him from the start.

Ayala also heard Krana's words. She looked towards Sam again, with a bit more determination on her face this time, as she forced her gaze to stay steady. She was studying him. This time, she didn't look away.

Perhaps the new Charisma was already helping with that.

Sam returned the favor, looking her over curiously. She was wearing a well-made white and blue dress that wasn’t damaged at all by the tunnels, her blond hair was neat and tied up behind her head in a loose bun, and she was not at all dirty.

It was...quite a surprise, actually, that she had managed to stay so clean down here. Perhaps she had some enchantment helping.

She looked nice enough, with a heart-shaped face and delicate features.... In reality, she was very pretty, but he didn’t have any interest in that at the moment. What he wanted to know about was the enchantment that was keeping her clothes so clean.

It would be useful.

Also, what else did she have on her that he could study?

The wizardess’s death was already making it less likely that he could join a guild in the future..., especially if word of it got out. He wasn't sure why she had attacked him..., whether it was due to her being a Wizard or just some quirk of her personality. If the rest of the people in her guild were like that, it would definitely make things difficult.

He frowned to himself as he thought about it, and then he pushed the thought away.

The surprise attack on him had proved one thing, at least. He wasn’t going to be easily accepted by people who saw him. His father had been right about getting more Charisma..., and now he wasn’t sure if that would be enough on its own.

He might have to find some type of illusion as well, to make him look more human.

"How did you get down here? Do you know where the exit is?" Jeric asked Ayala, his attention directed to the most important point that was on his mind. He had already been talking to her for a minute, so it wasn't strange for him to ask. "A magical disaster sent us down here, and we’ve been lost for a while. We need to get back home."

Ayala was still staring at Sam with a fixed gaze, and she visibly trembled for a moment. Some color returned to her face as she looked away and turned her attention back to Jeric.

"We traveled from Osera, across the Abyssinian Plains," she murmured. Her voice was unsteady, but clear. "It took us a couple of months...."

"So, we are under them after all," Jeric confirmed the location, nodding as she spoke. He followed up with his next most critical question. "How did you get past the acid worms?"

There was a light halo of energy around his father that was new, which intensified as he asked his questions. It shone clearly in Sam’s eyes.

Was Jeric using Persuade on the girl, to get her to talk to him? He hadn’t realized it could be used like that, but it made sense.

"Ismela had some amulets for it...," Ayala answered, as a hint of concern appeared in her expression. She hadn't been thinking about the way out before, but now that the wizardess was dead, it was something she would have to consider. After a moment, she started to talk more freely, explaining where they had come from.

"I’ll be right back," Sam suggested, as he stood back up. Krana started to stand up with him, but he shook his head at her. It looked like she was serious about being his friend, but she was also friends with the girl, and right now she should stay and help her settle down.

"I’m just going to look for those amulets. We’ll need them to get out."

No one objected, so Sam headed towards where the wizardess had died. It was up on the far edge of the cavern, on the slope that led up to the opposite tunnel.

He didn’t feel like talking to the girl at the moment anyway. One of her party members had attacked him and she hadn’t bothered to apologize about it yet.

He understood that seeing him was a shock, but that didn’t mean he had a good opinion of her.

There was really no reason why he should. If she were useful, he’d be polite to her. But right now, she was in shock and barely speaking, and sitting next to her was hardly going to help her talk.

Perhaps it was his new Wisdom and higher Charisma that was giving him a better insight into her mind, but right now, the most useful thing he could do would be to let his father get a bunch of information out of her, and to do that, ...he should be elsewhere.

Of the two new women, the dwarf was the one who was much more interesting. He already wanted to ask her about the hammer she’d used and how she had cracked the shamans’ shields open. Was that a Seer ability or an enchantment on the weapon?

As he walked, he realized that a lot of the pain from the lightning bolt had already faded away. The new Constitution was helping to quickly restore him. He was moving more easily again. At the same time, another couple points of his essence had returned, which boosted his confidence.

He reached the edge of the tunnel and located the corpse. Then he began searching through the remains. It was a messy pile of parts, but after the last couple of weeks living in the tunnels, it didn’t bother him that much.

He had no issue at all in looting the wizardess. She had tried to kill him, which put her on the same level as the basalt gnomes or any other wild beast. Right now, her equipment would be useful and he was going to take it.

As he searched, he found several items that were glowing with enchantments. He collected all of them, as well as the pouches that had been on her belt. After a moment, he took the belt too, which was still in one piece. It would be useful.

He looked around, but the wizardess didn’t seem to have a larger pack, and he frowned for a moment. A couple of her pouches were also glowing, and there were rune-markings along the opening....

His heart picked up its pace as he wondered if they could be dimensional storage items. Were those common enough that a wizard would carry them around?

He definitely hoped so.

He had never been wealthy enough to know much about that sort of item, but now that he thought about it, none of the new adventurers had been carrying large packs. Did they all have dimensional items?

He continued to search through the wizardess's items, looking for the amulets that had warded off the acid worms as well as anything else useful. It was bound to be a good harvest.

Down in the cavern, Krana looked up toward Sam. Of them all, only she knew that it was her shout to stop that made Ismela hesitate in summoning a shield. There was a trace of regret in her eyes, but in the grand scheme of things, the wizardess really had brought it on herself.

Battlefield Reclaimer 34: Church Doctrine

While Sam sorted through the wizardess’s equipment, his father continued to speak with Ayala and Krana in the cavern behind him. He kept one ear on their conversation, but it was still mostly focused on calming Ayala down and basic introductions.

He searched the wizardess, but as he’d expected there was no aura on her. It was like experience and auras didn't come from civilized races. He wasn't sure what that meant, but it was something to consider.

Everything he found on her was in the two enchanted pouches, except for a dagger, which was also on her belt. There were a few small runes on that, but he couldn’t help shaking his head.

What a terrible piece of enchanting...it barely had any function except to make the blade a little sharper and more durable.

The main equipment was the two bags, which were definitely dimensional pouches. When he put his hand into them, there was a strange, separate space that allowed him to search through it, and he was able to pull out what he wanted.

They weren’t that large inside, but each bag by itself held more than his old pack did...about five cubic feet. It was an excellent find. He could take one bag and the other one could go to his dad. These had to be what the other adventurers were using all the time.

There were five enchanted amulets that looked the same, which had to be the wards against the acid worms. The enchantment on them was shakier than he’d expected..., all it seemed to do was project a sense of "I’m an unpleasant, cold rock." Perhaps that was enough for them to work?

There was also a small collection of clothing, which he searched through for durability enchantments, some travel food, flasks, quite a few bottles of wine, ...and a collection of monster ears and finger bones. There was no energy in it at all, which meant it was just a trophy collection. He tossed it aside.

There were also two small, brown spheres that had to be monster cores, two pills he didn’t recognize, a scroll that looked like it was for healing, a couple of gems, a handful of gold and silver coins, and a small book that...was mostly blank, except for a half-completed spell diagram at the front.

Did wizards not actually use spellbooks? Sam grumbled to himself as he put it back in the bag. It was a place to draw his own designs, at least. There were writing tools too.

He sorted the items back into the two pouches, divided up the food and coins, and settled Ismela’s old belt around his waist. It was a lot better than the one he’d had.

Overall, Ismela’s loot was useful, but it wasn’t what he’d expected a wizard to have. Perhaps most of her items were elsewhere, or maybe she just hadn’t been very strong for where she came from.

He couldn’t evaluate the rest of the world by the standards of the village. He was already Level 29, which was near the top of the village's strength, and it felt like it was only the beginning. If the wizard had been just a few levels higher than him..., maybe that wasn’t much in a world where you could Evolve.

The World Limit was 399. Perhaps Level 50, or 100, or even 150 was the standard for success. He wasn’t sure.

If nothing else, the items told him a lot about the life of an adventurer. They gave him a standard for evaluating his progress and what it might be like to visit a city. As for the enchantments she had...with the exception of the dimensional bags, the rest of them were pretty bad.

There were some clear differences between them and what he could make. His enchantments had a sense of personality...of life, whether it came from the auras he used or the more complicated runic patterns that he’d borrowed from spell scrolls. Maybe that was just a feature of his class?

It would be useful to study the dimensional bags and the other runes, but that was all. Perhaps he could incorporate them into his own work.

As he thought that, he realized that his thought process was more complex than it had been before.... He was considering things more deeply and gaining more information from the evidence in front of him.

That had to be an effect of his new Wisdom. It almost felt like he’d grown up and gone through a few more years..., even if it was only that he was getting more out of his experiences now.

"Demon! You’re as corrupt as the stories say, looting a human like that!" One of the guards shouted at Sam from across the cavern, pulling his attention towards them. The guard was snarling, his hands clenched into fists as he stared towards Sam.

Sam frowned at him, his eyes hardening. He had not forgiven this group for attacking him. He had some positive opinions of the dwarf already, but the rest were completely unknown.

Personally, he didn’t care about taking the wizardess’s equipment. She had attacked him, and this was paying that back in some small way. Perhaps his view wasn’t orthodox, but he was just being practical about it.

If the guards were going to cause trouble about it, well...their first meeting had already made them his enemies. If they wanted to continue on the same course, he would match them step for step.

He glanced down to where his father was talking, and then sighed as his new attributes continued to affect him. Perhaps there was still a way to salvage this....

"She tried to kill me," Sam replied, as he tried to keep his composure. "I’m claiming her equipment as payment for that."

"You’re a demon...a monster that’s a plague on the world!" The same guard shouted back. "It’s no surprise at all that she attacked you on sight! No decent human would associate with you. You should be killed, along with the others who are helping you!"

Sam’s temper flared at the threat to his father and himself, but he tried to keep his composure. They had never seen a demon before, right? It had to have been...difficult for them.... His expression hardened.

The Guardian had tasked him to solve the problems with the seal, and had warned him that people would dislike him, but this was too much. How could they not see that he was talking to them, and that he’d been attacked first?

Were they that...blind?

The two guards here were reminding him very much of Kilien and Boric back in the village on the night before he’d left. Boric had mocked him for having a broken class back then, and now these guards were mocking him for...being a broken human?

That only made him more angry with them.

"How do you know what a demon is, or what a human is?" He shouted back, his temper flaring.

"I looked as human as you a couple of weeks ago, until Outsider energy transformed me into this! Look at me talking to you, reasoning with you...is that not human?"

He snarled out the last word as he glared at them. He had no reason to hide his history and maybe telling it to them would help change their minds.

"Is attacking an unknown party of people fighting monsters human?" he shouted. His anger continued to pour out at them.

He was still angry about being attacked and he added all of that into his voice. Crystal flames swirled around him, instinctively flaring into the air.

The World Law’s attempt to imprison him just a few days before and the Guardian insisting that he forgive it also combined to make him angrier.

The flames swirled higher, surrounding him in an enormous spiral of crystal blue flame that rose up toward the roof of the cavern. Ismela’s remains near him were incinerated, boiling away under the intense heat.

"Why is the world such a disaster!" he yelled, his eyes fixed on the guards. "Why can’t it make sense and why can’t people see what is true and what is not?!"

Beside him, Krana was backing away from the flames, her hand rising to block her eyes. At that moment, he really did look like a demon.

"Sam! Calm down!" Jeric shouted from below, spinning to look towards his son. "We’ll talk it out!"

"Only a demon would act like that!" the guard shouted again as Sam’s voice and the flames confirmed everything that was already in his mind.

The second guard, however, frowned at Sam’s words, as something in them caught his attention. His eyes tracked the flames that were forming, as worry began to crease his features.

"You’re a monster..., an Outsider!" the first guard continued. "How can a monster reason with humans? Throughout history, all you’ve done is destroy cities, burn farms, and eat people. Some of you are smart enough to act human, but that doesn’t make you human!"

"Yeres, shut up!" The other guard asked suddenly, elbowing his partner and interrupting his words. "What do you mean you were human? Is that really your father?"

"Sam is my son!" Jeric shouted back, turning his attention momentarily toward the guard before he looked back at Sam. "Sam, we’ll figure it out. Ignore them..., they’re just frightened."

Just then, Krana suddenly shouted, drawing everyone's attention to her at once.

"Stop! I’ve had a vision about him and I can see that he is not a demon or a monster!"

The dwarf's words rolled the cavern with a deep, resonant echo that made everyone stare. They were frozen with surprise as she continued to speak.

"You know me and you’ve traveled with me up to here, and you know what a Seer tells you is true! Believe me, he is not a demon, regardless of what he looks like. In fact..., he is incredibly important in stopping demons!"

Sam turned to look at Krana, stunned into silence with everyone else. The flames around him began to slowly subside as he stared at her.

She'd had a vision...about him?

"I saw him, this man you think looks like a demon...," Krana continued, looking towards Sam and then towards the guards. Her voice was strong and vivid, as if she were seeing the vision again.

"He was the one standing in the rift between the world and Outsiders, sealing the barrier closed again. If you attack him, you are putting the entire world at risk!"

Her words stunned the guards into silence, and even Ayala turned to stare at her. None of them had any idea what Krana was talking about.

An uneasy silence settled over the cavern as everyone's attention was focused on the seer.

---

The story of Krana’s vision was slowly explained to everyone present, from the monsters breaking through the walls of the dwarven kingdom to the rifts in space that threatened to tear the world apart.

"That’s...a legend of a Breaking," Ayala whispered as she listened. Her voice was reverent. "The star that fell from heaven to seal over hell...."

She had come around a bit as Krana spoke. Some of her shock had disappeared. She still looked sometimes toward where Ismela had died and then towards Sam, her hands shaking, but she was more composed now.

Wherever she had come from, it was clear that she wasn’t used to this type of thing. Nonetheless, she was adjusting.

"What do you mean about a star sealing over hell?" Jeric turned to look at her, frowning. "I’ve never heard that story."

"Don't you have a church where you're from?" Ayala answered as she turned towards him. She was still trying not to look at Sam. "It’s well known and part of the church's doctrine...."

Since her father was so involved with the church, she had grown up surrounded by its teachings. To her, these things were as plain as day, like learning to read. How could they not know this?

To Sam and Jeric, however, it was new information. They didn't have much to do with the tiny church in their village. They had rarely even stepped inside it.

If something was common knowledge there, they didn’t know anything about it. It was also possible that their church was too small and unofficial to have any real information.

"You mean a Breaking of the World Law...," Sam asked, drawing her attention back to him. He saw her flinch, but that didn't stop him as he continued, "The legend that it’s been destroyed and remade?"

Ayala hesitated, frozen in place, but then she slowly turned towards Sam. She looked into the space between him and Krana. In the end, she answered.

"Yes..., broken by demons and Outsiders. That’s why you...," her voice trailed off for a moment. "Well, you...look like a demon from those stories, although I...trust Krana when she says you’re not."

"There are Outsiders involved in breaking the world?" Sam asked, frowning. The Guardian’s words were running through his mind, but he didn’t know how everything fit together.

Was this what he had been warning him about?

The Guardian had said that he needed to protect the World Law and that something was tampering with the seal, which had created flaws. Also, that if he didn’t stop it, the world was at stake.

Did this girl actually know what the Guardian was talking about? Or was this some information he could get from the church?

"Yes, Outsiders...," Ayala sighed as she started to explain. This was a topic that she was familiar with. As she spoke, some of the color in her face began to return.

"My father is constantly talking about them.... It’s almost the entirety of what he talks about when he sees me. They are a source of constant frustration that takes up the attention of nearly every high-level individual in Osera, and perhaps in the world. It’s why you don’t see Second or Third Evolution people very often."

"Who is your father?" Jeric interrupted, as her words caught his attention. If this girl could speak so easily of Second and Third Evolutions..., she definitely didn’t come from a normal family.

Ayala’s expression grew hesitant, but when Krana nodded at her encouragingly, she answered.

"My father is a Paladin of Law in Osera, one of the major defenders of the city. That's a paladin of the Church of the World Law. He’s at his Second Evolution, which is World Knight."

Sam frowned as he heard it. Second Evolution meant her father was over Level 200!

It also meant that this girl...was about as close as it got to being a princess of the church.

He wanted to know more about the seal and what the girl knew, but there was another question on his mind too. One that was more obvious.

What sort of father would send his daughter to the Abyssinian Plains with just a few guards...?

"Why did you come here?" he asked, focusing on her as he let that question take precedence for a moment. This didn't sound like a normal leisure trip for a princess. "This isn’t a normal place to adventure.... Why did your father allow that?"

A moment later, as Krana nodded to her again, Ayala slowly filled in the answer.

"I have a...class to unlock that requires me to come here. He...thought it would be easy enough to do, so he didn’t pay much attention, I suppose...."

Instead of saying anything more, Ayala asked a question of her own as she looked between Sam and Jeric.

"Who are you two and how did you get here? If you’re not a demon, then what are you?" Ayala held her gaze on Sam for the first time.

"I’m Jeric Hastern, and this is my son, Sam." His father answered the question. It wasn’t the first time he’d given his name, but it was apparently the first time Ayala was listening.

"Hastern...," Ayala murmured to herself, her eyebrows scrunching up in confusion. After a moment, she shook her head, as if something didn’t make sense.

"We were exploring an Outsider ruin,..." Sam began, explaining the basic concept of what had happened, from the initial teleportation to their trip here. It took a little while, and by the time he was done, the two girls were staring at him in surprise.

Even the guards on the other side of the cavern had begun to listen in. Their expressions were closed, but they were silent for now. Perhaps something in the story would help them to understand what was really going on.

"I’ve...never heard of anything like that happening before," Ayala finally said. "Outsider ruins are very dangerous though. The church investigates all of them and tries to destroy them. You shouldn’t have gone into that one."

"We know," Jeric interrupted, his eyes tilting toward the unseen heavens. If they hadn't gone into the ruins..., Sam would never have unlocked his class.

He kept that part to himself as he brought the conversation back to what they were going to do now.

"But you were telling us about Outsiders and...," he turned to look at Krana, "how that fits into the Seer's vision."

For once, the conversation between the two parties was becoming productive as the two guards stayed silent in their part of the camp. Sam leaned forward to hear what Ayala had to say.

This was the information that he needed to know. Or, at least, it was the church's perspective of how the world worked. Maybe it would fit with what the Guardian had told him to do.

"Alright...," Ayala said, as her thoughts turned toward church doctrine. "According to the church, the world is a star that fell from heaven..., sealing over the path to hell. That is why it is called Aster Fall. Aster means 'star' in an old dialect. There are also rumors that there was a world here before that, and that something happened..., resulting in a vast, ancient war between humans and Outsiders, which turned all of Aster Fall into a battlefield.

"Some say that was when the star fell, ...that it sealed off that battlefield and made the world what it is now." Ayala continued to think through things as she added more details.

"The church says that Outsiders are still trying to constantly get into the world because they want to steal that star, or maybe 'stars' since there’s more than one in some versions..., and it is our job to protect it. The levels we gain are the World’s Blessing to help us in that task and the flow of experience is a holy force that empowers the world, the seal that prevents Outsiders from entering, and us, the worshipers."

"Wait, the seal that prevents Outsiders from entering is connected to experience?" Sam interrupted, his attention locking onto that point.

She knew what was happening with experience gain? Did she know why there was a maximum then, and why you only got half of the experience from a monster? And what did she mean by saying that it was connected to the seal?

Were they talking about the same seal here?

"Experience is a type of energy, right?" Ayala responded easily, as if it were a self-evident fact. "That energy is part of the world. According to my father, it’s what maintains the seal over hell...the one that the world is blocking. You don’t get all of the monster’s experience because the rest of it goes to that."

Since her father was so involved with the church, she had grown up surrounded by its teachings. To her, these things were as plain as day, like learning to read. How could they not know this?

"So the flow of experience is also the flow of energy in the world seal?" Sam muttered to himself as he thought out loud. And the World Law was taking some of it to maintain the seal? Is that what the Guardian had meant by the whole world being part of the seal?

"And the seal is imprisoning or blocking Outsiders...." he said aloud. "So, what are the flaws in the seal then?"

"Flaws?" Ayala frowned as she listened to him, distracted enough that she focused on his words and not his appearance for once. "That’s what my father calls the points where Outsiders break through. Those are the flaws or holes in the seal. I think they can be other things too though, like places where the World Law can't reach, although to suggest that sort of thing is blasphemous, according to some priests."

For all of her background, it wasn't like she believed everything she'd heard. Many people questioned the World Law's decisions from time to time.

Her words started to bring together many of Sam's ideas, including things the Guardian had mentioned. Maybe that was why he hadn't explained more..., if it was supposed to be common knowledge? He had said he was short on time.

As for flaws where the World Law didn't reach...apparently his class was one of them too, but he wasn't going to tell all of his secrets to a random girl he had just met, even if she was friends with a dwarven Seer who'd had a vision about him.

Still..., he reached up to rub his chin as he thought. "Have you ever heard about fixing a flaw?"

"No..., just blocking them or killing the things that come out of them," Ayala replied immediately. "I think that...over time, if there’s enough experience flowing around the world, the flaws are supposed to heal over again. Haven’t you ever been to the church before? These are common topics of the sermons."

"Tell me what you know, please," Sam demanded, ignoring the dig. He’d never had a good relationship with the church or a reason to spend time in it. The church was focused on the World Law and on leveling, which had been denied to his family. "What does the church say about the seal, Outsiders, and the world?"

"Experience is the flow of energy into the seal...," Ayala repeated again. "Part of it comes to us, to strengthen us to fight, and part of it goes to heal the world and the keep hell sealed over. That’s why only monsters give experience....

"Humans and civilized races are supposed to be the holy defenders, while the monsters are part of the world and return to it when they die, strengthening us and the world at the same time. Some people even think that they are the souls or fragments of Outsiders that have been left behind...and that their energy turns into a sort of monster as the world processes it. At any rate, it is our job to slay them and support the seal."

Ayala paused for a moment as she pulled the rest of her thoughts together and then added some more information.

"When an Outsider invades, they threaten the balance of the world.... We need to fight them and make sure that they are never able to gain the things that they are after. If they do, the world will shatter and the gods will have to step in and rebuild it again. That's a Breaking..., which is what Krana's vision sounded like. It's the end of the world."

She turned to look towards her friend as she paled again. Her father had also scared her with stories about that. He was a very devout follower of the church.

"The church says that it has happened before when we’ve failed in our duty, and everyone in the world died...that the World Law was broken and remade."

"If there are gods out there, can’t they stop that from happening?" Jeric muttered as he gazed upwards.

"I don’t know...," Ayala replied, "but it is said that the gods can’t reach the world and that this is a testing ground for our faith. It is our duty to protect the seal and the world, to prevent Outsiders from invading, and to constantly level up in order to give the world the energy that it needs to stay strong. If we fail, both the world and the realm of the gods is at stake.

"In those stories, there's always one type of Outsider who is the most dangerous of them all, even more than giant beasts or strange monsters...." Ayala’s words trailed off as she turned to look at Sam, her face paling again.

"The most dangerous Outsiders...are the demons who look like you."

Battlefield Reclaimer 35: A Walking Catastrophe

After the explanation of the church’s stance on Outsiders and demons, Sam felt a dawning realization of what he was up against with his new appearance. It wasn't comforting.

Looking like this would end up with him being attacked on sight.

He shook his head as he tried to think of a way to fix it or to hide his appearance. He needed to at least hide his horns, eyes, and talons.... Unless he could come up with some way to create an illusion, he wasn’t sure what would work.

The Seer in front of him was a good example of the problem with that route. The class was well known for piercing illusions and discovering the truth. That was also why a hat, gloves, or other simple disguise, wouldn’t work. Too many people could assess a person’s race or class.

Some, like Krana here, were even better at it.

"We can’t be fighting one another here," Krana said, as she looked around the circle at them. Her voice was determined. "I propose a truce. My vision said Sam is important, so I’m going to do what I can to help. I also have to help Ayala first, though. Why don’t we all work together?"

Sam frowned as he looked between the dwarf and the church princess, shaking his head. Krana had been reasonable so far..., but he was still angry with Ayala for thinking of him as a demon and it was clear she didn’t trust him either.

Fortunately, no one was attacking him anymore.

The two guards were still muttering. The main problem was with the one called Yeres. The other one, Lesat, was more willing to listen. He seemed to be keeping his silence, making sure that Yeres didn’t do anything too sudden, even as his gaze traveled to where Ismela had died and back again.

From time to time, Sam felt their eyes on him, as if they were weighing something. It was a reminder that they were dangerous and of how the world would treat him now.

There also wasn’t going to be a dwarven Seer shouting "Stop" every time he walked into a new area....

He shook his head again. They needed to leave here and travel alone. No matter what Krana’s vision said, it was her problem. The Guardian hadn’t told him to work with everyone else.

He just needed them all to stay silent about him..., including the guards. That was the real sticking point. If he just left now, they might tell Ayala’s father about him, or the local church authorities, and then...who knew what type of trouble would come from that.

His family needed to leave the village at some point...and perhaps now was the time. When they got home, they could pack everything and go. They could make a living with enchanting, hunting monsters, or mining and smithing.

Their new classes would help them survive.

He looked towards his dad as he sighed. It would be a little difficult, and not fair to his family at all, but he knew that they would do it for him.

He was just about to suggest leaving immediately when he saw Krana watching him, as if she knew what he was thinking. The dwarf had refused to let him out of her sight so far.

"Don’t go yet," Krana said simply, confirming it. "I think I can help you with your problem."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked. Surprise made his eyebrows rise as he turned towards her. What exactly were the abilities of a Seer class anyway? Could she really read his mind?

He doubted it, but her perception was...ridiculous. Wasn’t Seer a Wisdom-based class? He frowned as he considered what that attribute did at higher levels.

"You need to hide your appearance, right?" Krana asked, as she looked from Sam to Ayala and back again. She also included Jeric in the look, silently asking him to help her.

"What you need is an illusion amulet. My father is a high-level diplomat in Osera. I’ve seen one that he uses. They’re common among ambassadors to hide class, race, and other details from Seers and inspections. They can also be used for cosmetic alterations..., like if you didn’t do your hair that morning."

"What?!" Sam’s eyebrows shot up to the sky. The idea was an enormous hook grabbing his attention. If he had something like that....

He turned to look towards his dad, frowning. Then maybe his family wouldn’t have to leave the village. A moment later, however, Krana brought him back down to reality.

"The real thing is probably going to take a Second Evolution Enchanter to make..., unfortunately," she continued, but there was a light in her eyes that said she wasn’t done yet.

"But I’ve seen the pattern on it and I remember some of the runes..., maybe enough to be useful. I used to play with it as a child. You’re an Enchanter, so maybe you can figure something out that would work for a little while, until you can find a real one. I’ll help you with it if you help us."

"What do you need help with?" Jeric asked suddenly, as his attention was also locked on Krana’s offer. It sounded like exactly what they needed to get Sam home and smooth things out.

These guards here would still be a problem, and they’d have to hope that Krana and Ayala didn’t say anything about them, but...it was a much better idea than just trying to walk home and see what happened.

The group looked across the circle at each other, as they began to open up a little more.

"I’m here to unlock my class," Ayala offered, returning to the idea that she’d mentioned a few minutes before. This time, she decided to explain in detail.

"It’s Earthwalker Mage..., it’s unique and I need to find a special mana pool to unlock it. Technically, the quest is this: ‘Locate an Earth mana pool and absorb 100 points of Earth mana in order to unlock your class and empower your initial abilities.’"

Sam frowned at the familiar words, which were almost the same as for his father’s class. It was clear why she had come here.

It wasn’t a big surprise that the class condition was similar, since unlocking a class was not supposed to be difficult. Most combat classes simply had to kill something.

His dad leaned forward, as if he were just about to say something, but before he could, Sam bent down and whispered an idea into his ear. Then he turned towards the two girls.

"What if we show you where the pool is and you agree to show me what you know about the illusion amulet and then not say anything about us?" Sam asked, frowning at them.

It was a fair trade, so hopefully they would take it.

His father could seal the deal with a Sacred Trade. That was the idea he’d just whispered in his ear. If they could make a deal to keep them silent..., maybe it would all work.

An illusion would definitely make it easier to go home. Even without it, Krana had given him good information, since now he knew such a thing was possible.

"What?! You know about the mana pool?" Ayala stared in disbelief. She was truly surprised for the first time.

"Yes, we’ve visited it," Sam said, refusing to add any other details. "But I won’t help you get there unless we make a deal, and you won’t be able to do it as easily alone."

His new Charisma helped him to make the bluff more convincing. They hadn’t been there, so they shouldn’t know that it was fairly easy to find. If they pushed on anyway, he might just sneak back and collapse the deadfall that was still there, and make sure to bury the entire pool too.

The Seer had stopped her party from attacking him, but he didn’t owe her for that. They had also been the ones to attack him, so it was even.

Krana gave him a long look, before she turned to Ayala and nodded, encouraging her to accept. After that, she turned back towards Sam and his father, her eyes shading slightly to silver as she looked at them.

It almost seemed as if she could tell what they were thinking.

"That would make things easier," Krana suggested. "The pool is extremely valuable. However, you shouldn’t part ways with us that easily. It’s very dangerous outside, especially if you travel alone."

Krana turned towards Sam, her expression entreating him to agree with her, as she continued.

"For a deal, how about this. You lead us to the pool and do your best to help us unlock Ayala’s class. After that, you help me escort Ayala home again afterwards. At the same time, I’ll do my best to teach you how to make an illusion enchantment, at least as much of it as I can..., and then once Ayala is home, I’ll travel with you as a companion on the road, doing my best to protect you. Having a Seer with you will be a big help."

Sam frowned as he looked between Krana and Ayala, and then back to his father. He didn’t want anything to do with Ayala, but Krana’s offer.... It might solve a lot of his difficulties.

Having a dwarven Seer around was also a good way to keep people from attacking him. In fact, if possible, he should always travel with a group of respected, civilized races...to deflect attention. Maybe that, plus an illusion, would be enough.

Showing her to the pool was easy, but if he had to escort Ayala too..., that would delay their return. Spending more time around her also meant being closer to the church. If her father or any of the higher-level officials showed up to look for her and found him here....

Well, it was obvious what they would do.

To him, the description of the church's doctrine, their power, and their agenda to defend the world by slaying monsters and Outsiders, all led in only one direction. There was only one thing they were going to do as soon as they saw a 'demon.'

Kill him on sight.

Not even Charisma would help with that. He’d just be a handsome, dead demon.

Nonetheless, he hesitated over Krana’s offer. On the one hand, staying with Ayala was likely to get him killed. On the other hand, traveling home without an illusion might be just as bad.

An illusion could solve his biggest problem, at least if there were time to make an amulet and get it to work. In the long run..., was it worth spending a little more time with them?

The offer was hard to pass up, especially when it might come with other methods to advance his skills... and make it easier for his mother and the village to accept him.

He looked towards his dad to see what he thought about all of this.

When Jeric saw him looking, he also frowned. An illusion was extremely tempting, since it would help his son blend in. They might even be able to return to a normal life in the village, but...it would delay them.

He also doubted it would be that easy to make an illusion amulet. Who knew if Krana would remember the inscriptions correctly or if Sam would have the right skills..., but it was a chance.

Before that, however, there was a question that had been bothering Jeric ever since he’d seen the girls.

"Before we get into a trade..., there’s something I want to know," he said, as he looked from the two girls to the guards, and then towards where Ismela had died.

"Why in the world did your father send you here with such a weak group of guards...? That seems unwise, especially if he is so well-known. Your family’s status doesn’t fit with a group like this."

Jeric shook his head, frowning. He was a father himself, and he never would have allowed this. Especially for two girls from such high-level families....

Ayala just sighed, as she glanced towards the guards across the cavern and then towards Krana. She had deflected the conversation away from this point once already, after mentioning that she needed to unlock her class.

Now, she was hesitating again. One of her hands twisted around the other, squeezing until her knuckles went pale. Whatever was going on, she didn’t want to tell them.

Everyone was looking at her, even Krana. There was a slight frown building on the dwarf’s face as she looked at her friend.

"What is wrong, Ayala?" Krana asked, her voice becoming firm. "Didn’t you say that your father sent you here as a test to see if you could do it yourself, with just a standard team to help and with me to lead the way?"

"I’m sorry, Krana...." Ayala sighed, her hands twisting tighter. Now, there was something in her expression that said she was about to come clean.

Finally, the words came out.

"I misled you.... I hired the guards myself, using my father’s name. He doesn’t even know about it. I just wanted to unlock my class and he wasn’t listening to me." Ayala looked toward her friend sadly, her eyes glistening.

Krana froze as she looked at her friend, her eyebrows raised in disbelief. Then, she slowly closed them. To escort the daughter of a World Knight was one thing..., but to help her sneak away was something else entirely.

Her own family was going to be very angry with her. Their relationship with Ayala's father might not survive this.

"That..., does he even know where you are?" Krana asked finally, as she let out a slow breath and forced herself to focus on practical matters.

She had been friends with Ayala for a long time, and she understood her. She also knew they were going to be in a huge amount of trouble when they got back. The only thing that would make it better would be to get Ayala home as quickly as possible, hopefully before her father found out.

And with an unlocked class.

"No..., he’s off on another mission." Ayala sighed as her head dropped. Her expression was conflicted and tears started to run down her cheeks. "He’s never home much, you know."

A few things became clear to Sam at that moment, including why the girl's guards were so weak..., but there was an even bigger worry that started to fill his mind. He groaned as his head nearly fell into his hands.

He’d thought she was just a rich girl out adventuring, but no, it was much worse than that.... Her father was bad enough in the background. After all, what sort of power was a Second Evolution World Knight?

But by getting Sam involved in her illicit escape at the same time, Ayala might have just signed his death sentence. If her father or anyone from the church came looking for her, and they found Sam near her..., would they ask questions first or just try to kill him on sight?

On top of that, he and his father both had the Defiant trait, which would make officials of Law doubt them..., and Ayala’s father was definitely in that category.

He could already see the thoughts that would run through her father’s head if he discovered him anywhere near her right now. An evil Outsider had abducted his little girl and led her astray....

What more of an excuse did he need? Her father would attack him without even thinking about it.

Ayala misunderstood Sam's reaction and her head dropped lower, but he ignored her as he focused on his own issues. One thought was resoundingly clear in his mind.

He needed to get as far away from Ayala as possible.

This girl was a walking catastrophe.

---

Instead of dealing with Ayala any more, Sam got up and walked over to the warlord’s corpse, where it was still stuck in the crater. He wanted a bit of time to himself to think things through and there was something he’d forgotten to do.

It didn’t take him too long to find the warlord’s head and torso. When he located them, he searched through the two parts to see if there was a monster core inside.

The warlord’s rocky chest was shattered by large cracks, which made it a bit easier, and his senses sank into the monster’s hide, searching through the interior. After a minute, he located what he was looking for and dug it out.

It was a small, dark grey sphere about the size of a coin and slightly bigger than the ones he’d found in the wizardess’s gear.

There was a thread of energy running through it that felt familiar, almost the same as the Aura of Basalt. He’d never had a fresh one to study before and his new thoughts about monsters and aura made him examine it closely.

As he studied it, a prompt appeared.

You have encountered the fragment of a known aura.

There was nothing else, and he frowned, switching it out for one of the brown ones. A prompt appeared again.

You have encountered the fragment of an unfamiliar aura.

Do you wish to identify it?

There was no option to reclaim the aura, just to identify it. He tapped his finger on the core as he studied the prompt again and then dismissed it.

Identifying an aura usually destroyed it, and if there was an aura left in this core that he could study or use later..., he didn't want to destroy it so quickly.

Cores were new to him, but it was clear that the aura didn’t dissipate as quickly from them as it did from the monster’s corpse. On top of that, it was a fragment and not the complete thing.

The strange thing was that there was anything left at all. He hadn’t expected that, but it fit with his theory on permanent enchantments.

Maybe this was why they required a monster core to function.

Somehow, a core could maintain the aura that was originally infused into the enchantment. Maybe they kept it from being lost or helped it to regenerate. He looked at the cores one more time before he shook his head and slipped them into his pouch.

Perhaps he could figure out a way to use them. It would be good if he could make the enchantment on his father’s hammers permanent.

Crafting was much simpler than dealing with those two girls and the church.

He sighed as he headed back towards the group, his thoughts still tumbling over themselves as he tried to decide what to do.

---

As soon as he returned, Ayala looked towards him and sighed. It seemed like Krana and his father had been explaining things to her.

"I’m sorry," she said, sadly, "I’ve made things worse for you. I don’t understand what this is all about, but I trust Krana. If you are really that important to the world, I’m sure my father would help you."

It was the first time she’d actually apologized to him and, for a moment, Sam was stunned. He just looked at her, wondering what was going through her mind.

"That’s not going to happen," Jeric interrupted with a frown. "Your father is likely to attack Sam on sight, the same way you almost did. You said he hates Outsiders. There won’t even be time to explain it to him."

Sam shook his head as well. He definitely wasn’t going to show up and ask Ayala’s father for help. That sounded like a quick way to get killed.

Maybe if there were some way to trust him..., but he wasn’t comfortable placing his fate in the hands of a church Paladin.

Even with Krana's help, his story hadn't convinced the guards. It was too big a shift of perspective for them. The same thing would probably happen with a lot of the people he met.

He frowned as he looked around the group and tried to simplify everything. There were really only two options right now...to leave or to stay.

If he left, the guards and Ayala would probably talk, and Krana might try to follow him at some point. That was a route that left everything uncontrolled. The Church would probably find out about him and at some point they might come to look for him.

Ayala could possibly talk to her father on his behalf, but why would she do that if he’d never helped her?

That route led to potential disaster.

If he stayed, he could learn what Krana knew about illusion amulets and possibly make a better connection that would influence things his way. If it all worked out, it might help him blend into the world better and keep the Church off his back. He’d also have Krana’s help.

When he put it like that, it really wasn’t much of a choice.

Battlefield Reclaimer 36: New Plans

Sam looked at his dad and nodded as he agreed to stay. The only option was to salvage what they could of this encounter.

"What about the guards?" he asked, as he turned to look towards them. Yeres and Lesat were a problem. Yeres glared back at him, as if daring him to come closer.

"They’re bound to secrecy by the mission contract," Ayala spoke up suddenly. "As long as I ask them to keep it a secret, they won’t be able to tell anyone about the details of this mission. It’s a standard clause that costs a little extra, but I didn’t want my father finding out."

"That will work. Guaranteed secrecy about Sam’s appearance will be part of the deal." Jeric stepped in to negotiate the terms.

"You can say you met us, but nothing about Sam looking like a demon. As for your father and the church, Ayala, you have to do your best to protect Sam, and to not give them any reason to think of him as an Outsider or an enemy. Hopefully, we never have to deal with your father, but if we do..., that’s the price for helping you unlock your class. Also, we’ll only be able to escort you home once Sam has an illusion."

Jeric looked between them as a thought occurred to him.

"On top of that, I need a way to contact my wife. Do either of you have a message scroll on you, or a way to get a message to them? We’re going to be delayed if we have to take you home.... We can’t do that unless I know my wife is alright."

Message scrolls were common in the cities. They were single-use arcane scrolls that could record and deliver short speeches from one person to another. He was hoping the girls had one.

Aemilia and Altey were weighing on his mind. He desperately needed to get in touch with them and see how they were doing. At the very least, they needed to know he and Sam were still alive and on their way home.

Hopefully, they would be safe until he could get back....

Ayala hesitated for a moment, but then she pulled out a scroll from her pouch and held it up. "This is a standard message scroll, but it’s...probably too far away to work down here. It can only cover about a hundred miles."

"I might be able to help extend the range," Krana offered, as she looked at the scroll.

The scroll made Jeric relax a little as optimism about contacting Aemilia hit a sore spot in his heart. They had some friends in the village, so she should be safe enough for a while..., but their savings had never been much. Relying on the village for charity was a bad idea.

A wave of pain hit his heart as he thought about what his wife and daughter had to be going through. No matter how much his class had changed, it only mattered if he could get home and make their lives better.

He was stronger now..., enough to make a difference. As long as Sam could look human too, things were going to work out. He would fix it all when he got home.

The message scroll would help. Aemilia wouldn’t be able to reply, but he could at least tell her that they were alive and on their way. He didn’t want to think about how worried she had to be.

She probably thought that they’d been eaten by monsters or trapped in the ruins. If she’d gone to the ruins to look..., it must have looked like they died there. He doubted there was anything left of it after the formation self-destructed.

He shook his head as he forced himself to stop thinking about it and focus on the deal. He wanted to demand that Ayala help his family even more, and an idea to use the pool to trade for that passed through his mind..., but he felt like that would be asking for too much.

The agreement to protect Sam would be enough. It was a promise with wide-ranging effects, which meant that it was worth a huge amount, especially given the trouble Sam’s appearance could cause. With Krana’s offer to help with an illusion and to accompany Sam..., it felt like he was getting the better deal.

It took a little longer to go through various clauses, but the deal was made. It was the first time Jeric had used his new ability and as he finalized the bargain, he had all of them shake hands, even the guards.

Yeres did not look happy to be there, but Ayala demanded it. Assisting her was included under his original guild contract to complete this mission, so he didn’t have a choice.

A bright red-gold aura surrounded Jeric and flowed out across the group, giving rise to notifications. The terms of the deal resonated in everyone’s mind, and a notification appeared.

You have been offered a Sacred Trade.

The terms are listed on your status sheet under ‘Contracts.’

The penalty for breaking the contract is five General Levels.

Do you wish to accept or reject this offer?

Jeric read the terms, which were a simplified version of what they’d discussed, and accepted it. When everyone had done the same, Jeric heard a series of silvery chimes sound in his mind and a wave of experience hit him. At the same time, his Merchant profession jumped from Level 1 to Level 7.

Congratulations, Earth Blessed. You have completed a Trade.

You gain 1200 General experience and 240 Class experience (20% contribution from Merchant).

You are now General Level 28.

Total Experience: 174,000 / 200,000

You are now a Level 28 Earthen Marauder.

Total Experience: 173,040 / 200,000.

You gain +1 Strength, +1 Constitution, and have two free status points to assign.

It was just enough experience to push him to Level 28.

He assigned both of the free points to Charisma, raising it to 22. If it had been higher, he might have been able to make a better deal.

When that was settled, he nodded to Sam, indicating for him to lead the way. Deal or not, he was going to keep himself between his son and the guards.

---

Sam led the way back through the tunnels as he worked through the problems on his mind. The tunnels here were empty of monsters, which gave him a chance to think.

Krana had been helpful so far, Ayala was a disaster, and the two guards would probably try to kill him at some point, if they could get away with it.... He shook his head. At the same time as he considered what to do about that, he was focusing on more important things.

Namely enchanting.

Before they left the cavern, he’d borrowed the message scroll and studied the design on it, copying it into the book he’d taken from Ismela. He’d also asked Krana to sketch the design of the illusion amulet for him, which she had done with fast, deft hands.

The design was extremely complex and she didn’t know if there had been runes on the inside, but the sketch showed how adept dwarves were with crafting. It had only taken her a few minutes, but it was a beautiful, detailed model.

Currently, runes made of crystal blue flame floated in his imagination as he turned them around, creating or erasing the lines in vivid detail. He was studying the patterns to see how they connected and what he could do to make some amulets or message scrolls of his own.

He wanted to figure out a better way to contact his mother, or at least be able to make his own message scroll. Ayala’s version was Basic, so it should be within his capability to make one.

He wished he’d known the pattern before. His father’s knowledge had all been about theoretical applications of runes, rather than the simple, everyday things. Ever since Ayala had pulled out the message scroll, he'd wanted to rummage through her bag and see what else she had in there.

Now and then, he asked Krana a question about the runes she remembered, trying to imagine how they would fit.

He fiddled with one of the acid worm amulets as he walked, turning it around in his hands. It was a very simple amulet, and it was actually quite helpful to him as a model. It gave him a place to begin.

At the same time, he pulled the design of the message scroll to the front of his mind. It was based around three distinct runes; one for distance, one for voice, and one for mana. The three were linked together into a triangle at the center of the pattern, surrounded by a support formation.

It worked by pouring mana into the scroll and focusing your voice through it. The triangular focus point and the support pattern were more complicated than what he’d been working with up to this point, but it wasn’t too difficult.

The main thing was using the triangular rune pattern at the center instead of a single focus rune. He hadn’t tried that, but apparently it would work. It raised the question of what other patterns might fit at the center of a scroll formation.

A square of runes, a hexagon, a nine-pointed star...? Sam glanced down towards the star on the back of his hand, wondering how the Guardian had created it. It was far beyond him, but it had to operate on some type of similar principle, right?

The worm amulet also focused on three linked runes at the center of the design, except they were cold, rock, and avoid. Instead of a triangle, they were linked in a spiral pattern and surrounded by a support circle.

Overall, it was a flimsy enchantment with very little aura left, and he doubted it would last for more than a couple of weeks...., but it did give him an idea.

If he had the right base, he might be able to put the message scroll onto a similar amulet, or make a copy of this one. He tapped his finger against the pendant and the clear ting of high-grade silver responded.

He frowned as he debated if they had enough silver coins to make another one, or if a rock would work instead, like the basalt he’d used to make his father’s hammers. Maybe he could use a gnomish dagger or a leftover spear and turn that into an amulet.

If he could figure out a way to make a message amulet instead, something that he could infuse more mana and aura into each time, then they could stay in touch with his mother.

If that didn’t work, he would try to make some scrolls of his own. They were almost up to where they had left the two salamanders in the tunnel. He planned to pick them up on the way.

---

Sam was dragging one of the salamanders behind him as they continued down the tunnel, and his father had the other one. They would be good for scroll materials and to eat.

His study of the acid worm amulets reminded him that there were six people now, but they only had five of the amulets. He was going to have to make another one of those too.

They would have to spend a little while near the mana pool after Ayala unlocked her class. There were several things he needed to do, starting with sending the message to his mother.

He had to make a new worm amulet, a message amulet or some scrolls, and also work on the much more complicated illusion amulet.

In some ways, the arrival of this group had solved the problem of getting through the Abyssinian Plains and might pave the way for a better future, but it was going to take a while to adjust.

As for this new requirement to escort Ayala home.... Once they got out of the tunnels, he fully intended to drop her off as far as possible from the city and run in the other direction. Hopefully, that would be enough to complete the contract and avoid her father and the church.

There was no such thing as a perfect secret and he wasn’t going to trust that everything would work out. He shook his head as he looked at the dwarf next to him.

Instead of thinking about it anymore, he asked Krana a question that had been on his mind. One that he was dreading the answer to.

"Seers can tell if something is a monster that gives experience, right?" he looked down at her as he frowned. "Am I going to give people experience if they kill me?"

"No, you wouldn’t." Krana shook her head adamantly in response as she glanced up towards him. "You are just like all the other civilized races here. You don’t have that monster glow about you. Unfortunately, you do look like one, and people may jump to conclusions.... That’s why the illusion will help. It only has to hide your appearance and race, and the rest will be fine."

Sam heaved a sigh of relief as he heard the answer. He’d been worried about that, and dreading what would happen if the answer were yes. Every Seer around would have thought he was a monster in disguise.

It would have ruined any chance he had of visiting a city.

Since they were on the topic of experience now, there were a few other questions he wanted to ask.

"What’s the common level in Osera?" he asked Krana, trying to get a better idea of the area they might have to travel through.

"Oh.., around 40 or 50, I suppose," Krana replied slowly. "It’s not hard to get to that point, but after that, there’s a lack of monsters to fight if you stay nearby, and most of the crafting classes take longer. If you want to get stronger, you really need a priest or healer to help."

"Why is that?" he asked, frowning. He didn’t want anything to do with Priests right now.

"‘Priest’ is a subclass that comes with magical healing and wards, so most adventuring parties look for one to accompany them," Krana explained. "That’s also why Priests get so strong. A lot of them have combat main classes, like Ayala’s father, and they are constantly fighting. That's also why the church is everywhere..., they have a duty to face monsters wherever they exist in the world."

She looked off into the space down the tunnels for a moment, but since everything was quiet, she added a bit more.

"In Osera, the town guards are close to 100, the officers are in their First Evolution, and the really strong people are in their Second Evolution.... Every once in a while someone in their Third Evolution comes through, but the city isn't big enough for that to happen very often.

"In my own home city, Runekeld, it’s closer to Level 120 on average. Most adults reach their First Evolution eventually, since dwarves are long-lived and we accumulate levels over all that time. Our crafting professions are also racial subclasses that help to feed into primary class experience."

Sam just stared at her. He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It was a stark comment, one said without any particular emphasis, that drove home to him just how he rated compared to everyone else in the world.

The answer was depressing.

He was Level 29 now, but that wasn’t even average for where the two girls had come from. Since Evolutions were common and he had already gained a couple of dozen levels so quickly..., perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised.

What was surprising was that the two girls had decided to go on a journey at such a low level themselves.

"Do you know what the Level 399 World Limit is all about?" he asked, following up on a question he’d had for a while. "Why can’t we gain more experience after that?"

It was a very distant goal, but it was strange that the World Law had specifically told him there was a limit. He wanted to know why.

"The church says that the level limit at 399 is when you become a Saint." This time, it was Ayala who answered the question as she spoke up from behind him.

"All of the experience you gain at that point goes into maintaining the seal, so you are more holy than other people. The church asks all of their clergy to try and reach that level, ...that’s why almost all of the priests you encounter are near or past their First Evolution. You have to be at least Level 80 to be a full priest."

"What?" Sam frowned, as he thought about the little church in their village. They definitely didn’t have a priest who was that powerful there. Maybe it didn’t even count as a church in her eyes?

If a priest had to be level 80, and the church was one of the biggest organizations around..., exactly how many people did they have at that level or higher? A building worry about the church was growing at the back of his mind as he put all of the information together. He did not want to get their attention.

Hopefully, the illusion would work.

---

"Here we are," Jeric announced a few moments later as they arrived at the entrance to their cave. He turned behind him to look at the two guards, as he announced, "You two stay out here."

"We’re guards for the girl, not you," Yeres growled back, his temper flaring. He hadn’t wanted to go along with them, but guarding Ayala was part of his guild contract. Those were extremely strict and he didn’t want to lose dozens of levels by breaking it.

"How do we know the demon isn’t going to kill her inside? Maybe you’re helping him!"

"She will be fine," Krana spoke up, as she put herself between the two of them. Her voice. "And this is why you’re staying out here. You haven’t accepted the truth yet and your bias against Sam is only going to cause trouble. I’ve told you that he’s not a demon, and until you believe that, you’re not welcome inside."

The guard growled back, but neither Jeric nor Krana relented. In the end, the two of them stayed outside and Jeric took up a spot near the entrance to keep an eye on them.

Sam, Krana, and Ayala entered the old cavern. The familiar, silver-white glow of the mana pool radiated through the chamber with a shadowless light that filled everything in Sam’s eyes, and the sense of a familiar home returned to him. This place had been good to him.

Krana’s sudden gasp of shock brought him back to the present and he looked towards her, curious as to why she was so surprised.

"By the Mother...," Krana’s low, whispered oath resonated through the cavern. "That...is...incredible."

The dwarf’s hand touched her chest and then she raised her palm towards the pool. It had to be some kind of religious gesture.

Sam followed her gaze to the pool, which she was staring at with the widest eyes he’d ever seen. They were even wider than when she’d seen him for the first time.

"Weren’t you looking for it?" Sam asked, feeling confused. It was an impressive pool of mana that had been extremely useful to him, and his father had said it was sacred, but....

"You don’t understand?" Krana nearly whispered her response. She could barely drag her eyes away from it as she looked towards him. There was a silver-white glow that was reflected there, as if the pool had filled them.

"This is...in any dwarven kingdom, this would be a treasure that would echo through the generations. It would be offered up by the drop to only the best crafters in the entire world. This has to be the heart of at least ten thousand miles of Earth mana veins..., and there is so much of it. It must have lain here undisturbed for thousands of years."

Sam’s eyebrows rose as he heard the fervent tone in them. The value of the mana pool flew upwards in his mind. He’d known it was rare, but based on Krana’s reaction, that still wasn’t enough to describe it.

"This type of mana can be used to bless almost any creation," Krana continued, as she waved her hand toward the pool. "It’s a sacred gift of the Earth. The value of a single drop is worth more than a high-grade mana crystal and is many times more pure."

Her words made him think of his enchantments and how the aura had consumed the mana to strengthen itself. Perhaps the purity was why it had worked so well for him. It made him want to make some more of the crystal spheres, but his pack was already full.

Unfortunately, the dimensional bags weren’t able to hold them, so that was off the table. He had tried putting one inside, but as soon as it got near the opening, there was a feeling of it being rejected, along with a building instability in the pouch’s enchantment.

Instead of focusing on that, he turned to Ayala.

"Go ahead," he offered simply, as he gestured towards the mana pool. "Unlock your class."

Battlefield Reclaimer 37: Earthwalker Mage

Ayala’s eyes were wide as she stared at the sight in front of her. They reflected the silver-white glow of the mana, almost as if she were seeing a vision of her new life. She walked forward in a trance until she was standing at the edge of the pool.

"This..., I’ll find a way to pay you back," she murmured as she stared down into it.

"It’s not necessary," Sam replied. In fact, he hoped they could split up as quickly as possible and that he would never see her again after they got her home, but his new Wisdom and Charisma kept him from saying that out loud.

It was nice for the girl to unlock her class, but he was only completing his end of the contract. If nothing else, maybe her presence here would help him discover something interesting about Earth mana.

Ayala knelt down by the side of the pool. As she touched it, her entire body began to radiate a similar silver-white glow. She stood up and began to disrobe. Her dress slid to the floor in a puddle, revealing a slender back and instant curves.

Sam spun around, his face reddening. Had she been serious about bathing in it? The pool had changed his father’s entire body. What was going to happen to her?

Krana stood next to him, the look of reverence never leaving her face. As Ayala slid into the pool, a resonant hummm began to build through the cavern.

It was a slow, gradual melody, and as it continued to increase, Sam found himself glancing back over his shoulder to see what was going on. At the same time, he tried to sense what was happening. His aura infused into the walls, floating through them as he felt for the energy of the Earth.

When his father had received his subclass, the earth had sung in a great chorus. Sam hadn’t realized what was happening in time to pay attention to it back then, but he was going to make the most of it this time. His attention was on the walls as he felt for the pitch of the vibrations, trying to sense the patterns of the world.

It was a theory that he was testing out. The more he learned about runes, the more he figured they had to come from somewhere. When he’d made the hammers, the combined song of the enchantment had built on that idea. Together, those seven simple runes were greater than the sum of their parts.

The sketch of the illusion amulet had given him new insights. Many of the runes on it were things he had never seen before, forming connections in an intricate braid. He wasn’t sure if the pattern was unique to the Enchanter who had made it or if it was just more advanced than anything he’d seen so far.

The amulet had been made by a Second Evolution Enchanter.., so whatever he could learn from it, it would be invaluable, even if his way of doing things wasn’t the same.

Ayala was nearly immersed in the pool now and only her head was showing. The intensity of the mana obscured her enough that he was able to watch without being impolite. The sound of the Earth was coming from the pool as well as the walls around the cavern in a multi-toned cascade.

As he sensed the energy flowing around the cavern, he could feel ideas coming together. The hammer he’d made before and the combination of its runes, the tones here, the complexity of runes increasing in difficulty....

As the Earth’s song continued, his confusion faded away and was replaced by certainty, like clouds drifting away to reveal the sun. He wasn’t sure what they were, but he knew there had to be other Earth runes out there.

Perhaps this was where runes originally came from, ...the world itself. Maybe they were models of natural energy, somehow condensed into formulaic lines. Representations of the truth.

There wasn’t a lot of time while Ayala was in the pool, since it didn’t take long to unlock a class, but Sam’s attention poured through the walls, trying to memorize every tone and flow of the energy as he looked for patterns inside it, searching for runes.

He could feel that the lowest tone was the simple Earth rune he’d used before, but the higher ones were much vaster. They existed in multiple forms at once, a mix of sound, energy, mana, aura, and something else that was not easy to grasp. To understand their structure was going to take time, perhaps longer than he had.

Time passed while Ayala drifted in the center, her eyes closed. The hummm continued to build throughout the cavern, almost reaching the peak of the Earth’s song that he’d heard when his father gained the Earth Blessed trait. Her visible skin and hair slowly turned silver-white and began to glow.

At the same time, a chime rang through the air and the walls began to rumble. Sam tried to follow the flow of energy, tracing the way it curled through the walls, but it was already disappearing. He hadn’t had enough time to fully grasp the next level of Earth rune, and he felt a sense of frustration, at himself and at Ayala, ...but mostly at Ayala.

Why couldn’t the girl have taken longer?

Nonetheless, the discovery of natural runes opened a new path. He knew that it was possible now, as long as he studied the flow of energy in the world for long enough. Perhaps this was how runes had been discovered in the first place. He barely noticed it, but as the sound faded away, his Enchanting profession gained a bit of experience. It was just enough to get it to Level 9.

The song faded away, leaving the cavern silent as Ayala let out a deep breath. The silver-white glow faded away from her skin, leaving only a streak of the color that stayed in her blond hair.

She opened her eyes and looked into the distance, reading a notification of some type. Her laugh filled the room with a warm, bubbling sound as an excited smile broke out across her face.

"Thank you!" she cheered, her eyes settling on Sam, as she began to wade toward the edge of the pool. Sam spun around again as he focused on runes.

"It worked?" Krana asked from behind him. He heard her walking across the floor to help Ayala out of the pool.

"I unlocked my class," she confirmed, as a smile began to dawn across her face. "Earthwalker Mage.... It’s a combat class. I only suspected that before. The main abilities are Summon Earth, Earthwalk, Earth Sense, Earthen Spear, and Earth Barrier. My father is going to be so happy!"

"A summoning class? That is useful for combat then," Krana nodded as she heard the description. Then she let out a cheerful laugh as she patted her friend on the shoulder and offered her congratulations. Her excitement on Ayala’s behalf was palpable.

"Maybe you can get a few levels in it on the way home and surprise him!"

She was doing her best to ignore that Ayala had run away and dragged her into it as well. Right now, she just wanted to make the most of her friend’s success. Unlocking a class was the same as starting a new life and the real entrance into adulthood.

Ayala smiled back at her friend, her eyes sparkling as optimism washed through her, followed shortly after by the weight of reality.

"He’ll expect me to take a Priestess subclass," she sighed, as her mood fell a little.

"Have you thought about it?"

"You know I don’t want to." Ayala shook her head as she finished dressing. She was still excited, but now it was mixed with sadness. "I don’t want a double combat class, even if it does come with healing. I don’t want to end up like him, never being home.... That’s not a life."

Krana just nodded as she patted her friend on the back. She also knew that it was going to be hard for Ayala to refuse that path. It had been laid out for her since she was a child. She already had all of the requirements to set Priestess as a subclass, and if she missed that or took something else, or if she missed the Level 20 tier-up for it....

Well, her father’s anger over running away was one thing. His anger over that would be something else entirely. There was no point in reminding her of that, however. Ayala was capable of thinking it through on her own. Some things were best left to develop over time, like plants extending their roots slowly through the earth.

If she did take Priestess as a subclass, when that was combined with a primary Earth-summoning combat class, the girl would be a terror on the battlefield. That was what her father hoped for the most when he looked at his daughter, that she would be a core force for the church, ...but she had never wanted that path for herself.

Instead of saying anything else, Krana took out a small, reinforced box from her pack and opened it to show a dozen small crystal vials. The box was designed to keep them safe, even if it were shaken or dropped.

She made the same gesture of respect as before. One by one, she filled the vials from the pool and placed them back in the box. When she was done, she stood up, holding the box in her hands with a reverent expression as she looked between Sam and Ayala.

"Sam," she said, hesitating. "Do you have a way to gather mana for yourself? It’s..., the value of this pool is incredible. You should take what you can. It could be a gift for a king in any dwarven kingdom, and having some to offer will open many doors for you, once your illusion is working."

She studied him for a moment, before adding, "If you don’t have a way to take some, I’ll give you half of mine when we return."

It was a kind offer, one that she clearly made with some regret. Whatever she wanted the mana for, it was extremely precious to her. Perhaps it was a gift for her family or just resources to use in the future.

The vials in her box were only the size of Sam’s finger, but they didn’t look like any type of crystal he’d seen before. There was a violet hue to them. Whatever they were made from, it was probably valuable. It looked like they could probably hold forty or fifty drops each, but in total volume, all of them together wouldn’t equal two of his crystal spheres.

"There’s no need," he said, as he waved the idea away. The offer made him like her a bit more, but he wasn’t going to tell her how many of the spheres were already in his pack. She didn’t need to know all of his secrets.

"It’s too bad we don’t have a good way to take more of it with us." Krana shook her head as she considered it, placing the box into a pouch at her belt. It was a regular pouch, instead of a dimensional one, which meant that she had the same issue with storing the mana as he did.

If his pack had been able to hold any more of them, he’d have already filled it up. As it was, what he’d taken before would have to be enough. Now that they were at the mana pool again, he could use it for the crafting they were planning to do together.

After that, Ayala gathered a similar box of the mana, although hers was half the size of Krana’s. Perhaps the vials were rarer than he’d thought. She also placed it carefully into a pouch on her belt.

The two of them had come prepared to make the most of the mana pool. Perhaps it was how Ayala planned to pay for the journey, or even a way to bribe her father to not be angry with her. Returning home with treasure was always better than the opposite.

"May you have great success on your path," he offered, flatly, as Ayala straightened out her clothes and hair. The new silver-white streak there caught his eye and he wondered for a moment what else she had obtained. Then he pushed it out of his mind.

He was getting rid of her as soon as possible.

"Let’s start on the message scroll then?" he suggested as he turned to look at Krana.

---

Jeric was standing by the door, keeping an eye on the guards, as Sam and Krana worked on figuring out how to extend the distance of the message scroll. Ayala was occupied with her new class, muttering something to herself as she studied her new abilities.

Sam pushed her out of his mind as he focused on the task at hand. If they could send a message home, it would go a long way to making sure his mother and sister didn’t worry as much. They’d already been gone for two weeks with no word, and it would be longer before they could get back. It was something that had been eating at him.

"How far away is it?" Krana asked as she looked at the scroll in Sam’s hands. "I’m not that powerful of a Seer yet, but I’ll do what I can."

"Perhaps two hundred or three hundred miles?" he replied. "It’s hard to tell exactly where we are, but it should be within that range."

Krana picked up a chunk of stone and turned it around in her fingers, almost as if studying a map of the world. She seemed to be thinking as she glanced between the rock and the mana pool.

"At least that’s closer than Osera. Normally, I couldn’t help it over that sort of distance, since it would take too much mana, but maybe with the help of this Earth pool something can be done. You said you were an Enchanter and an Arcane Scribe, right? I can see two options here."

Krana turned towards Sam and began to sketch on the ground in front of them.

"The first, is we create an enhancing formation around the scroll and place it at the center. The problem is that it will place the scroll under a lot of stress and it may explode, even if I try to help. The second, is that you try to create a new message scroll..., one that can hold a lot more mana. That basically means upgrading it from Basic to Advanced, but it’s a simple change and I can give you some ideas on how. If you can do that, then it should work."

It wasn’t a clear yes, but it was enough for Sam’s hope to shoot through the roof. A moment later, he called out to his father and they started to discuss the idea. The second option sounded a lot better, especially with the pool here to use.

"There is this scroll as an example," Sam debated, as he thought it over, "and I have one blank parchment left."

There was still one blank sheet left from before, the one he’d planned to imbue his Aura of Crystal Flame into. He’d never found the opportunity for that, and it would work better for something like this.

They also had the two new salamanders, which he could turn into another seven or eight parchments. That should be enough to test out what the stronger version looked like. If it worked, it would give him a useful scroll pattern and more experience with runes. If it didn’t, they could still try the enhancement formation.

He nodded and pulled out a piece of chalk as he got to work. He began drawing the pattern of the first message scroll on the stone at his feet, adding it to what Krana had already started as they shot questions back and forth.

---

Sam sat on the opposite side of the cavern from Ayala as his father continued to guard the doorway, standing near the old deadfall.

If this message scroll worked, they could tell his mother that they would be home soon. They had finished the design and he was currently infusing the parchment as he prepared to add the runes. The conversation with Krana had helped to elucidate some runes that he hadn’t been familiar with before, including more ways to stabilize and empower a formation.

His new Intensify Aura ability was also on his mind, but he didn’t want to try it out too much while the girls were around. Over the last few hours, he had discovered that it would let him use his essence to infuse an aura, gradually making it stronger over time. It meant that the auras he had in storage could be improved, becoming even better for enchantments.

The problem with using the Aura of Umbral Flame on his spear, for example, was that it had run out halfway through. If he hadn’t had the mana pool here to fill in the gaps, it probably would have ended up as a failure. Intensify Aura was a solution for that, replacing the need for multiple auras of the same type. As an aura became stronger, it was able to cover more runes and act as a better power source.

The auras in storage could be taken out, intensified, and placed back in there, which meant that he could charge them whenever he wanted. If he poured essence into them for long enough, they would also give him back more energy when he Combusted them.

The amount he could infuse was based on his Wisdom, similar to the success rate for Identify and Reclaim. Right now, it was a 1 to 1 comparison, and he could fill an aura with up to 16 points of essence. That might be enough to do a full weapon enchantment.

He didn’t have the time to experiment with it too much right now, since he was working on the scroll, but in the future it was going to be something to do whenever he had free essence. While traveling, for example, he could build up his crafting resources and energy reserves at the same time.

It also meant he was going to have to add more Wisdom. That would be useful for reclaiming more auras, for intensifying them, and for improving his mind. The difference between 10 and 16 was extremely noticeable as he thought back to his experiences before. There were probably diminishing returns as he hit the limit for his race or level, but what would it be like at 25 or 50?

It would probably enhance his perception a lot.

In the conversation with Krana, he’d also found out something useful about experience calculations and what she called the "Three Cliffs." Apparently, experience requirements grew dramatically at Levels 33, 66, and 99. No one knew why, but the church theorized that it had something to do with the seal. Apparently, there was even a picture of a triangle inside a circle that they used to represent the Three Cliffs. It did look something like a rune.

He shook his head as he returned to infusing the parchment, letting the thoughts on his new ability and plans for the future continue in the back of his mind.

---

"Are we ready to try?" Krana asked, as she looked at the completed parchment in Sam’s hands.

He’d just finished drawing the rune pattern they had come up with onto the scroll. It was similar to the original, but there were three times as many stability runes and mana infusion points in this one. The runic bands were twice as thick, completely filling the parchment.

"Yes, I believe so." Sam agreed. If his theories were correct, this would barely be enough to count as an Advanced spell scroll, since the formation was still pretty basic. He needed to fill it with mana and test it out, but it should be able to reach across three hundred miles. It was the best scroll he’d made so far and he was hoping nothing would go wrong.

He looked toward his father and saw the hope in his eyes. Jeric had been watching the entire time, his attention hanging on the scroll. If they could get a message back to his mother, at least she would know they were alright and that they were doing their best to get home.

He wished there were a better way to communicate and also to let her respond, so they could see how she was doing, but there was nothing for it right now. In the future, if his message amulet idea worked out, he would solve that problem by giving them to his entire family.

"I’ll start the mana infusion," he said as he picked up his stylus and headed for the pool. While he had easy access to all of this mana, he was going to use it, even if Krana looked pained that he was wasting it on something so simple.

About an hour later, he finished infusing the last line with mana and the scroll began to hum, the lines on it shifting as the mana filled them. His skill with Essence Control was Advanced, which meant that imbuing even more complicated lines than this weren’t a problem, but he couldn’t help a sense of nervousness.

The mana surged through the lines, rippling like a river as it rushed through the thick runic bands. One by one, the runes inside came to life, taking on the same silver-white brilliance. This time, perhaps because he’d been listening to the sound of the earth, he could hear a very quiet hum that gave the scroll a sense of stability, as if it were still a part of the earth.

With a final shussshhh-click, the runic lines settled into place and the entire scroll began to gleam with a soft brilliance, especially the triangular focus pattern at the center. As soon as it was complete, a notification appeared.

Congratulations, Essence Scribe. You have created your first Advanced spell scroll.

You have now completed the professional requirement to take Essence Scribe to Advanced, but you still need to gain the remaining experience.

You receive 1,000 General experience

You receive 300 Class experience (30% contribution).

His level in Essence Scribe jumped from 5 to 7 with the single scroll, making him wonder how fast he could level if he stayed next to this pool.

An excited smile broke out across his face as he looked towards his dad and held up the scroll.

"Dad, are you ready to talk to mom?"

Battlefield Reclaimer 38: A Message Home

Jeric looked toward the scroll in his son’s hand and tears stung his eyes. It was a symbol of hope, a message that they were alive and better days were coming. He walked forward with shaking hands to take it as he thought about his wife and daughter.

"Just infuse your mana into it, speak what you want into the center formation, and then touch the activation point to send it," Krana offered, as she watched from the side. There was a smile on her face as she saw how much the scroll was affecting Jeric. "I’ve added my own touch as a Seer too, which should help it arrive."

Jeric nodded as he looked down at the scroll. A light silver glow surrounded the parchment as he activated it. It was different from the elemental scrolls Sam had made before. This time, the energy rippled around the pattern, waiting for the message, rather than instantly converting itself into the final spell.

The words he spoke into it were heartfelt, and a moment later, the scroll shimmered in his hands as it activated. The runic lines on it flared, surrounding the triangular pattern at the center. Then, the outer circle of runes began to rotate, slowly picking up speed. The edges of the scroll crumbled away, turning to dust that was absorbed by the spell pattern. After a moment, only the runic formation was left, shining in the air.

Sam had poured as much of the Earth’s mana as he could into the scroll, and because of that, it behaved a little differently than normal. The hum of Earth mana was still present in the formation, its soft chimes barely audible at the edge of hearing as the spell turned. It seemed to be picking up speed with each rotation, as another chime accompanied it.

Most scrolls would have simply disintegrated and sent the message to the target after they were activated. Instead of just fading out, this one hung there. The pattern shimmered as it twisted around and the outer circle of runes spun faster. The center triangle began to shine with a brilliant light, absorbing all of the energy that was pouring into it. It was so intense that it looked like molten silver.

The spell reflected the glow of the mana pool as it folded in on itself and disappeared with a soft pop.

---

Hundreds of miles away, in the small village of Cliff’s End, Aemilia was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. Her daughter was beside her, pretending to write a letter on the wooden table. Altey was clean and her blond hair was in a tidy bun, but Aemilia’s own hair was a long, unruly river that had only seen a couple of swipes with a brush.

"Mom, when are dad and Sam coming back?" Altey asked, as she added another line to the imaginary letter in front of her.

"They’ll be back soon, love." Aemilia reached out and tucked a lock of Altey’s hair back into the bun. Her eyes were red and her heart was aching as it slowly pulled itself apart.

More than two weeks had passed since Jeric and Sam went missing on their dungeon exploration. She understood her husband very well and had even taken part in some of his explorations in the past. They should have been back that first night, or at least by the next day. It meant that something had gone seriously wrong. All kinds of terrible possibilities filled her mind, including the one that she refused to think about.

After they disappeared, she traveled out to the ruins where they had gone, but there was nothing left. The entire area was only a streak of barely cooled lava. It matched the distant explosion that had rocked the village the day they disappeared, which had caused the elders to double the guard on the wall, preparing to ward off an attack. Only she knew that the real danger had already come and gone.

Since then, she hadn’t been able to sleep. She spent her nights trying to see through the distance, searching for them with her heart as she stared into the dark, but the only thing that came back was an echoing silence that stabbed at her.

There was a small box on the table in front of her that had two silvers and a handful of copper coins inside. It was all the savings they had left. She had been working as hard as she could to make a living for herself and Altey, but coins were hard to find in the village. They had to be carefully hoarded for taxes and difficult moments. Jeric had brought in a few extra silvers from his explorations, far more than from his work as a laborer, and that had been all that covered the gap every month.

Now, the rent on the house for this month would take up the last two silvers and there would be only the coppers left. If something didn’t change soon, she wasn’t sure what she would do, or if she even had the will to do it. The future was bleak and made worse by the fear that dwelled at the edge of her thoughts.

Her thoughts spun in a circle as she asked herself why she hadn’t stopped them from going out that day. It was frequently interrupted by the hot flash of pain in her eyes. At first, she tried to hide her tears from Altey. Now, she had cried so much that she didn’t have any tears left.

She couldn’t allow anything to harm her daughter, so she had to figure something out and keep herself together, but the light in her eyes was dimming. Life here had never been easy. They had only scraped through together with luck and hard work. Jeric and Sam were more than half of her life, and with them gone... No, she told herself, pushing the thought away.

There was a chance that her family would help, but she hadn’t even spoken to them in years, not since they’d disowned her. They’d had no desire to help her train a useless class. That was not something she would go back to if she had any other choice, but she wasn’t sure that she did.

At best, she would be a beggar there, cleaning the house for them just for a place to sleep.... No, she had to do it on her own, if she could.

Her General Level was 16, but her Historian class was still only Level 1. She’d never been able to train it, since it cost too much to buy the required paper and books. Even if she had trained it, there was no market for that type of class, and that made it pointless. Because it was so low, she’d also never taken a subclass. She was considering that again, debating if there were anything that would help, but the options were as bad as they had always been.

The only things available to her as subclasses were from farming and household professions, as well as Wizard, but Jeric had already taught her Mana Control and the basic Wizard abilities were only for that and Meditation, along with a couple of utility abilities.

If she’d had any spells to study, she might have considered it and then gone out to look for a few monsters on her own, since that at least would be a viable path despite the danger, but at the moment it was no better than sticking to what she had. She also couldn’t risk abandoning Altey like that.

With what she had here, the best she could do was another month or two. There wasn’t much in the house that could be easily converted to coins. She could sell some items from the house, keepsakes and the better decorations, which might get another few silvers. Their garden would supply vegetables and she could trade some extra work for flour.

Her thoughts tumbled over themselves as she did the same old accounting and tried to make it fit a new conclusion. Above all, she avoided the dark reality that was trying to pull her apart. She just had to figure this out for long enough that Jeric and Sam would find their way home.

At that moment, a soft silver light appeared in the air above the kitchen table, shining across the room. At first, she didn’t realize what was happening. Her thoughts were still far away.

"Mom! What’s that? It looks like magic." Altey’s voice chimed in her ears, pulling Aemilia’s attention upward. There was a gleaming spell circle hanging in the air above the table. Its outer edge was slowly rotating.

"It looks like a message scroll," Aemilia murmured automatically when she looked upwards, her eyes widening. "But who..., Jeric?"

Hope surged in her heart as she reached up towards the pattern and touched it. She had never seen many message scrolls, but she knew how they worked. As soon as her hand touched the pattern, a very familiar voice resonated across the room, accompanied a moment later by Altey’s gleeful shout of "Dad!"

"Aemilia, my love.... Sam and I are fine and on the way home. We should be there in two months, I hope, or just a little longer. Please take care of Altey and take loans from the village if needed. We will be able to pay them back. Sam and I have unlocked our classes! We are coming home and if anyone has harmed you, they will answer for it. We send our love."

The message was short, but it was enough. Aemilia’s eyes grew wider as the words echoed all around her, and then a new batch of tears began to run down her face, like a wellspring that had been renewed at the source.

The silver pattern of the message spun again for an instant as the excess mana in it tried to find somewhere to go. It was imbued with an enormous amount of Earth mana and this wasn’t even a fraction of the distance it could cover, but there was nothing else in the spell formation to tell it what to do.

Normally, a message scroll was supposed to expire when the mana in it ran out, which happened when the words were delivered, but this one had completed its mission and still had more than 80% of its energy remaining.

The low hum of Earth mana filled the room, resonating as it struck against the walls. The stability of the energy didn’t allow the spell to become unruly, so instead the pattern began to condense, following the path of least resistance as it spiraled around and turned into a small, silver sigil.

Since it had nowhere else to go, it flew toward the last thing that it had touched. In an instant, the rune settled onto the palm of Aemilia’s hand, inscribing itself into her skin.

As soon as it did, she felt a strange pulse of energy washing through her body. Part of it was familiar and she could feel Sam and Jeric there. The energy was mostly Sam’s, even though her husband’s voice had been the one that just spoke. At the same time, there was a new presence, someone who had helped to create the spell.

She could also feel a sense of vision in the aura, and she wondered if it had to be a Seer of some type. They were the class that was most involved in all forms of distant speech and visions.

She didn’t know why the spell had changed into this form, but as she stared down at the rune on her palm, a vast sense of relief broke through her heart, filling it with hope like water rushing into a dry riverbed. The cracks in it began to seal over, nourished by the words.

Altey reached out to touch the rune and then quickly pulled her fingers back. "It tingles! That was dad!"

Aemilia could only nod as she continued to look at the rune. A message scroll was supposed to fade away after it was delivered.... She had never used them herself, but she knew that. What had happened with this one? Was it some type of reusable enchantment?

She tried to pour her mana into the symbol, which lit up and began to glow, but it didn’t rotate again. It just flared with a bit of light and she could feel a gentle hum resonating through her body.

She tried a few more times, hoping that she could use it to send a message back, but eventually she shook her head. Whatever had just happened, it wasn’t going to be so simple. The spell hadn’t been designed for a two-way conversation.

Despite that, she was very glad that some part of it was still here. It was proof that what she had just heard was real. But why had it ended up on her hand? Was there another way to use it?

If there were, she wasn’t going to give up the opportunity so easily. It felt like there was a lot of energy there, including the part from the Seer, so maybe with enough strength of will, she could make it do what she wanted.

The hum of energy continued to resonate through her body as she stood up, turning in the direction of the ruins as she tried to see where her husband and son had gone. Questions poured through her mind as she reached out for them. Where were they now? What had happened to them? Why had they sent a message instead of just returning, and how had they afforded such a strange and powerful scroll? Her husband said they had unlocked their classes?!

Only she knew what that really meant. It was the beginning of an entirely new life. They might be able to change things for the better if the World Law was no longer suppressing them.

She glanced around the house, her eyes falling on the things she’d planned to sell. She no longer had any doubts about them. Those could definitely go. They just needed to get by long enough for all of them to be together again.

She looked back towards the ruins, trying to see through the distance as she poured her mana and will into the rune on her palm. She didn’t know what it was for, but she needed it to cooperate. If she could just tap into the energy inside it and follow it back, then she could see what they were doing and if they were alright!

The Earth energy cycled through her body as the spell pattern began to rotate on her palm. It was still partly in the original pattern: the mana and distance runes were there, but the activation point and the voice rune were gone, which meant that it couldn’t be used to send a message back.

As her will pushed into the pattern and the rune tried to carry out the task she was commanding it to perform, she encountered the trace of Krana’s aura that was still there. The Earth Seer had poured her energy and good will into the message to help it on its way.

Aemilia’s eyes were usually blue, but in that moment, they shaded slightly to silver as they connected with Krana’s aura. Earth mana poured through her body, augmenting her vision as the distance and mana runes activated. The world swept away as she tried to see.

And then it splintered apart as her vision shattered into a thousand sparkles of silver-white mana. The rune on her hand dimmed, nearly disappearing.

Aemilia staggered back, falling into the chair behind her as Altey rushed toward her. Her head ached with a pounding beat and it felt like burning icicles had stabbed into her eyes.

She hadn’t managed to see anything after all. Regret washed over her. She had been so close.... She had felt her vision traveling there, for just a moment, until she’d met some type of brilliant, hot energy that threw her back. Maybe if she tried again, something would happen.

A moment later, however, a notification appeared in her mind, chiming softly.

Congratulations, Historian. By channeling your mana to see across distances, you have met the requirement to unlock a new Subclass.

Do you wish to become a Seer?

Aemilia stared at the words, her eyes widening. Seer was a non-combat class, which meant that it leveled slowly, but it could gain experience from using its skills in battle, in crafting, or in day-to-day communications. The abilities from it were in high demand.

But that wasn’t the main thought on her mind. What she cared about the most was that with this subclass..., maybe she could see where her husband and son were and how they were doing. She accepted it without a second thought.

A whirlwind of the World Law’s energy gathered around her, pouring into her body as it altered her meridians and mana, establishing new abilities as it recreated part of her existence. Information on what they were flooded into her mind.

Congratulations, Historian.

You are now a Seer.

This Subclass grants you the following abilities: Analyze, Far Sight, Foresight, Spell Barrier, Illusory Paths.

All experience earned from the subclass will be directed to your Class or General experience, as appropriate.

You may select one Subclass Ability to advance at each Tier of your primary Class (Levels 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100).

Your Subclass cannot be altered until your First Evolution. At that time, it may be replaced with another.

Aemilia sank back into her chair as the information filled her mind. When she could move again, she reached out and grabbed Altey’s hand, gripping it tightly as hope blossomed in her heart.

The silver rune was still on the palm of her hand, the gentle hum of energy from it resonating. She could feel that her own mana had started to combine with it and...it felt like it wasn’t going anywhere. She didn’t know if Jeric had intended this when he sent the spell, but somehow it felt right, as if it fit there.

She stared down at it for a moment before she looked up, her eyes searching into the distance. She would have to meditate for a while to regain her mana, but tomorrow she could search for Jeric and Sam again. Her eyes lit with a new fire as she gripped Altey’s hand tightly.

"Everything is going to be fine," she whispered into her hair, as she bent down to kiss her on the head.

Seeing her family was the most important thing, but the subclass was an opportunity that she had never expected to receive. Getting this class had been a dream of hers once as a young woman, but she had set it aside a long time ago, faced with the reality that she simply couldn’t afford it.

To get this subclass, you needed to use expensive items, like a farseeing stone, or sometimes to inscribe vision spell formations onto your body with a Seer and an Arcane Scribe to help, using them until you were able to get your mana to follow the correct paths. Even that was not a guarantee. Only the rich could afford such a thing.

She looked toward the village as her heart raced, thundering like a galloping chariot as she considered the other effects of Seer and why she had once wanted it so badly.... It was one of the few subclasses that combined well with Historian.

If she could see what was happening at a distance, she could write about it, recording her visions into a form that would give her class experience. There was even a chance that what she saw and told people about could work.

"Mom!" Altey called, as she tugged on her hand, pulling her attention away. The little girl was bouncing around now with the confirmation that her father and brother were on the way home. Her excitement was pouring out everywhere, along with her questions.

"What was that silver light all around you? It was in your eyes! Where did dad and Sam go? Why are they taking so long to get back?"

Aemilia laughed helplessly as she pulled Altey into her lap and began to explain, reaching for any excuse so she didn’t have to say what had really happened. There was no way she would tell her about the lava field that was all that remained of the ruins. She didn’t know how they had survived that. She was just glad that they had.

"They got stuck in a storm," she said, trying to come up with a good reason that wouldn’t upset her daughter. "Then, they had to go to the city before they could come home. It is a long trip, but they had some good luck too. Did you hear about their classes being unlocked?"

"What do their classes do?" Altey asked instantly, wanting more details.

"Haha...," Aemilia laughed again, hugging her. "Well, I don’t know exactly, but I can tell you all about a new Seer subclass that I just got. Do you want to hear about that?"

"Yes!" Altey nodded emphatically, as the new idea distracted her. She was old enough to know that a new subclass was extremely important, and she began to ask all about her mother’s new abilities, and why she had taken the class, and what she was going to do with it now, and....

Aemilia ruffled her hair as she slowly began to explain, thinking over the abilities to herself at the same time. "Well, first there’s Far Sight..., and then Analyze...."

Far Sight was the ability to see across distances, which was what she had been trying to do when she unlocked it. That was what had allowed her to get it.

Analyze was the ability that allowed Seers to see Race and Class, as well as other information as it became stronger. It could also be used to identify items.

Foresight was the premonition ability that Seers were most famous for, but it was notoriously unreliable. When it worked, it would allow her to see a few instants ahead in time, to avoid attacks and to warn people of danger.

As for the last two abilities, Seers might not be a combat class, but they weren’t defenseless. Spell Barrier was a shielding ability and Illusory Paths was a mental attack that could cause confusion or madness.

As she finished explaining the abilities to Altey, she pushed the thoughts of her new class abilities aside. They were a source of new hope, but they were not as important as the other thing the spell scroll had brought. Now, she knew that her husband and son were alive and on their way home.

"Everything is going to be alright," she repeated. Tears ran down her cheeks as she ran her hands through Altey’s hair.

Battlefield Reclaimer 39: Flaws in the Seal

Somewhere...

The two Outsiders were sitting across from each other inside their dimensional bubble, looking gravely at the orange spell sphere in front of them. Their efforts to pierce into the World Core were encountering new difficulties now that the Core was aware of their interference.

"The World Core isn’t able to access the interior of the prison, but it is actively working to limit our connection with it," the man glanced across the sphere as his fingers brushed the surface. It looked like he was waving away a speck of dust. "It will make it harder to proceed."

"It doesn’t matter," the woman replied, shaking her head as she also studied the sphere. It was smaller than before, but the intensity had increased. "The flaws are increasing now. Soon, the Core won’t have time to pay attention to us."

"It is a powerful relic, but also an ancient one." The man chuckled, his eyes creasing at the corners as he looked at something in the sphere. "The original negotiations created some very interesting things. It’s a shame that they eventually fell apart."

"It doesn’t matter," she replied, waving her hand dismissively. It was a favorite habit of hers. "We are making progress, even if we did create that unexpected class...." She frowned as she considered it.

"How was a World Forger born here? That class has only ever existed once."

"You know the legends as well as I do," he replied, glancing towards her. His voice was indifferent. "In the very beginning, our people and the Astrals worked together. The World Core was one of the first things they created together."

"That old story? You’re much older than I am, so perhaps you know more about it. It didn’t work out, did it?"

"When does anything ever work out, when the two sides want the same thing?" The man shook his head. "The early creations showed excellent promise. In the beginning, the World Core was only a proof of concept to show what can happen when you combine our essence with their class system. It was originally assigned to govern the flow of energy at the nexus point between galaxies."

He paused as old memories passed through his mind, his attention drifting away again. It almost looked like he’d fallen asleep until the woman’s words drew him back.

"They created the World Forger after that, didn’t they? The second creation?"

"Not the second thing, but it was the next big project..., an attempt to create an Astral Class that operates on principles of essence. They chose a crafting class, so that it wouldn’t be too damaging if it went wrong. The project was never finished and only the original prototype was formed before the First War. To create that one, it also required the infusion of life essence from one of our people."

"That must have killed them...."

"I believe they used a prisoner, so it didn’t matter much. As you can see, it was an effective combination. She was placed in charge of the World Core back then, the only individual with full access. It is regrettable that she sided with the Astrals during the war."

"What happened to her? She was half part of us, after all. How could we lose track of her?"

"She went missing during the creation of the seal, which brought an end to the war. Now, no one is capable of managing the World Core or the seal directly. The Astrals can only observe from the outside or they risk breaking the world, the same as us."

"Then this new World Forger has the capability to change the balance."

"It’s unlikely that he will survive. Where is he going to find an infusion of life essence to stabilize the class? Without that, he’s only a half-formed shell." The man paused as he thought, his eyes flashing with an intense orange light as he tried to see deeper into the spell sphere.

"Just by having essence, he is also a flaw in the seal." The woman laughed as she thought of the irony. The sound was rare for her and it held an edge of delight. "The World Core will not approve of him."

"On top of that, our interference has resulted in more breakthrough points, and things with essence will be attracted to one another." The man smiled slightly, clearly pleased with the idea. "You know how essence loves to consume other sources."

"You mean they’ll be attracted to the World Forger too?" the woman asked, her fangs flashing as her laughter continued. "That would be lovely."

"Indeed. The rifts are still small for now, but perhaps they will solve the problem for us, cutting him down before he can bloom. The first one caused enough trouble." The man’s eyes drifted closed as he returned to his meditations.

---

Beneath the Abyssinian Plains

Sam looked up as the last of the silver message formation faded away, hoping that it had reached his mother. Across from him, Jeric heaved a sigh of relief as he wished it well. It looked like it had worked, so at least Aemilia would know they were alive.

It was a big weight off of Jeric’s chest. He still needed to get home to help take care of things, but she should be alright for a little while longer.

The two of them watched the place where it had disappeared, their thoughts far away. Eventually, Sam spoke up, bringing their attention back to the present.

"We just need one more acid worm amulet and then the illusion amulet. Let’s do the easier one first, and then we can try the illusion amulet together." He nodded at Krana as he pulled out one of the current acid worm amulets.

Krana came closer to examine it, while his father went back to guarding the door, keeping a careful eye on the guards outside.

"Does anyone have some silver coins to melt down?" Sam asked, as he addressed the main problem. "We’re going to need to make a new blank for the base."

There were ten or so silvers in his pouch now, and about the same in his father’s, but he didn’t want to use them if he didn’t have to. They were too important at home and he might need his own for the illusion amulet next, which was even larger and more ornate.

"It should take about five silvers to do it," Krana suggested as she looked down at the amulet in his hands. "A bit more if the quality of the coins is low, since we’ll lose some in the refining."

"That part is not a problem," Ayala offered as she pulled her attention from her new abilities. The idea of going home had caught her attention and she walked over, pulling a handful of silver coins from her pouch.

"Here." There were six silver coins in her hand. She held them out to Sam.

He just nodded as he took them, pleased that he didn’t have to spend his own silver. After half an instant, his Charisma kicked in and prompted him to say, "Thank you."

He supposed the amulets had originally been hers, and even if he claimed Ismela’s as justified loot, that left him one short to use for himself and his father..., but he wasn’t going to admit it.

"The amulets originally cost three gold, so if you can make one for five or six silver, it’s a good bargain," she replied. She hesitated a moment as she looked at him, more closely than she ever had before. "You can sell it when you return."

It was an offhand generosity, something offered to a person who had nothing. A moment later, she returned to her corner and her meditations, but the coins sat heavily in his hand. She’d seen more than he wanted her to and it made him a bit angry.

The silvers didn’t mean much to her, but they did to him. A gold was ten silver. Two silvers was a month’s rent on their house.... He frowned down at the silvers in his hand as he shook his head, adjusting his view of the world.

She had handed over the silvers as if they were nothing. He knew that his village was small, but it was uncomfortable to realize the difference between their backgrounds.

It was only one example, but it also gave him some information on the value of enchantments. If the medallion cost five or six silvers, and the completed amulet was three gold, it meant they sold for around six times the base cost.

"Let’s get started then," he said, as he pushed the thoughts away. Life was changing and perhaps one day he would also be able to hand out six silvers without worrying about it.

"I’ll help you with the smithing," Krana offered with a smile. "I may be an Earth Seer, but I’m also a dwarf. I grew up in smithies and working on crafts."

Sam looked at Krana and the thoughts about the silvers faded away as an answering smile spread across his face. He had always admired dwarven craftsmanship and now he was going to get to work with one on a smithing project.

Perhaps he could learn a few things.

---

The silver coins melted into a puddle as the heat in their small crucible intensified. Krana had a miniature forge in her dimensional pouch, which made the task of shaping this amulet much easier than when he and his father had made his stylus. He needed to get one.

He’d also discovered that Krana had several different dimensional bags. There were a couple of large ones on her belt, but she also had a series of pouches in the pockets of her vest. As she pulled out one tool after another, Sam’s eyes grew wider. He also needed one of those.

He was taking the lead in the crafting, so that he would get the experience for it, but Krana was guiding him from the side. As she did, she explained some of the techniques that the dwarves used for their crafting.

"There are common techniques, which I don’t mind sharing," Krana offered easily, in between showing him what to do. "There are also heritage techniques that are unique to particular families, which are more closely guarded. My family has many Smiths in it, but it is not my strongest skill and I don’t have the ability to use most of those arts. The common ones are enough for this."

She was doing her best to help him out and to convince him that she was a friend. Showing him a few smithing skills was an easy thing for her.

"Do dwarven Smiths take an Enchanting subclass?" Sam asked curiously. It was an idea that occured to him as he watched the silver melt. His class was a combination of Enchanter and Smith, so he wanted to know how common it was. His crystal blue flames were swirling through the metal at the same time, burning away the impurities as he attuned it.

"Some do," Krana agreed, nodding as she watched the silver carefully. "There are more specialized racial subclasses as well, like Dwarven Armorsmith, which includes enchantments that work best for armor, but Enchanter by itself is a good combination."

"What abilities come with Enchanter?" Sam asked half-distractedly. His old theory on how enchanting worked differently for him was at the front of his mind.

"Aren’t you...," Krana turned to look at him with some surprise. "Ahh, right, you have a unique class. The abilities for those are different sometimes. An Enchanter usually gets four abilities: Enchantment, Stabilize Enchantment, Mana Control, and Meditation. It’s similar to being a Wizard in the last two abilities. As you gain higher tiers, a new ability comes with every 20 levels usually, just like with most classes. That includes things like Strengthen Enchantment, Model Enchantment, and so on. Some are enhancement abilities and others are for utility or design purposes."

"Stabilize Enchantment is what lets you extend the duration?" He wanted to confirm if that was the skill to infuse aura into things.

"Yes, it allows an enchantment to be renewed," Krana agreed. "It’s the only way to add aura to one. Even other classes with aura skills are not able to do that."

Except for him, he thought automatically. He wasn’t going to mention that though, even when Krana was trying to help him. There was no reason to make her wonder about what he could do.

Essence Control gave him the same functionality as Stabilize Enchantment, but it was more direct, without having to rely on class abilities. It seemed like he had the more foundational skill, while Enchanters were using something less effective to accomplish the same thing.

"Strengthen Enchantment is what it sounds like," Krana continued, "a way of strengthening an enchantment over time, either by adding a new layer or perfecting what’s already there. Model Enchantment allows you to create a pattern visually before applying it and also to remember all the patterns you’ve used before. That’s why you don’t find many enchantment patterns around. Enchanters tend to only share them directly with apprentices or as a trade with colleagues."

Sam nodded. The last two abilities would be useful, but he could accomplish the same thing with Intensify Aura and his imagination. All of the runes he’d learned so far were preserved in his memory, outlined in crystal flames. He wasn’t sure if it was a class feature or something that came with his transformation, but it was useful.

"It’s about time to cast it," Krana suggested, as she drew his attention back to the pool of molten silver. "Once you’re done infusing, the mold is ready."

They had constructed a simple mold out of stone. It was similar to what his father had made for the stylus, but the surface of this one was much smoother. Krana had good tools and he had more control over his aura than in the past.

His crystal flames swirled through the silver a final time, searching for any other impurities, but there were none. The silver had shrunk slightly and it was glowing with a soft light. His hands were lined with crystal flame as he picked up the crucible. Then he turned towards the mold and poured the liquid metal in.

While it was setting, his aura swirled through it again. This time, the silver began to change color, taking on a crystal blue tint. Krana had suggested using Mana Refinement on it while it was still cooling, to help shape it to the desired goal, so he was following her advice.

Actually, he was going a bit further and using both parts of his essence: mana for strength and aura for durability. It felt like his essence was doing something else as well, as it resonated with a unique energy signature that was his, but he wasn’t quite able to pin down what was happening. It felt like some type of attunement.

He was planning to use this amulet himself, which would solve the complaints from anyone who didn’t trust it. As for the other amulets, he would just infuse some more aura into them, so they could last until they got across the plains. If they used them in the current state, he would be surprised if they made it out in one piece.

Maybe that was another reason people avoided the Abyssinian Plains. Did the amulets come with a warning for how long they lasted or did you just have to guess? Not everyone could identify them and see the duration.

The amulet hardened as it began to cool. When it was ready, he poured more of his essence into it, shaping it into a simple, blank disc. It didn’t take long, and when it was done, the silver chimed with a high-pitched tone. The crystal blue tint was spread evenly throughout.

A notification sounded, playing in four oddly-spaced tones on instruments he couldn’t identify. When it opened, it was written in the World Law’s ornate, archaic script.

Congratulations, Battlefield Reclaimer. You have gained a new Skill for your Class.

Essence Refinement.

Your previous skill of Mana Refinement has been merged into it.

That was all it said. This time, there was no reward accompanying it, like there’d been when he gained Essence Control early. A moment later, the notification was replaced by another one. This one was more modern and reverberated with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil.

Congratulations, Smith. You have created a Basic item.

You gain 100 Class experience (100% Contribution from Smith).

You are now a Level 4 Smith.

Sam turned his attention to the blank amulet in his hands as the notifications faded away. The amulet was still silver, but his crystal flame was definitely imbued into it somehow. It shimmered in his eyes with a soft light, as if something of the flame had been left behind.

"That’s interesting...," Krana said, as she looked over at it. "You just infused your mana into it? It’s clearly taken on some qualities from you, but I can’t tell what they are."

He gave her the amulet to examine, but Krana just turned it over in her hands and then shook her head. The connection between the color of the amulet and his crystal flame was obvious, but she didn’t know what to make of it.

"You’ve changed the structure of the silver somehow. It’s not a lot, but it’s not entirely blank anymore either. It’s almost like you’ve attuned it to an elemental alignment. My uncle would be interested, but I can’t tell what the effect will be, so the only thing to do is to try the next step."

Sam was already pulling out his stylus as he sat down at his work table and placed the amulet in front of him. He put the original amulet above it as an example and then began to inscribe the new one. The pattern was simple, so it wouldn’t take too long.

His crystal flame continued to swirl around him, pouring into the amulet and the stylus. The tip bit easily into the silver, leaving a trail of runes behind it.

It was tempting to improve on the amulet, but it wasn’t wise to mess with something that worked. Instead, he just made sure that the lines were as accurate as possible. The original amulet looked like something a lazy apprentice had made, with lines that were barely straight.

Maybe that was the truth, but it didn’t bode well for the helpless adventurers who were stuck using them.

The inscription didn’t take long, and when it was finished, he moved on to imbuing it with mana from the Earth pool, humming to himself as he made the trip back and forth. It was simple work, but it was good. It was progress.

Things were looking up again.

As he was adding the last lines, thoughts of the illusion amulet began to intrude on his concentration. It was going to take a lot more silver, perhaps all of the silvers in his pouch. He rubbed his chin as he started to plan out what he needed to do. As soon as this one was finished....

Click...ting...

A strange noise reached his ears, like the sound of metal tapping against stone, but he pushed it aside and connected the last lines of the amulet. Someone had probably leaned against a wall. As the mana began to surge through the runic lines, he continued humming to himself.

A moment later, the chime of a notification filled his mind.

Congratulations, Enchanter. You have created a Basic enchanted item.

You gain 300 Class experience.

As the experience became part of him, he turned the amulet from side to side, admiring it. If he could find more things like this, he’d be able to make all sorts of useful things to sell.

Between amulets and message scrolls, along with some weapons, there would be a good source of income once they got home. He would just have to find a few other patterns, like a ward from rain, or how to make dimensional bags....

He was feeling optimistic about the future, not thinking much about the Guardian’s words, when the star on his hand suddenly flickered, sending a pulse of sharp warning through his body. A voice appeared in his mind, similar to the World Law, but not.

A Flaw has been detected in your vicinity.

It was followed a moment later by the World Law itself, which echoed through the minds of everyone in the cavern as each of them received a unique message.

All Authorities of Law Are Summoned to Defend Aster Fall from Outsider Invasion.

An Outsider breakthrough has been identified in your location. As the closest combatants, you are required to assist. Refusing to do so will mark you as Defiant.

You are currently Defiant. Assisting in the sealing of five Flaws will remove this Trait.

Failure to assist will result in Greater Defiance.

Estimated Outsider Threat Level: Unknown.

Time until the Flaw is Sealed: Unknown.

At the same time, a bloodcurdling scream ripped through the tunnels, accompanied by the unsettling sound of jaws crunching through bone.

Battlefield Reclaimer 40: Hellish Spiders

The scream was coming from just outside the entrance to the cavern. It rose to a high-pitched shriek of pain that was accompanied by the dull thud-clank of an armored body striking stone and falling to the ground.

The skittering sound of clicks and metal scraping against stone filled the tunnel and poured into Sam’s ears as he shot to his feet, throwing both amulets into his pouch. His spear leapt into his hand as he lunged towards the entrance, surrounded in a swirl of crystal flame. Krana was right behind him, her warhammer leading the way.

Before he could arrive, his father was already there, surrounded in the golden gleam of stamina as his eyes flared red. He ducked into the hallway, shouting as he grabbed for the two guards. He was planning to drag them back inside, but by the time he arrived, it was too late.

"Spiders!" he shouted over his shoulder as he pulled his hammers from his belt. "They’re taking the guard! To the right!"

The warning from the World Law was still resonating in Sam’s ears. Whatever was happening, it was clear that this attack was related to an Outsider invasion. He’d never seen spiders in the tunnels before.

Whatever these spiders were, he didn’t want to be labeled even more Defiant than he already was, which meant that they had to die. As for the guards, he’d save them if possible. Maybe it would change their minds about him.

His essence pool was only about 80% full, since he had been slowly infusing the amulet, but it would have to do. He had a handful of auras to combust, and perhaps these spiders would add some more. A surge of crystal flame soared out of his body, condensing into the battle spiral that was ready to split off into other forms. He rushed out into the hallway, following his father as he held his spear at the ready.

The edges of a nascent Essence Shield flickered around him, ready to take full form as he looked in both directions. His father was running to the right, heading towards one of the guards that was being dragged down the tunnel.

There was an oversized black and red-striped spider with its fangs locked around the guard’s leg, dragging him as it retreated backwards. Its body was as broad across as an adult human, but it was shaped like an angular, black teardrop. It was covered in abstract red stripes that ran along the back of its carapace and swirled down across its legs and stomach.

Thin ridges rose up from its back that gleamed with sharp light, preventing anything from grabbing onto it. Its wide legs were armored and protected by black, serrated spikes that ran along the sides. Every edge of it looked dangerous.

A moment later, a prompt formed, giving it a name.

Red-Striped Hell Spider (Outsider)

Warning: An Outsider Invasion Has Been Detected in Your Vicinity.

It also confirmed that the spider was an Outsider, which meant that it was the target he needed to eliminate.

The spider was enormous, easily larger than one of the giant rats. It came up to his waist and its legs were wide enough that it almost filled the tunnel. He didn’t know how it had managed to creep up on the guards unnoticed, but maybe it had some ability to blend into the shadows.

Or maybe the guards were just useless.

To his left, the other guard, Yeres, was thrashing around on the ground. It looked like he’d been stabbed in the stomach by something, maybe a leg or a fang. That meant Lesat was the one being dragged away. The spider must have ambushed them both and then taken one off for a meal.

Behind him, the others began to pour out of the cavern. Krana was at his shoulder and Ayala was right behind.

"I’ll take care of Yeres and guard here as a fallback!" Ayala shouted as she came to a stop behind him and scanned the area, her eyes hardening. Her old fear of him had disappeared as something in her personality shifted. Perhaps it was facing the Outsider threat that her father had told her about. Her eyes shot down the tunnel to where the spider was dragging off the other guard.

"Save Lesat if you can!"

Her hands glowed with an intense silver light as earthen walls began to rise from the ground around them. She was using her new class abilities for the first time.

There wasn’t time for Sam to reply as he sprinted after his father, but he agreed with her choice to stay behind. They didn’t know how many more spiders were out there, and she was a low level. Krana kept pace with him, her warhammer and eyes both shading silver.

The spider was backing up, its jaws locked around Lesat’s leg as it dragged him. The weight wasn’t slowing it down much.

"There are more of them ahead!" Krana shouted, warning his father too. Jeric was closing in on the spider now. "At least ten! Don’t rush into them!"

Kriissshh.

Four crystal flame arrows split off from Sam’s crystal flame spiral, sending a series of splintering sounds echoing down the tunnel as they shot toward the monster. They flickered past his father in an instant, homing in on the target.

The spider froze as it saw Jeric and the arrows approaching, crouching down as its jaws stayed locked around Lesat. Its chitin began to radiate with a flickering, red-streaked light that intensified.

The streaks lifted out of the spider’s body, brightening until they turned into a defensive shield all around it. The surface of the barrier flowed with black and red-striped flames, similar to the design on its carapace.

The first two arrows slammed into the shield in an explosion of blue and red, turning it into a cloud of a thousand swirling sparks. It bent inwards, curving back toward the spider, and then the third and fourth arrows hit, ripping through it with a hissing crackle as they slammed into the spider’s body. The impacts tore a six-inch hole through its carapace and blasted away one of its legs at the joint.

Hisss. Cccliickkk.

That wasn’t enough to stop the spider as it crouched down. A clattering sound came from its jaws as it released its hold on Lesat and backed up a few more steps. The shield around it began to reappear, flickering in and out. Its fangs widened as a sphere of black-streaked flame began to form between them.

At the same moment, Jeric arrived, surging forward as his hammers slammed down. A bright yellow Earthen Shield surrounded him, pushing aside the spider’s reforming defensive barrier as he swung for its head.

His hammers struck one after the other, thudding into the spider’s skull with dull, echoing cracks as he broke through the chitin and left gaping holes behind.

The spider twitched, trying to rear up on its back legs to get away, but Jeric was too persistent. He stayed in close as he advanced and swung again. At the same time, the spider’s front legs stabbed toward him, their serrated edges gleaming.

Krissshhh.

A new flight of crystal flame arrows flew past Jeric and blew apart both legs as they continued into the spider’s body, the impacts exploding through its head, mouth, and carapace. Sections of its body tore outwards, splattering across the tunnel behind it.

The spider froze, its body somehow still intact despite the gaping holes. It wobbled there, its legs splaying outwards. Then, slowly, fluids began to ooze from inside and pour out from its chitin, coating the floor, as it slumped to the ground.

Jeric’s hammers slammed down again, striking it a few more times for good measure to make sure it was dead as Sam raced up by his side.

Clickkk..Ting...

Click...

"There’s more!" Krana shouted, drawing their attention farther down the tunnel to where a wave of the spiders was racing forward. There were five of them this time, and they weren’t distracted by having to carry their prey.

Instead of staring at the injured guard on the floor, these spiders’ eyes were all fixed directly on Sam as a sense of hunger radiated from them. A frisson of warning ran down his skin, almost like a ripple of tiny spikes, as an urge to destroy them surged through his blood. His Aura of Crystal Flames flared in response, raging all around him.

It was a strange feeling, one that he’d never encountered before. It felt like an instinct, as if the spiders were his natural enemy. It had to be related to his transformation. He only had a moment to shove it to the back of his mind as the crystal flame spiral around him condensed.

The flame arrows hadn’t done enough damage. They had only ripped holes through the spiders rather than blowing them apart, which meant that he needed to go bigger. The spiders were too durable for point attacks. They had to be torn apart.

An Essence Blade began to condense in front of him, its diamond-like, translucent edges radiating crystal flames all around it. With his aura and Flame Strike at Advanced, his spell formation was fast, but there wasn’t much time before they reached him. More than half of his remaining essence poured into it, leaving him with 14.

"Hold on!" He shouted to his father and Krana, sprinting ahead of them as he released the spell.

KRRiiiisshHHH.

The Essence Blade blasted forward, ripping a path down the tunnel as it filled it with cerulean light. A rippling wave of energy flared all around it, like an aurora in the darkness, as the edges cut across the walls and left melted lines behind.

The spiders saw it coming, crouching down as their strange defensive shields rippled off from their chitin. It looked like the surface of their bodies came alive and poured into the air, turning into a barrier.

All five of them clumped together in the center of the tunnel, their serrated legs gleaming and clicking against the stone floor as they braced themselves.

This time, their defense and durability didn’t matter.

The Essence Blade sheared through their combined shield in an explosion of scintillating sparks that flared in red, blue, and purple starbursts. Then it blasted farther inwards and ripped through the clump of carapaces. Serrated legs exploded outwards, chitin ruptured, and chunks of dark carapace went flying through the air as half of the pile disintegrated in a wave.

Then the entire clump was picked up from the tunnel floor and flung backwards, their angular bodies stuck together as their legs and spikes became tangled. Scattered shrieks of anger and rage chittered out from the pile as it slammed into the curve of the wall forty feet farther down the tunnel.

The ball of spiders began to shudder, ripples crossing the surface as they started to extract themselves, but Jeric raced toward them, following up before they could regroup. Krana was right beside him.

Sam ran with them, hanging back for just an instant as grabbed the one intensified aura he had from his storage and combusted it. 16 points of essence flowed into him, bringing him back to 30.

There were still five regular auras in his storage, but he didn’t want to waste them if he didn’t have to. Now that he could intensify them, they could hold several times as much. He just needed to find the time to charge them.

His father and Krana were wading into the tangle of spider limbs by the time he arrived, their hammers swinging as they crunched things viciously on every side. Jeric was surrounded by the glow of his Earthen Shield that deflected flailing, serrated limbs and Krana had her own type of bright yellow shield that accomplished the same thing.

Most of the spiders were already dead or dying by the time they slammed into the wall, but a couple were still able to move, their legs stabbing outward like spears. The tips ended in a sharp, wedge-shaped spike. They moved so quickly that they were only a blur, the serrations hissing through the air.

The two melee didn’t give them any time to recover, their hammers slamming down repeatedly everywhere they could reach. Krana’s eyes were pure silver as she spun and hammered into one spot after another, aiming for something that only she could see.

Click. Ttiinnggg.

That was....

He looked down the tunnel only to see another pack of spiders charging toward them. This time, they were far enough away that he had a moment to think, but it was dwarfed by the realization that these spiders had their mouths open....

Five spheres of tumbling red-streaked black flame shot down the hall towards them.

Sam dropped his spear as his hands slammed together in front of his body and then pressed outward. His crystal flame followed, condensing as it changed into an Essence Shield in front of him. He poured his essence into it, strengthening the defense as it formed in a grid, like hexagons locking together. One area hardened after another, spreading in an instant as he created a half-dome across the tunnel.

Half a second later, the five balls of spider flame slammed into it.

The impacts shuddered through the barrier as coruscating layers of dark fire roiled on the other side. Sam felt his feet sliding across the floor as he leaned into the pressure, pushing back against it. A sharp heat reached him, radiating around the edges where the shield stopped. The stone ceiling and walls began to melt, dripping as they ran.

The heat washed across his body, but as it touched him, it only felt like a bright radiance that warmed his muscles. The dangerous part was trapped on the other side and this was just the ambient residue. It was threatening and comfortable at the same time, even as he felt the shield in front of him bending.

His essence dropped by ten points in an instant, and then by another four as he reinforced the shield, pushing it back down the tunnel as the flames on the other side stuck to it. The flames didn’t fade as he’d expected. Instead, they stuck to his shield like tar, slowly hardening into some type of substance that looked like stone.

Whatever these spiders were, they were spitting the content of their guts at him. It only looked like flame until it cooled. That same urge to destroy them surged back through his blood, demanding that he kill them. His expression turned hard.

He had no idea where the feeling was coming from, but he definitely agreed with it. He maintained the barrier as he reached into his storage and pulled out four essences, leaving only one behind. He combusted them all at once, splitting them between mana and aura. It put him back to 31 essence.

A new spiral of crystal flame began to gather around him as his aura surged. His father and Krana finished off the pile of spiders and came up beside him, looking down the tunnel at the new attackers.

The spiders had bunched together again after throwing the fire and were slowly backing up, waving their front legs in a threatening posture.

"Whatever these are, I doubt they can throw that fire again so quickly," Krana offered, her face set into hard lines. "Thanks for the shield."

"One more big blast, son," Jeric growled as he stared at them. His muscles were covered in a sheen of sweat and his breath was coming like a bellow. Golden-yellow energy was spiraling along his body, from some combination of his Stamina and Earth mana. "I’ll take care of the rest."

"There should be at least a few more," Krana added, her eyes still silver as she looked down the tunnel. "We need to finish them all off, so that the World Law can heal over whatever hole they created to come here."

She frowned, taking advantage of the spiders’ temporary retreat to add the information she knew.

"I don’t know how this happened, but this fits with the legends of invasions I’ve heard about before. They start small and increase over time. Usually, there’s only one type of monster, unless the hole stays open for too long.... It’s good that we don’t see anything here smarter than this, or that looks like a demon." She glanced towards Sam as she said that, but her voice was firm. It was just a fact.

"These are between Level 15 and 25..., probably scavengers that found a gap in the world barrier."

Sam nodded in response. He was also glad there was no demon here. If there were, they’d probably all be dead by now.

He wasn’t sure how all of this worked, but it was obvious that this was the type of thing Ayala’s father dealt with. It was also what the Guardian had told him to stop if he wanted to save his family.

From the way Krana was speaking, she clearly knew more about it than he did, which raised a lot of questions. How often did this happen?

He’d thought it would be rare, but apparently it wasn’t. It sounded like the world was constantly under the threat of invasion from Outsiders.

It almost made sense. How else would there have been an Outsider ruin in the first place? Then there was the way the World Law had suddenly focused its attention on him when he transformed and again when he threatened it. It was watching for that sort of thing.

The state of the world was becoming clear. He might not have heard about this type of thing in his village, but the legends had to come from somewhere. It also made sense now why authorities wouldn’t like someone who was marked as Defiant.

If you stood by and let these monsters do what they wanted.... You were a threat to the entire world.

He didn’t know how these spiders had invaded, or why they had suddenly appeared so close to him, but there was no way he was going to allow them to retreat and regroup. The World Law wouldn’t allow him to stop right now anyway, not until they were all dead.

Somewhere behind them, the second guard was still lying on the floor, and Ayala had probably finished fortifying the entrance to the cave. That would help if there were more of them than expected.

Anger filled him, combining with the urge to kill the spiders. His eyes blazed like crystal blue suns as another Essence Blade began to form in front of him.

He’d just wanted to make an amulet.

Battlefield Reclaimer 41: Essence System

The crystal spiral of flame condensed in front of Sam into the familiar diamond-edged blade. His Essence Shield dissipated as the attack sliced forward, heading for the spiders in a wash of spiraling flames.

KkrriiisshhHH.

The five spiders in the new wave huddled together in the same defensive reaction as the others, but this time they weren’t so close that they got tangled together. Their legs were braced, digging into the stone, and their carapaces shone as red stripes surged out to form a shield.

When the Essence Blade hit, it ripped through the barrier with a crackling explosion that threw the red and black flames back in a wave. It continued on as it blasted through the pack, scattering them across the hallway in a hurricane of disintegrating, serrated limbs.

The two in the center of the pack were ripped in half and the sections flew apart to the sides of the tunnel, but loud chitterings and angry clacks came from the others as they tumbled across the stone, their remaining limbs flailing for purchase. They slid to a stop in a scatter of legs and chitin, twitching as they tried to rise.

Jeric and Krana sprinted forward as the spell faded away, lunging toward the survivors with their hammers raised. Multi-toned notes sounded out a dull tattoo, accompanied by the screeching sounds of chitin dragging across the floor and the hiss of serrations tearing at defensive shields.

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he looked past the pile. His essence was down to 11 and he had the feeling that this wasn’t over yet. He could feel something else, farther down the tunnel, that felt more challenging. There was a stirring in his blood that fed him the information, similar to the killing intent when he saw the spiders.

Now that these two waves were dealt with, they had a moment to regroup, and theories began to connect in his mind as he looked toward the spiders and then turned his attention to the feeling in his blood. That desire to destroy them didn’t feel like it was coming from the World Law. The pressure from that was all in the notifications it sent and the demand to eliminate the threat to the seal.

This feeling was from something inside of him, a part of his nature. He looked down at his hands, flexing his talons, which curled into deadly, ebony claws. The edges were sharp and glittering, like diamond. He usually forgot about them unless he used them to engrave a design, but their real purpose was for rending.

The feeling wasn’t there when he faced the gnomes or rats, ...just these Outsiders. He wasn’t sure what that meant. There was something about them that made him want to kill them.

Did people feel the same when they saw him? After a moment, he shook his head. His father or Krana would have mentioned that. This was something unique.

Even if that was separate, however, this battle against Outsiders was making things clear to him. Ismela’s attack on him had been automatic and the guards didn’t trust him, ...and apparently that was normal.

Perhaps they were even being reasonable about it, if Outsider attacks were common. Anyone who had fought Outsiders like these spiders or heard stories about them would react in exactly the same way. Killing them was necessary to protect the world. Without her vision, even Krana would have thought the same about him.

That meant even if there were no notification to tell people to kill him..., they would do it anyway out of habit. It wasn’t a comfortable idea. Given her upbringing, perhaps Ayala was showing remarkable restraint and trust in Krana just by talking to him.

He’d thought that the church would be against him because of his appearance, but this was making it clear that it was more than that. Everyone would try to kill him. Looking like an Outsider was more dangerous than he’d thought.

Life in Aster Fall was clear cut. You were either with the world or against it. That was what being Defiant meant. Up until now, he’d only planned to get home, holding the idea in his mind as a hope that once he did that, everything would be alright. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He could put his family in danger just by being near them. Perhaps...he shouldn’t go home.

It felt like something was tearing inside his heart.

He needed to finish the illusion amulet, but even if he could get it to work, there was no guarantee that it would be perfect. He didn’t have the full pattern and he wasn’t at the Second Evolution like the original enchanter.

Perhaps he should find a place to stay on his own, just communicating with his family via messages? It would be a sad life, but if he could figure out the illusion....

He’d never thought of himself as someone who was hated before. It was a hard thought for the boy from the village who had just wanted a few spells and some extra silver.

Sam shook his head as he looked up and down the tunnel, pushing the thought away. Right now, he had to focus on the present. For the moment, it was silent. They had moved far enough away from the cavern that it was no longer visible.

"Take the experience from those," he called to his father and Krana as they continued to finish off the half-dead spiders. At the same time, he walked towards the five from the last wave.

He bent down and searched the spiders, pulling the threads of experience into himself. He needed more essence and auras, since he wasn’t sure how many spiders were left.

The experience hit him in a rush as it bubbled merrily through his blood, flowing in every direction. It tingled in his fingers and ran through his hair with electric ripples. A notification followed, different from anything he’d ever seen before and with more weight.

You have used your Class abilities to defend Aster Fall from an Outsider Threat.

You Are Acknowledged, Battlefield Reclaimer.

You gain 100,000 Class experience.

You have reached the maximum experience you can absorb at once, based on your level.

Congratulations. You have gained two Class Levels. You are now a Level 31 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Total Experience: 290,475 / 296,000.

You have gained two Levels. You are now General Level 31.

Total Experience: 293,475 / 296,000.

You gain +2 Intelligence, +2 Aura, and have six free points to distribute.

[You Have Gained the Trait: Acknowledged. You need to assist in sealing 5 Flaws to remove Defiant.]

Then the notifications paused. It felt like the World Law was waiting to see what he would do.

The experience had stopped at 100,000, similar to when he'd looted the gnome shamans. The rest of it had to be going to repair the flaw, or perhaps it was a maximum of what his body could handle in a set period of time.

Experience was a powerful energy that remade him each time he absorbed it, which meant that the limit would probably increase in the future.

He wasn’t sure what the World Law wanted, so he looked down at the spiders again, searching through them with Crystal Focus to see if he’d forgotten something. As he did, he felt something strange. Part of the killing intent he’d felt when he saw the spiders was still circulating through his blood, demanding that he seize something from them.

He reached out for it instinctively. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he wanted it. There was some type of energy there that felt familiar, something that was just starting to separate from them, and it belonged to him.

He ripped it out of them as he called it to him.

Sparks of scintillating energy rose up from the spiders’ corpses. They were rippling black stars, striped with red like the spiders’ chitin, and they burned with a strange fury. As they flew towards Sam, they began to change color, turning crystal blue by the time they hit him. He felt them settling into his blood.

Each of the stars was a miniature lightning burst filled with explosive power. They felt almost like experience, but their energy was much more domineering. It was battle and thirst, blood vengeance and terror, conquest and satisfaction. The stars burned with furious sizzles that ran through his muscles, filling him with a sense of victory and might.

He stretched upward, his back crackling, as he let out a wolfish grin. His expression morphed for a moment, looking sharp and deadly, before it settled back to normal.

One more notification appeared as the World Law made up its mind. It was in the archaic style and extremely ornate, with silver borders and scrollwork decorating the edges of the letters.

Racial Ability Identified: Essence.

Total Essence Gathered: 5 / 1,000.

The notification was followed a moment later by the World Law’s verdict, the cold announcement echoing through all of reality around him as strongly as when it had ordered him to prison.

Your Existence as an Essence-Based Inhabitant of Aster Fall is Authorized.

Then it was gone, leaving behind only the question of what it had meant, along with the sizzling sense of conquest that slowly faded away.

Sam looked down at the spiders and then at his talons, flexing them as he considered what had just happened. The sparks that rose out of the spiders were obviously essence, which had entered his body in a way very similar to...experience.

His thoughts clicked along at lightning speed as everything he’d learned recently began to fit together. To speed it along the way, he threw all six of the new points into Wisdom, taking it to 21.

The difference between 10 and 15 had changed his thinking, and this should help even more. It would also boost his chance to reclaim auras. As long as he had enough of those, his essence pool could be refilled.

The urge to destroy the spiders and claim what was theirs had faded, but he could feel the same sensation coming from further down the tunnel. There was even a trace of it back where they had killed the first spider now. Absorbing those stars had enhanced his awareness of it.

Sam looked up towards the hidden sky, searching for the World Law, as he considered what it thought of all this. It hadn’t threatened him this time, it had just told him that he was authorized. When he’d claimed the essence, it had felt like it was waiting for him to do it.

His mind raced along. If monsters were formed from the parts of Outsiders that stayed behind, like Ayala had said.... He glanced at the spiders. He had claimed not only their experience, but also their essence, and their auras were next. Three types of energy, but most people only claimed one.

Were the essence and aura the ‘soul’ of Outsiders that the church talked about, that eventually gave birth to monsters? If that was the case..., maybe he was cleaning up the world somehow and helping the World Law, which was why it had acknowledged him.

It felt like these sparks of essence were a separate experience system. It was slower than the one he was used to, and the energy was qualitatively different, but the process was similar.

He had the feeling that this was how Outsiders leveled up.

They used essence instead of experience. That was why there was a feeling of hunger from the spiders when they saw him and also why he felt an urge to kill them and take their essence.

He would have to wait and see what happened when he gathered 1,000 sparks, but he was confident that it would confirm his guess. It had to be some sort of level.

As for the ornate notifications..., he’d seen them before, every time he did something related to his class or essence skills. There had to be a reason for that, like it was easier for the World Law to use notifications that already existed than to make up new ones for him.

Were the old notifications from an essence-based system and the normal ones from the experience-based system? If so, that meant essence-based individuals had once existed on Aster Fall, just like him.

The question was what had happened to them and if it were connected to why Outsiders kept invading. The church’s doctrine didn’t have an answer for that, at least not that Ayala had explained, which meant there was more to the story.

The conclusion was obvious. Essence and experience had once existed together on Aster Fall. Both systems still worked, but something had happened to exile or kill most of the essence users, either the war that Ayala had mentioned or a Breaking.

Clearly, the experience users had won that war and set up the current system. Now, essence users were returning as invading Outsiders. The name suggested they didn’t come originally from Aster Fall, but the archaic notifications implied they had once been accepted.

There had once been a period where the two sides worked together and the World Law had given notifications to both.

His thoughts spun along, coming to a final conclusion as he considered what happened to the Outsider energy if only the experience part of it was claimed. The essence and aura had to go somewhere. He was able to gather auras from monsters, which suggested that those passed through the process of genesis intact....

But he’d never felt essence from a basalt gnome or other monster. There was experience, but no essence. If they were really the remains of Outsiders, something was happening in between.

He glanced toward the spiders again as it started to make sense. These had experience, essence, and auras. If people claimed experience from them, and then when monsters were formed, they had auras and experience again, but no essence....

Maybe the World Law was converting the essence into experience somehow..., a form that it could use more easily. Then, when people killed a monster, the process was complete and the experience flowed to them and to the seal.

At the same time, if a monster killed an adventurer and seized their experience, was that like the essence fighting back? Was that why they were always hostile?

From what he could see, the people of Aster Fall didn’t have essence or auras. Those only came from Outsiders. But Outsiders also had experience.... If the two systems were completely separate, they shouldn’t.

Were Outsiders somehow gaining experience when they broke through the seal and arrived here? If the seal was constantly being damaged, perhaps that was where the energy was going and why the World Law needed it back.

It was strange to think of the entire world as a battle between two types of energy, but that was where his thoughts took him. He had the feeling that the entire history of Aster Fall and the World Law itself was somehow entwined with that conflict.

Unfortunately, as he reached that point, he ran out of evidence to connect. His thoughts began to turn in a circle, which was frustrating, since he felt like he was onto something. He had to conclude his analysis with a single, self-evident fact.

His existence proved that the two systems could operate together.

He shook his head, forcing himself to turn to the other information in the notification. Despite gaining the maximum experience, there was no Dauntless trait. The spiders were too weak for that. He still wasn’t sure if the maximum had to do with physical limits or if the World Law was just taking the excess to use for the seal.

He moved on, touching the closest spider as he searched for the half-real thread of energy that was its aura. It didn’t take him long to find it.

It was a rebellious, angry flame that tasted of ash and sulphur, surrounded by darkness that crushed down on top of it and wrapped around like chains as it held the flame inside. The darkness was full of struggle, fighting to consume the flame, and the flame resisted, burning it away as it tried to devour the darkness in return.

You have encountered an unknown aura.

Do you wish to Reclaim it (31% chance) or to Identify it?

Your Fire Affinity has boosted your chance to Reclaim this aura by 10%.

He chose to Identify it.

Identification is 50% complete.

He moved on to another one. A moment later, the struggle between the rebellious flame and the devouring dark returned, each struggling to conquer the other. He identified this one as well, and just like the other, it burned away to nothing in his grasp.

You have Identified an Aura.

Aura of Rebellious Flame.

As soon as the name came to him, it clicked, instantly making sense with the feeling of rebellion in the spider’s aura. He turned to the others without wasting any more time.

You have encountered a known aura.

Aura of Rebellious Flame.

Do you wish to Reclaim it (61% chance)?

He nodded as he accepted it. He’d been at 50% for Basic auras before, when his Wisdom was 10. Now that it was at 21, he had added that directly to it.

Of the three remaining auras, the first and second slipped into his storage, but the third incinerated itself in a struggle to escape him, burning away to nothing.

He had already taken too long, so he sprinted back to the first spider that had died, leaving its experience alone as he reclaimed the aura and essence from it. Then he ran back towards where his father and Krana were. On the way, he picked up his spear. He might need it if he ran out of essence.

When he returned, he was just in time to see Jeric and Krana splitting the experience between themselves, which meant his realizations hadn’t taken that long. A brilliant shimmer of energy flickered around them as they gained several levels, their bodies shifting slightly as the new attributes changed them.

If they had hit the maximum, his father should be around 31 now, with most of his free points in Charisma. As for Krana, she had been Level 15 before. From what he knew, Seer was one of the rare primary classes that got Class experience for nearly everything, whether it was combat, crafting, or utility skills. 100,000 experience should have boosted her up to level 26 or 27.

She must not have been in many battles before this, at least not with anything around level 20. Perhaps she’d been sheltered behind the two guards, or perhaps they’d taken all of the experience for themselves.

Leveling through combat was so fast that it almost felt like the World Law wanted combat classes to be at a certain level of experience. Sam frowned as he glanced at the Outsider spiders scattered across the tunnel in front of him and slowly nodded.

Perhaps it did.

With everything he had just realized, it made sense. The World Law was arranging experience gain so it could quickly train up combat classes to fight Outsiders and monsters. Then, maybe it slowed them down again with the maximums so it could use the excess to repair the seal? People didn’t even need to know it was happening. They would just thank the World Law for all of their early gains and be even more dedicated to it.

Sam pulled his thoughts back to the present, reserving his judgment. Right now, he was killing Outsiders too, so he couldn’t blame the World Law for encouraging it. However strange the world was, Aster Fall was his home and he wasn’t going to let a bunch of spiders attack it.

He stared down the tunnel, searching for the sources of essence that he knew were down there. They still had to find the flaw where they had emerged.

As his father and Krana finished taking the experience, he moved forward and reclaimed the auras. Of the five, he only got two, which was unfortunate, but at the same time, he ripped the essence out of them, taking it for himself. He did it quickly when he touched them, so that it didn’t make a show. Another five points of essence flew into his bloodstream, zipping along with explosive emotions.

He pushed it down, letting it settle into his blood. He had five Auras of Rebellious Flame and one Aura of Basalt now. That would have to be enough. As felt what was ahead, he combusted all five of the new ones, bringing his essence pool back up to 25.

"Let’s go," he said, looking towards his father and Krana as a new spiral of crystal flame condensed around him. "This isn’t over yet."

Battlefield Reclaimer 42: Fatal Attraction

Before the three of them could go any farther down the tunnel, a strange figure came jogging around the curve, its footsteps thudding into the ground as it ran. It was...some version of Ayala, but formed from a dark stone that matched the cave walls.

Given his current mood, only the fact that it looked like an ally kept Sam from attacking it. As it came closer, the figure’s features were more easily visible, making it clear that it was some type of golem. Its body shape and clothes were an exact match for Ayala’s, except that they were all made of stone, but the expression on its face was firmer and more determined than he’d ever seen on her before.

What in the world was going on? He’d never heard of a lifelike rock golem as a mage spell.... A moment later the name of Ayala’s class came back to his mind, making several things apparent all at once.

She was an Earthwalker Mage. It wasn’t clear if this golem was Ayala herself or something she had summoned, but this had to be one of the main abilities of her class. The figure thudded to a stop next to Sam and Krana.

"This is a disposable golem," the stone figure rasped out an explanation with a gravelly echo. It sounded like Ayala mixed with an avalanche. "I can only summon the one right now. It takes most of my attention to control it, but I’ll try to help. The cave is secure and I’ve raised new walls on both sides. Yeres is unconscious and his wounds are sealed. I’ve also retrieved Lesat. I’ll hold the area there and this golem can accompany you."

Her words were precise and clear, almost militaristic, and Sam stared at the golem for a moment, wondering what had happened to the shy princess he’d seen before. This was an entirely different Ayala.

"Fine, we’re heading out now." Sam shook his head, turning around to look back down the tunnel. The golem looked durable and ready for battle, much more than the church princess did on her own. Perhaps it would be useful.

There were more sparks of essence not too far from them. He wasn’t able to tell the exact number, but their essence felt stronger than any of the earlier packs.

The four of them moved past the scattered limbs of the spiders and farther down the tunnel, keeping their eyes out for anything else that might appear.

It wasn’t clear how far the spiders had come before they encountered them, but the answer was clear a moment later as they rounded the curve in the tunnel and caught sight of another pack of spiders.

These were the ones he’d felt. There was almost a hundred feet between them, but it was easy to see that this group was different, with two spiders that were larger than the others, and behind them....

There was a scintillating ripple of colors hanging in the air like an unholy eye. It radiated purple, red, black, and yellow light, as well as a rainbow of seemingly every other color in existence and a few that weren’t. It swirled with an intense twisting force that tore at his eyes.

Tiny starbursts of energy were flaring out from the edges, surrounding it in a halo of sparks that tried to shoot outwards, only to encounter some barrier as they fizzled out and fell downward to be reabsorbed by the rainbow of light.

At the center, there was a dark gash filled with red and black streaks that matched the color of the spiders’ chitin. All around it, there was a sense of pressure, so much that reality around it froze, holding everything still as the world blocked it from spreading any further.

That had to be the flaw, although it wasn’t clear where it went. Despite the seriousness of its presence, curiosity sparked through Sam’s mind as he wondered what was on the other side of the world barrier...and outside of the seal.

Was it a place unique to the spiders, like the hell they had been named after, or an area that had other beasts as well, and the spiders were just the first to find a way through?

The flaw resonated in his vision, glowing with a sort of fatal attraction as the twisting sensation turned into a pull. He could feel the slow pulse of essence inside it, somewhere very distant, and it called to him. Somehow, he knew that if he seized that energy, he would grow stronger.

Much stronger.

For an instant, he almost wanted to leap through it, tearing his way into a new world to conquer it and take it for his own. His eyes dilated, the black slits at the center fluctuating with the space at the center of the flaw. Then he pushed the emotion back down, letting his common sense take control. His eyes returned to normal.

Click... Tiiingg. HisssSSs.

As soon as they came into view, the spiders turned towards them, their jaws clattering as their serrated legs stabbed at the tunnel floor. Their signature red stripes flowed across their carapaces like demonic flowers blooming as their front legs rose threateningly into the air.

There were six of them in this group. He didn’t feel any others close by, so hopefully these were the last ones they’d have to deal with. Four of the spiders were the same as the ones they had just faced, but the last two were half again as big. Their stomachs were on the same level as the heads of the smaller spiders.

As soon as their presence registered, Sam started to condense more crystal flames for an Essence Blade, but then he stopped himself, adding the flames to the spiral around him. He was almost out of essence and if he used that spell again, he’d be tapped out. They needed to fight this in a smarter way. He didn’t want a repeat of the gnomes, when he ran out of energy right before the warlord appeared.

The spiders weren’t rushing forward, which was enough for a rough idea to form.

"I’m nearly out of energy," Sam muttered to the others. "I’ll do what I can, but I need you to break the shields and get in close. I’ll take advantage of the openings."

"I’ll go in first and draw their attention," Ayala’s golem immediately volunteered. Her voice was clear and firm. "It should create a distraction."

"You’ll need a weapon." Jeric glanced at the golem as he shook his head. He grabbed the old Spear of Earth and Fire from his bag and passed it to her. "Take this and let’s move before they do anything else. I’ll go in next."

His father’s voice was stern and he was radiating a powerful wave of golden-red energy, a combination of his Stamina and mana.

Ayala took the spear with a nod. Then, without any hesitation, she started running forward with heavy thudding footsteps, heading straight for the spiders.

Jeric held back for a dozen steps and then followed, charging as his Earthen Shield flared brighter around him. Behind him, Krana also raced forward, her warhammer shining brilliantly.

A crystal flame sphere formed between Sam’s hands as he matched their pace, staying a bit behind them as he waited for the right moment.

As they saw the golem approaching, the spiders abandoned their defensive posture and swarmed forward to attack. The larger ones shoved past the others, lunging from above as their front legs shot down like serrated spears. The regular spiders raced around the sides, trying to get there too.

Krissshhht.

The flame sphere shot out of Sam’s hands in a condensed roil of energy like a miniature sun, whistling past Ayala as it headed for one of the larger spiders. As the spell approached, the smaller ones froze, the stripes on their carapaces rising into a shield, but the larger ones didn’t seem to care.

They continued to lunge toward Ayala as the sphere closed in. The red stripes on their bodies writhed, but they didn’t rise up into a shield. The sphere exploded against the one that was slightly farther back, surrounding it in a hissing wash of crystal flame.

The flames clung to it, rippling across its body in a strange undulation as the stripes beneath brightened until they were visible through the explosion. When the flames faded, there was a seared streak across the spider’s carapace and a long, melted area, but that was all.

They were more durable than the regular variety.

Before he could switch to another spell, Ayala was already in range of the closest spider. Her golem leapt forward, its feet leaving the ground by only a few inches as it drove the spear towards the spider’s head. She handled the new spear easily, probably better than he could have. He had to wonder what her life had been like growing up.

The spider’s two forward legs slammed into her stone body like deadly pincers closing as she stabbed towards it. Shattered bits of stone flew away from her abdomen and leg. The blow sent her spinning to the side as it deflected her attack, and she slid heavily across against the ground for a few feet until she caught herself. Despite her weight, the spider was stronger.

The spider recoiled, preparing to strike again, but the golem caught itself and lunged back at it. She was already close and this time, she reached the spider first, the spear in her hand driving upwards into its neck as it let out a screech. Its jaws slammed together, clamping around the spear.

At the same time, Jeric sprinted forward as his hammers slammed toward the other large spider. The weapons were surrounded by a reverberating humm that echoed off the walls, and when they struck, they sheared straight through one of the spider’s legs and ripped an enormous chunk out of its carapace. He didn’t stop there, continuing forward as he carried the attack into the normal spiders behind it. Spider legs stabbed towards him in serrated blurs, striking sparks off his shield.

Krana raced in a moment later, cracked through one of the normal spider’s shields as she went for its head.

The melee fighters were too close for Sam to use large spells now, so he broke the flame sphere he had started to summon into two parts, dividing it into arrows that shot forward. A moment later, half a dozen more followed as he aimed for open areas.

With the attackers so close, the spiders didn’t form their shields again and the arrows ripped through the bodies of three of the normal ones in explosive crackles of black chitin. Charred organs and fluids followed, splattering across the tunnel behind them. They stood there for a moment, frozen, until their legs began to sag as they fell towards the ground.

Only one of the regular spiders was left, and a moment later two more arrows exploded through its head and abdomen, scattering its brains across the wall.

Sam turned his attention to the two big ones. The strange rainbow flaw was still there behind them, floating in the air, but for now it was silent. Hopefully, nothing else would come out of it.

His father pressed the attack on the one he’d been fighting. Its front legs were already crippled, the serrations broken in multiple places as they hung at its sides. It was trying to back up as Jeric chased it, crushing new dents into its carapace with every blow. There was a building surge of power along the spider’s back as the stripes there began to ripple and a warning flared down Sam’s spine.

"Careful!" he shouted, as he raced forward. Six new arrows flew ahead of him, whistling toward the large spider. Ahead of him, his father growled, his arms rising higher into the air as his shield intensified.

The red stripes on the large spider lifted out of its carapace in a blur of aggression, striking forward like vipers. There were a dozen of them and they slammed into Jeric’s Earthen Shield with a splintering crack, breaking through it as they whipped across his body. Each of them was a thin, bright blade.

At the same time, Sam’s arrows slammed into the spider, piercing through its defenses as they tore into it with pulverizing force. As they hit it, Sam was already rushing toward his father, but he stopped a moment later as he saw that he was fine.

His father was already turning toward the last spider. His body was covered in burnt, red streaks that were filled with thin lines of blood, but he was moving easily. Sam let out a quick breath of relief as he realized he’d underestimated his father’s defense.

Ayala’s golem was the closest to the other spider as it tried a similar attack. This time, the red stripes lifted off its carapace and lashed through the stone figure with hissing speed, leaving behind lines of shattered rubble. A moment later, her golem exploded apart into a dozen chunks.

Sam glanced at his dad and then down at the rubble, as he realized he had no idea exactly how strong his father had become. From the looks of it, Ayala’s golem was much weaker.

For another few moments, the cavern around them echoed with the dull sound of hammers and the sizzle of Sam’s flames, but he tried to conserve the last part of his essence. As a result, it took a little longer to kill the last one, but eventually the three of them stood there, breathing heavily.

After a moment, the star on Sam’s hand flickered, dimming slightly as the sense of alarm from it faded. It wasn’t entirely gone, but it felt like part of the threat had been neutralized.

"I think that’s all of the spiders," Sam said, looking around them as he took stock of the damage. Chitin and spider guts were everywhere, coating the walls of the tunnel in a sulphuric stench. He waved his hand, covering all of it in a wave of flame as he tried to purify the air.

"Ugh," Krana agreed, wincing as she held a hand over her nose. Her other arm was tight to her side. A spider had wrenched it at one point by trying to tear away her hammer, and she’d had to switch hands. "That smells almost as bad as dead goblins."

"So, that’s a flaw, is it?" Jeric looked around, waving a hand in front of his nose, as he grunted in agreement with Krana’s opinion. "It looks dangerous. What are we supposed to do with it?"

The spiders were dead, but the flaw was still there, shimmering in the air with that unsettling glow.

After a moment, the voice of the World Law appeared, resonating in their minds. It was the version that had some personality, as if the World Law were paying attention this time.

You have contributed to the defense of Aster Fall and eliminated all of the Outsiders in your vicinity.

Claim the experience so that the Flaw in the Seal can be closed.

The words were expectant, as if it were waiting for them to take the last step. As Sam heard it, something clicked in his mind.

The World Law could control the flow of experience, but it couldn’t pull it directly from the corpses. That was why it needed people to help.

He could feel the flaw pulsing in front of him, like a rainbow heart beating between the veils of reality. His attention returned to it again as he felt the desire to jump in.

He had to admit that he was curious about what was on the other side, but he forced it back down. Jumping into an unknown portal to some version of hell was not a good idea.

Especially not when he had a family to think about and a world that needed to be fixed.

Maybe after that?

The thought floated through his mind, and he shoved it away as well, attributing it to the effect of the flaw. It had some strange power of attraction for essence, or these spiders would probably have never come through.

"We’ll have to claim the experience, but it’s a waste if we’re at the maximum for now," he suggested. As he thought about what to do, he went around to each of the corpses and reclaimed the auras. He only got three of them, but at least it was something. At the same time, he also ripped the sparks of essence from them. The sense of blood-drenched battle that came with them ricocheted through his blood, stirring his emotions again before it settled down.

"Perhaps Ayala can gain something?" Krana suggested, looking between the corpses. "She fought here as well."

"Let’s go get her," Sam agreed with a sigh. "It looks like the flaw won’t close until we do."

It was true that she had fought with them. After seeing her in battle, his opinion of the girl was starting to change. She had been forthright and determined, willing to jump straight into it and to do what was needed.

Maybe he needed to give her another chance.

He sent a long glance back as they walked toward the cavern, ignoring the scattered Outsider corpses lying on every side. Behind them, the flaw rippled like a rainbow awl that had been drilled through the universe.

Hopefully, it would be safe enough there for a few minutes.

Battlefield Reclaimer 43: A Difficult Decision

The trio had to stop shortly before they reached the mana pool cavern, since the path was blocked by a stone wall. It covered it from one side to the other, and if the stone hadn’t looked so new and oddly straight, it would have been easy to think the tunnel ended here.

A moment later, the stone began to slowly recede back into the ground, flowing away like water. Behind it, Ayala came into view. Her face was pale, but her expression held determined lines and her eyes were intent. She was standing just in front of the two guards, making it clear that she was defending them. Their wounds were wrapped with quick, tight bandages.

"You need to go get the experience from the last pack," Sam told her simply. "The flaw won’t close until after that, and I’m not sure how long we should leave it unattended."

Ayala just nodded, as she looked down the tunnel and then toward the two guards behind her.

"One person should come with me, and the other two can guard the cave here."

Sam glanced over the guards to see if they were awake, but they were both unconscious for now. It wouldn’t do for him to be the first one they saw, if they woke up.

"I’ll go with you," he offered, causing Ayala’s eyes to widen with surprise. He sent her a considering look, before he turned and gestured back down the tunnel.

After the realization of what his appearance meant, he was willing to be a bit nicer to her, at least enough to be polite. Unlike Ismela, she hadn’t attacked him or done anything except be nervous.

As for the wizardess, that had apparently been the reflex of someone who didn’t think before they acted. She still should have waited to see what was going on before throwing lightning at him, or asked the seer in their group if he was actually a demon, or...just run in the other direction. He shrugged, pushing the wizardess out of his mind.

"We should hurry," he added. "I’m not sure how good of an idea it is to leave it there."

He also wanted to see what happened when the Flaw closed. He had the feeling that it would be important to him.

"We’ll be here and I’ll keep an eye on the guards," his dad offered, giving him a nod. "It looks like they might survive, but the wounds are pretty severe. Yeres is still bleeding out his guts into that bandage and Lesat is missing the leg. Unless there’s magical healing...." Jeric’s words trailed off.

Ayala hesitated, turning back toward the guards for a moment as something seemed to pull her in that direction, but there was a conflicted look on her face as she sighed and turned back around.

"I used one healing pill on them both already..., hopefully their Constitution is enough with that. Lesat’s leg is the most difficult to fix. I’ll be back soon. Maybe we can do more for them."

With that, Sam and Ayala turned and headed back toward the flaw. It was only a few minutes away, but it was enough for the silence between them to become noticeable.

"Your golem was helpful," he said, breaking the impasse. "It’s a skill for your class?"

Ayala turned slightly toward him, shooting him a quick glance out of the side of her eyes, before she nodded. "It’s Earthwalk. It’s what the class is named for. Maybe, when I’m stronger, I’ll be able to summon more of them, or a bigger version. The wall came from Summon Earth."

"It’s a good class," he offered, before he turned the subject to something more interesting. "Have you ever heard of essence, where it means something like mana?"

Ayala frowned as she thought about it, and then finally shook her head. "No, I’ve heard of essential energy, but never the term essence like that."

It was proof of a sort, and Sam added it to the evidence he had. If Ayala hadn’t heard of essence with all of her education and church background, it meant that it wasn’t well known in the world. It might still be a secret of the church, but it wasn’t in the popular concept.

Her father might know more, but there was no way Sam was going to meet him until he was at an equal level of strength. Preferably stronger.

He was about to ask another question when Ayala took the initiative.

"Who were you before this?" She gave him a quick glance before she turned around again, looking toward the front. "I know you said you’re from a village, but who were you there?"

"Just a boy," Sam replied honestly, letting out a short sigh as he thought about it. "A villager’s son who dreamed of being a wizard..., to throw spells and fly across the sky."

Ayala actually laughed at that, covering her mouth with her hand. Some of the nervousness she had when she looked at him faded away.

"What about now?"

"Now...," Sam let out a deep breath as he looked towards her and then back down the tunnel. Krana’s vision explained most of it, but Ayala had already heard that. She was looking for a different answer. "I’m wondering how to keep my family safe when Flaws show up."

"They tend to only show up in the wilder areas," Ayala answered automatically. "The flow of experience is stronger around cities where there are a lot of people, which makes the seal stronger there. It’s similar to why monsters don’t appear near cities, I think."

"It sounds like we need to move to a city then." Sam looked over at her as an idea for the future flashed through his mind, and he felt a hint of gratitude that she had mentioned it.

"Or at least, they do," he added. His appearance might prevent him from joining them. "I can’t risk being seen with them like this."

"I...wish I could help," Ayala said, a bit sadly. She’d heard enough of his story that she understood what had happened, as well as what Krana had seen. "An Enchanter can make a good living in most cities, so if Krana’s idea for an amulet works, maybe it won’t be a problem." A frown passed across her face as she looked at Sam. It looked like she was about to raise a question that was on her mind.

"There is something I still don’t understand. It occurred to me the first time you mentioned your family name.... You said your family name is Hastern, from Tower Reach?"

"Yes, my grandfather was from there," Sam answered with a shrug. He wasn’t sure why it mattered, but that was the city his family had been from before coming to the village.

"That name is rare and I’ve only heard of it from one family. I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you from the Tower Reach Hasterns? The Arcane Researchers who are really famous?" Ayala’s face scrunched up a little in confusion as she looked at Sam.

"I don’t know how famous they are," Sam answered. Surprise made him look over at Ayala as he continued walking. "We haven’t been in contact with them for a very long time."

He’d never heard that story about his family, but the fact that she said they were from the same town and had the same name immediately grabbed his attention. The fact the class was correct was even more suggestive. The same family name and the same class as his great-grandparents?

"But that’s the family that invented the Tower Magus subclass." Ayala’s eyes widened as her guess was confirmed."If you’re from that family, how come you’re living in a small village? Shouldn’t you be in Tower Reach?"

"The Tower Magus subclass?" Sam’s ears perked up as he heard that and he turned around to look at her. "You mean the racial subclass for humans?"

"Yes, that one. I thought everyone knew about them. Tower Reach is a long way from Osera, but it’s really famous for that." Ayala was studying him now, her eyes carefully avoiding his horns as she frowned.

"My grandfather was disowned a long time ago." Sam replied as he looked away. Whatever she thought it meant, it was a lot simpler than that. His father had told him their family had its golden days, but the idea that they were that famous only made him angry.

"I’m sorry," Ayala said quickly. "I suppose some traditional families who are very strict do disown their children, if they don't like their class. I didn’t know the Hasterns were like that."

Sam turned over what he’d just heard in his mind, connecting a few points, and an intense dislike for his great-grandparents hit him in a burst.

"It doesn’t matter," he answered at last, shaking his head. That branch of the family had many years to help out and they never had. If it were true that they were so famous and had invented one of the only two racial subclasses for Humans that he’d ever heard of, how could they have disowned his grandfather and his father?

It said nothing good about them at all.

As for now, he seriously doubted they would help him with an illusion amulet, and that was the only thing he was interested in, but he wasn’t going to ask them for help. He would have to explain why and show his appearance, and he wasn’t willing to take that risk.

If they were willing to disown their own children, they would probably try to kill him on sight, like everyone else. He would take care of things on his own.

"We’re almost there," he said, turning the conversation back to the present. "It’s just around the curve."

He could feel the flaw in front of him now, perhaps because the spiders were no longer blocking it. It was a tiny speck of essence that was calling to him. Maybe that was how Outsiders found them, or maybe there was a way to make them by drilling through some part of the seal.

Ayala’s expression cleared again, her eyes narrowing as she looked ahead. Sam watched her with some bemusement. At moments, she was a young woman with an expressive face, and at others she was this...daughter of the church, who must have been raised on stories of battles and with the expectation that one day she would join in.

There weren’t many female guards in the village, but if there were, perhaps some of them would have been like her.

As they rounded the corner, the flaw came into sight again, accompanied by Ayala’s quick gasp of surprise.

The rainbow tear was hanging there in space, but where there should have been a dark space at the center, there was a long chitin-covered and serrated leg trying to force its way through.

They had already gathered most of the experience from these spiders, and the sense of rippling pressure from the World Law was binding the flaw in place. It looked like the spider was having a much more difficult time getting through than the others.

He stared at it, with his eyes fixed on the leg as it tried to tear at the space, but no new notifications appeared about enemies.

"I don’t think it’s able to fully break through," he said, shaking his head as he relaxed a bit. "Maybe if it had more time."

They’d only been gone for a few minutes, but clearly it was not safe to leave a flaw behind. If they’d taken longer, perhaps the spider would have been able to get through.

He turned toward Ayala, feeling optimistic about it all, only to see that her face had gone completely white. He shot a quick glance back toward the flaw, but nothing new was happening.

"What is it?" he asked as he looked around for more enemies. There wasn’t anything around them, but his senses roved out farther, searching through the tunnels as his ears tilted, listening for the smallest sound. "Did a spider escape?"

There was no notification for it, but perhaps the World Law hadn’t noticed yet.

"My father was right...." Ayala’s voice was quiet and shaken as she stared at the spider leg, which was flailing wildly, trying to tear its way through to no effect.

Sam followed her gaze to the leg, which he had to admit did look strange, and then back to her face. He turned around again, searching for another enemy, but there was still nothing.

"That’s all I see," he said. "It’s alright."

Ayala’s face had gone pale, however, and he finally realized that it was all due to the spider leg sticking through the flaw. There wasn’t anything else around them. It was ugly, but he didn’t know why it bothered her. It was just another Outsider spider trying to get into his house. In a minute, he’d chop it off and the flaw would close.

"No, this proves everything." Ayala turned to him, her hands clenched into fists. "Fighting them in the tunnel through the eyes of my golem was one thing. They were just like regular monsters. But this..., I can see them tearing at the World Seal! Don’t you know what that means?"

Sam shook his head as he considered what she meant. It was clear the sight was affecting her, but he wasn’t entirely sure why. This was just the nature of the world. When he looked at the flaw again, he supposed the flailing leg did look kind of bizarre.

It was just thrashing around there, almost mindlessly, as it searched for purchase. The serrations were trying to tear at the edges of the flaw, but they weren’t able to widen it.

"It means I was being foolish before, and I need to face reality." Ayala’s hands clenched again before she forced herself to slowly relax them, as she turned to stare at the flaw again. "Look at that spider leg. It’s reflexively trying to get through, to kill anything on this side, and to eat us. If it could, it would probably devour the entire world. That’s what Outsiders are.

"Yes," Sam agreed simply, as he waited for Ayala to adjust her perspective. "It needs to be stopped. Isn’t that what we’re doing?"

"It means I need to do what I was raised to do." She studied it for a moment longer, before she turned to Sam and her expression changed again, relaxing, as she started to accept the idea. It looked like she had come to some realization.

"Work for the church?" he asked, as he started to understand. "That’s what your father wants, right?"

"That and more," Ayala sighed, as her thoughts turned inwards for a moment. "But we should close that first."

Sam pulled out his spear as he walked forward, channeling crystal flame down the edge as he raised it. A quick swing followed, shearing off the spider leg that was flailing around.

"You should grab the experience," he suggested, as he put the spear away. "I’m going to see if any of these corpses have materials for crafting."

Maybe there was something useful here still.

Ayala turned immediately and pointed toward the carapaces.

"Those spiders should have an internal organ where their fire was generated, but it may be useless. They don’t seem like the web type, so there won’t be spider silk. The serrated legs could be used for weapons..., but most likely, it’s the carapace with the red stripes that’s the main material." Ayala paused and pointed toward the closest spider, waving her hand at the signature markings.

"Turn it over and look inside. It should be lined with a softer material that can be used for spell parchment. The carapace itself could be used by some professions, but I doubt you want to make armor out of it. Other than that, make sure not to eat anything from Outsiders. They have strange effects sometimes and can be poisonous." She rattled the words off automatically, as if it were a school lesson.

Sam blinked at her, and then he nodded before going over to one of the carapaces. The red stripes on them were still there, gleaming against the black surface that was covered in thin ridges.

Behind him, Ayala went to see if she could gather the experience. Her golem had participated in the battle, so she should be able to, but she’d never used that ability before. On the way here, he’d checked the remaining spiders to make sure they had gathered it all. Once that was done, the flaw should close.

With a lot of effort, he was able to rip the carapaces away from the spiders’ corpses. As Ayala had suggested, there was a dense web of shimmering grey material inside, which looked like some type of padding.

When he scraped it out, it separated from the inside of the carapace in large, silvery strips, almost like an internal layer of skin. It was a lot like silk, but a bit thicker and tougher. When he pulled on it, it stretched slightly and then snapped back into place. It did look like it would work for spell parchment.

He managed to get quite a bit of it as he went from spider to spider. Each spider gave him enough for four or so scrolls, with more from the big ones, but some of it was damaged from the battle. He’d have to stop by the other spiders and get that as well. If he collected it all, there should be enough for thirty or more spell scrolls.

While he was working on that, he glanced over to see what Ayala was doing, only to notice that she was standing there staring into space, as if she were wrestling with a difficult decision. She hadn’t gathered any of the experience yet.

She looked up into the air, as if she were staring at the heavens above, and before he could ask what was going on, she said two simple words.

"I accept."

The words were loaded with meaning, and for a moment Sam wasn’t sure what she was doing. Then he felt the swirling pressure of the World Law descending and he understood in an instant.

She had just accepted a subclass.

She hadn’t taken the experience yet because she was deciding what to do first. If she got the maximum experience, she would definitely end up over Level 20.

The World Law descended in a spiral of increasingly intense white light that swirled around Ayala and poured into her body. Her skin seemed to take on a gentle luminescence, glowing from the inside.

It didn’t take long from his perspective, as the energy swirled around her. He could almost see the flow of energy settling into her body as new abilities merged with her. Each of them was a scintillating web of light that shone like a diamond against the dark walls of the tunnels.

He’d overheard Krana’s conversation with her before and he knew that there was only one subclass her father would allow her to take. Apparently, seeing the flaw in front of her, along with the immediate need to gather all of the experience, had forced her to make the decision. The white light was also a tell-tale sign.

She had just become a Priestess.

The flow of energy continued as Ayala stood there in the center of the tunnel, surrounded by the scattered corpses of Outsiders. He could see the regret and frustration in the lines of her body, in her stiff neck and clenched fists, as well as the same determination that she’d shown in the battle. He couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for her.

She hadn’t wanted this. She had wanted to do something else that was more free, perhaps a craft or some other profession that could let her be herself, but she had accepted it as necessary.

This was her duty to the world.

In many ways, it was the same for her as it was for him. Neither of them had a choice if they wanted to see the world stay whole. They had to do everything they could to protect it. He gave her a nod of respect as he turned away, heading back to his task of gathering the spider material.

Behind him, the process continued and light glowed across the walls, but it was a quiet, serene brilliance.

By the time he was done, Ayala was waiting for him near a couple of the normal spiders. They were the only ones that had unclaimed experience still. He had killed them at a distance, and it looked like she couldn’t get the experience.

She looked basically the same, except that she seemed to have a slight, white glow around her that was woven through her presence. If she had gained the maximum experience from the two larger spiders, she had probably just hit Level 24 or so, bringing her up close to the rest of them.

She looked a bit different now, with a stronger sense of energy to her that came from increased vitality and higher attributes. She had probably added a few to Constitution and Charisma, with the majority in Intelligence and Wisdom. Since she had a caster class and a healing subclass, she was probably going to have to split her efforts between the two.

Behind her, the sense of pressure from the World Law was increasing around the flaw and he felt an expectant weight in the air, as if the World Law were waiting for him to finish the job.

He gave her a nod of acknowledgement as he bent down, touching the two spiders as he pulled the experience from the corpses, and this time he could feel the flow of excess energy dissipating into the world around him. It was a stream of sparkling power that he could just feel at the edge of his senses. It had that same sense of ecstatic starbursts around it that always hit him when he leveled.

He kept his attention locked onto it as he looked towards the flaw, waiting to see what would happen.

He felt the energy sweeping past him, heading for it. The sense of pressure that was hanging in the air increased as the force of reality became more intense. A feeling of stability and weight began to press in, like great stones pushing down on top of the area.

At the same time, he felt a surging expectancy in his blood, demanding that he reach out and grab that experience for himself, but he pushed it aside. The World Law would definitely not appreciate him interfering and being marked as Defiant once was already enough.

The rainbow gash shuddered as the flow of energy through it started to change. Slowly, like a vise closing, webs of sparkling light shot across the opening. They were blue and white, then yellow, and then other colors following in quick succession.

He could feel different elements being woven into each strand. Some were Fire and Water, others were Air and Earth, but beyond that there were other things. The web of energy began to intensify as more concepts were added. He could taste the feeling of the earth, the weight of ages, a sense of desolation and loneliness, the feel of a sunset, the brilliance of the last light of the stars before the sun rose in the morning, the spreading coolness of a shadow beneath a tree as moss grew across the forest floor.

Everything he sensed was part of Aster Fall, and it quickly became too complex for him to follow as more things joined in. The flaw at the center was filled with the web of light and then it began to close. First, the rainbow flares at the corners halted and folded in towards the center, and then the dark gash grew smaller. The web of energy grew broader, encompassing all of it like the sky covering over a distant hole in the earth.

It felt like the gash was growing more distant, as if it were retreating from him, and then, between one instant and the next, it was gone. There was nothing left where it had been but the smell of stone and the silent echo of the tunnels.

A notification appeared as the voice of the World Law resounded brightly in his mind.

The Flaw has been Sealed. The World Barrier in this location has been restored.

You are Acknowledged, Battlefield Reclaimer.

To remove the Defiant trait, assist in sealing four more Flaws.

Aster Fall thanks you for preserving the balance.

At the same time, he saw Ayala staring into space. Her hands clenched into fists and then slowly uncurled again as she listened to the same voice. Her eyes set into determined lines as her face hardened. Then her posture relaxed as she seemed to come to a decision.

"We need to head home," she said, turning towards him. "But first, I need to help the guards. It’s time for me to live up to my responsibilities."

Battlefield Reclaimer 44: Priestess

On the way back to the cavern, Ayala’s gaze was fixed ahead of them. It looked like she was more relaxed than before, but the determination had become a permanent fixture. It was just a little quieter now, running beneath all of her actions.

"You didn’t want to be a priestess?" he asked after a minute. He’d never known a priestess before, and he was becoming more curious about her. It sounded like her life hadn’t been easy, even with all of the advantages she had.

"I dreamed of a life where I didn’t have to fight," she answered, her voice walking the line between sadness and fact. "It was childish, but it was my hope."

"I understand," Sam said. In that way, she wasn’t so different from him. It made him like her a bit more. She’d made a difficult choice because she had to, just like he had made a choice to help the Guardian and the World Law.

For him, the other option was prison and death. For her, perhaps it wasn’t as severe, but it sounded like she’d had to give up something important to her. Dreams were sometimes more important than anything else.

As he studied her, he broached a subject that had been on his mind for a while. It didn’t seem like he had to hide all of his secrets anymore. She was able to see what needed to be done.

"Have you ever seen this symbol before?" he asked, as he showed Ayala the nine-pointed star on his hand.

Ayala looked at it, frowning as if she were seeing it for the first time, and then she blinked. "The Guardian Star? It’s a symbol of the Church, but usually you only see it on official documents. It’s a sign of authority in Aster Fall. Some bishops use it as their personal seal, and...well, nevermind the other use for now. Why is it on your hand?"

It was as if she were seeing it for the first time, even though he’d never tried to cover it up. Her reaction suggested that it had been invisible or unnoticeable until he pointed it out.

It made him frown as he looked down at it. It had always just been there on his hand and he’d thought people could see it. Apparently, they couldn’t unless he showed it to them.

It took him a moment to figure out what to say. He wasn’t going to tell her everything, but some was fine.

"After I transformed, the World Law wasn’t happy with me," he replied, keeping it simple. "You know it doesn’t like Outsiders. After a little while, it got worse and a voice told me I had to make a choice, to either be against the World Law or with it. When I chose to be with it, this star appeared."

Ayala stopped walking and turned towards him, studying him. Then, she reached out and took his hand in hers. There was a significant difference between his black claws and her white hands. After all of the Charisma, his body was well shaped, even his hands, but the claws were clearly for one purpose.

"I’ve never seen this on your hand before. It only appeared now...." Ayala said slowly. "To some people, it would be blasphemy to see it on the hand of someone who is cursed like you, to look like an Outsider. They might attack in an attempt to take it back, so it’s good that they can’t see it." She paused as she thought, her eyes studying the symbol. Eventually, she reached out and touched it.

"I think that you are blessed, but it is a sad blessing. The other use of this symbol.... The Guardian Star is a symbol of those who sacrifice everything for Aster Fall. It is placed on tombstones." Her voice took on a gentler quality that was more refined, something that he would expect of a priestess.

He was silent as he struggled with the meaning, and then he gave out a helpless laugh, a single soft hah.

"Well, that’s appropriate," he said when he could speak again. "Is there any point in showing it to the Church, to make them not hate me on sight?"

Ayala shook her head slowly as she looked at him and then at the star. "Only as a last resort, I think. You would need enough time to show it to them, which means they will have already attacked. Even then, they might not believe the reason."

Her words confirmed his own thoughts on the subject. It wasn’t something that was going to instantly make the Church like him. If it had been, the Guardian probably would have said something. Maybe it would still help in a pinch, if someone were on the fence, but by that point, they’d already be having a reasonable conversation with him.

"However...," Ayala said slowly. "I think I know what to do with this right now. It might help. Let’s go back."

---

When they returned to the cavern, his father and Krana had taken the guards inside, and Jeric was keeping watch by the deadfall, waiting for them. There was a sense of relief in his features when he saw Sam, but he didn’t look worried. The World Law had notified him when the flaw closed.

Now, they just needed to close four more flaws to get rid of Defiant. Sam had to wonder how long that would take. If what Ayala had said were true, they could find more flaws out in the wilderness, and not so many in the city. Perhaps there would be some on the way to Osera? How common were they, exactly?

Before all of that, he needed to work on the illusion amulet. It shouldn’t take that long to copy what he could from the design..., a few days at most. The question was if it would work.

"Let me help the guards," Ayala spoke up as she walked into the cavern. There was a new authority to her movements, as if she had grown up a bit. She had lost some of the hesitation that was part of her before.

Everyone turned to watch as she knelt next to Lesat. Both of the guards were unconscious, but his missing leg was the bigger problem on the trip back. With enough Constitution, missing limbs could be slowly regrown, but Sam wasn’t sure how much was required.

Apparently, Ayala had something else in mind. He watched carefully, since it was the first time he’d ever seen magical healing. He wanted to know how it worked.

A brilliant white light surrounded her, radiating out from her hands and towards Lesat. The energy was completely different from the tunnels, but there was a hint of the earth’s stability about it.

Ever since his transformation, and even more now after absorbing the essence from the spiders, Sam’s senses were incredible, especially for different types of energy. Everything came to him with a sense impression, like a smell or taste. He’d noticed it first with auras, but other energies had it too. He had the feeling that the more he understood about each type, the better he would be able to use it with enchantments and spell scrolls.

The energy coming from Ayala was flavored like the sun and woods of Aster Fall, a nurturing force that brought life. He could see it in the air, twisting as it left her hands in a torrent that was a waterfall surrounded with sparkling rain.

The structure of it wasn’t like anything he’d seen before, but he could tell the energy was twisted together from separate concepts. Just on the edge of his awareness, there was a unique sound, a note in a particular tune, that was similar in some ways to the Song of the Earth, but in a different scale.

He did his best to search for the natural runes in the spell, but it only went on long enough for him to tell that they were there and not to understand them as the healing energy flowed out of Ayala’s hands and poured into Lesat’s leg.

As soon as it touched him, the swelling and bruising around the stump began to subside. The clotted blood faded away, disappearing into nothing, and the leg began to reform. It took several minutes, but by the time Ayala’s spell finished, the stump was about two inches longer than it had been before, and the edge of it was smooth.

"It will take a few days to regenerate it completely," Ayala said, as she stood up slowly and moved to Yeres. She wobbled slightly on her feet and Sam moved forward to catch her, only to stop at the last moment when it was clear that she was fine. "That will have to do for now. I used more than half of my mana already."

She bent down next to Yeres and placed her hands over his stomach where the spider had torn it open. Once again, she was surrounded by the white cascade of her healing spell and Sam focused his attention on it.

The bandages fell away from Yeres’s stomach, leaving it visible under her hands as the energy brushed across it. As the energy flowed over it, the swelling subsided, the blood disappeared, and the wound began to close. A lot of what was going on was internal, but Sam could see the pattern of the energy sweeping through the guard’s body.

Eventually, the spell ended and Ayala wavered in place. Sam was already there this time, holding her shoulder until she caught her balance. At his feet, Yeres was slowly waking up. The guard blinked as he looked around, and then up at Sam.

"Demon!" he shouted as he tried to leap to his feet, scrambling for his sword. He was trying to draw it as he rose to his feet.

Without even thinking about it, Sam reflexively punched him in the face.

There was a very satisfying crunch.

Yeres had a higher Strength and Constitution than him, which meant the hit didn’t hurt the guard very much, but leverage was on Sam’s side and it was enough to send him sprawling across the floor.

Loops of crystal flame began to flow down Sam’s arms as he started a spell to subdue the guard. He wasn’t that upset and he didn’t plan to kill him, but he wasn’t going to let the guard keep acting like an idiot.

Whether it was fair or not, he didn’t have any real sympathy for him.

The guard had ignored Krana’s vision, Ayala’s commands, his father’s explanation, a day of seeing things with his own eyes, and now...he was still acting like a fool. Perhaps it was hard to change someone’s basic nature.

By that point, Jeric was already there, ready to knock the guard back down, Krana was staring at the cavern roof as she shook her head, and Ayala was surprised as she started to become angry.

"Stop!" Ayala shouted, her voice resounding through the cave.

It made the guard freeze.

When he did, Sam shrugged and let his flames die down as well, as he kept an eye on Yeres and waited to see if the guard would try anything else.

His Wisdom might have increased, which meant that he understood Yeres’s perspective, to an extent, and his Charisma was higher now as well, which meant it was a lot easier to clearly express his stance to others in a positive way, but neither of those things changed Sam’s basic nature.

He’d never liked idiots and his patience right now was extremely thin. He probably should have refrained from punching him, and from summoning the flames, since it only made him look more demonic, but it had been very satisfying. He’d wanted to do it for a while now, every time the guard talked about killing him or called him a demon.

The first one Ayala yelled at wasn’t Yeres, but Sam.

"Sam!" She glared at him, her eyes intense as the lines in her face became hard. "Stop making my job harder!"

"Sorry," he muttered, as he looked between her and Yeres. He had to admit it was a fair point. She had just healed the guard. "He’s fine though. He can’t keep babbling about stupid things like that. At some point, it’s going to cause trouble."

"You’re a demon!" Yeres shouted back, taking the moment to try and turn the blame on Sam. He didn’t seem to realize that he was healed and moving easily now. "Ismela was a martyr!"

His voice was filled with hatred.

"You are a demon! She did right to try and kill you before you can bring destruction to the world. These spiders were yours! This is all your fault! We wouldn’t have been attacked if you hadn’t called them here!"

Apparently, he was aware enough of what happened to make up a reason for it all, and to try and blame it on Sam.

"Be silent at once!" Ayala’s voice hit the guard this time. He saw her hands clenched into fists, shaking with real anger this time. "Sam is not a demon!"

There was a new aura surrounding her as she spoke, a sort of white-silver light that reminded him of his father’s Persuade ability, and it hit the guard with the weight of a loaded wagon. Yeres sagged on his feet, nearly falling backwards.

"You have a contract with me!" Ayala continued, her shout turning into an icy cold blade as the force of her will hit Yeres. "I have told you again and again that Sam is not an enemy. Now, as a Priestess, will you finally listen to me?!"

The aura of white-silver light around her rose out of her body, swirling into the air as it outlined her with power. Whatever ability she was using, it had to be something like Persuade, and it radiated out across the room.

When the edge of the light touched Sam, it felt like sparkling lightning against the edge of his skin and it fizzled out, unable to push through. Either his Charisma or his Aura of Crystal Flame was more than enough to deflect whatever she was doing.

He was tempted to reach out his finger and poke at it where it was touching him, because it was kind of ticklish, but his common sense suggested it would only make Ayala more angry. Instead, he focused his attention on trying to analyze it with Crystal Focus, letting the ability speed up his thoughts. The energy was well within his aura, so it was just a matter of time and understanding.

"But..., he’s an...Outsider...," Yeres’s face was pale as he struggled to speak. He had slumped against the far wall and was sitting down as he looked up toward Ayala. His voice was shaken. The glow of her ability was reflecting from his eyes.

He looked at her, his eyes traveling to the aura all around her as his voice became a bit more stable, almost reverent. "Lady..., you became a priestess?"

At the same time, Lesat was blinking his eyes as he came to awareness and slowly sat up. He looked around the room, taking in what was going on, and sighed as he shook his head. What was happening was already clear to him. He’d expected it to happen before.

"Yeres, knock it off!" he growled. They were not the first words he’d expected to say after escaping from near death. "I know you grew up as a ward of the Church and you’ve always followed their teachings with near insanity, but look at her! The lady is telling you it’s fine!"

"But...," Yeres mumbled as he looked between Ayala, Sam, and his comrade. "It’s a...demon...and it killed Ismela."

"Ismela killed herself," Lesat growled back at him. "True, she did what she thought was best, but she was foolish to attack without looking at what was going on and she ended up attacking a normal person who just looks weird. Now, drop it! The Arestes Guild doesn’t care about us enough to push this matter, especially against a Priestess when she’s telling you to stop it. You know that."

"But...," Yeres mumbled to himself, as he looked at Sam again. There was a crazed light in his eyes, and even Ayala’s ability wasn’t forcing it down yet. He wasn’t able to accept the change that easily.

"Sam is not a demon," Ayala spoke up, her voice echoing with even more persuasiveness than before. "His appearance is a curse from a demon to try and kill him."

She turned to Sam and her voice changed back to normal.

"Sam, show him your hand."

Sam glanced at her, wondering what she meant for a moment, but then it was obvious. He held up his right hand, turning the back of it toward Yeres as he showed the nine-pointed star on it to everyone.

It instantly caught the guards’ attention, and even Krana blinked at it, as if seeing it for the first time. Her forehead furrowed as if she were puzzled by something, and then cleared.

"The Guardian Star...." Yeres muttered softly as he stared at it. "How does a...."

He stopped him himself, correcting what he was about to say as Ayala glared at him.

"How does a cursed individual have the Guardian Star on his hand? That..."

"It’s a blessing," Ayala interrupted, her voice falling into a soothing cadence. "Sam is blessed by the Church, but because the Outsiders don’t want him to survive, he is suffering from a curse. They are trying to kill him. You have to help him and protect him, or the Outsiders will break through into the world."

Sam had to agree. Even if she was making it a bit more dramatic, it was close enough. The Guardian had told him to fix the seal if he wanted to save his family. Ayala had probably taken the idea from Krana’s vision, but she wasn’t wrong.

"But...," Yeres’s resistance was waning as Ayala’s ability washed over him. For a moment, Sam had to wonder exactly what the ability was and why it was given to Priests. Was this the World Law’s way of persuading people to help it?

The World Law might not like him, but it was convenient that for once it would end up helping him out, if this worked.

Lesat looked over toward Yeres and just shook his head, and then lay back down on the stone, closing his eyes as he left the other guard to his own devices.

Yeres’s eyes grew wider as he stared at Ayala, filled with the silver-white light, and then he finally lowered his head.

"Yes, ...Lady," he answered slowly, his words taking on some of the same quality as he echoed Ayala. "Sam is not a demon. He is just cursed and I need to help him."

Sam held back a nod as he watched, trying not to interfere. Most of his attention was on the ability, which was very interesting. He had to wonder how often Priests abused this ability against those with weak wills or low Charisma.

It looked like the ability was similar to Persuade, and it probably relied on some version of Ayala’s Charisma and Wisdom, using those two attributes to target someone else’s will. As a Guard, which was a common class, it was unlikely that Yeres had more than 8 or 10 points in either attribute.

After Sam had increased his Wisdom, he could tell that it was related to mana regeneration, as well as perception and insight, but he hadn’t quite figured out the details yet.

"You have a contract with me to keep this mission secret, which means you cannot tell anyone about Sam. That would only bring him trouble. You are also part of my contract to protect him, which means you have to do your best for him. Do you understand?"

By mentioning the contract, Ayala was referring to the Sacred Trade they had all made. Even the guards had joined in on it, albeit under duress. If Yeres had actually attacked Sam, he might have ended up breaking it and losing five levels.

Fortunately for Sam, protecting the guards was not part of his side. He just had to help Ayala get home.

"Yes..., Lady," Yeres mumbled slowly. There was a new light dawning in his eyes as he looked towards Sam. "He’s...important to the world, but cursed to look like that. I have to protect him and I can’t let anyone hurt him. The church understands him...and is helping him...."

"Exactly," Ayala agreed, as the light began to fade from around her. "Now, please, stop stressing your wound. I need to make sure it’s healed, so we’ll be staying here for a day or two. I need to finish healing Lesat’s leg too."

The light faded from Yeres’ eyes at the same time, and he looked toward Sam, blinking, as his posture changed.

"Sorry, I was confused before...." he muttered, half looking at him and half staring at Ayala with wide eyes. It wasn’t clear what he saw when he looked at her, but there was adoration there.

On the ground, Lesat just sighed and didn’t even bother to open his eyes. He couldn’t imagine how Yeres had thought this would go any other way. He didn’t want to get Preached at himself, so he was staying out of it. Life wasn’t fair, and the church had an enormous amount of power, not to mention the abilities to back it up. Ayala’s family was even worse. Her father was not someone to cross.

When Sam looked at Lesat, checking to see how he was taking all of this, the guard just looked resigned to everything. His eyes were closed and he was pretending to nap, but there was a furrowed line across his forehead.

The cavern fell back into silence as everyone looked toward Ayala and then toward Sam. The star on the back of his hand was the center of Krana’s attention.

"I knew there had to be some mark," the dwarf grumbled as she looked at him. Her expression was intent, and it was clear she was thinking hard about something.

"Why don’t we stick to that curse explanation, if it ever comes up again." she suggested. "It might keep people from killing you if we shout it out fast enough and you show that star."

Battlefield Reclaimer 45: Gem Silver

"Tell people the church blessed you with that star as a sign of the truth." Krana added, as she studied Sam. "That you’re a good person and such. It won’t help if they attack immediately, but if you get a chance to talk first, it’s worth a shot. Persuade and Preach can help as well, if we’re all together."

Sam nodded at her in agreement. It seemed like the problem with the guards had been solved in an unexpected way by Ayala’s new subclass. It had given her the right ability and authority to persuade Yeres.

As for the ability she had used on Yeres, Preach, it was probably similar to Persuade. It wouldn’t have worked if the guard didn’t want to believe her on some level, and it really just made him more open-minded to the idea. Her position as a Priestess and as part of the church was enough to influence him.

It meant Yeres cared a lot more about trusting the church than he did about Sam’s appearance. If he had been raised as a ward of the church, it explained a lot of things. Either way, it was a glimpse into the influence of the church.

It seemed like the guards were dealt with for now, so what he needed to do was some intensive crafting. If he could make that illusion amulet, he could avoid all of this trouble in the future.

Even if he could show off the Guardian Star and make up a story about a curse, he’d still have to survive an instant attack in the first place. He didn’t want to have to constantly defend himself, keep his temper, and explain himself to everyone over and over. It sounded horrible.

Showing the star, combined with Ayala’s influence, had been more effective than he’d expected. It was nice to be on the side of the church for once, even if it was temporary. He was still planning to stay far away from them, but it was a good enough story that it should work in some situations. He wasn’t going anywhere near Ayala’s father or other high-level individuals. Who knew if they would agree?

"Let’s start on the illusion amulet then, while we wait for Ayala and the guards to recover," he suggested. Ayala was pale now and had gone to sit down on the side of the room, with his father helping her. She had used a lot of mana just now. Something tugged at him and before Sam knew what he was doing, he was walking over to her.

"Thank you," he said gently, as he bent down next to her. Her eyes were closed and she looked exhausted.

"I think you’re a good person, at heart," she said slowly, without opening them. "You don’t deserve to be attacked like that. We also have a contract."

The words were kind and a little business-like, and Sam nodded as he heard them. She still deserved his thanks. There were a lot of ways to handle something, but she had taken care of the problem in the best way he could think of. Even if it was part of the contract to protect him, and the trade had been unlocking her class, he was still going to remember it.

She was kind at heart. That was rare.

"Still, thank you," he said, as he patted her on the shoulder and then walked back over to his work table. The way she’d dealt with the guards had taken a lot of pressure off, so now he could focus on more important things.

As he sat down, he pulled out his book of designs, comparing the image inside to the three-dimensional model that he was constructing in his mind. There were no mistakes in it, but with the more life-like model in his thoughts, it was easy to see exactly how many areas were missing from the drawing.

He had dozens of new runes from what Krana had drawn in the image, but there had to be at least as many more in the finished version. The complexity made him wonder if the inside of the amulet also had runes engraved into it, and how it was done.

He could probably use his aura to engrave runes on the inside of something..., but it would take a very clear focus. He wouldn’t be able to use his stylus to help smooth out any fluctuations in his essence.

The design had good and bad news in it. The good news was that he could learn a lot from studying it, which would help to advance his skill as an Enchanter. The bad news was that he clearly wasn’t going to be able to make the real thing. All the same, he was going to do everything he could.

He took out a piece of chalk and began to draw on the table in front of him, adding and removing runes, as he started to create a new model. He needed to extract the key runes and simplify the amulet down to something that he could make. In the future, as he became more skilled, he could continue working on it, incorporating new insights.

Ayala was going to need a couple of days to get Lesat back on his feet and to make sure that Yeres’s wound was healed. There were also some red lines from the spider’s attack on his father’s skin, but those were already swiftly fading to white. In an hour or so, they’d probably be gone.

It meant that he had a little time to craft.

---

Sam was surrounded by the hum of Earth mana behind him as he melted a lump of silver coins in Krana’s crucible. He’d borrowed it and relocated his worktable next to the Earth mana pool. Now, he was trying out an idea he’d had to infuse the coins with more energy. He’d already tested the theory out on a small chunk of silver. It had taken a few tries, but he was fairly confident in it working this time.

He’d noticed a significant problem with the illusion amulet design, which had led him to this step. A normal silver base couldn’t channel enough mana to power all of those runes. It would break, probably explosively, or at least fizzle out and melt. Whatever the original amulet was made out of it, it was not normal silver. That thought had led him into a series of experiments, of which this was the latest.

His conversations with Krana and the pointers she’d given him over the last couple of days had also helped him to significantly expand his knowledge of materials and of crafting in general. It also made him want to go and spend some time with the dwarves, since it seemed like their understanding of crafting and enchantments was more similar to his than to the items he’d seen from Ismela. Krana had shown him some of the items she kept on her, and there was a level of understanding in the way the runes there flowed with the items that was absent in everything else he’d seen from Ismela except for the dimensional bags.

According to Krana, there were other metals out there, with everything from mithril, to embradium, argentine, ebonstone..., and a lot more that he had never heard of before. The names went on and on. Apparently, nearly every facet of the world could come in a dozen different variants, depending on what type of mana or elemental attunement it had.

Even Krana didn’t know what metal the original amulet was made out of, only that it looked like silver. That narrowed down the possibilities, but there were at least two dozen options, even if you excluded the rarest ones. There was also the possibility that it had been plated with something that looked like silver, while the base itself was different.

He couldn’t solve that problem, so he was doing the next best thing. He was trying to make mana-infused silver. Theoretically, if he attuned the item with his aura and infused it with enough Earth mana, it should give the base silver an opportunity to change into a higher-energy state.

Now, the coins were floating in a small pool of Earth mana and his aura was flowing through it as he heated them. He wasn’t using a normal flame this time, but his personal aura, which was letting him control the process precisely. The Earth mana had its own heat, like lava, but the metal had come originally from the Earth and was still part of that element, so it didn’t melt in it that easily.

The crucible was more special than he’d thought, engraved with runes for durability and mana diffusion that helped to keep the energy contained inside. Otherwise, it probably would have fallen apart. As he heated the crucible, he kept a careful watch to make sure that the hum of the Earth mana was blending easily with the silver. His aura flowed through the mixture constantly, purifying out anything that didn’t belong as he worked to smoothly incorporate the mana into every part. At the same time, he was pouring his essence into the item’s creation, adding as much energy as he could.

Sweat beaded along his forehead as a result of his concentration.

As the mana continued to mix evenly with the silver, he pulled out the next part of the process: a sapphire that had come from Ismela’s equipment. He had already purified the gem with his aura, preparing it for enchantment, and now he dropped it into the mixture, letting it melt into the pool of silver and mana.

It was a risk to add new variables, but as long as everything stayed primarily Earth-aligned, the properties should be complementary. Gems were often used as a focus for enchantments, since their structures naturally held elemental affinities, more than most things in the world.

The sapphire was particularly useful to him, since it combined a bit of Fire with the Earth. Its color was also close to his own shade of essence, which might not matter, but it had called to him more than the ruby he had.

Based on Krana’s explanation, if he could merge the silver with the crystal structure of the gemstone, it would create a new, mana-infused substance called gem silver. Apparently, it was a fairly common crafting technique for better enchanted items.

If the merger succeeded, the gem silver would be much more durable than regular silver and able to take more mana, which would give it a higher enchantment potential. It could also hold smaller runes on it, without the risk of high mana levels causing them to collapse. Weaker materials needed more space between the runes to prevent that from happening.

The only problem was that the intensity of heat and mana required to melt the gemstone and infuse it into the silver was much higher than that of the silver itself. There was a risk of burning the silver away.

That was what the Earth mana around the silver was for. It was acting as a buffering solution, allowing the process to take place. It was also infusing its energy into the silver, raising the enchantment potential of the metal even more, along with adding more unique properties that existed in the Earth mana itself, like an innate stability from the Earth’s blessing. There might be something else along with that, but it was a difficult thing to control.

When he asked Krana about the best ways to use the mana, she had told him to just try it, and then a few myths. Apparently, the Earth mana was so rare that it was nearly impossible to find someone who had any real practice with it, but the legends suggested that items created with it sometimes had unique abilities.

Like his father’s hammers. As Jeric had demonstrated on the warlord, the Song of Seven Earths was more powerful than most enchantments.

Without Krana’s guidance, there were a lot of things Sam would have missed when it came to using the Earth mana, but since it was here, he was going to take full advantage of it. The pool of liquid around his amulet was about the same amount as in one of his crystal spheres, around 300 drops.

It was enough Earth mana to blow the cavern around them apart, and several times more than he’d used in any project so far. Fortunately, it was extremely stable.

His crystal blue flames swirled through the mixture as he kept a careful eye on it, slowly increasing the heat until he felt the sapphire begin to melt. It didn’t melt away all at once, but in layers, and he felt the substance flowing away into the silver and the Earth mana all around it.

As it happened, he felt the three substances merging into a new pattern, something that felt like crystalline silver in his mind’s eye. The silver was taking on the properties of the sapphire and its structure was changing. At the same time, the Earth mana was flowing into it, binding itself around the structure to support it.

All through that, his aura was flowing into the material too, just like it had for the acid worm amulet. He wasn’t sure exactly what was happening with the process, but he could feel it becoming a little bit more like him as it took on a touch of his personal energy. Krana thought that it was some type of personal attunement, which was fine by him.

A little while later, Sam’s eyes glowed as the sapphire finished fusing into the silver and the Earth mana surrounding it began to swirl. The level of liquid mana began to drop as it sank into the metal.

Sam’s hand rose to the side as his aura swept out, ready to pick up more mana to add to the mix, but after a moment the process settled down. The liquid mana surrounding the amulet had nearly disappeared. Over 90% of it had been absorbed.

At the center of the crucible, lying just under the surface of the mana, a pool of gleaming, sapphire blue silver was visible.

Attuned Earth-Blessed Gem Silver.

A prompt came and went, with a notification of experience gained for his Enchanter profession, but he ignored it.

"Time for the mold," he mumbled aloud, as he turned to the next step of the process.

Now that there was a slight break, he was also able to look over and see what his father was doing. He’d heard him talking to Ayala while he worked, and it sounded like he was spending a lot of time asking questions, trying to get as much information about Osera and the route home as possible. At the moment, however, Jeric was carving away at a piece of stone, practicing a Mining skill. It looked like he was debating taking the profession to go along with his Prospect ability.

The guards were leaning against the wall on the other side of the cavern, talking to themselves, while Ayala was meditating, recovering her mana so she could continue healing them.

Everything was peaceful as he lifted the crucible and turned towards the mold.

Krana watched from the side, her gaze focused, as she kept careful track of everything Sam was doing. She’d taught him a lot of details, but she’d been extremely surprised at his ability. Every time she mentioned something, it was as if he instantly understood how it worked, and then he’d come back a few minutes later with a connection she hadn’t thought of.

She wasn’t an Enchanter, but if she had been..., he’d have been a wonderful apprentice. If he found the right teacher, then maybe in only a short decade or so, he would have the ability to really challenge the masters of the craft. There were dwarves who had been enchanting for centuries, even a few for a millennium or two..., but she’d never heard of anyone who had the sheer aptitude that he did.

He hadn’t explained his unique class to her in any detail, or what it could really do beyond being an Enchanter and a Smith, but whatever he had gained from it..., it definitely wasn’t a normal class. He didn’t seem to have any specific abilities that helped him create enchanted items, but in terms of the foundational skills and instincts, she’d never heard of anyone better at his level.

It was not a normal level of skill.

She’d never heard of anything quite like it. Normally, classes granted specific abilities and some information on how to use them. For Sam, it seemed to be the opposite. He didn’t get any specific abilities for being either an Enchanter or a Smith, nothing like the simple Enchant Metal or Infuse Material abilities she was familiar with, or even the more standard Enchanter line of abilities.

Gem silver could be made with either of those in a much faster way than Sam was doing now. A good dwarven Smith could have done it in an instant, practically by just crushing the two items together between his hands if his ability level was high enough. It was a common task for apprentices to make this sort of material.

Instead of those abilities, what Sam had was an incredible amount of underlying potential that came out at the slightest hint of an idea, but he still had to do all of the basic work to make it come to life. He didn’t even seem to be aware of how strange it was.

It was almost like he was just in tune with the flow of energy in the world and constantly experimenting to see what he could do with it. She’d seen him staring off into the distance a couple of times, and when she asked what he was doing, he’d told her he was listening for the runes of the world.

She just shook her head again, since she had no idea what that meant. Runes could be experimented with, but it was a dangerous practice. Sometimes, they were discovered as part of a natural formation, if the world’s energy flowed through a large amount of crystal or a natural area in just the right way to cause the energy there to move into a pattern that worked, but she’d never heard of someone listening for them before.

He was a strange human...demon...person, but it fit with the vision she’d seen.

Sam was unaware of Krana’s thoughts, but even if he’d heard them, it wouldn’t have bothered him much. He was getting used to doing his own thing.

The mold for the silver amulet was just in front of him, and he carefully poured the gem silver from the crucible into it. There was enough room that the liquid mana flowed along as well. It wasn’t water, and it didn’t cool the molten liquid down at all. Instead, it helped to keep it at an even temperature as it moved with it.

The silver flowed into the mold with a hiss of escaping steam as it hit the colder stone, and then it settled into it. The liquid mana floated on top, still covering it over like a pond, as he put the crucible back down.

He wasn’t adding any new heat now and, slowly, the gem silver began to cool. It was an extremely slow process compared to normal cooling, since the mana on top of it retained most of the heat. He watched it steadily, barely blinking, as the level of Earth mana began to drop. As the metal cooled and became harder, the crystalline structure of the gem silver was changing, which allowed more of the mana to sink in.

He’d estimated how much mana it could take, and then gone a bit above that to make sure, but he was still standing by to add more if necessary. An hour later, as the amulet continued to cool, he did exactly that, pouring a small handful of mana on top of what was already there. It was absorbing even more than he’d thought.

His aura swirled through it, keeping track of the process, as he continued to pour in his own energy. He could have tried using a monster core, but he had the feeling that it would only destabilize the process. Even if he’d had a permanent enchantment pattern to use, it didn’t seem like it would be a good idea.

It would only disrupt the purity of the gem silver.

Time passed as he continued to watch the metal cool and the pool of Earth mana slowly sink. Whatever the result was, this would be his finest creation yet.

Battlefield Reclaimer 46: Attuned Design

It took the better part of a day for the amulet to finish cooling and by the time it was done, it absorbed nearly 500 points of Earth mana. It was far more than he’d expected.

He had the feeling that the capacity had something to do with the attunement he’d added through his aura. There was a sense of crystal flame there, of him, imbued into the material, and it felt like that was what had absorbed the rest of the Earth mana.

As his senses swept through the material, he could feel that the silver had taken on a crystalline structure similar to the gemstone, while at the same time it retained the fluidity of the metal. It was an interesting blend, and not one he’d have thought could happen before this.

Among other discoveries during the crafting process, he’d learned that touching the Earth mana didn’t harm him. He’d never felt particularly threatened by it, but his father’s warning and the intense heat coming from it had been enough to make him cautious. With Ayala around to heal, he’d felt comfortable enough risking a drop of it, which he had let fall on his leg. The mana was hot and intense, but it only rolled off his skin like water.

He had a feeling that it had something to do with mana density. His body was saturated with his own internal essence, which acted like a protective shield. He wasn’t Earth-blessed like his father, but as long as his internal energy was intact, the Earth mana wasn’t going to harm him.

Now, he picked up the mold, turning it over in his hand as he let the excess Earth mana pour into his palm. There was a cracking sound as his aura flowed into it and the mana began to crystallize. It was just a tiny amount of mana, and it turned to a crystalline powder that was a lot like snow.

Crystallized Earth Mana.

The prompt came and went, as it usually did when he created something for himself. He didn’t have a skill to assess everything he saw, but if it was related to him, the World Law tended to give him the name. Maybe one of these days, he’d learn a skill for identification that would help with that.

If he had time later, he wanted to experiment with adding it to materials, but for now he just stored it away in a small pouch that was on the side of his work table. The little pouch was already half full of the same substance, since he’d been playing with the Earth mana while waiting for the amulet to cool.

His essence flowed into the amulet that was still in the mold, filling it more easily than any other item he’d ever created. It was almost like he was just sending it from one part of his body to another. The amulet wasn’t even finished yet, but it already felt connected to him. That had to be an effect of the attunement.

The amulet fell out of the mold and into his hand. It was a slightly rough disk of gleaming, crystal blue silver about the size of his palm. He’d already been working on the amulet with Essence Refinement as it cooled. Now, it was time for the final step.

A surge of essence flowed out of his body as a spiral of crystal flames flowed into the amulet, fully embedding itself into every crevice of the amulet’s structure. Instead of just purifying it, it felt as if this amulet were almost made of living crystal flame. His aura swept through it joyfully, reaching into every corner and twisting around the internal structure as if it were coming home.

He held the concept of what he wanted it to look like in his mind and the amulet began to shift, transforming slightly as it took on beveled edges and the surface smoothed out, becoming a perfectly blank expanse without a single ripple in the surface. The grain was nearly invisible, as smooth as a mirror.

A moment later, Essence Refinement was complete. A notification rang in his mind with silver chimes as he felt his Enchanter profession jump upwards. It also came with a surge of class experience.

Congratulations, Enchanter. You have crafted a fully attuned personal item from rare Earth materials and infused silver.

No one besides you will be able to use this amulet.

You gain 5,000 Class experience.

Congratulations. You are now a Level 32 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Total Experience: 296,975 / 533,000

You are now General Level 32.

Total Experience: 299,975 / 533,000

You gain +1 Intelligence, +1 Aura, and have three free status points to distribute.

He blinked at the notification for a moment as he felt the surge of experience bubbling merrily through him, making him feel more relaxed. He’d been at the edge of Level 32, but he hadn’t expected to get there from this one item.

5,000 experience was an enormous amount for a crafted item, fully ten times more than he’d ever gotten before, and that was just from making the base. What was it going to be if he managed to enchant it?

He also noted that the requirement to hit Level 33 was almost twice the experience he had already. That was the First Cliff that Krana had told him about. The levels after that wouldn’t be any less difficult, and then at level 66, it would become even harder.

If he had been a pure crafting class, it would have been a staggering amount of required experience, something that might take him a year or two to get past even if he could work on it every day. Fortunately, he was able to gain full Class experience from combat too, which meant he would just have to spend about three days killing Outsiders and it would be easy enough to get to 33.

Even if didn’t go looking for monsters or a flaw, he was sure the World Law would let him know when one popped up. It seemed like the Guardian Star on his hand marked him out as one of the "Authorities of Law" that would always be summoned to Outsider invasions if they were nearby, and it wasn’t like he could refuse. He was strangely alright with that, even if it was dangerous, since every battle would result in a significant amount of experience and perhaps crafting materials.

As for the free points, he put all three of them into Wisdom, bringing it up to 24, since he wanted to get his ability to reclaim auras up higher. The more he learned about them, the more useful they became.

While waiting for the amulet to cool, he’d been able to test out his ability to intensify auras some more. He’d discovered that he was able to charge a Basic aura up to a maximum of 20 points of essence. His Wisdom had been at 21, so he suspected that was the limit.

Now, all four of the auras in his storage were fully charged to that, which gave him a good pool of restoratives. He just needed to find some more monsters now.

Once the experience stopped surging through his blood, he focused himself as he looked down at the amulet in his palm.

Attuned Earth-Blessed Gem Silver Amulet (Blank)

The prompt came and went, giving him a description of the item, and he let out a slow breath as he carefully turned it over, studying it from every angle to make sure it had turned out well. He could feel that it had as his aura flowed through it, but he wanted to see it too.

Now, for the actual enchantment.

He pulled out a piece of chalk as he turned back toward his work table, setting the amulet down carefully on top of a piece of salamander hide at the center. Gem silver was extremely durable, even more than the gem it had come from, and the stone table shouldn’t even be able to scratch it, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He began to draw, sketching an enchantment pattern in a circle all around the amulet. It was an enlarged version of what he had learned from the illusion amulet, with all of the new runes he had seen.

---

Some hours later, there was a massive circle of runes surrounding the amulet at the center of the table. It was as close as possible to what he’d been able to discern from the original amulet. Now, as he was trying to imagine how this would go onto the amulet, he realized he might have gotten a bit carried away.

This rune diagram was enormous. He had placed all the runes he had seen into it, and then he’d copied the connections between them and created new ones based on the same concepts to create something like a balanced formation, but he didn’t know if any of it would work. He was guessing at a lot of it, which meant the pattern was theoretical at best and probably explosive at worst.

He tried to imagine placing the formation onto the amulet, but there were too many runes and he was missing a lot of the connections from the original pattern. On top of that, he had the feeling that the actual enchantment was not just in two dimensions. There were connections between the runes on other levels that he was missing, where the layout itself represented higher runes or individual concepts, a larger pattern built from the smaller ones to create layers that all had to be balanced for the enchantment to work.

The original was a design by a Second Evolution Enchanter, but he’d tried to copy it anyway, filling in anything that seemed broken as he was lost in the flow of it. He’d even come up with a way to put it all into a circular enchantment that would fit on the amulet.

He shook his head as he looked at the pattern he’d spent so long drawing out. Then, he suddenly reached out and erased the entire circle of runes with a sweep of his hand, brushing the chalk away from the table.

Using it like that could warp the amulet into something unrecognizable, which would be a huge waste. He also couldn’t take the chance of 500 points of Earth mana suddenly erupting in an uncontrolled explosion.

In the future, he would practice with these runes, from the simple to the complex, and figure out what each one of them did. Eventually, he would discover what was missing and make the enchantment his own, but trying to force it right now was the wrong path.

He brushed his hands off as he looked back to the now blank work table, tapping his talons on the edge as he considered what to do instead. The design might be too complex for now, but the effort hadn’t been wasted. It had taught him a lot of new runes and some ways to connect them. Now, those ideas began to run through his mind as he considered what to make instead.

He needed the amulet to help him blend in and keep people from attacking him at the drop of a hat. It might not be powerful enough to stop a Seer’s abilities, but a Seer should be able to tell he wasn’t a monster and that he didn’t have an Outsider glow around him. He would have to hope there was enough time to talk that out before anyone attacked. It would also give people pause if Krana or his father were close by.

He had learned several illusion-type runes from the amulet pattern, as well as concealment, shadow, prevent, obscure, and others that were more specific, like clothing, hair, and eyes, which were all related to changing parts of the wearer’s appearance. A few of them he’d already known from his studies, but most had been new.

The most useful of them all was the one he’d seen for race. If he could create the right pattern, he might be able to make something with that. The amulet had been designed for a dwarf and there was no rune for human on it, but he knew a rune for that already. His talons continued to tap on the stone table.

Eventually, he pulled out the acid worm amulet that he’d created, staring down at the simple pattern on it. It was the barest, most simplistic piece of trash of an amulet created by a brain-addled apprentice who was probably drunk..., but it was an illusion amulet of sorts. It was enough to give him an idea.

He might not be able to create an amulet that completely changed his appearance or that hid him from sight and identification abilities, but what if he could create an amulet that gave people around him the suggestion that he was normal or that made them not look at him? A "Nothing strange here, I’m a human" type of avoidance amulet?

With 500 points of Earth mana behind it, that might be enough to convince people to believe it. It might lose energy quickly if he got a lot of attention, and it probably wouldn’t work that well on anyone who had a seriously high Wisdom..., but he could recharge it. That might be enough to travel home, with a cloak up around his face, and discourage people from looking at him. He’d have to make a set of gloves to hide his talons, since that would save some energy. He rubbed at his chin, thinking it through.

He wasn’t going to be walking into a city with it, but if he could get home without being attacked, that would be good enough. As long as he was in a party with other people to pull attention away from him, he might just look reclusive. There were some strange people out there who always wore cloaks and didn’t like to show their faces, and he would be just one more of them.

The chalk came out as he began to draw again, quickly sketching a runic circle around the amulet. If he made an amulet like that, it wouldn’t be enough to just say he was human. They would look at him, and that would drain the amulet faster. He needed something that would make people avoid him and think nothing of him. It would be better to be seen as some type of reclusive shadow wizard who turned people away rather than a demon.

Runes flickered through his mind as he sketched ideas, until he settled on a combination of human, avoid, and strange, along with some supporting connections and sub-runes that he’d learned from the illusion amulet. Those were common enough that he wasn’t afraid of them going wrong. They would only help to stabilize the enchantment.

He had thought about using dark instead of strange, but he didn’t want people to think he was evil, nor to accidentally create a cloud of shadows around himself. He’d rather give them the impression that he was just strange and should be avoided. An "Avoid the strange human" amulet.

He had also considered forget instead of avoid, but that was a much more complicated rune. It would take a lot more energy to make people want to forget about him, rather than to just avoid him. He looked down at the rough pattern and nodded as he began to add in more details, working to perfect the design and make sure it was balanced.

There were always odd travelers on the roads and some of them were frightening. He’d seen a few of the type when they’d passed by the village, especially as guards for small merchants. It shouldn’t be a problem if he made himself look like one more.

He wasn’t sure how long the amulet would last, but he should be able to recharge it back to its maximum mana, even if it took a while. The amulet was different from the water crystal or even his father’s hammers. Those were driven directly by the user’s mana, which meant you had to always be in control of the process. The amulet had its own mana storage instead, which meant it could operate automatically until the energy ran out.

He did some quick math in his head, coming up with the rough idea that it would take him about 17 hours of meditation to recharge 500 points of mana, and that was if he did absolutely nothing else with his time. He shook his head as he thought about it.

At his current rate, he passively regenerated around ten points of essence an hour. The increase to 24 Wisdom had improved it to almost 17% per hour, and it looked like every 5 or 6 points of Wisdom added another percent. If he actively meditated, it was two hours to get back to full. That part hadn’t changed.

It would be better to charge the amulet continually over time rather than trying to do it all at once. He didn’t know how much mana it would use in a day, but he could try to top it off each night. He would also need to keep some intensified auras on hand to feed it in an emergency.

Time flew away from him as he continued to sketch, adding more stability and durability to the enchantment. He might not have learned how to use dozens of runes at once, but studying the illusion amulet had definitely helped to give him some ideas for how to make these three more effective.

---

A short while later, the new design for the amulet was complete. Instead of just one big circle this time, there were three concentric ones. Each of them was linked to one of the three runes at the center and they included stability and durability runes that enhanced the overall formation.

The entire pattern was an interwoven cycle, like three spirals turned into one. No matter where energy entered it, it would flow evenly through all three circles before powering the focus runes at the center. That would help to increase the efficiency of the enchantment and to harmonize the flow of energy, even if it meant that it needed more power to activate it.

He wasn’t worried about that part. The amulet had more than enough energy and, once it was running, the cost to maintain it would drop precipitously. The concentric circles would help to contain the mana, increasing the efficiency as they bound it in place and made sure it was only spent as needed.

"Well, it shouldn’t explode," Krana said thoughtfully, as she looked over his shoulder to see the result. She was still trying to help, but she didn’t have much to add on the design. Sam was treading new territory with this experiment.

Sam nodded back at her. Then he picked up the amulet and turned it over in his hands as he let his aura flow through it. Models of the runes began to flicker through his mind, flowing into place as he imagined where they would go.

In his mind’s eye, an image of the amulet appeared, made out of crystal blue flames. Runes began to appear on it, flowing into place with a little snap of power. He could feel a slight amount of his essence draining away as he continued, but there was no skill notification for this visualization technique. For Enchanters, something like this would have been under Model Enchantment, but he had the feeling that for him it just fell under Essence Control.

It didn’t take too long for him to complete the design in his mind, and he held it there, turning it from side to side as he checked it over for flaws. He knew there was a way to add three-dimensional runes and to surround the entire amulet in a sphere of interwoven connections, since the original design had been something like that. He couldn’t do it yet, but one day he would get there.

For now, this would have to be enough. In the future, he’d either find a way to alter this amulet or he would melt it down and build another one. He gave the amulet in his hand a deep look as he set it back on the work table and turned to pick up his stylus.

The design in his mind’s eye merged with the amulet in front of him, overlaying it. Then he began to engrave the runes, starting with the focus points as he worked his way outward to the first circle. A subtle spiral of crystal blue flames swirled around him and across the design, fluctuating in time with the subtle movement of his hands and his breath.

It wasn’t the huge design he’d first come up with, but it was still the most complicated enchantment he’d ever created. Conceptually, it far outstripped his father’s hammers, which drew most of their power from the same rune being layered seven times to create a resonance. The hammers were beautiful in their simplicity that was refined to a single purpose, but this was complex.

Hours flickered past as the engraving continued, and Sam’s eyes never wavered. He wasn’t even aware of the passing time except as it related to his progress on the design. The others in the cavern continued their own training, turning to look at him from time to time, but he was barely aware of them.

Eventually, he carved the last rune and paused, his slit-pupiled eyes staring down at it. A moment later, his last Aura of Basalt appeared from his storage and hovered over hand.

He set the stylus to the side as he took hold of the aura and began to imbue it into the amulet, slowly fusing the wisps that rose off of it into the lines. He could have used pure mana for the amulet, but he had the feeling that using an aura would give him better results.

He didn’t notice Krana’s wide eyes as she stared at his hand, trying to see what the sphere of grey smoke was, or her glance toward the enchantment that was slowly being filled with energy. He’d never explained his class to her, and this was the first time she was seeing an aura.

Despite its small size and the aura being fully intensified to 20 points of essence, the amulet had a significant number of runes on it, some of them with a lot of internal storage capacity. They all needed to be imbued fully for the initial activation. The aura only lasted through about three quarters of the process. When it ran out, he was in a meditative state and, almost as if acting on instinct, he waved his hand toward the mana pool, calling it to him as he picked up his stylus again.

A stream of Earth mana twisted up from the pool and flowed through the air to a point near his shoulder, where it gathered into a liquid sphere that radiated heat and light. A thread of mana poured down from it, connecting to the stylus in his hand. He was barely aware of it as his stylus moved on to the next rune.

Battlefield Reclaimer 47: First Amulet

Sam was so focused that he only came back to himself when he felt a surge of power clicking into place as he connected the last rune. He looked down at the amulet in front of him, his gaze doubling as he compared it to the design.

He was worried for a moment that he had made a mistake, but as he checked it over, the design matched up with every line on the amulet. It was perfect. A sense of relief hit him. As he watched, the power of the misty grey aura imbued into the runes began to surge, passing from one line to the next as it activated.

It started at the first focus rune for human, which brightened to a brilliant, misty grey light, and then it began to grow. It quickly flared out toward the first circle as it passed through the main connection, and rune by rune, the circle came to life, igniting with a flare of power as the light from the aura continued to intensify.

After a moment, the entire first circle was glowing with power and the process continued, looping back into the center as the second focus rune for avoid came to life, intensifying until the energy flowed out into the second circle, which swiftly activated part by part until it too was shining.

From there, the light swirled in again, touching the third focus rune at the center before it paused. That was where the aura had run out. The light wavered for a moment and then it began to grow again as the aura started to expand, devouring the mana next to it as the third rune brightened to the same level as the first two. The light jumped from there to the third circle, swirling through it as those runes also came to life.

When everything was lit up, the runic circles seemed to lift out of the amulet slightly as the gem silver beneath began to glow, adding its own stored power to the design. As 500 points of Earth mana poured into the design, it intensified until the runes were shining like silver, and then their color swiftly turned to crystal blue, the same as Sam’s aura.

Once that happened, the amulet lifted into the air and began to float above the work table. The surface blurred as the runes lifted out of it, pushed by the energy stored in the gem silver. The focus runes shone in the center, hovering in the air as they moved outward to take up three equidistant positions around the amulet.

The three concentric circles expanded, becoming three-dimensional rings that stretched out past the sides of the amulet. The three bands rotated until one was vertical, one was horizontal, and the third was at an angle. Each of them was filled with the runes that were part of them, the lines shining brightly. It was a larger version of his design that had come to life with the amulet at the center.

Then the rings began to spin, spiraling around the amulet as they gathered speed. There was a music to it that chimed with each rotation of the rings. At the same time, the base material also gave off a low vibration that felt like flickering flames as it continued to pour its stored energy outward. It rose from the gem silver in streams of crystal flame that fused with the enchantment, pushing the rings to spin faster.

He had never seen anything like it, and he watched with wide eyes as his senses traced the pattern. He’d had the idea that an enchantment could exist in three dimensions, but he hadn’t expected it to happen here. Somehow, the structures he’d borrowed from the original amulet had created something he didn’t quite understand.

He could see that the power from the base amulet was at the heart of it, pushing the rings to spin faster. This had to be some type of combination process, where the base material and the enchantment he’d laid on top were merging together, but he’d never considered what would happen with that until now, or how it would actually occur. This process was following some natural law engraved into the runes.

The rings brightened again, expanding outward as the attuned gem silver poured its energy into them, slowly changing the runes to the same color as his crystal flame. The energy in the amulet had been silver-white originally, but after the attunement, it had changed to be the same as his own. He could feel a connection to the process, a soft pulse of intensifying power, that told him the attunement was growing in strength.

The amulet floated in the center of it all as the runes across its surface burned with power. As he watched the rings spin around it, the runes were using some of the energy to engrave themselves more deeply into the surface, and that wasn’t all they were doing. He could feel that some of the power of the entire formation was embedding itself into each one of them, linking them together in a way that made it clear they could not be broken apart again. Not without destroying the entire thing.

His mind raced as he tried to follow the entire process, and he realized that the linking and this event had to have come from some of the bonds he’d etched between the runes. He hadn’t known what they did, but he had copied them from the original amulet’s design. Now, things were becoming clear.

He’d been right not to try the bigger design. It wasn’t complete and he had the feeling that if it had reached this stage, it would have collapsed with dire results. It wouldn’t have been able to sustain itself without the rest of the enchantment to support it. The reason this was working was because it was a complete enchantment on its own, one that he’d unwittingly enhanced.

As he continued to watch, tracking every movement, he could feel the amulet slowly burning away all 500 points of mana that had been contained in it, pouring them into the process. It looked like it was using that entire initial strength to create the most stable pattern possible, strengthening itself as it followed the runic instructions for durability, stability, and...bonding?

No. A flash of understanding hit him. Those runic braids that connected each rune to the next and formed part of the circles weren’t bonding runes exactly. They were some type of self-enhancing rune pattern that was repeated like a loop throughout the entire formation. He’d borrowed the design from the original, thinking it was just going to add stability, and it had done this instead.

It was clear that the gem silver was going to pour all of its energy into the enhancement pattern and intensify the enchantment as much as possible before it was done. He shook his head slowly as he realized a few very important things about enchanting, especially with higher-level materials.

If he hadn’t used that pattern, the enchantment would not have stuck well to the gem silver. There would have been two opposing energy sources, one from the enchantment and one from the base material. The result would have been unpredictable. At best, the enchantment would have burned out more quickly. At worst, it could have warped into something else or exploded. Given that he was using blessed Earth mana for it..., it probably wouldn’t have been too severe. Maybe it would have just melted into slag.

There was more to enchanting than he knew, and this pattern had just helped to open the doors to one path. Materials and their properties needed to be matched to the enchantment, and the pattern that bonded them together was also critically important.

At least it seemed to be working out. The runes he’d engraved were careful and precise, and now the energies were following that path as they merged together.

Everyone in the room turned to look at it with wide eyes as the amulet continued to float there, held aloft by the intensity of the mana radiating from it. The crystal blue rings continued to rotate, spiraling around the amulet like flaming bands that were circling the heart of a star. Then, suddenly, they began to shrink, pulling inwards as the intensity brightened.

The surface of the amulet flared as the rings were pulled back into it. They spun for a moment across the mirror-bright surface before settling into place, glowing with crystal light. And then they dimmed, fading away as the last point of mana was expended and the runes carved themselves just a little more deeply.

A brilliant notification chimed in his mind, as well as a surge of experience that was far more than he’d gotten from making the base. There was a qualitative difference between his first simple enchantments and what he had just done here. The amount of experience reflected that.

Congratulations, Enchanter. You have successfully Enchanted a fully attuned personal item using an Expert-level Binding Pattern.

Earth Blessed Amulet of Avoidance.

To create this item, you only used items that came from the Earth, including attuned silver, sapphire, blessed Earth mana, and an Earth-aligned aura. This has resulted in a synergistic effect with added stability.

Primary Effect: This amulet persuades those around you to look away. It also suggests to them that you are a strange Human and that it would be uncomfortable to approach you.

Earth Blessed Synergy: The blessing of the Earth mana used in the creation of this item stabilizes the enchantment and adds a reassuring feeling to the effect. Those who are affected by it will be more comfortable and less likely to believe anything negative about the wearer. Those with strong wills or who are antagonistic to the Earth will be affected less than others.

Mana Charge: 0 / 500

Duration: Permanent (Attuned)

That notification faded away, only to be replaced by another.

Congratulations, Enchanter. You have shown great dedication to your craft by successfully fashioning an attuned item well beyond your current level of skill. As a result, you gain bonus experience in your profession.

You gain 15,000 Class Experience.

You are now a Level 16 Enchanter.

Additionally, your efforts in fashioning this item caused you to lose track of time.

You have gained the Trait Craftsman.

[+2 Wisdom, +2 Constitution. You will find it easier in the future to fall into a working trance and to endure long hours of labor. You will also find it easier to relate to other Craftsmen, gaining a natural Charisma bonus when speaking with them.]

You demonstrated Expert-level skills in a magical profession while still two Tiers below that level.

You have gained the Trait Mystical.

[+2 Intelligence, +2 Aura, +2 Wisdom. You will find that it is easier to understand natural forces in the future.]

The amulet was still floating in the air, but the aura around it was subsiding as the last bit of mana radiated away. It hovered there with a soft blue flame curling all around it.

He could feel the new statistics from the traits he’d just gained enhancing him, and he looked up toward the heavens, searching for the presence of the World Law. Its voice had been almost kind again, as if it were happy with him, as much as the unemotional presence was ever happy.

The traits were a pleasant surprise as he looked at them on his status sheet. He hadn’t known you could gain traits from crafting or demonstrating higher skills. They were a recognition of what he’d experienced while creating the amulet.

As for the Expert-level runes, that could only be referring to the pattern he had borrowed from the original amulet. He’d thought it was a support pattern of some type, but apparently it was a Binding Pattern. It was very welcome knowledge.

It didn’t mean that he was an Expert Enchanter, but it was a nice bonus. It hadn’t been too hard to use it, which meant that the difficulty level of tiers was not always clear cut.

It was also a look into what enchanting might be like in the future. There was a long road to understanding how all of the runes and materials operated together.

He didn’t feel anything different now that the traits were added, but it was hard to tell. The bonuses from them sounded like they would be very helpful, both for crafting and for his enchantment efforts.

He had to wonder if the effect from Mystical would help him discover natural runes more easily. That was the first thing that came to mind when he thought about it. It would take some experimentation to see if it were true.

At that moment, the amulet finished radiating off the last of its mana and landed in his hand, its surface glowing. Despite the intense energy that had just surrounded it, it was only warm to the touch. As he looked down at it, the runes on the surface gleamed with crystal flame, burning softly against the sapphire-tinted gem silver like tiny stars that would never quite fade out.

Through his attunement to it, he could also feel that the rune pattern had sunk through the entire amulet, becoming one with the material. Gem steel was already durable, but minor damage wouldn’t bother the enchantment now. It would still function as long as enough of it was there to maintain the flow of mana.

It was a beautiful piece of art.

He looked up to see everyone staring at him, their expressions shocked.

"Son.... What in the world was that?" his father asked, breaking the silence as he looked towards him. He was halfway between sitting and standing, as if he had been caught in the act of moving towards him. It looked like he was worried about the amulet and had started to come over.

"Sorry," Sam replied helplessly as a grin peaked out at the corner of his mouth. "It was a bit more dramatic than I thought it would be. It’s fine now."

"Enchanters rarely share their methods," Krana added, shaking her head as she added her own opinion. She was standing about halfway across the room now, where she must have dodged when the amulet started glowing. Her eyes were shaded silver as she studied it in his hand. "I’ve never seen anything quite like that before. It looks like it worked though? Or, at least, it didn’t blow up on you."

"I believe so," Sam agreed, nodding as he looked back down to the amulet in his hand. "I’ll need to charge it up again before I can be sure. It used up all of the stored mana just now when it bonded the enchantment to the material. It also strengthened itself more than I thought it would."

Based on what he could feel from it, the amulet was now the most durable item he was carrying on him. His father could probably hit it with his hammers for an hour and not even cause a dent, at least as long as it had a trace of mana left inside.

"I still need about a day to finish healing the guards," Ayala said, as she looked over too. Of them all, she was the most calm. Perhaps she’d seen bigger events before, or perhaps she was just sticking to her new role. "Will that be enough to charge it?"

"If I meditate for almost the entire time, it should be just enough," Sam agreed, nodding back at her. "Then we can finally get out of these tunnels."

Everyone returned to their own training after a few more long looks. Most of them were still wondering what happened with the amulet. It was dramatic.

Sam started to study the amulet in his hands, analyzing everything that had happened. He wanted to know exactly how all of the runes worked, so that he could do better the next time. A current of crystal flame formed in his hand, slowly pouring into the amulet as he began the process of recharging it.

He didn’t even notice as both of the new traits activated from somewhere near his heart and silently began to send threads of energy through his body, helping him drop into a meditative trance. There were only the runes floating through his mind.

---

It took him most of a day to finish charging the amulet, and Sam didn’t look up once during the entire process. The two traits he’d gained made the entire experience seem like one fluid moment, with barely any sense of passing time. For seventeen hours, he barely moved except to turn the amulet around in his hands.

The entire time, he was relaxed and filled with energy as he studied the pattern, working to understand exactly why it had worked and how to do it again, as well as how to use the support runes in better ways. Before long, he was already starting to think of how to make the next generation of amulet and what he could improve.

In many ways, this amulet was a symbol of his journey as an Enchanter. It was currently the best item he could make, and he had the feeling that it might always be that way as he continued to improve it. He didn’t have enough information yet, or enough runes, but one day he would reforge this one into something even better. There was a long road to walk before it was as good as it could be.

Even if he reached the Second Evolution and crafted the real amulet that Krana remembered, who was to say that was the end? What if he could go further and create another amulet past that, which had illusions as just one part of what it could do? Who was to say that was even the limit for a Second Evolution Enchanter? Maybe one day that version would look as simple to him as the acid worm amulets did now.

Ideas of eternal craftsmanship spun through his mind, filling his thoughts with possibilities, until eventually the amulet was fully charged. It glowed in his hand with a soft aura of flames, notifying him with a pulse of heat that he couldn’t add any more mana.

He blinked as he was pulled from his thoughts and looked down at it, seeing the flames shining all around. The excess essence was looping around the amulet like crystal blue dragons, flaring away in arcs. He pulled the energy back into himself, and the flames around the amulet died down, leaving it with just the same tint to the silver and the sparkle of hidden light in the curl of the runes.

Unless he willed it, the amulet wouldn’t flare to light on its own, which was a good thing. He took a chain that Krana had given him, which was made from another type of gem silver, and threaded it through the ring at the top. Then, he hung the amulet around his neck.

He’d have to enchant his own chain soon, but making chains was a time-intensive bit of smithing. Perhaps he could do some on the way home and then enchant it with another effect.

When that was complete, he looked around the room, taking in the preparations. The guards had been fully healed now and were back to their quiet, obedient selves as they stayed near Ayala and well away from him, which was just the way he wanted it.

His father and Krana were working together on a piece of stone, discussing mining and smithing. Ayala was meditating, recovering her mana from the final batch of healing she had just done. All around the cavern, everything useful had been removed and placed into dimensional bags.

He looked around with a nod, his gaze stopping on the Earth mana pool and then on Krana and Ayala. He was tempted to make more crystal spheres of mana, but a look at his father and then back to the pool stopped him.

For the first time, it was starting to look like the level of the pool was a hair lower than when they’d first arrived. The sight hit him with a sense of something precious having left the world, followed by his own sense of thanks for all the things it had helped him make.

He’d taken enough. The twenty-five spheres of mana that he already had, if he used them carefully, were enough to reforge his amulet many times over, and maybe also to help him make a few weapons or other artifacts. He would save them for that, along with a special item or two for his family.

Auras would work fine for his regular enchantments. He would just have to collect a few more of them on the way home. His gaze turned toward the exit as he wondered what they would find on the way and how strong the opposition would be. He had a feeling that it wouldn’t be so simple.

Either way, it was time to see if this amulet worked.

Battlefield Reclaimer 48: Leaving the Cavern

"Let’s head out," Sam suggested as he looked around the cavern. The desire to see his family again was strong as he looked at everyone and then down at the amulet in his hand. "But first, let me activate this amulet and see what it can do."

Now that the amulet was charged, he wanted to see how it worked. If it did what he hoped, it would make his trip back to the village possible. It would also give him ideas on how to advance it in the future.

He wasn’t sure if the avoidance effect would work that well on anyone here, since they already knew what he looked like, but it was worth testing.

As soon as he spoke, everyone started to move. His father and Krana had everything packed away and the guards were healed. They had just been waiting for him and Ayala to be ready.

Ayala was still meditating to recover her mana, but as he looked over at her, she opened her eyes. As if sensing what he intended, she nodded. Then she stood up, her posture changing to one of calm intent as she watched him.

Her transition to Priestess had come with a significant change in her personality, as if she had been fighting all the time before to be herself and to stay away from her duty. Now that she had accepted the necessity, it looked like she had unified the two sides of her thoughts, bringing her more peace. Perhaps those sides weren’t as different as she’d thought.

"Here we go," Sam said, as he touched the amulet that was hanging on his chest, feeling the energy that was stored inside it. The attunement meant that he always had a connection. Perhaps that was why it had turned into a permanent enchantment.

There were a couple other possibilities for that too, including the binding pattern and the gem silver that could store mana on its own, or even that he’d combined both of those with an aura, but whatever the reason was, monster cores were not the only way to make something last.

He could feel the eyes on him as he activated the amulet with his will. As he did, the pattern on it flared to life and a shimmer of energy flowed out around him, surrounding him in a sphere.

He was watching the guards, since they had the weakest Wisdom, and as soon as the enchantment activated, he felt their gazes sliding away from him. Their eyes became unfocused as they glanced away and a trace of confusion passed through their expression.

A couple of points of mana flowed away from the amulet at the same time, and then a few more as the guards brought their attention back to him. It looked like they were struggling to focus on him. After a moment, their gazes slid away again.

Both of the guards had heard the conversation and knew what was going on, so it was no surprise that they were trying to see through the enchantment. They knew he was there and what the amulet was supposed to do.

"That’s damned annoying," Lesat grumbled, as he shifted his gaze away from Sam. "You look all blurry and it’s making me uncomfortable. Every time I look at you, it’s like you slide away. I can still see you there, but it’s like looking at you through rain."

"Easy to lose track of you," Yeres grunted in agreement, before he turned away and just looked at the entrance instead. "You don’t seem too weird, though, just hard to see clearly. That curse isn’t getting my attention in the same way."

"You’re still there," Jeric agreed as he came over and patted Sam on the shoulder, "but definitely a bit blurry. Hopefully that helps to keep people from paying too much attention."

Jeric’s eyes were worried and there was a frown on his face as he studied his son, testing to see how much the amulet helped.

"It’s not a perfect fix," Krana agreed, as she looked towards Sam without any apparent difficulty, "but that should definitely discourage people. If they don’t know who you are already, that will help turn their eyes away before they can get too curious. How’s the mana expenditure?"

Sam touched the amulet with his senses. He’d felt points of mana flowing away every time someone looked at him, but it wasn’t too bad yet. The amulet was down 10 points over the last minute.

"Ten points so far," he reported. "It drains more whenever someone looks back at me. It seems like 500 points might be enough for 500 looks. Very straightforward."

"That should help," Jeric said, patting Sam on the shoulder again. "Unless there are a lot of people on the road, it will last a while. There aren’t many folks who will keep trying to look back after the first time, if they don’t find anything interesting there."

Sam nodded in agreement. Hopefully, his father was right, since that was what he had planned for when he created it. From the way Krana was looking at him, however, it was already clear that she didn’t feel much pressure. Either her class or her Wisdom was enough to see through it.

Ayala also didn’t seem to have too much of a problem looking at him, but after the first time, she politely looked away, studying the exit instead. Perhaps her Priestess subclass gave her an ability that helped, or maybe she was just helping him save mana. Either way, it looked like she was ready to go.

He deactivated the amulet with a brush of his thoughts, since there was no need to waste the mana in it. In the future, he’d have to figure out a way to exclude people from the effect, so that the people around him wouldn’t drain it.

Maybe he could add an attunement feature somehow, where he could imprint them onto it.... The ideas flowed through his mind until his father’s pat on his shoulder brought him back to the present.

"Let’s head out," Jeric said, encouraging Sam to push aside his worries. The amulet was a sign of progress and it would help them on the way home. "It’s a long road out of the tunnels and then we still have to get across the Abyssinian Plains."

The curving wall of the tunnel stretched into the distance as they left the cavern behind.

---

It didn’t take them too long to get through the tunnels and then past the remains of the basalt gnome nest. There was little left of that, except for the rubble where the monsters had built rough houses. It was strange to think they had been remnants of Outsiders and that was why they had building instincts.

Perhaps the basalt gnomes had once been a real race of Outsider gnomes that had invaded Aster Fall, but more likely they had been an intelligent elemental race.... After the World Law absorbed their essence and auras, they had merged with some pattern of nature in Aster Fall and turned out like this.

According to Krana, basalt gnomes were extremely common in the world and a significant problem in dwarven mines. They popped up with no pattern to their existence except that the area had to have dense Earth mana. Over time, they would eat the stones around them, growing thicker skins and evolving.

Their evolutions didn’t stop at the warlord, either. That was barely in the middle of their more common varieties. Apparently, there were even basalt gnomes that could reach the First Evolution, but the dwarves tried to eliminate them well before that.

Sam shook his head as he thought about it. He knew that the World Law was able to recycle essence into experience somehow, but he had the feeling that the Aura of Basalt from them was even more important. It didn’t seem like the World Law had the ability to affect the aura in the same way, though, since it passed through the conversion process intact, and that made him think.

He still didn’t know what an aura really was, but his class description and experience so far gave him some ideas. Auras had something to do with nature, both a part of the world itself and something in the personality of the monsters.

The gnomes had their Aura of Basalt, which represented their attunement to the earth. The salamanders had Umbral Flame, and the spiders had Rebellious Flame. Every aura was like a condensed concept of the monster. Perhaps it was even what gave them their identities.

It wasn’t like their soul, exactly, although that idea did pass through his mind. It was more a representation of their elemental or spiritual affinity, or maybe a part of the world that they represented.

Did the Outsiders steal a part of the world when they broke through the seal, which then turned into an aura? There had to be some reason that civilized races didn’t have one, or at least not one that he could claim.

It was an interesting line of thought, but he didn’t have any way to prove it yet, so he turned his attention back to the tunnels around them as they moved past the gnome nest. So far, there were no monsters here, only silent tunnels. The battles with the gnomes and then Outsider spiders must have driven everything away.

As they walked, he continued to practice with his skills, forming enchantments in his mind and theorizing how to improve his spell scrolls. When they stopped, he’d have to work on another message scroll, so they could use it later to keep in touch with his mother. It wouldn’t be fair to her to leave her without updates. Hopefully, she was doing alright.

It had taken Ayala’s party a couple of weeks to get through the tunnels, and then another month and a half to travel from Osera, so...even if they were quick about the return, it was going to be more than two months before they could make it home. It was much longer than he wanted, but at least it would give him some time to practice.

Time passed, accompanied by the granite of the tunnels as they walked on, heading toward the distant exit. For the first couple of days, nothing interesting happened except that he recharged his amulet on the first night and then worked on turning the salamander hide he had left into spell scrolls.

He had seven sheets of that, so he made two Earth, Fire, and Water scrolls, giving one of each to his father. Then, he used the last one and one of the new spider skin parchments to make two more scrolls for Wind, which was treading new ground. It was the same basic pattern, so he was confident in it working. He was looking forward to seeing what they could do.

He only used his own essence to infuse the scrolls this time, pouring both mana and aura into them, which made them a bit different from most spell scrolls. Each of them held 7-10 points before it was saturated, which seemed to be the limit for the salamander skin.

If he tried to push it past that, the parchment started to warp and the edges curled in as if it were about to burst into flame. The spider skin held more, up to 12 points on the one Wind scroll he tested.

There were clear differences between materials, which made him wonder if they’d encounter another flaw on the way home. He was almost looking forward to it.

When he was done with that, he had thirty-one spider skin parchments left, but he was planning to try more advanced things with them, once he decided on a design.

He had already started to combine his old knowledge with the binding patterns and support structures from the illusion amulet as he slowly created new ideas, theorizing ways to make the spell scrolls stronger, along with how to create an artifact or weapon that could help in battle. New designs were swiftly being added to his memory and his notebook.

Here and there, especially when he created the spell scrolls, small surges of experience flooded his body, but it was only a drop in the bucket compared to the amount he needed for 33. The major gain was that his efforts brought Essence Scribe up to Level 9.

He was pulled out of his thoughts about three days later as they moved into an unfamiliar area of the tunnels. There was a hiss of scales against the stone that didn’t belong, and his ears instantly swiveled toward it.

At the same time, Krana froze. She was walking just ahead of him and her eyes turned silver.

"Enemies," she said quietly, warning them all as her warhammer appeared in her hands.

Instantly, everyone’s postures changed, their weapons appearing. A spiral of crystal flame began to condense around Sam as he stepped to the side, getting some distance from the others so he could see more clearly.

His father’s skin began to radiate with golden-yellow light as Stamina and Earthen Barrier started to flow around him, ready to surge into existence. Jeric gripped the two hammers in his hands as he prepared to see what was ahead.

Their party of six was not the same that had come down into the tunnels. They were all close to level 30 or over it, with Ayala the lowest at 24. They were a significant force and a well-balanced party now.

They’d encountered a few rats and small things over the last day, but those had only run away from them. Whatever was ahead of them, it sounded like it was something bigger, but confidence flowed through Sam as he listened for it. There was an urge for battle in his blood that was singing to him, like a low, compelling drumbeat that called him to fight. His hands flexed, the talons arching.

The first thought that passed through his mind wasn’t to be worried about the enemies. It was "New crafting materials." Unless it was extremely strong, anything that bothered them was in for a bad time.

Krana’s eyes glowed more brightly as she waved them back, motioning them to move silently.

"It’s a pack of Ivory Scaled Pythons," she whispered, frowning as she kept ushering them back a bit farther. "Don’t rush ahead. They’re dangerous in a group and all around level 20. There’s a larger nest behind them that has taken up residence in a cavern nearby. I don’t know how they got here, since we didn’t see anything this strong on the way in, but it’s no wonder we didn’t see many smaller things in the area. They probably ate them all. I’m getting a bad feeling about something, but I can’t pinpoint it yet."

Once they were back far enough to have a conversation, Sam looked towards Krana and asked the natural question.

"How many are there?" If there were only a few, she wouldn’t have seemed so serious about it. He’d never heard of Ivory Scaled Pythons before, but there were a lot of different monsters in the world.

"About twenty," she replied, her tone low. "They have powerful bodies, and it’s a bad idea to get tangled up in the midst of a pack. They’ll crush you before you can blink and they’re extremely fast. With our group, we can probably get through them, but we’ll need to...."

Her voice trailed off as she shot a look over her shoulder, and then she spun to the front as she shouted. "Get ready to fight! They’re following us!"

A smile spread across Sam’s face as a spiral of crystal flame poured out of him, swiftly looping around his body in a widening pattern. He hadn’t been much of a fighter before arriving in the cavern, but now the desire for a challenge was burning in his blood.

It had been growing ever since the battle with the gnomes, when he’d nearly died. Absorbing the essence from the spiders had accelerated it, turning it into a wild flame. Instead of making him lose his reason, the desire was blending with Crystal Focus, highlighting the world around him in intense detail as time seemed to slow down.

Even if they were dangerous, he was looking forward to seeing what these pythons were made of. There hadn’t been anything interesting to fight for the last few days now, ever since he finished the amulet, and he had missed the feeling of a challenge.

His father had his hammers in his hands and the guards drew their swords now as well. Ayala stepped to the rear of the party as her hands spread outward. "Bless," she whispered as soft white light flew outwards from her like rain, forming into a spell of some type as it landed on each of them.

When it touched him, Sam felt the spell merge into his skin, followed by a surge of strength and toughness. The spell was enhancing his Strength and Constitution by a few points each. He’d never really been in a group battle before. No wonder people wanted Priests along.

At that moment, three white-scaled heads whipped around the curve of the tunnel, heading straight for them. They were moving so fast that they were almost a blur, like white whips streaking across the stone. The details were clear to him as Crystal Focus slowed everything down.

A surge of miniature stars rushed through his blood, like an echo of the essence he’d absorbed, as it brought additional focus and drive. It was an internal starscape singing to him of battle and blood. He had just enough time to realize that this was what the essence system was all about as the pythons arrived.

Ivory Scaled Python (Subterranean)

The three pythons were at least fifteen feet long and nearly a foot wide, with angular, diamond-shaped heads. Their scales were the size of a thumbnail, overlapping down their length in an interlocking pattern. Their eyes were pure red, giving them a slightly demonic look as it contrasted with their white scales.

Their group didn’t have time to get into a better battle formation, and the pythons wouldn’t have respected it anyway. They were too fast to stop easily. Instead of attacking the first thing they saw, they had some intelligence and they went for the weakest targets that they could identify. Two of them whipped like white lightning toward the guards and the third headed for Ayala.

The guards looked nervous, their eyes widening as they hacked toward the serpents. Ayala, on the other hand, was calm as she raised a translucent yellow barrier in front of herself. An Earth shield. She gestured with her other hand and two walls of stone began to rise in front of their group, dividing the tunnel.

Each wall covered about three-quarters of the path, one connected to the right side and the other connected to the left side about five feet farther on. It was a funnel of sorts, to break up the serpents’ path if any more came.

The key point was that Ayala hadn’t simply blocked the tunnel. It looked like she wanted to kill the rest of them too. Perhaps she realized that it was inevitable, so she’d started to fortify their position.

Sam could have sent crystal flame arrows ripping through all three pythons, but as he turned to look at the guards, he held back. He wanted to see how they fought first. If they needed help, he’d jump in.

It was an opportunity to study their classes that he wasn’t going to pass up. He was familiar with his father’s class, as well as Krana and Ayala’s to some extent, but he didn’t know much about the Guard class that these two had, or if they even had subclasses.

Guard was a fairly common class, a variant of Warrior that focused more on defending. He wanted to know how good they were and what the differences were between unique and rare classes and regular ones. A moment later, when he saw what was happening, a wince passed across his face.

Krissshhh.

Two crystal flame arrows shot out from the spiral around him. By that point, the serpents were completely wrapped around the guards like tangled, ivory balls. The guards’ attempt to attack them had only left an opening for the lightning-fast serpents. They had already surged around the swords and then wrapped themselves around the guards’ arms and waists, before tangling up their legs and starting to squeeze.

Their heads were at the top of that pile, their jaws unhinged as they started to bite down towards the guards’ skulls. That was when the arrows hit, slicing through the pythons’ heads. The snakes didn’t even register what had hit them before they died and their scales didn’t put up any noticeable defense.

Their bodies went limp, slowly loosening their grasp on the guards, and Sam just shook his head. The snakes had been too fast for the guards to even react appropriately. Their Agility had to be a lot higher than the guards, or perhaps it was a racial trait.

At the same time, the third python rebounded from Ayala’s shield and before it could do anything else, its head was crushed by Jeric’s hammer, which shot in from the side. A moment later, a second blow followed, breaking the snake’s spine as he flung it across the hall.

"More are coming!" Krana warned, as she looked toward the front. "The wall will help to slow them down a little, but they’re very fast."

The two guards were pale, shivering as they tried to unwrap themselves from the pythons, and Krana went over to give them a hand. She yanked at one tail and then another, pulling them away so the guards could extract themselves.

Their classes either didn’t have shielding barriers or they just didn’t have enough Agility to deal with these pythons. The snakes were able to easily maneuver around them, which left them at a loss. It probably would have been difficult for the pythons to crush the guards that quickly, given their Strength and Constitution, but it wouldn’t have ended well for them. It was no surprise that nearly everything in the tunnels here had been eaten.

Sam shook his head again as he turned to look ahead, waiting for the rest of the pythons to arrive.

Battlefield Reclaimer 49: New Crafting Materials

As the hissing sound of the approaching pythons got closer, Sam’s talons flexed and the crystal spiral around him intensified. At the same time, he glanced toward his father to make sure he was ready. Jeric was also looking toward the front now, his muscles rippling beneath the tattered ratskin tunic that he was still wearing.

At the sight, a practical thought passed through Sam’s mind, and he turned to look back at the pythons on the ground. They were pretty big, which meant there was a lot of snakeskin. He and his father were both still wearing their old clothes. Even if he turned some of the skins into spell parchments, maybe they could make some better clothes out of the rest of it.

He still wanted to see what the runes were on Ayala and Krana’s clothes that kept them clean and durable, and experimenting with snakeskin would give him a chance to try it out.

As for the approaching snakes, he barely gave them a second thought. He’d seen what they could do so far, and they were just crafting materials that had volunteered to deliver themselves to him.

These pythons were just beasts, not Outsiders or basalt gnomes with lesser evolutions to make them stronger. They might have an ability to use, but it looked like speed and strength were their main focus. That was the main difference between a beast and a monster.

Beasts could be dangerous, but they typically only had their powerful bodies and maybe one or two abilities to rely on. Monsters were something else entirely, with classes and the abilities to match.

The guards’ problem in this fight was that they had a common class and apparently no shielding abilities to create a barrier or any enhanced perception skills to help them evade. Without those, they were left with just their Agility, which wasn’t enough against the pythons who specialized in it. If it had been a more straight-up fight at their speed, they would have done better.

Sam glanced toward his father, taking in the radiating energies of Stamina and Earth mana all around him that were markedly different from what the guards had, and then revised his thought. A little better.

Perhaps his father’s Earth Sense and his own Crystal Focus were helping them more than he realized. Either way, it was showing the difference between common classes and rare or unique ones. The guards should have been using their Stamina too, but they hadn’t had the chance before the pythons wrapped around them.

At that moment, the next python arrived. Its speed was slowed down by having to cut back and forth, but it still slithered around the barriers like a whip. Its form lashed to one side and then the other as it came through the opening and shot toward them. Right on its tail, another python’s head followed, poking out a moment later.

For a moment, Sam hesitated, wondering how much he should help. He was confident in being able to kill these pythons as long as he had enough essence, but would it steal the experience from everyone else if he killed them all? He wasn’t sure on the etiquette of fighting in a party. He’d never done it before.

At the same time, he wanted to fight them himself. He wanted to rip them apart with his bare hands and spells, cutting through the pack until he found the source.... And then his mind halted as he analyzed what he had just thought, recognizing that it was quite different from a month before.

Then, he pushed the thought aside with a mental shrug. He liked the new Sam better and he didn’t see a reason to doubt himself. He wasn’t going to suddenly go on a killing spree and act like a real demon. It wasn’t a bad thing to enjoy a fight.

A half-dozen crystal flame arrows formed in the air around him, waiting for a target, but instead of killing the new pythons at once, he waited a moment, letting the others move in. He could be the patient caster, reserving his essence for critical moments. His aura was already covering the battlefield, including the two pythons, so he could probably get the experience from them.

Just to make sure, he sent a tiny spark of crystal flame at each of the snakes, about a tenth of a point of essence, zapping them on the head. The pythons were surging toward his father this time, who was at the front of the group, and when the stars hit, they writhed around. It was like a slap on the head that was enough to make them hesitate, but they recovered instantly and surged forward.

They slammed into the golden-yellow barrier around Jeric, their heads striking it in a flare of light as they were pushed away. Their instinct was to wrap around their prey, but the barrier kept them from getting any sort of a grip on him.

As they tried to wrap around him, Jeric’s hammer swung down, crushing first one skull and then the other. A moment later, both forms crumpled to the ground, their lives gone. It was just in time, as more pythons were already slithering around the wall.

The rest of the fight went as expected. The pythons were not a challenge to any of them except the guards, who just had the wrong classes to be effective against their speed. Yeres and Lesat did summon up their Stamina after the first few snakes kept coming, which made them move a little faster, but it didn’t look like they were able to shape it into a barrier.

The difference between classes was becoming clear, and it made Sam grateful that his subclass and his father’s class had both worked out. Without those, they wouldn’t have been any better off than the guards. Battlefield Reclaimer was powerful, but it wasn’t a combat class by itself. Those skills all came from his Outsider abilities and Scion of the Crystal Flame.

Now that her class was unlocked, Ayala was a force to be reckoned with. She blocked every attempt to reach her with a glowing, yellow Earth barrier. It looked like it was the same type of shielding ability that Krana and his father had. It had to be something that came with most Earth classes.

Krana’s efforts in the battle were also extremely effective. Her eyes were bright silver and she seemed to predict where the pythons would be as she moved to block them, her war hammer swinging before they even arrived. There were beads of sweat on her forehead, which said it wasn’t easy, but she didn’t have any trouble keeping up.

Before long, there were more than a dozen dead pythons scattered around them, and they went forward to clear out the rest of the nest that was blocking the path. There was no way that they were willing to leave them there as they continued on. The pythons were dangerous hunters and would only have crept up on them from behind.

When it was finished, there were twenty-two python corpses scattered across the stone tunnels. It didn’t take long for him to find out that anyone in the party could take the experience from them.

"It’s something to do with our auras," Krana explained as she answered his questions. "As long as you’re in a battle together, your aura is blending with everyone else’s, and so you can take the experience from shared kills, even if you didn’t hit it."

In the end, they divided the pythons up evenly, with everyone getting four, except for the guards. They got three, since they hadn’t helped as much. After nearly dying to the first two snakes, they didn’t even complain about it.

Congratulations, Scion. You have used your Class abilities to slay your enemies.

You gain 88,455 Class experience.

Total Class Experience: 401,240 / 533,000

Total General Experience: 406,130 / 533,000

The experience surged through Sam with its usual bubbling merriment. It was almost as much as he could gain in a single fight, if his theory of what the World Law allowed were true, but it wasn’t enough to bring him to the next level. That would take a couple more fights still.

As he looked around, he saw the glow of energy surrounding Ayala and Krana, which meant they had leveled up though, and after a moment, his father also had the same glow, which meant he’d just hit 32.

Sam bent down next to the pythons, but as he searched for the auras on them, there was only a sense of emptiness. A sort of comfortable absence, as if he were touching the world. He frowned and searched again, looking for the thread of energy, but there was nothing there.

His forehead wrinkled as he looked down at them. Puzzlement and frustration flickered through him. He wanted more auras and he’d been looking forward to gathering all of these. What had happened?

He looked back through his memories of the battle and to when the pythons had first appeared, and after a moment, he realized that these had never had a glow of aura around them. The only energy that had been running across their bodies were their scales and white energy that had to have been a form of Stamina for their race.

It didn’t make sense for a moment, until he thought about how that wizardess had also not had an aura, and then he combined it with his current theories on monsters and Outsiders.

He had just been thinking that there was a difference between monsters and beasts. Apparently, he’d discovered one more. The pythons weren’t monsters..., they were beasts. If all of his theories were true, that meant they were natural inhabitants of Aster Fall, just like the civilized races. These were not monsters who had been created from the essence of Outsiders.

It didn’t mean they were harmless, since clearly they had been trying to kill him, but it suggested that the world had once been this way. Perhaps there had been no monsters originally, before Outsiders appeared. There had just been beasts and the civilized races living in the world.

Then, Outsiders had come and things had changed... Probably slowly, over time, or after the war that had caused them all to fall out with each other. That had resulted in the current state of affairs.

It meant that the rats in the tunnels actually were fragments of monsters, just like the salamanders and basalt gnomes, even though they were very weak. He suspected that the pythons had even been eating those rats, but they hadn’t gained any auras from them. Perhaps they couldn’t be passed on that way.

It was a bit frustrating, since it would have been a nice pile of auras, but he supposed he couldn’t ask for too much. It had been a pretty easy fight and the experience was good.

Despite that, the pythons did have something left to offer. Sam rubbed his chin before he turned to look at Yeres and Lesat, a slight smile forming. The guards might not be that good as fighters, but they were definitely free hands.

He was going to need some help skinning these things.

"If you help me, I’ll help you," he offered simply, as he explained what he wanted. "If you do, I’ll see what I can do about enchanting a defensive barrier for you, perhaps into your armor or shield. You just need to help me with various tasks on the way home. Deal?"

It was an opportunity to get some cheap labor, which would make things easier, and at the same time he could study their equipment as he practiced enchanting. Either way, he would win. He didn’t mind giving them some enchantments either, since it would make their whole party stronger. It might also help to bring the guards over to his side more, cementing their opinion of him as a human.

He would just be sure to leave his mark on the enchantments, so that he could take control of them again if he needed to. That was a feature of placing his soul mark on items that he’d discovered in the last few days, although he hadn’t used the symbol much since he made his stylus. As long as an enchantment he’d crafted was within his aura and marked, he could still connect with it.

If the guards wanted to sell the items when they got home, that was up to them. They could count it as a tip for their service. They would still be bound by the contracts to stay silent about him and to protect him, unless they wanted to give up a lot of levels.

Lesat’s eyes widened as he heard Sam’s offer, and he turned to Yeres with a nod, encouraging him to agree. It wasn’t every day he got offered an enchantment that could possibly save his life. The battle with the pythons had been terrifying for both of them. The snakes were so fast that they’d barely been able to see them moving.

Yeres didn’t hesitate much longer, glancing at Lesat and then toward Sam before he gave a slow nod of agreement.

"I’ll help too," Jeric chimed in. "We don’t want to spend too long here, but that’s a lot of good materials."

"The skins are actually worth a decent amount," Krana agreed, moving to help as well. "They can be sold back in the city if there’s extra left. The skins are a favorite of leather workers and the scales have a high demand among alchemists for pills or potions that boost agility temporarily."

Only Ayala refrained, shaking her head slightly as she looked at the task in front of them. Skinning snakes wasn’t really a task for a church princess. Sam shot a glance over his shoulder at her as he headed towards the first python, but there wasn’t any disdain on her face. She just didn’t seem interested. Perhaps she didn’t want the materials or the wealth from them.

He turned back to the job at hand with a mental shrug, sizing up exactly how best to skin the pythons. A moment later, he was joined by the others, including his two new assistants, who were cautiously enthusiastic about the whole thing.

The offer of an enchantment marked a turning point in their behavior.

---

It took a couple of hours to skin all of the pythons and then for Sam to treat the hides with a low-level flame. He took the opportunity to purify them slightly, which helped to keep them supple, almost as if they’d been appropriately tanned.

In the end, there were twenty-two new rolls of Ivory Scale Python hide, which mostly went into Sam and Jeric’s bags. Krana also took four, but she waved away the rest, saying that it was enough for her share. As for the guards, they were content enough with the offer of an enchantment, and Sam decided to start on that the same evening.

Each hide was about fifteen feet long and nearly three feet wide when it was stretched out. When they were rolled, they were fairly compact, but each one was still three feet long and about half a foot wide. When they were put away in their dimensional bags, there was barely any room left, which also raised an important issue.

Storage space.

Each bag only had about five cubic feet of space inside and there were already a good number of other things in there. Even when the hides were split up between their two bags, there wasn’t a lot of room left.

The list of things Sam needed to enchant was growing longer, and he wished he could just set up a workshop here. He needed to make better dimensional bags, if he could. He had the feeling it would take a while to figure that out. He wasn’t even sure it was possible for him yet. He had only taken a brief look at the runes on the bags, but they had almost all been unfamiliar to him. In one way, that was good, since it would teach him more, but he needed the time to study it.

He also needed to enchant the guards’ armor so they didn’t die as easily on the way home, make some clothes for himself and his father, study the durability and self-cleaning runes on Ayala and Krana’s gear, make new spell scrolls, make himself a better offensive or defense artifact..., and so on. His father still needed more equipment and he wanted to make some gifts for his mother and sister.

Unfortunately, a lot of what he wanted to do would have to wait until he got home, except for what he could work on while they were resting. He rearranged the list of things to do in his mind, sorting it into an order of priority.

At the moment, dimensional bags were not at the top, no matter how much he wanted them to store more materials. That spot was reserved for things that were useful in battle. The guards’ armor was going to be first, followed by new jerkins for him and his father. Maybe Jeric could make those while he enchanted the armor.

His attention was pulled away from his plans as he noticed Krana was staring down the tunnels ahead of them. They had just finished putting away all of the snake skins and were getting ready to leave again, when he noticed what she was doing.

The Seer was frowning, her eyes shading to silver as she searched the area ahead of them. After a moment, she turned back to them with a troubled expression on her face.

"There’s something big happening ahead," she said with a deeper frown. "Many things are moving, like a series of small packs of monsters and beasts. Past that, there’s something else, some type of bigger monster, but I can’t get a good enough feeling from its aura to tell what it is. It’s shrouded in a golden haze that’s blocking my vision. It sends shivers down my spine when I look. It must be what drove the pythons here."

She paused, as her eyes searched the dark tunnel for more information that wasn’t forthcoming, and then she shook her head as she sent a long glance with them. Her back straightened, her hands resting on her hips as her expression became harder.

"There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the next closest thing is a day or two away at their current rate, so we have some time to prepare." She turned to look down the tunnel again, her attention drawn back to whatever she could see.

"The bad news...," she continued as she reached down to the war hammer at her belt, gripping the handle tightly. Her expression became even more fierce, her tone sharpening until every word she spoke was as sharp as a cliff. "Is that whatever that bigger thing is behind them, it’s coming this way. And it’s pushing all of those other things ahead of it."

Battlefield Reclaimer 50: Preparing for Battle

Sam’s attention locked onto Krana as his thoughts raced, trying to figure out what could have scared a pack of Ivory Scale Pythons so badly that they’d fled from it rather than fighting. Whatever it was, it had to be more terrifying than they were, since the pythons had attacked them instantly.

"How far away is the first pack?" Jeric asked instantly, moving forward next to Krana as he looked down the tunnel too, searching for the enemies that were approaching. His eyes were narrow as he tried to assess the danger.

A moment later, Sam was there as well, his senses sweeping out through the tunnel ahead of him as he joined in on the search. The star on his hand was silent, which suggested there was no flaw nearby, and he couldn’t feel any sources of essence, but he didn’t know what the limits of the star were.

On the way here, Ayala’s party hadn’t encountered anything like this, which meant something had changed. The only thing he could think of was that the flaw had attracted something. If monsters were the remnants of Outsiders, they might still have an instinct to be drawn to essence, which had been radiating out from the flaw.

If that were true, it meant that any flaw was going to be a lure pulling monsters towards it, as if something in their souls were stirring them to return to the place from which they’d come. It made a flaw even more dangerous than they were already.

He couldn’t feel anything in the tunnel except silence now that the pythons were dead, but his aura also only extended about forty feet. His range wasn’t anywhere near as effective as Krana’s. She could actually see into the distance, which meant they were going to have to rely on her for advance warning unless something with essence appeared. If anything like that got close enough, he should be able to sense it.

"It’s twenty miles away, or maybe a hair more," Krana replied, her frown deepening. "It should be here within a day or two if it keeps up the current pace. I knew I had a bad feeling about those pythons. Whatever’s behind this movement, it’s definitely something we need to be cautious about. Monsters like these don’t scare easily, so it’s going to be something dangerous."

For a moment, he’d thought it would be a smooth journey home. Obviously, that was asking for too much. It wouldn’t be as easy to leave the tunnels as he’d hoped. The rest of the party crowded around, looking toward the Seer and then into the distance of the tunnels as an uneasy silence spread across the area.

"We can prepare an area to meet them," Sam spoke up at last, breaking the tension as he tried to come up with a plan. "A series of barricades here. I’ll need a day or so to enchant Yeres and Lesat’s armor with some sort of barrier, and they’ll need to work on their ability to charge it."

He’d discovered that most adventurers had some form of Mana Control, or at least a lesser skill known as Mana Infusion, which allowed them to use enchantments. He hadn’t asked if the guards did, but if not, they would have to figure it out. At the moment, they were the weak link in their group.

"A barricade is good. I don’t think it’s going to be so easy to avoid them," she agreed, nodding slowly as she looked into the distance again. "There might also be more than one of the things at the back."

"You said there was a cavern that these pythons were using?" Jeric turned towards Krana as he scanned over the tunnels, searching for where the pythons had been gathered. "Perhaps we can barricade it from the inside."

"A small one, about a hundred feet ahead on the right," Krana agreed as she gestured ahead. "It might be too small for our purposes. I’ll look for another."

The silence of the tunnels echoed around all of them as a sense of danger thrilled across their spines. There was no good way to avoid what was coming. Even if they just tried to block off a cavern and stay out of the way, the monsters here were used to tunnels and could probably dig straight through the walls to get to them.

All they could do was try to prepare. This battle would be the judge of whether or not they made it out alive.

---

The cavern the pythons had been using was little more than a narrow cave that went back about a dozen feet into the stone. It wasn’t suitable for their defense, so they moved on to the next larger one that Krana could find, which was about an hour’s walk ahead of them.

When they got there, the opening was a broken gash in the wall to their right that led into a cavern about nearly ten times the size of the one that had held the mana pool and much taller. It was an oval that was easily two hundred feet deep, fifty across at the widest point, and about twenty feet from ground to ceiling. There were jagged stalactites hanging from the ceiling over one half, along with the usual luminescent mushrooms and lichen decorating the walls.

There was also an old beast lair on one side, filled with scattered bones and fur, and a thin rivulet of water that ran down the back wall. It was too small to be easily gathered, but it might provide some liquid if a beast were desperate. It looked like a tunnel boar or some other large animal had lived here, not too long before. Most likely, the pythons had eaten it.

As soon they were inside, Jeric and Krana began to divide up tasks, putting the guards and themselves to work as they started to plan how to fortify the area. After a moment, Ayala joined them, offering her Earth skills to create new walls and a maze.

"We’ll need a sort of maze to slow things down, with some traps, deadfalls, and escape routes," Krana summarized as she looked at the area in front of them. As a dwarf, defending underground was something she was very familiar with. Even if she hadn’t done too much of it herself, she had grown up seeing dwarven defenses. The idea here was to slow down the monsters, to block them from reaching the party while killing them, and to have an escape route back to the tunnels if needed.

It would be easier if the monsters decided to just move on past, but that was unlikely. If they were chasing essence..., Sam frowned as he debated whether or not he should leave the group. Then he shook his head. His father, and Krana as well, would never allow it. At best, it would only break the group in half and make each half more vulnerable. Besides, he didn't know if the monsters were actually after him or not.

The best thing to do was to make this cavern as defensible as possible, and that meant he needed to get to work. Instead of feeling frightened by the oncoming battle, he felt excited. He could feel the desire to tear apart the challengers in his blood. After a moment, he pushed the thought aside. It was just an instinct to deal with, like any other, but it did help to put him in a more confident mood.

While the others started on the plan for the defenses, he turned to enchantment. There was a lot to do before the enemies arrived.

"Lesat," he called out, as ideas started to run through his mind. "Let me see your armor."

The guard came over and, after a moment, obediently removed his breastplate, shield, and sword, setting them down on a stone that Sam had chosen as a work table. It didn’t take Sam too long to measure them and to get an idea of how to proceed.

"I’ll need a couple of hours," he announced, as he handed the sword back. "Leave these two here for now, and I’ll start working on them. I’ll do the sword after, if there’s time."

He only had three auras left, and he didn’t plan on using any of them on the guards’ armor. Instead, he was going to add a simple, temporary enchantment for a mana barrier. It wouldn’t take him too long to engrave it, and if he infused most of his essence pool into it, it would have enough energy to last for a while, probably a couple of months.

There was a stark difference between his early enchanting efforts and his current skills. The idea of engraving a mana barrier as a defense would have baffled him once. Now, he recognized it as one of the simpler things he could do. It wasn’t much different than a spell scroll.

He was planning to use the same triple-linked spiral at the center as the amulets had, along with one containment circle. There was a lot of space on the shield and armor, which gave him a wide area to cover, but he couldn’t make it too big. The bigger he made it, the more mana it would hold and the stronger it would potentially be, but he doubted the guards had enough mana to charge something that covered all of it.

Instead, he’d make an enchantment diagram that was about two hands across. That should result in a decent barrier. He could even add some of the crystallized Earth mana that he had in a pouch, which should help to empower the enchantment. At the very least, it should make it last longer and turn the formation into something that could hold a charge of its own.

Ten points or twenty points maybe..., since the base material itself wasn’t magical. Whatever the result, it would be something to help keep the guards alive.

Without saying anything else, he sent Lesat back to help the others. Then he took a moment to scour the work table’s surface with his crystal flame and smooth it out, so that he could sketch on it. He set the armor to one side as he began to draw a diagram on the center of the table, his mind filling with runes that spiraled through his consciousness, striking bolts of crystal light from one another.

All around him, the cavern began to hum with activity and the slow thrummm of earthen walls rising from the ground.

---

The next day and a half passed in a blur of activity as the party readied the cavern for the oncoming assault. There was always a chance that the monsters would bypass them, even if it wasn’t very likely, so the first barricade was a simple stone wall that blocked the opening to the cavern. It was moderately reinforced, but thin enough that Ayala could remove it in an instant if needed.

None of them thought the monsters would do that though. It would be out of character for them. Whenever a wave of monsters attacked a village, they ripped through everything in sight. They even dug through the ground and tore everything they could find out of the cellars. Hiding from them was futile.

If someone was too weak to fight, the only thing they could do was run and try to put enough distance between them that the monsters wouldn’t bother. That was also why monster hordes were so dangerous. They left nothing behind, as if they had a vendetta against the entire world and wanted to consume it.

Which they did, based on everything Sam had put together so far about the history of Aster Fall. He shook his head as he looked down at the armor in front of him. He had finished with both breastplates now and he was adding the final touches on the two shields.

He had considered for a long time if there were anything around the cavern that he could enchant instead, which would help them more than this, but in the end he’d decided that there wasn’t. All of his enchantments were item-based, which meant he’d have to enchant individual stone spikes or maybe a single wall at best, and it would only eventually break.

Ayala’s earthen walls and his own Essence Shield were just as good and much more efficient overall, so there was no reason to waste the effort. If there were time, he might consider enchanting the final defensive wall, but it would still be a much larger project than what he was doing now. Regular stone didn’t take enchantments well, so he’d have to pour a great deal of crystallized Earth mana into it too, which would be a huge waste.

Instead of that, what he really needed to do was to try and create better weapons for everyone, some more armor for his father, or defensive artifacts. Some more grenades would be good too, but he’d have to change the pattern on them if he wanted to do that. The umbral fireball he’d made before had been incredibly unstable. It wasn’t something he wanted to store.

When these shields were done, the guards would be able to create two barriers for themselves. One would come from their breastplate, which was focused on magical defense, and the other would come from their shields, which were focused on physical defense. Everyone else already had mana shields of one type or another that did the same thing.

He took a break from infusing the shield in front of him to glance over at the enchantments on the breastplates that he’d completed earlier. The name that the World Law had given his work wasn’t anything complex, but making both of them had been enough to level his Enchanter profession to 17, and using the crystallized Earth mana as part of the runes had worked out better than he’d expected.

Breastplate of Earth Shield.

[Enchantment: Earth Shield (Advanced).

This enchantment is designed to deflect magical attacks. At will, the wearer can summon an Earth-aligned mana shield in a sphere around themselves. The pattern is inlaid with crystallized Earth mana, which helps it to hold an independent charge and raises the tier to Advanced.

Mana Charge: 25 / 25.

Estimated Duration: 2.5 months.]

The enchantments on the breastplate were designed around three runes connected in a three-armed spiral: one for mana, one for shield, and one for Earth, which gave it an elemental alignment to match the crystallized mana. They runes were surrounded by a binding circle that linked into the end of each spiral, which was itself filled with mana storage, stabilization, and activation runes.

This type of temporary enchantment was much simpler than his amulet or anything designed to operate on its own. Part of the binding circle around it simply linked it to the will of the person who activated it, which meant that it didn’t need anything complicated to tell it what to do.

It was simple and straightforward, even less complicated than the first spears he’d made. Those had been creative, resulting in more unique items and ones that had some elemental qualities of their own, as well as a more comprehensive runic pattern that covered the item and improved it in many ways, from durability to force.

His understanding of enchanting had improved a lot since then, allowing him to more quickly put down these enchantments, but they weren’t as efficient or as effective. They were basically enchantment patterns slapped down forcefully onto the items, and as a result they would probably create stress points across the armor or warp them over time.

He chose not to tell the guards about that, since he wasn’t sure it would happen, but he still felt slightly annoyed by having to create these items so quickly. He would rather have focused his attention on improving his craft, even if it resulted in slower experience.

The mana charge on the breastplates came from using the crystallized Earth mana, which he had melted into every rune when he engraved it, almost like a type of ink. It hadn’t taken him too much effort to pour his essence into it after that and to give it the initial charge. It should work to defend the guards against several attacks, however much 25 mana could do. It was quite a bit, so hopefully it would hold out for a while, even if it weren’t as strong as him using essence directly.

The shield he was working on now was similar, almost an exact copy except that the mana rune was replaced with force, which would help to focus the enchantment toward more physical attacks, even if it was still powered with mana.

It didn’t take him too much longer to finish the enchantment and to charge the runes. When he was done, a small surge of experience hit him, followed by the shield’s prompt.

Congratulations, Enchanter. You have created an Enchanted Item at the Advanced Tier.

You gain 2,700 Class experience.

A moment later, the description of the shield followed.

Shield of Earthen Defense.

[Enchantment: Earthen Shield (Advanced).

Mana Charge: 27 / 27.

This enchantment is designed to deflect physical attacks. At will, the wearer can summon an Earth-aligned physical shield in front of themselves. The pattern is inlaid with crystallized Earth mana, which helps it to hold an independent charge and raises the tier to Advanced.

Estimated Duration: 2.7 months.]

The description of this one was slightly different and it held two more points of mana, which Sam chalked up to his increasing practice and perhaps a bit more crystallized Earth mana. Unlike the other, this shield looked like it would create a wall-type barrier, or perhaps extend the edges of the shield into a physical defense. If his guess were right, both the magic and physical barriers would be a glowing, yellow shield similar to what Krana and Ayala could summon.

He nodded as he set the shield aside and moved on to the next one. If it gave him the same amount of experience, it should be just enough to level his Enchanter profession to 18.

---

A fortress of walls had formed in the front half of the cavern, creating a maze that blocked the path from the doorway. The walls of the maze rose up to the ceiling, closing as Sam turned to watch. The idea was to slow down anything coming through the entrance, hopefully confusing it. Their various perception abilities would let them sense what it was before it arrived, so they could prepare for it. Just on the exit to the maze, there was a wide-open killing field where a number of traps and drop pits had been constructed, all of them covered over at the moment.

The back half of the cavern, where Sam was working, had been turned into a more fortified structure with three layers of walls around it that were about twelve feet tall, including some walkways on the backside that acted as ramparts. There was enough room to fight from the top of each wall, and Ayala would be standing by to raise them the rest of the way. She had struggled to raise so many walls over the last day and a half, with many pauses to meditate and recover her mana, but she had managed it in the end.

"The first wave is nearly here," Krana announced as she looked into the distance, her eyes shining with power. "It’s a group of Horned Water Lizards, all around level 15 to 25 again. That seems to be the average level of most adult monsters here. There’s only ten in this pack. About two hours behind them, there’s another wave of Grey Shard Stalkers, and that’s going to be a lot more difficult."

"Grey Shard Stalkers?" Jeric spoke up before Sam could ask the same question, frowning. "What are those?"

"Think of...lizardmen, basically, about five to six feet tall," Krana replied. "They’re a wide-spread monster race underground with classes that focus around hunting, archery, and stealth. They often use poison on their weapons. It looks like there are some Seekers with them as well, which will definitely have bows."

"We’ll be ready for them," Jeric replied, his knuckles turning white as he wrapped one fist into the other and squeezed. "Nothing else to do here except fight."

His words were accompanied by the dour expressions of the two guards, but they only gave a slow nod of acknowledgement. Whether they liked it or not, they were trapped here and the only way out was to fight as hard as possible.

"Your armor is ready," Sam announced, drawing the attention of Lesat and Yeres as he walked towards them. "Try it on."

They looked at it with doubtful expressions as they accepted, but when they saw his encouraging nod, they started to put it on. They didn’t trust it yet, but they’d seen his amulet and some other work, so they didn’t hesitate much either.

Krana looked over to the guards, as they were working to buckle the armor back on and nodded. Then she turned to Ayala, a smile across her face.

"Did I ever tell you the story of the Siege of Torinfast?" she began, as she drew the girl’s attention, working to change the mood. "Arbalests the size of wagons lined the towers there, facing off against a horde of Ruby Inferno Scarabs that were even bigger. The battle went on for three weeks and left half of Runekeld’s farming caverns in ashes before the legions and the Battleguard managed to bring down the last of them...."

Her voice was calm and confident, speaking of victories of the past, as she drew the attention of everyone in the cavern. The guards couldn’t help but turn towards her, pulled by something in her voice, as illusory images began to fill the air above Krana’s hands, growing stronger and more vibrant as she spoke.

Krana smiled as she gestured more widely and the illusion became even more real, spreading across the air to fill half the cavern with vibrant colors, marking out the shining ruby forms of the scarab queens and the long lines of grey-armored dwarves.

There was no dwarven Skald present to sing the battle or sound the drums, but she wouldn’t be her father’s daughter if she let this battle start without something to stir their hearts.

Monsters had threatened Aster Fall for time beyond memory, from one Breaking to the next, but for now, the walls still held.

Battlefield Reclaimer 51: Horned Water Lizards

The splintering sound of cracking stone exploded through the cavern as the wall blocking the tunnel shuddered under the impact of the Horned Water Lizards. Jeric turned to look at his son as he heard it, making sure that Sam was holding up alright. When he saw Sam’s confident expression, he only nodded and looked forward again, feeling a bit conflicted.

They were standing just inside the maze, close enough to the tunnel that they could sense what was on the other side. On the other side, there were a dozen Horned Water Lizards. He could see them clearly in the range of his Earth Sense, and as he watched, the three largest ones backed up and then ran forward again, lowering their heads.

The monsters were twelve feet long from their heads to the tips of their tails, with powerful limbs corded with muscle. They were low to the ground, only about three feet tall at the most, and covered in crescent-shaped, blue-grey scales that overlapped in rippling patterns like waves.

Their eyes were intense, aquamarine gems that glinted like seaspray in the sun, remnants of an ocean that was very foreign to these caves. Among other things, it marked their Outsider origin, even if they were only regular monsters now.

Their foreheads were tipped with three long crystal horns, with one behind the other two to create a triangle. The horns curled backwards slightly and their texture resembled the notched lines on a seashell. They were also surrounded by a constant flow of water that surged along them, glowing the same color as the lizards’ eyes.

As the monsters charged toward the wall again, that water surrounding their horns rose up into thick spikes that extended their reach by a foot and added the crushing force of the tide to their attack.

The lizards could smell the people on the other side, and they were hungry. They’d been running for days now to get away from the thing that was coming, but it was a little way behind them now. They had enough time to dig out the food that was hiding here.

Jeric shook his head as he thought about what had brought them to this point. The earlier battles had all happened so quickly that there had barely been any time to think about them, but this one was different. Waiting behind a wall as monsters tried to break in was making it difficult not to think about his choices in life.

He had never wanted to bring Sam into all of this or have him risk his life fighting monsters. Even now, he just wanted them to get home and live a simple life, using their new classes to make a place for themselves. The Guardian Star on Sam’s hand had changed all of that though, as much as he didn’t like it.

The lizards attacking the wall made it clear they were going to have to fight here, whether he liked it or not. There would be even more of it in the future, if the Guardian’s words were true, ...and the flaw with the spiders had shown that they were.

He’d never seen anything like that before. It was some type of gash torn through the world and it made him question what he knew. He’d lived a full life, but there were still a lot of things in the world that he hadn’t experienced yet. It wasn’t difficult to reach 200 years of age or even more if you Evolved enough and managed to survive the battles it took to get there.

He’d heard of Outsiders before, like everyone else, since they were a common part of myths, and he’d known that the old ruins were probably from them, but it had all been distant back then, like a story. It was just something to think about while exploring.

Finding out that it was all true and that Outsider invasions were much more common than he’d thought had left him shaken and then determined to set things right. There was more to the world than he’d thought, which meant he needed to get strong enough to see his family through it.

He shook his head again as he focused on the present, looking back towards Sam. His son was growing up. Ever since the battle at the gnome nest, Sam had been changing by the day, becoming more confident and sure of himself. It was good to see, but strange.

When his son was younger, he’d been an easy-going lad, cheerful and a bit chaotic. Now, he was becoming someone else..., a man more sure of himself as he gained the power to carry out his goals. The crystal blue flames swirling around him proved that. His eyes were burning with the same color, giving him an otherworldly cast that highlighted his calm expression as he looked toward the wall.

Sam had found his stride down here in the tunnels, fighting against the things that wanted to eat them. Despite that, there was a lot that Jeric blamed himself for. The current situation was only part of it. He’d wanted a simple life for his family, not this chain of battles and a mission to repair the world.

At least it didn’t seem to be bothering Sam....

And they‘d found some good people, he told himself, as he looked towards Ayala and Krana, who were standing nearby with the two guards. The young Mage and the dwarven Seer were powerful in their own right, and their backgrounds even more so.

It had been a rocky start with that hired wizard attacking Sam..., but it seemed like it was going to work out. Jeric’s expression hardened as he looked toward the wall again, reaching for the hammers at his belt.

Soon, the lizards would break through the wall and enter the maze. Hopefully, that would divide them up as they rushed through it. When they got to this side, he’d take them down as they came. Sam might have gotten a job to protect the world, but his job was to protect Sam.

His knuckles cracked as he gripped the haft of his weapons and then released them again, waiting until the time was right. His face firmed as he pushed his wishes to the back of his mind and focused on the present.

No monsters would be getting past him.

---

Sam was studying the lizards on the other side of the wall as his crystal flame reflected off the surface of the stone. He could see the monsters clearly with Crystal Focus, which flowed through the wall in front of him. In many ways, it was better than seeing them with his eyes, since it let him analyze their energy.

He was pretty sure that these lizards would have auras and he was looking forward to collecting them. It was something to do with Water, which made him wonder if he could turn their horns into water crystals or something similar. The element radiated through their presence, just like the fire that had been a part of the salamanders and spiders.

Once these were dealt with, he needed to reclaim their auras and intensify them, stocking up as many as possible for whatever bigger thing was following them. Krana was keeping an eye on that, but it was still a couple of days away.

He looked over to his father and saw the fierce expression as he glared at the wall, so he sent him a grin. It looked like his dad wanted to fight these things too. A random thought passed through his mind as he wondered if these water lizards tasted the same as salamanders.

As he looked around and saw the nervous expressions on the guards and the tight focus on Ayala’s face, he could tell that not everyone was as excited for this battle as he was. It was strange to think back to a few weeks before, when he would have agreed with them.

Now, things were different. He wasn’t sure if it came from his expanding abilities or absorbing the essence from the spiders, but he liked this feeling of expectation before battle. Perhaps this was who he had always been, and he just hadn’t had the ability to let it out before.

Risk came with living, and all he could do was face it straight on and find out who was stronger. He flexed his hands and felt his talons cut the air as a surge of expectation ran through him. It was better to see the world as a source of challenges and power, rather than as something to avoid.

Ahead of him, the Horned Water Lizards rammed into the wall again and this time it gave way with a sharp crack that echoed through the air as the monsters’ horns pierced through the stone. A giant crack ran from top to bottom as the barrier started to fall.

A moment later, they struck it again, sending rubble flying as the first of them tried to shoulder through the gap. Behind it, others hit it as well, their horns breaking apart the remaining pieces of the wall. As they got stuck in the rubble, their claws flew, throwing rocks to the sides as they dug their way through.

There were three exits to the maze and their group moved to their stations that blocked them, taking up a defensive posture in the killing area where the lizards would exit. Sam had one exit, his father had the second, and Krana had the last with the two guards next to her.

Behind the three groups, Ayala waited, ready to raise another wall or to heal as needed. She was the reserve force in this fight.

Sam looked toward his gap as he tracked the first lizard that had entered the maze. It tumbled over the rubble in the wall as it shook the stones off and climbed back to its feet, its scaled legs clawing at the ground. Then it started to run forward, darting smoothly around the walls in its way as it smelled the humans on the other side.

There was no sense of essence from the monsters, but he didn’t expect there to be. It only came from Outsiders that had just arrived through a flaw. The World Law had converted it into experience for these lizards.

A long, whistling hissss echoed through the maze, rattling from the walls, as the first lizard raced through it, darting through one opening and then the next as it followed its nose. Chance directed it toward Sam’s exit. A smile stretched across his face as he followed its path and waited.

A moment later, it charged through the gap, its head swiveling from side to side as it clawed at the stone. It was a giant lizard, one of the three leaders that had broken through the wall. Its scales gleamed blue-grey in his eyes. He could see the flow of the same energy throughout its body, like a river of light that marked out its aura.

He saw it not just with his eyes, but with his senses as he touched the aura around it, feeling the force of the ocean. The lizard’s energy was a violent, storm-tossed sea, and it was somehow living in these caves where it didn’t belong.

As soon as the lizard moved out of the maze, two crystal flame arrows ripped through the air toward it. A shimmering barrier glowed around its horns and tried to sweep forward to block the attack, but it was no use. The first arrow shattered the shield and continued onward, joined a moment later by the second that was completely unimpeded.

One after the other, the arrows exploded through the lizard’s head and neck. It didn’t even have time to realize what happened before it tumbled to the side. Its momentum carried it a dozen feet until it fell over and the last of its life fled.

Sam glanced toward it, tempted to go and gather the aura, but there were more lizards already entering the maze. He looked toward his father and Krana to make sure they were alright, but no other lizard had reached them yet.

He turned his attention back to the front, waiting for the next enemy to appear. Three more lizards were already charging through the maze, followed by another four. The maze did its job in dividing them up as the impatient monsters took different openings, competing with each other to see who could reach the humans first. Ayala was standing by to change the internal structure of the maze if needed, but it wasn’t required yet.

This time, lizards charged through all three of the openings, splitting off toward the others as well. His father’s hammers were already humming in the air as his yellow-gold shield surrounded him.

Near Krana, the guards were testing their own barriers that he’d just enchanted. Bright yellow shields appeared and disappeared in front of their shields and in spheres around their bodies. It looked like the enchantments were working.

Jeric rushed forward as the next lizard leapt out at him, meeting it head-on. It had thought it would find weak prey cowering in a hole, and it tried to rear backward as it saw the human growing larger in its vision. Before it could escape, his hammers were already swinging down, slamming into its skull with a staccato beat.

The lizard was born of the sea, whether it was from a recent ancestor or some distant primal origin in another world, but it had lived its entire life in a cave. In that moment, it realized why the tide always broke on the shore. Its skull splintered under the blows as the hammers sang its death.

On her side, Krana rushed forward with the two guards right behind her. Her eyes were intense as she dodged the lizard’s tail, stepping forward an instant before it swung through the area where she had been.

Her next steps were hard to understand as she dodged right and left again, moving in a pattern that only she could see, but the lizard spun with her, its claws shining as it tried to catch what it thought was dinner. Every time it attacked, she was in a different place, until her war hammer slammed down through its skull, closing its eyes permanently.

The next lizard popped through the exit in front of Sam, but it froze as it saw the corpse of the previous lizard. Instead of retreating, it reared up as the horns on its skull began to shine. The water rippling between them intensified, forming into a crystalline spike that shot toward Sam. It spun through the air like a drill, rotating as it flew.

Halfway there, it shattered against a cerulean barrier of crystal flame. Before the lizard could see what was happening, two arrows of the same flame pierced through the exploding technique and blew its head apart.

As it fell over and blocked the exit, Sam frowned at it, debating how he was supposed to unclog the maze. A moment later, Ayala waved her hand and the ground beneath the lizard surged like a wave, shifting the lizard off to the side and dumping it there.

Excellent, he thought, as his attention turned to the remaining lizards that were entering through the maze. Four had already died, including all three of the larger ones, and now there were only eight left.

It didn’t take long to finish off the rest of them. As soon as the monsters ran out of the exits, they died. These lizards were a lower level than all of them now, and they wouldn’t have been difficult opponents even before that.

They were vastly outmatched by the team. On top of that, the maze had worked even better than they’d hoped, sending the lizards to them one by one, which tilted the battle in their favor. Even though he knew it was only a warm-up to what was coming, Sam felt pleased as he looked around the battlefield.

When he looked at his father, however, Jeric looked more conflicted, despite the steadiness in his movements as he put away his hammers. Sam studied him for a moment, trying to figure out why, and then he nodded. He was probably just worried about what was coming next.

The guards were wiping sweat from their faces as they sheathed their swords. The barriers had done their job, blocking the one water spike that the lizards sent in their direction.

Behind them, Ayala looked around the area before she sat down where she was, her expression unruffled as she began to meditate. She hadn’t needed to heal anyone, but she had used some mana redirecting the lizards and moving the corpses out of the way.

Sam had to wonder if her calmness came from accepting the life that had been designed for her or if she just didn’t care anymore. His confidence came from excitement, but hers was almost apathetic, as if nothing touched her now. He studied her with a frown, wondering if everything was alright.

She had done everything asked of her, but she hadn’t made any suggestions in the past day or so. The way she was acting..., it was almost like someone who had already accepted her death. Or at least someone who had given up her dreams in the face of reality and realized that adding more struggle was futile.

He didn’t know what exactly had passed through her mind when she saw the flaw, but he knew it had shocked her and made her reevaluate all of her decisions. He wanted to go and talk to her, but he wasn’t sure it would help. He was living proof of her realization that the world was under threat.

Still, he couldn’t quite let it go. Maybe he could help her see the world in a better light. There were families to keep safe, and crafting to do, and.... His thoughts were interrupted by Krana’s warning.

"We have about an hour and a half," the Seer announced, her eyes silver as she searched the distance again. "Then the Grey Shard Stalkers and Seekers will be here. There are six Stalkers and two Seekers. The maze should still work, but it will be more difficult. Let’s collect the experience and clean this up, and then rest while we have the chance."

Sam didn’t need any more encouragement to move forward to the lizards that he’d killed. He was already itching to collect the auras. He could talk to Ayala right after.

There were three of the lizards piled in front of him and their scales reflected the light of his flames in rippling sea shades as he leaned down to touch them. The experience was first and he felt the surge of energy as he pulled two of the twisted silver threads into himself.

The energy bubbled through his blood and fizzed in his mind, boosting his already decent mood. The lizards were all level 20 or higher, with the biggest at 25.

Congratulations, Scion. You have used your Class abilities to slay your enemies.

You gain 79,350 Class experience.

Class Experience: 490,990 / 533,000

General Experience: 495,880 / 533,000

It wasn’t enough to gain a level, but it was close.

There were six of them and twelve lizards, so to be fair, he saved the third lizard for Ayala. He could take it over to her in a minute. Then he searched for the aura, resting his hand on top of the biggest lizard’s scales as he found it.

It came to his mind with the rush of the ocean, the thundering sound of water crashing against the shore and the susurration of the waves. It was endless, rippling blue, filled with a weight that crushed everything beneath it.

Below that, there was sand and silt, where eggs could be laid far from prying eyes, safe and cold beneath the waves. It was waves and the ocean’s roar, crushing force and secrets, and the prompt sprang into his mind as it pulled his attention away from the feeling of it.

You have encountered an unknown aura.

Do you wish to Reclaim it (28% chance) or to Identify it?

Since there were twelve of them, he chose to identify it, and then the one after that as well, as the taste of silt filled his mouth as the auras burned away to nothing, consumed one after the other by the process of identification. The first one raised his chance to 50% and the second was enough to completely identify it.

You have Identified an Aura.

Aura of Reclusive Tide.

He nodded as he turned to the third one and felt for it, noting that he had a 68% chance to reclaim the aura now as he pulled it toward himself. The aura separated from the lizard, forming into a bright blue sphere that rippled like water as it flickered past his shoulder and into his storage.

A success.

The other lizards weren’t far away and as he moved toward them, he exchanged a few words with his father and Krana. The Seer’s eyes widened as she watched what he was doing.

"I’ll explain more about my class later," he said, as he looked toward her.

He had to trust her at some point and this was one detail of his class that was too easy to see. She was smart and could put together the spheres that were forming from the corpses with the one he’d used to enchant his amulet.

Of the remaining lizards, he managed to get seven more auras, which was better than his percentage chance. It brought him up to 11 total. He would have to spend some time charging a few before the next wave arrived. It would be a waste to combust them otherwise.

He looked over toward Ayala as he returned to the lizard he had saved for her. He picked it up by the tail and one leg, dragging the four hundred or so pounds without too much difficulty as he walked toward her.

Battlefield Reclaimer 52: Grey Shard Seekers

When he reached Ayala, Sam set the lizard down to the side as he looked at her. Her eyes were closed in meditation. He debated whether or not to disturb her, but he wanted to see if there was something he could do to help.

"I brought you a lizard," he announced, trying to sound positive. "Are you alright?"

Ayala’s eyes opened slowly as she looked at him, and then she took in the lizard next to him. A flicker of some emotion passed through her expression, but it wasn’t enough to change her overall calmness.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "Don’t worry about me, though. I know what I need to do. Beyond that..., I’m just thinking of life and how things don’t always go the way you expect."

"Krana told me you didn’t always want to be a Priestess," Sam replied, looking for more information. "What did you want to do instead?"

"I was going to be an Elemental Artist, like my mother," Ayala said, as she gave him a long, quiet look and then shook her head, tossing her hair to the side before she gathered it back behind her head. "I wanted to draw and paint, to capture natural moments. Just silly things now."

"What’s an Elemental Artist?" Sam asked, before he could stop himself. He’d never heard of it before.

"It’s a class that uses fire and water, or other elements, to create art," Ayala answered, her eyes turning distant. "It can even be used in battle, but the best part is making the world come to life, to create a sunset or a tree...that is so much more than people imagine, and to share it with others. Every stroke can radiate life and energy. It’s magical."

"You still can," Sam replied, not quite understanding. "Just draw anyway. What’s stopping you?"

At that, a small laugh burst out of Ayala and then she reached out and patted him on the arm, her eyes brightening. It didn’t change her overall attitude, but it was like the sun breaking through the clouds for a moment.

"Not everything is so simple, but I’ll try," she agreed, before her expression returned to the same calm look. Now, however, there was a hint of laughter hiding behind it. "But you should go and prepare too. More things are coming."

It was a polite request to be left alone. After a moment, Sam nodded at her and turned back to his own work as he headed toward the lizards again. He wanted to collect as many of their horns as possible, to use for experiments.

He didn’t quite understand what Ayala was struggling with, but if it was not getting the life she wanted, then he sympathized. He knew how that went. It was only a little bit of sympathy though. She had two strong classes, a powerful family, and influence, so things couldn’t be that bad for her.

As for being an artist, he had been honest when he told her to just do it anyway. There was no reason to just accept what the World Law allowed, as long as you weren’t trying to damage the seal.

Even if she didn’t get the subclass abilities that went with Elemental Artist, maybe there were skills that could do something similar. He wasn’t sure what abilities that class had, but it had to be something like elemental manipulation, and it made him wonder if something like his Fire Affinity could be used for that.

Could someone learn to manipulate an element through a skill? It sent his thoughts down a long, interesting path that encouraged him to explore what he was capable of in more depth. He doubted he’d even scratched the surface of what his Fire Affinity and Aura of Crystal Flame could really do.

Even the abilities that came with his Scion subclass weren’t structured that much. He had been the one to think of turning the crystal flame into arrows, fireballs, and Essence Blade. His fingers tapped on the crystal horn of the lizard in front of him, letting the crystal flame swirl into a blade that cut it free.

He needed to keep experimenting with his abilities and to work on more skills in the future. There had to be other ones out there that would be useful to him, whether it was for crafting or something else.

There also had to be something like a library that held records of skills people had gained in the past. He’d have to look for that. But, for now, he had an idea of where to begin. Every time he heard of a new class, he just had to try to imagine what abilities came with it. Then, he would try and experiment, to see if he could do something similar.

First up, he decided, was to turn his Crystal Flame into some type of art, even if it was just to prove to Ayala that it was possible. It would prove that you didn’t have to be content with what the World Law gave you, and it would also help him with imagining new attacks.

The very first kinds of art that came to mind were runes and enchantment patterns. He was fairly sure that with enough focus, he could use his crystal flame to directly create runes in reality, or even create spell formations. He just wasn’t sure if they would work. They could end up as hollow shells.

Beyond that, it would be kind of fun to make a crystal flame tree, he decided as he sent a look back at Ayala. Just to prove that it was possible.

He returned to gathering the horns from the lizards. There were three per lizard, which should have been six horns for each of them, but Krana, Ayala, and his father let him have theirs.

The guards were tempted to keep their share until he reminded them of the enchantments and all of the crystallized Earth mana he’d used. After that, he ended up with all 36 of the horns, and he grinned as he stored them all away in his dimensional bag.

There was still a while until the next wave arrived, so after that he sat down to meditate, charging as many of the new auras as he could. He was up to 62 essence, which meant he could charge three of them every two hours, if he spent all of his time meditating.

Time was limited, however, and he needed to keep his essence full, so he was only able to charge two and a half of the auras before Krana’s warning rang through the area.

"They’re almost here!" the Seer announced, waving them all to their feet as her eyes went distant. "Six Stalkers, Two Hunters. They’re moving quickly now. Perhaps they caught some scent from the battle."

Sam stood back up and returned the aura he was working on to his storage. Then he took up his position at the exit to the maze, while the others did the same. Crystal Focus brought the area around him into stark relief as he waited to see what was coming.

Ayala had already restored the outer wall, but the signs of something suspicious were still obvious from the outside. The lizard tracks ended and there were still signs of rubble scattered around.

Sam moved into the maze far enough that he could sense what was on the outside and waited for the new monsters to arrive. About five minutes later, he sensed the first one entering his aura and information about it began to enter his mind.

It was a sort of bipedal lizard around five feet tall with a spear in one hand and two daggers at its belt. There was a dense, bony ridge along its spine that gave it a slight hunch, pushing its shoulders forward, but it didn’t seem to impede its movement. As he studied it, a prompt appeared.

Grey Shard Stalker (Subterranean)

Its face ended in a blunt, ridged snout with sharp fangs sticking out from the bottom of the top jaw. Its skin was a pattern of grey scales, lighter in some areas and darker in others, and on the top of its head was a fan-like frill that had to serve some purpose, whether it was for sensory perception or radiating heat. Its eyes were dark grey, almost the same color as its scales, and it seemed to have no difficulty seeing down here.

Its hands ended in short, four-fingered claws that gripped the spear easily, and it was wearing a dark grey cloak that covered most of its body and that was a shade very similar to the stone walls. At its belt, along with the dagger, there was a series of pouches that had to hold either food or some type of poison for hunting. All he could tell was that it was various types of powder and sticky substances.

As soon as it saw the lizard tracks stop, it spun around and hissed something to the group behind it. A moment later, four more of the same type were next to it, all of them prowling around the tunnel outside the wall.

Before long, three more joined them, including two that were a bit taller than the others and held bows instead of spears. Those two had quivers at their belts and even more pouches full of similar substances. They were clearly in charge, since as soon as they arrived, they hissed at the others and sorted them into an organized team.

Grey Shard Seeker (Subterranean).

The two Seekers turned to look at the wall, their eyes focused. The grey color in them seemed to brighten and then the snout of the first one opened, showing a row of rough fangs, as it hissed again, telling the others something. Then, it let out a cough that almost sounded like laughter.

Immediately, the six Stalkers rushed toward the wall, digging at it with their claws as they ripped away chunks of stone. Their claws weren’t big, but something about them allowed them to cut through the stone like it was barely there, as easily as if they were moving sand.

Their actions were nothing like the Horned Water Lizards, and Sam frowned as he watched them. These monsters were focused, like a hunting team that had been sent to look for something. If that were true..., then it seemed that the Flaw had gotten their attention.

It was going to take them a minute to dig through the wall, so he went back to his position and called to the others.

"They’re about to break into the maze," he announced. "They’re focused and they’re definitely looking for something. It looks like an advance scouting party."

"There’s more of them coming too," Krana agreed as she looked toward the tunnels. "It seems we’ve gotten the attention of a Grey Shard tribe. The only question is what the bigger thing is behind them and if it’s with them or not. These Stalkers are around Levels 20 to 25. The Seekers are about 30."

Sam nodded as a spiral of crystal flame spun around him, ready to split off into other spells. He wasn’t too concerned about this group, but they did look intelligent. They wouldn’t be fooled so easily by the maze.

If more like this came, along with something stronger, and attacked them all at once.... He imagined a wave of poisoned arrows flying from every direction while the Stalkers attacked out of the shadows. If they also had spell casters, that would be a lot of trouble.

Maybe there would be time to enchant some better defensive items and make more scrolls before the rest arrived, but he’d done what he could for now.

A moment later, he felt the Grey Shard Stalkers break through the wall. Unlike the lizards, they didn’t rush into it immediately. They raised their snouts and sniffed at the air, smelling what was inside. Then, at the command of one of the Seekers, two of them slipped through the wall. He could sense them activate some type of stealth ability, their energy changing to more closely match the stone around them.

The two Stalkers split up, moving part of the way into the maze. After a minute, they returned, hissing something to the first Seeker. At his gesture, the rest of the Stalkers all moved forward, slipping into the maze. Behind them, the two Seekers followed.

"They’re in the maze," Krana announced to the others. Her voice was firm and confident. "Get your defenses ready for arrows and spears. Be careful of poison."

As she said the last part, she looked toward Ayala, who nodded back at her. The Priestess would be ready to act if needed.

In front of Sam, an Essence Shield started to appear, ready to spring to life. He also formed half-a-dozen crystal flame arrows. A moment later, two grey blurs darted out from his exit, trying to slide to the side as they reached the open area. At the same time, two streaks of metal whistled through the air toward him.

The Essence Shield was already there, and the knives clanged as they ricocheted away from it again, falling to the stone below. Summoning the shield distracted him for a moment and the two Stalkers were already moving, speeding forward as they split up to come at him from each side. They were a lot faster than he’d expected, almost as fast the pythons.

It forced him to change his tactics a bit, and he realized that he’d been a little overconfident. An Essence Shield hardened around him as another knife clanged off of it, thrown by the one on the left, and he pivoted, sending three crystal flame arrows towards the other one that was trying to sneak up on him from the right.

The arrows flared like burning blue meteors as they hurtled toward the Stalker and tore through his body, his scales and cloak offering no defense against the condensed flames. Halfway through, they erupted, shattering his body into pieces.

Before he could turn again, a series of thudding attacks struck Sam’s Essence Shield, which flared with crystal blue sparks as a spear and dagger tore at it. One point of essence flowed away as the structure was damaged, and then another. The Stalker wasn’t weak.

Sam spun back to him, the other three arrows flying forward at his command. They struck their target with unerring precision, tearing through him in an explosion of blue flames that sent his body spiraling away in chunks.

Instead of watching what happened, Sam turned toward the others, worried for how they were faring. His father was surrounded by his Earthen Shield and the glow of Stamina was highlighting his muscles as he struck down a Stalker. One hammer knocked aside the spear and trapped the point as the other sailed in and shattered the monster’s chest, sending a wet thud and the crack of breaking ribs echoing across the cavern.

Krana was protecting the guards, her shield flaring to block attacks as the Yeres and Lesat faced off against another Stalker, but there was no sign of another one near them. A quick count made that one the fifth Stalker, which meant....

Sam spun around as he looked toward Ayala, only to see a stone palm rising out of the ground, wrapped around the sixth Stalker. A moment later, two rocky spears flew up from the ground and drove through its body, finishing it off.

At the same moment, arrows whistled through the air in the middle of the cavern as the Seekers announced their presence. Both of them were aimed for Ayala. The arrowheads hissed as some corrosive substance burned the air and left a thin trail of smoke behind them.

There wasn’t time to raise an Essence Shield in front of her, so instead he turned toward the two Seekers as another half-dozen arrows condensed out of the spiral around him. With a flick of his hand, he sent them flying in a return volley.

To his surprise, the Seekers were even faster than the Stalkers, and they flowed out of the way as the arrows approached, suddenly appearing a dozen steps away as if they’d teleported there. Either that, or they were so fast that he just wasn’t able to keep track of them.

Ayala reacted in time to block the arrows they’d fired, but they hit harder than expected. The first one shattered against a bright yellow shield that flared in front of her, and the second landed with a small explosion in the rocky hand as she sent it surging upward from the ground. A moment later, it began to break, falling apart into great chunks of stone.

The arrows that he’d sent toward the Seekers continued on past them, and he reached out with a flicker of will to redirect them. He was too late to get two of them. Those exploded onto the maze behind the Seekers, breaking off chunks of it.

The other four curved in the air, hissing as they flew back toward the Seekers. The redirection made the energy in the arrows drop, leaving them weaker than before. The Seekers jumped out of the way again, and this time the arrows didn’t have enough energy to be redirected. They exploded harmlessly against the ground.

Crystal Focus helped him to see what was going on around him, but that didn’t mean he could respond immediately to everything, a point that was proven a moment later as the Seekers sent two smoking arrows flying in his direction.

An Essence Shield flared around him and the arrows exploded against it with a bang, covering the area around him in thick smoke. He held his breath as the flames around him surged, pushing the smoke away. He wasn’t sure if it was poisonous, but he didn’t want to find out what his tolerance for that sort of thing was like.

A moment later, two more impacts struck against his Essence Shield, sending another billow of smoke out. The Seekers were fast and apparently used to this sort of a fight, trying to pin him down and block him at a distance. A flicker of irritation spread through his body as he formed a larger shield and used it to sweep the smoke back towards them, trying to obscure their vision as he changed tactics.

He could still see them with Crystal Focus, even as they tried to dart to the side again, and he took a moment to shape a larger crystal fireball, compressing it between his hands. A moment later, it was ready and he sent it whistling through the air toward them, aiming for the first one.

Whatever other skills they had, the smoke seemed to block their vision too, since they didn’t react to the fireball until it burned through the other side. Then they slid away again, their movement ability causing them to blur, as the fireball exploded where they had been standing. It sent shards of stone and a wave of explosive heat rolling outwards.

Annoying, he decided, as another flight of crystal flame arrows formed out of the spiral around him. Whatever class abilities or innate qualities they had as Seekers, they were much more difficult to deal with. But that just meant he needed to go bigger.

One by one, at random intervals, he sent the crystal flame arrows at the Seekers to distract them, watching them slide around each time as he got an idea of how their ability worked. It looked like they could jump about a dozen feet in any direction, and they almost always did it to the right or left, away from each other.

From what he could see, they also hesitated after every slide, as if it took them a moment to get their bearings, and they couldn’t use it again immediately. That gave him an idea.

As the arrows kept their attention, a sphere of crystal flame formed in his hands. When it was done, he set it to hang in the spiral of flame that was already around him, like a star over his shoulder. A moment later, he created another one, and then a third, until they were all hanging above his head.

His essence was already down to half, which made him shake his head, but he pushed the thought out of his mind. He really needed to collect more auras and charge them. A new surge of crystal flame flared out of his body, dropping his essence down another ten points, as he got more creative and started to shape something he’d never tried before.

This time, he shaped the crystal flame into a long line, compressing it down on itself again and again. He didn’t want a spherical explosion this time, but something broader. Something that would really cover the area these Seekers could cross.

It didn’t need to be as strong as his Essence Blade, it just needed to be big. When it was ready, he turned toward the two Seekers and released another wave of six arrows at them, followed by the rest of what he’d just prepared.

It was the largest bombardment of spells that he’d ever created, and it drove home the point that he was going to have to think about how to counter fast opponents. He had good explosive power, but not everything was going to be slow enough that he could hit it easily.

Krriiisshhh.

The arrows flared toward the Seekers first, three heading toward each of them. As usual, they slid out of the way, one heading to the right and one to the left. They were like shadows darting along the stone.

The compressed line blast he’d prepared flew out next, expanding outwards in a ripple of energy like a rope that suddenly grew from being just a foot wide to over three dozen. It was a line of scintillating blue light that ripped towards the Seekers and expanded into an enormous wall of flame, one that was long enough to cover the original target area and their new positions with room to spare.

BooooOOOOmmmmmMMM!

When it hit, it exploded into a rolling surge like an ocean wave, followed an instant later by the arrival of the three fireballs behind it, which were spread evenly along the line. Those exploded like falling stars in the middle and at both ends, covering the area with a roaring three-part explosion and a enormous wash of flames as the stone on the ground shattered. Splinters of heated rock went flying in every direction.

The Seekers tried to escape, but both of them were caught directly in the explosion, unable to jump again. Their forms crumbled as the flames ripped them apart, sending chunks flying away from the blast. Behind them, a quarter of the maze also exploded into fragments as the blast washed over it.

The combination of flames and flying stone filled the air, spreading outwards from the center of the blast as crystal blue light covered everything. Sam dropped his hands, panting for breath slightly.

It hadn’t been a very long fight at all, but his essence pool was down to a quarter. He really needed to be more efficient. He looked around the cavern, checking on everyone else, only to find them staring at him.

A quarter of the cavern was ablaze as crystal blue flames burned away at the stone.

"What...?" he asked, as he glanced around and pretended to be innocent. So, maybe a few things were on fire....

Thank You for Reading!

~ The End ~

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