The detonation slowly faded into the dark. Cal lowered his arms, blinking against the afterimages that still hadn't cleared from his eyes. Below, blistering heat radiated from the dimming glass surface, making the air above it tremble.
A strange pop sounded through the quiet.
Across the glassy expanse, points of light quickly pulled inward from the heat-distorted air. The motes of energy coalesced with a hiss into tiny red, blue, or purple stones that dropped onto the cooling crust.
Within moments, a dozen essence stones lay scattered across the blast zone, glittering like fallen stars on a field of night.
Cal stared hungrily at the nearest one, a purple gem that radiated power. Just one. They won't notice just one missing, right? Before the thought could fully form into a plan, Zamir and Hope were already stepping across the glass and plucking the gems from the cooling surface.
Resigned, he let the party move out ahead of him, deliberately falling to the back of the formation as the world expectedly stuttered. Hunching slightly as if adjusting a strap, Cal reached into his belt pouch and found a small vial that he gulped down.
The micro-tears in the nerve cluster behind his eyes sealed with tiny pinches, and his debilitation lifted in stages: the blurriness at his periphery sharpened, the disjointed motion of his companions smoothed into steady strides, and the dull headache subsided. He blinked. The world was whole again.
Cal slipped the spent vial back into his pouch and carried on, settling into pace behind Selara and Aurelian. When he stepped carefully onto the smooth surface, the heat bled through his boot soles, and light from the dungeon core above reflected in warped flashes.
A fine, acrid dust hung motionless in the air, the last remains of organic matter that had been too far from the epicenter to vaporize completely.
One Spell. D-tier is terrifying.
Ahead, the dungeon core hung in its fixed position, untouched by the cataclysm that had reshaped everything to one side. It beat steadily, each strobe sending out a pulse of spiritual energy that washed over Cal.
Ido stepped directly beneath the floating crystal. Zamir, Hope, Filip, and Angelika moved to surround him, forming an evenly spaced ring.
Extending his right hand, Ido turned his palm up and closed his eyes.
A thread of white light descended from the core's surface to touch his hand, and the beam fractured. Four other tethers of raw essence snaked outward from the point of contact, connecting to each team member simultaneously. The delvers blazed in unison, a brief intensification of their auras.
Through his perception, Cal tracked the transfer. The alterations seemed microscopic and perfectly uniform. A marginal shift, yet permanent.
Are they doing… what I think they're doing?
Selara stood beside him, her arms crossed, watching the ritual with disinterest. Aurelian, next to her, brushed soot from his sleeve, muttering a steady stream of complaints under his breath about charred remains getting his robes dirty.
"They're absorbing essence directly from the core, aren't they?" Cal asked quietly.
Selara glanced at him. "What did you expect? That is the entire point of a delve for most people. The core draw alone awards multiple stones' worth of essence, and often times delvers are not entitled to a share of the haul."
Cal stared for a minute as his mind raced, before asking, "Then why aren't the two of you in the circle? You're D-tier too?"
"The Dominion limiter restricts the yield," Selara said, nodding toward the floor beneath the crystal. "An array tallies the time since the previous run and dispenses a rigid volume of essence. That total gets split evenly among anyone linked in the circle. If Aurelian and I stepped in, we would dilute their shares by nearly a third."
Limiter?
"But Aurelian killed several of those stragglers during the fight."
Selara snorted. "Squashing a few bugs does not earn a cut of a dungeon clearing."
Cal considered his next words carefully. "They're at the D-tier threshold already, aren't they?"
She glanced at him sideways. "Perceptive."
"Then why haven't they broken through? They certainly don't seem to be lacking in wealth."
"It is an Imperial Academy tradition. Graduation requires all students to achieve a perfect D-tier foundation under their own power. You must earn every point from delves, adventuring, and your own labor."
Cal frowned. "That... sounds kind of familiar."
"Indeed. Naturally, it is based on the Sovereign Path traditions. Not the full Path, mind you. The Academy is stuffed with the wealthiest and noblest in the empire. No one expects them to have made it to D-tier on their own… but the expectations for graduation are higher, and the Path philosophy is the standard. 'A foundation built through struggle and self-reliance produces a qualitatively different graduate than one built on purchased power.'" She frowned. "It is often the last tier many try to pursue perfection through. A perfect foundation after D-tier becomes vanishingly rare... but maintaining it until then is what allows one to even attempt reaching A-tier, so most any of means will pursue it."
He nodded slowly.
Tradition. Cal almost scoffed. It was a luxury. A game for people with the best training and gear money could buy.
Not a game for a man racing towards the hope of seeing his family again. Every day they spend playing by these rules is another day I haven't been able to spend with the ones that I love.
He swallowed the bitterness and instead let his mind do what it did best: connect the dots. The cost of a perfect foundation and the value of a priceless natural treasure helped explain their situation.
They were willing to murder for the sake of graduation. It wasn't even about the money - they had that in spades. He wasn't sure if that made the situation better or worse, but it didn't matter when he was powerless to do anything about it.
Just another piece of the Dominion's rotten puzzle. For now, there were more immediate questions.
"The limiter," Cal said quietly, directing his words to Aurelian, who had drifted to stare at the Spell's aftermath. "Selara mentioned it regulates the core's output. What happens if someone tries to take more than their share?"
Aurelian glanced back at Cal, a glimmer of interest replacing his bored expression. He tilted his chin toward the floor beneath the core.
"See for yourself. Look beneath it."
Cal focused his [Spiritual Perception] downward, narrowing his awareness into a directed probe aimed at the ground beneath where the core hovered. At first, he felt nothing. Just the essence-packed rock that the entire dungeon was made of. He pushed harder, feeding Mana into his perception to boost its sensitivity.
He struck an invisible barricade. Instead of yielding, the barrier violently repelled his approach.
Cal glanced up at Aurelian to see the alchemist smirking back at him. Alright, he thought. Challenge accepted.
He squared his shoulders. Tapping his core, he drew a condensed thread of Mana and shaped it into a microscopic needle. He rammed the construct directly against the interference and gained a small foothold, though the backlash sparked a blinding throb deep in his eye sockets. It felt like he was on the shortlist for an aneurysm, but he refused to retreat. Funneling more Mana into the maintained needle, he slowly expanded the tiny gap he'd created by bulking up the projection.
The defensive shell eventually gave way with a soundless snap, and a thin line of blood leaked from his left nostril, catching on his upper lip.
Staggeringly complex runic architecture materialized in his mind's eye. Concentric circles of interlocking runes radiated outward from a central point directly beneath the core, each ring larger than the last, layered atop one another in overlapping planes that extended deep into the bedrock. The outermost ring was fifty feet in diameter. The innermost was a tight knot of what looked like control runes so densely packed that they merged into a convoluted nexus he couldn't comprehend.
The array pulsed with power, and its construction was flawless; every line and junction precise to a degree that made Angelika's meteor Spell look like a child's crayon drawing. [Savant of the Mind] processed the visible structure hungrily, identifying familiar elements within the alien whole.
"The Dominion's limiter," Aurelian confirmed. "Every registered dungeon on Veraxus has one, installed and maintained by the Ordo Caelarii. It regulates the core's output. Attempt to overdraw... the array activates. The results are... instructive."
"Instructive," Cal repeated flatly.
"For the next person who considers trying."
Hope appeared out of nowhere, standing silently on the glass beside Cal with a wry grin. He flinched as she said, "Short version: draining a core is a great way to get the Ordo on your doorstep. The Dominion doesn't appreciate people consuming its essence farms."
"Don't scare me like that!" Cal protested, causing the rogue to snicker. "Would it kill the dungeon permanently if someone pulled it off?"
"The reality shard powered by the core would disperse, yes," Aurelian said. "What makes a dungeon a dungeon would cease to exist. However, Veraxus periodically generates new shards to maintain the cycle. The loss would be short-lived on a geological timescale. The Dominion's control apparatus simply ensures this... turnover... remains minimal and managed."
Veraxus generates new shards?
Aurelian spoke of it like a weather pattern, a natural law baked into the planet's nature. But Cal couldn't get past the word 'generates.' Creation implied a mechanism. Mechanism implied design. Was the world just balancing its own books, a self-regulating system maintaining equilibrium? Or was there a celestial accountant running the numbers, creating dungeons with purpose and placing them with intention?
Just what are you? The question was directed inward, toward the invisible presence he'd spoken to in the formless space between death and rebirth. The World Soul. Vox. Whatever it truly was.
Silence. He'd expected as much.
"The greater concern," Aurelian continued, "is catastrophic failure." He said the words as if they were something he'd rather not have in his mouth. "When a dungeon has not been cleared in too long and the shard vomits its contents into the surrounding terrain."
"Dungeon break?" Cal had heard about this before.
"Dungeon break. Low-tier breaks from a shard like this one are not usually an issue. Local garrison and competent delvers can contain the spill within days. The creatures lack the power to survive long outside the dungeon's essence-rich environment and cannot travel far." Aurelian paused. "High-tier breaks are a different matter entirely. Creatures from those dungeons possess enough strength to sustain themselves much longer in the wild and can travel vast distances. When they stumble upon settlements that are not prepared, it gets… unpleasant."
Cal could already imagine what just one of the monsters he'd seen in this place could do if it reached the streets of Deadfall. He didn't want to consider the kind of devastation that higher tiers might accomplish. "That sounds… horrific. But I feel like I would have heard more about them at the inn if they were commonplace."
"The Dominion might fail at many things, but keeping reality shards properly delved is not one of them. In part, that is because there is not much turnover - especially at the higher tiers. While the vast majority of Veraxus is not populated outside the proximity of Gates, steps are taken to ensure that high-tier dungeons are constantly being sought out and managed. Lower tiers are not as big of a threat due to the monster's natural degradation, but there are Legion response teams maintained for quick reactions just in case. For everything else, the Dominion's limiter network is, I will concede, effective at preventing the most catastrophic scenarios. The Ordo earns its fearsome reputation in this regard, if nothing else."
Hope rolled a small dagger over her knuckles and gushed, "Ooo, imperial administration lectures from within the guts of a dungeon. I feel like we're back in Grigori's class." She waggled her eyebrows at the alchemist.
Aurelian offered a small smile, the stiff set of his shoulders dropping for a second.
As the conversation died, Cal's attention drifted back to his memory of the five delvers circled around the dungeon core.
The Sovereign's Toll required a mountain of essence stones. An impossible, soul-crushing quantity.
What if I could just… drink directly from the source?
The idea was absurd, dangerous, and utterly intoxicating. To bypass the grind. To sidestep the entire monopolized economy of delving and absorb the power he needed without an intermediary. It might be the shortcut he'd been desperately searching for, the one variable that could change the unreasonable cost of his progression.
But the limiter and The Ordo stood in the way. Aurelian's words echoed in his thoughts: "Every registered dungeon on Veraxus has one."
Registered.
The Dominion's control was vast, but it wasn't absolute. Civilization was maintained and concentrated around the Rune Gates, but there were vast swaths of the planet unclaimed if people were to be believed. Deadfall itself was in the middle of nowhere, only valuable because of a dungeon in relative proximity to a major city.
And what then? If he could find undocumented dungeons in the wilds of the world and claim their power for his own. Would it even matter if he delved and drained them? Aurelian had spoken of it like a weather pattern, how Veraxus would periodically generate new reality shards to stabilize the global essence flow. It sounds like The Ordo didn't even bother regulating them below a certain tier.
Somewhere out there, far from the Legion's patrols and the Ordo's watchful eyes, a new dungeon could be forming. An untapped wellspring of raw power, waiting to be found.
Ido clapped Zamir on the back after the team had finished exploring the cavern, breaking Cal's reverie. "Class dismissed, then. Let us away."
The party gathered at the cavern's exit and marched back through the corridors that led toward the surface. With each ascending step the essence density thinned, until they emerged from the dungeon's mouth into the Virethane Forest.
Second dusk still held sway, but true night was quickly approaching. Cal breathed deep and released the tension that'd built up since the first encounter.
As they exited the barrier, Angelika strode past the group without faltering, her features set in an expression of regal indifference. She stopped ten paces out, turned on her heel, and coolly surveyed the party.
"I will not walk, and am not sleeping..." She looked around at the small clearing derisively. "Here."
"Lady Halmi." A melodic, high-pitched voice began from an unlikely source, already exasperated. The figure who'd only been a peripheral shadow during the entire delve advanced in their hooded robes. "You know you are not to display proprietary family Spells before strangers."
Angelika flickered her fingers through the air dismissively. "Do you fear a beggar stealing a crown they cannot lift? Last I knew, the Veils lacked the talent for spatial magic. They could study my work for a century and never replicate it." She didn't bother sparing Cal a look.
"Then allow me."
Angelika lifted her chin and glared at the man. "I can do it myself."
The hooded figure shook his head and stepped back. Angelika raised her hands.
Wait. Wait wait wait wait. She can't be that arrogant, can she? Is she really about to—
Cal locked in, opening his senses and firing [Liminal Breath] back up just as Angelika's fingers, already in motion, began to draw a Spell he was suddenly desperate to see. Her casting speed slowed to something he could follow.
How she began differed from the meteor Spell. Both hands moved in parallel, each drawing independent glyphs that overlapped and interlocked in the air before her. He recognized the base framework of a [Binding] rune in one hand, its nested C-shapes drawn quickly. The other hand wove something he'd never seen: a spiraling, recursive pattern that folded back on itself, each loop tighter than the last, creating a compressed tunnel of structured Mana.
He couldn't identify most of the individual runes. The architecture was exotic, apparently generations worth of closely guarded magical development layered into an arcane sequence that bore no resemblance to anything in Aurelian's grimoires. Complex didn't begin to describe it. The structure was at least thirty runes deep already and she wasn't slowing, each one feeding into the next in a cascade of chained dependencies that made the seventeen-rune [Isolation Field] Spell look elementary.
Understanding could wait. Right now, all he cared about was recording.
[Perfect Memory] and [Spiritual Perception] captured every jot of Mana, every angle of every finger, every momentary pause or speed change in Angelika's technique. [Savant of the Mind] parsed the incoming data in real time, sorting the visual and magical information into categorized streams: hand position, Mana density, rune geometry, temporal sequence. The two Impartments worked in concert without friction, one absorbing and the other dissecting, each fueling the next in a closed loop of intake and analysis, documenting not just the surface-level imagery but the deeper logic of each component's relationship to the whole.
Twelve seconds of real time, almost one hundred runes, all cataloged and indexed and stored in the infinite archive of his mind.
He released [Liminal Breath].
Color and sound tumbled back as reality tore.
A portal split open six feet in front of her, a vertical disc of distorted light that bent and stretched the forest behind it, the treeline pulled out of true through its surface. It irised open along edges that crackled with purple-white energy, the runes that comprised the Spell visible for a brief moment before its diameter stabilized into a doorway hanging in the air. Beyond the threshold, Cal caught the sight of the edge of the village.
Angelika stepped through without a backward glance, and Ido gestured for the others to follow.
"After you," Selara said.
Cal walked stiffly toward the portal. He kept his face carefully blank, his head slightly bowed, and his shoulders hunched in the practiced deference of a tired apprentice grateful for the ride home. Exhaustion and humility, rendered in body language.
Inside, an electric euphoria spiked through his body. It reminded him of the afternoon he and Evelynn finally signed the closing papers on their house. The triumphant thrill of securing a permanent foundation for his family's future.
The complete casting sequence of some invaluable magical traveling Spell sat in his memory.
Grim satisfaction added to the endorphins that were pumping through him.
The first collection on their debt owed.
He passed through the portal.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Hey folks, happy Wednesday!
Thanks for reading, for supporting... I hope you enjoyed the chapter and the mini dungeon arc.
Web novels are kind of strange, aren't they? I grew up reading paperbacks, with the occasional hardcover when I would splurge for something that was brand new and I had to have it. How many of you remember that? That if you wanted to buy a new release, you had to shell out for the hardcover? That paperbacks wouldn't be released until further down the road? Heck, it probably still exists in the trad space, but we're spoiled in this genre. Still, there's nostalgia in it for me that gives me those 'ahhh, the good ol' days' vibes.
With paper, you'd have that tactile feedback when you were nearing the end of a book. I guess you can still kind of get that with e-books if you're tracking progress... but it's not quite the same. There was something about feeling the page count thin, about having to adjust how you held the book in your hands to accommodate fewer and fewer pages. It was kind of bittersweet. You simultaneously knew that you were close to running out of material - which was a bummer - but at the same time there with this anticipation building up. It was external to the story itself, just a reaction from your physical senses that informed you that the end was drawing close. And most of the time, that's when the best stuff went down.
Yeah, you should be feeling that right about now.
Jon