Chapter 167

A single blue box slid across Nick’s inner vision.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have participated in the defeat of:

+12 230 Exp

Nick snorted softly. Months ago, twelve thousand Exp would have been cause for celebration. Now it felt like finding an extra copper in his coat. It was funny how quickly “enough” inflated, he mused, filing the gain with a mental swipe.

Still, the message conveyed something useful: the blob they’d just reduced to sludge had been a single monster, not several smaller slimes as he might have expected. Though he wasn’t a monster expert and certainly didn’t know much about amorphous creatures, he suspected it wasn’t common for an ooze to reach level thirty-eight while trapped in a tunnel where nothing had moved through for decades.

Nick sought proof that no puddles retained sentience before any of them so much as relaxed a muscle. He sent narrow pulses of compressed wind down every fissure and across every ripple, listening for the tremor of a nucleus trying to regain its blobby body. Nothing responded but the hiss and burble he caused.

Elia padded slowly around the rim, tapping her claws against the bare stone, clicking like knitting needles. She kept glancing at the still pool as if it might lurch upright again out of spite. There was an anger there that went beyond the threat to their lives. She was outraged that such a thing could thrive next to sacred ground and possibly frightened by the implications.

Rhea, for her part, crunched quicklime crystals in her hands and scattered them. If any slime still hid, they would react violently with the desiccant.

Exhaling through his nose, Nick prepared. The ooze had not been powerful enough to explain the overall toxicity, which meant that the worst was still to come. His Force-bubble sloughed away spores and steam, but he expanded it a few more feet anyway—caution over comfort.

Rhea stood up and rolled her shoulders before tugging on elbow-length gloves from her satchel. From an inner pouch, she produced a corked shaker of yellow dust. She sprinkled the powder over her trousers and boots, and the motes sizzled in the air, forming a dull film.

“Going in,” she announced.

She stepped into the iridescent muck. It folded around her calves, but it recoiled instead of swallowing her leather shoes, swirling slowly like wary jellyfish. Rhea used a bronze spatula to probe, her head cocked, listening not with her ears. Nick wouldn’t be surprised if she had a skill similar to his , if only attuned to alchemical reagents.

Elia raised a brow. “Is this safe?”

“Define safe.” Rhea smiled without looking up. “These colonies can’t digest what is made of sunlight and brimstone. I’m just… tasteless enough that if anything remains, they will ignore me. You are probably in more danger.” She knelt, pulling, and a bead of viscous purple rose between spatula prongs—one of the hearts.

“Oozes are rare,” she continued, lowering her find into a glass jar whose interior glowed a faint green. “Most strands died off when the kingdom drained the great wetlands. Their cores hold enough accelerating agents to make wonderful restorative draughts. Once purged of necro-toxins, they increase tissue knitting by a factor of four compared to most vegetal compounds.” She hesitated, stirring the gloop aside. “My family kept a pit of domesticated ones. We dropped heated blades into them to quench steel. The edge gained corrosion resistance if the process was done properly.”

Nick blinked. Rhea almost never referenced home, and even less often what they used to do. Elia stole a sideways glance, ears twitching. They both offered to help, but Rhea shook her head. “Nah, it’s better to do it alone. This way, I don’t have to double-check where you went through.”

Nick snorted and shook his head but left her to it. He took out a few more slips of paper and began preparing more ofudas.

Twenty patient minutes later, Rhea emerged, her clothes dripping yet intact. She carried three phials of shimmering purple liquid and two globes the size of apricots that pulsed inside containment jars.

“These two cores are nearly intact, and three are ruined. The slurry, I’m pretty sure I can filter.” She cocked a brow. “If we are lucky to find a merchant with the coin, we can get north of a gold for the set—if I’m frugal with the catalysts.”

Elia whistled low and appreciative. Nick silently recalculated their expedition’s profit margin; the figures brightened. Food was almost a non-issue, given how often they’d been attacked, and water he could conjure at will. With the potions they received from Ogden already paid for by the mushrooms, they were firmly in the green now.

They retreated to a slab of dry stone. Nick’s wind continued pulling slime haze out of the air like a slow cyclone, cleansing the air, but he was getting worried. With the ooze dead, he’d have expected a lessening of the effect, but if anything, it was increasing.

Rhea needed some time to sort her acquisitions, so Nick took the opportunity to tinker. He unwrapped the six wing bones harvested earlier, selecting two that stood out the most to his senses. Using a burning finger, he carved nodes along each shaft.

First, a piercing spiral, to stabilize a high-speed rotation. Secondly, a shear saw-wave to split the pressure ahead of the dart. Lastly, his name to anchor ownership and ensure the bone accepted the ofuda overlay.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He had to be careful not to let them fall into anyone else’s hands, but given that their purpose was to explode violently, he was pretty sure that wouldn’t be a problem.

After each node, he exhaled a measured trickle of wind mana into the grain. If he added too much, the lines blurred, and he could feel the whole construct collapse. Fortunately, he only had to discard one piece of bone.

When he was finished, he held a carved bone up, and it thrummed like a tuned reed.

Now that he had left Floria behind, he no longer had the luxury of experimenting all the time, but he had already begun developing some ideas to expand what could do. He could draw inspiration from many other cultures, though perhaps he should wait to complete this trial first.

Elia outlined the trail, drawing a straight yet rising line until the bedrock became too hard, leading to a meandering descent that ended near the sub-shrine. “We still have nearly a day before we reach the temple and can see the sky again,” she added.

Nick turned the thought over. “If more colonies thrive, the airflow will be minimal—I doubt we’ll find scavengers, unless they are extremely specialized. I’ll keep my barriers against the spores, but I suspect we’ll find more toxic gas going forward.” Both girls nodded, knowing that this task wouldn’t have been possible without him.

Once they finished resting, they resumed their walk, and as promised, the tunnel ascended for an hour. The air warmed slightly; the stone transitioned from chalk to dense gray marl streaked with iron lines. Pockets of moss clung to the walls like ragged tongues.

Rhea touched one with a glass rod, and its tip smoked. “Neurovine. Eight seconds for your finger to tingle; thirty to full paralysis. Highly prized for sedatives, though it requires a master to dilute it properly.” She trimmed tufts with silver scissors into a tin that was a quarter full of stabilizing liquor. Each harvest momentarily slowed their pace, but no one complained given how valuable these ingredients were.

Nick maintained a steady ripple of clear wind ahead, directing specific eddies backward to prevent ambient toxins from lingering. The mild headache blooming behind his eyes from having to keep the two spells active for so long was worth the safety.

Another hour later, his senses pinged with movement: four-legged and slender, seemingly rocking back and forth. “I feel something that seems like a fox. Alone.” The note of curiosity in his tone drew Elia’s ears erect; only his forearm across her belly stopped her dash.

They advanced with care, with Nick at the center, Elia slightly forward, and Rhea one pace behind.

The sound reached them first—a humming that felt childlike, unresolved, yet ritualistic, as if someone had forgotten half the tune. It seeped through the stone, echoing not loudly but gaining weight. Nick felt ripples tugging at the edges of his windshield; each pulse attempted to slip between oscillations like a needle seeking cloth.

“The song’s destabilising the bubble,” he warned. “Treat it hostile.” Elia’s jaw flexed, but she nodded.

The corridor opened into a low nave where a cracked stele leaned at a desperate angle. Before it sat a fox—an ordinary land-fox at first glance, its maroon pelt matted as if it had fallen in a tar pit. Its back paws twitched, and its tail stump beat a half-rhythm against the flagstones. It sang a lilting rhythm that might once have been a blessing.

Nick’s stomach dropped when he saw its eyes. It had no pupils, just marbled cataracts. Yet they blinked in pain with each beat of its tail. Purple veins throbbed visibly under sparse fur, as though someone had pumped dye into them.

Elia couldn’t hold still. “Friend?” she called, voice cracking.

It continued, oblivious. *Thump* *Thump* Its tail slammed, unheeding of the delicate bones' crooked form.

Rhea’s hand darted for an antitoxin. “It’s in necrotic stasis,” she murmured. “I can try to heal it, but I don’t know if it’s too late.”

Elia gave permission with a desperate nod. A vial arced, shattering against the stone. Vapor of green-minted mana rolled over the fox. The hymn faltered into coughing bleats. Veins expanded grotesquely, fur molted in sheets; flesh sloughed like wax too near a flame. The song became a scream, then a wet gurgle. Seconds later, nothing remained but slurry.

Elia’s shoulders shook. “What?” Her eyes stared straight ahead, as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened.

“It was already dead,” Rhea murmured grimly.

Nick crooked a finger, pulling some of the residue toward him. Even a cursory glance revealed there was little biological left. “Dead long ago. The corpse was embalmed with toxins to keep a ritual cycle running. Your antidote just undid the balance and released the spirit.”

“What does that mean?” Elia whispered.

“I’m starting to doubt this is all natural,” Nick said, his voice flat. Too many coincidences didn’t necessarily imply malicious intent, but they certainly indicated that he needed to prepare for whatever was behind this.

What they found ahead only strengthened his belief. They encountered two more fox singers: one hobbled on its forelegs only, its hindquarters dissolved; another was nothing but a torso, yet they kept humming. Each time, Rhea’s antidote ended the horror. Elia performed breathless chants over the puddles, tears glistening on her cheeks.

Nick stopped her after the third. “We can rest for a while.”

“No.” She wiped her face roughly. “I need to see the shrine.”

Her fierceness roared like wildfire, and Nick respected it enough to say no more, although he knew they were still too far to push through in one go.

Hours later, exhaustion made even his perception blur, and Rhea forced them to stop.

They chose a basalt shelf for their camp. No stars twinkled above; only the tunnel’s taxic breath was their companion, but their circadian rhythms screamed midnight. Rhea brewed a thin soup using Nick’s summoned water. Otherwise, she would have had to draw it from the atmosphere, and doing so in a poisonous tunnel wasn’t wise, even if she could counteract the toxins.

Nick spread chalk dust in concentric rings, inscribed a solar cross onto the stone, and hammered each to a cardinal point with a spike of eagle bone. It was a very basic protection circle, yet even that much could help them in such a dangerous environment.

He then placed the owl totem at the center, and only then relaxed enough to join Rhea and grab the bowls she was filling.

Elia sat apart, gaze lost. Nick joined her, offering a cup. “Eagle soup.”

She accepted. “They were still there, Nick. The foxes. I could feel an echo from the corpses. Someone trapped them here.” She shivered.

Nick wished he could offer an easy answer. Instead, he said, “We’ll set them all free, one way or the other.”

Rhea ladled second helpings when Nick’s wind sense flickered as a new aura slid into range. Light footsteps, deliberate, mass close to Elia’s, but mana density far richer, layered like paint until it became impossible to see what it hid. He stiffened. The two girls followed his gaze into the dark.

A figure emerged: tall and statuesque, with three tails trailing behind like banners of silk. Her robe was the richest garnet, made from fabric that shimmered crimson and gold under the foxfire’s glow. Every claw, each nail lacquered to a mirror shine; her lips painted ruby red. Her face combined youth with ancient serenity, too flawless to be mortal. Amber eyes flicked over the camp, pausing on the protective circle before curving into amusement.

“Children,” she said, voice velvet and light. “Might your hearth welcome one more soul on this lonely path?”

Elia sprang upright, tail bristling, but she bowed low in instinctive deference to a more powerful foxkin. “Honoured Lady, the fire is yours.”

The woman’s smile widened a hint—somewhere between pleased and predatory—while Nick’s internal alarms howled. The silver fox spirit back in the Messenger’s temple had radiated wildness tempered by age; this being radiated poise over something cracked. Her mana felt like roses layered over vinegar.

Surprisingly, he didn’t have to inform Elia of this, as she glanced at him meaningfully, mouthing “Guardian, wrong”. Nick’s hand hovered near an ofuda, ready to use the seal. Rhea slipped a vial between her fingers beneath the soup pot.

The visitor seated herself with liquid grace just a foot beyond Nick’s shields, seemingly uncaring of the toxic gases. “It has been… many years since mortals reached these halls.” She inhaled, lashes fluttering. “Ah, gale eagle. They must have been stirred by the mess in the north.” Her smile widened, evidently enjoying knowing something they didn’t.

Nick flexed his barriers, shaping them thinner, sharper, ready to explode into violence. The fox-lady watched, eyes gleaming.

“So tense, little mageling.” She tapped red nails together. “Relax. We share an enemy, you and I. Will you not hear me out?”