Chapter 381

Nick floated above the swampy muck, reasoning that if he couldn’t sense anything beyond a few hundred feet, then his mana use was probably undetectable. was simply too valuable a resource not to utilize at a time like this, and considering he was racing against the clock, such recklessness could be justified.

The dungeon’s night cycle had drained the last remnants of twilight from the swamp, leaving behind a suffocating darkness broken only by the faint, sickly bioluminescence of fungi clinging to rotting logs like cancerous growths.

He flew just below the canopy, not wanting to be spotted from farther away than he could sense, and thought there were a few close calls. He managed to avoid any more interruptions and finally reached the Guardian’s domain after another twenty minutes.

Low groans started to echo all around him, blending with the regular groaning and creaking of the swamp, while the nearly pitch-dark night created a spooky atmosphere. He didn’t let it get to him, scanning his surroundings for any sign of humans, hopeful that his teammates had survived the ambush, especially since Vane had targeted him.

He couldn’t suppress a smile as he sensed an echo of leadership and reliability, and followed it until he found them hidden in a dense thicket of sawgrass and gnarled roots, a tiny island sticking out from the oil-slicked water, maybe three thousand yards from the Guardian’s central mass.

Raphael was the first to sense him. The spatial mage straightened up from where he’d been crouching, his eyes catching the faint starlight filtering through the canopy. A tense silence settled over the group until Nick flew completely into the small clearing.

The relief was palpable.

"You look like hell," Monte said with a grin, lowering the tip of his rapier. The noble’s fine clothes were ruined, stained forever with mud and ichor.

"You should see the other guys," Nick replied. He leaned on the Shard, temporarily pushing aside the weariness from everything that had happened.

“We tried to get back to you, but they kept throwing themselves into our path,” Mikel said, biting his lips, and it took Nick a moment to realize they were worried he’d think they had abandoned him.

Technically, the events had played out such that he could have thought that, yes, but they truly didn’t know him that well if they considered it a possibility.

Lina was twisting her hands, clearly anticipating an accusation of some sort, and Willow watched him with worried eyes.

Only Raphael and Joran didn’t seem too worried. But then again, Joran was never particularly concerned with what others thought, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.

“They were trying to corner me. A Captain Vane personally approached me to persuade me to sell out, but as you might guess, it didn’t go his way,” he said, rather than addressing all their concerns.

It was still enough to ease the tension, and a few chuckles were shared.

“I managed to escape the encirclement, but he’s probably still lurking around. That guy is strong, too, and with his minions' help, he might be able to defeat the Guardian,” he said.

Mikel looked at him in surprise. “I thought you said conventional methods were useless?”

“They are,” Nick nodded, “but he’s on a different level compared to the team we spied on before. In terms of raw power, he might still be slightly below the Guardian, given its access to all the mana we released from the other Anchors, but he’s very smart, and I don’t doubt he will have prepared actual countermeasures after the previous group’s failure.”

"Damn it, then we need to move quickly if we want to get there first,” Raphael muttered, but before he could start giving orders, Nick stopped him.

“There is something else I found,” he said. He’d debated how much to reveal, since the value of the Well, if what he’d learned from the Final Temperance was any indication, was genuinely astronomical, but lying at this point would only complicate matters more and give Vane something to use against him.

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So he told them what he’d pieced together from Vane’s arrogant pitch and the ancient records in the buried lab. He explained about the healer who tried to cure mortality and probably became the Inner Guardian after being twisted into a monster born of hubris.

“Clearly, no one has accessed it yet, or we would be dealing with a Prestige class and probably be dead on the field, but they genuinely believe that’s what the Well does, and it’s obvious that letting them take it would give a hostile force too much power.”

Nick still suspected there might be some hidden requirement to power the Well, which would fit with the overall Greater Ritual being woven through the dungeon. If its power was so easily accessible, why would the Inner Guardian need to go to such lengths?

Monte looked sick as he processed what he’d just revealed. "That… that would upend the entire continent. The King would never allow a single House to keep such a possession. It’d be war.”

"It's power on a scale beyond petty territorial jockeying," Ord rumbled, surprisingly accurate and verbose in his assessment. The large man stopped sharpening his axe and looked up, his eyes hard and unreadable in the gloom. "Real power. I know veterans who have resigned themselves to never climbing the last hurdle that would require them to sacrifice their families. Can they really do that?”

"They believe they can," Nick said, watching the mercenary closely. Beside Ord, Tessa had stopped working on her arrow, her head tilted as if considering what that meant. A glance passed between the two hired swords, subtle, but Nick didn’t miss it.

“Personally, I believe there might be some limitations,” he added, not allowing his eyes to linger on the two. Others felt similar levels of greed; the apprentices, mainly, given their interest in rare enchantments. Hell, he himself would love nothing more than access to such an artifact to study and take it apart, so he couldn’t exactly cast stones. “Either it can only be used at specific times, or it requires something to power it. Still, the fact remains that it is priceless.”

"It doesn't matter what it is or what they believe, "Raphael cut in, sensing the dangerous shift in the wind. He pointed toward the lake in the distance, where the Guardian awaited them. "We have a job to do.”

That caused them to shift their focus away from the untold riches awaiting whoever got their hands on the Well.

Willow sighed. “Unless Nick came up with something, we’re still stuck on how to influence it. I have been working on my filtering wards, hoping to keep it from affecting us with atmospheric effects, but that won’t be enough to stop it if it touches us.”

They all remembered what happened to the poor man who was that unlucky.

“It’s a good thing I came up with something,” Nick said with a small grin. “I’ll need to set up for at least a minute when the fighting starts, because I have to include its spiritual presence within the boundaries of my magic if I want it to affect it. If you think you can get me that, we’re in business.”

The others exchanged glances, some cautious, others oddly excited, but Nick had proven himself again and again in the heat of battle. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d pulled some absurd stunt out of his hat.

The group emerged from the reeds and entered the black pool, with water reaching their thighs. The soft silt on the bottom tried to pull their boots downward with each step, making it difficult to move quietly.

The Guardian’s groans stopped for a moment as the sound reached it, and it slowly began to twist, turning its many heads toward them.

Once it saw them, the moaning escalated into a shriek. The central mass jerked, and the vine-braided necks snapped toward them, sending heavy wakes across the stagnant water.

"Here!" Malik roared, slamming his shield down to brace against the mud.

The salamander head reached them first, spewing a stream of thick yellow acid. Willow’s water shield flared into existence, meeting the bile with a furious hiss of steam.

The battle started with a fierce pace. The wolf's head snapped at Monte, who dodged aside, his rapier flashing as he tried to hit the vine-like muscle beneath the mossy fur. An amalgam of goblin heads screamed, creating such a loud noise that Terence stumbled until Raphael warped the air to quiet the sound.

Above the chaos, floating just high enough to be missed in the gloom, Nick grasped the Shard with both hands, intentionally keeping its glow low to stay hidden.

He closed his eyes to the physical world, ignoring the heat of the acid, the sprays of mud as the Guardian moved closer, and the grunts of effort from his companions. He turned his gaze inward to the Tree of Life rooted in his soul.

Pushing mana into the sapling, he fed it until the ethereal bark seemed to groan under the pressure, and reached for the empty socket across from Gevurah, the space reserved for Chesed.

Until now, the Tree of Life, the most renowned and significant diagram of the Kabbalah, had been disconnected from his struggles. He was influenced by it, but the rest of the world was not.

That changed now, because Chesed was not the gentle mercy of a healer’s hand. It was the mercy of the executioner’s block, the kindness of ending those who suffered too much to go on.

Nick opened his eyes. They glowed with a terrible, serene green light.

He raised the Shard, aiming it not at the attacking heads but at the weeping, pulsing tumor in the center of the lake, the Anchor of pain that held the Guardian together.

",” he exhaled, feeling the breath rush out of him as all he was, all he had become, coalesced into mana.

The spell burst from him as a flood of spiritual energy, a gale of raw emotions visible only as a distortion in the night air that flattened the water as it swept through.

It crashed into the central mass a moment later, but there was no sound of impact, no great explosion. Yet a connection was made.

Immediately, Nick’s mind was flooded with the screams of a hundred assimilated souls, a choir of agony begging for release, more life, and an end.

Yet, despite the overwhelming pain and the vortex of negativity that was the monster’s mind, he didn't turn away. Instead, he expanded his own soul, using the framework of the Tree to impose his will on the chaos. He flooded the creature’s metaphysical space with his own until it was impossible to tell which was which.

It was extremely dangerous to be so exposed to a Spirit of Suffering. Even might not have been enough to protect him from harm at this point, since it was his own will pushing him toward it.

And the Guardian, after a moment of resistance, accepted his presence, returning to its practices and starting the process of integration.

That was his sacrifice. Nick was risking everything he valued in mercy, relying only on the strength of his own soul and the certainty that the Guardian’s very nature would see him through to the end.

He still had to fight it for dominance first, unfortunately.