Chapter 466

Alluria’s silhouette was swallowed by the pre-dawn fog as Nick, Rhea, and Gaelen slipped quietly through a seldom-used postern gate. The city guard, lulled into complacency by the quiet hour and a few well-placed silver coins, barely noticed their departure.As they rode into the outer farmlands, the uncomfortable ache of Rhea’s alchemical disguise finally began to fade. Nick felt his cheekbones narrow, and his jawline smooth out as the unremarkable face of a mercenary dissolved, revealing the budding aristocratic features of his true bloodline.

Beside him, Gaelen rolled his shoulders with a relieved grunt as his rugged facade melted away.

Rhea barely reacted, but then again, she was far more accustomed to this kind of thing than any of them.

Nick pulled his coat collar tighter against the morning chill, his mind entirely detached from the physical discomfort. Despite the hard path ahead, he was consumed by Tholm’s words.

During his latest experiments, Nick had treated his soul and his as a cage. When attempting to fuse his elements, he had clamped down on them like a vice, trying to crush opposing forces into submission and force them to occupy the same space through sheer willpower.

To be fair to himself, it was a method that had worked for his spiritual-elemental magic and just about every other spell. Intent was extremely valuable in spellcasting, and he had plenty of it.

But when faced with a problem, a hammer tended to see it as a nail, and it was becoming clear he’d need a different approach this time.

Indeed, he could now see it was fundamentally flawed. Elements, at least at the level he could summon them, were more than their physical manifestations, and although he’d tried to incorporate their conceptual aspects, he’d done so crudely. Forcing a flame to merge with a deluge of water was a paradox that inevitably led to a violent, uncontrollable detonation.

As his new horse settled into an easy trot along a hidden hunting trail, Nick raised his gloved hand, though for once he didn't summon the elements right away. Instead, he visualized a point in the empty air above his palm and began weaving a pure stream of mana through it, claiming it as his own.

Slowly, he drew a thread of fire and a thread of water, careful not to push them together. He introduced them to the point of pure mana from opposite sides, letting the flame’s conceptual hunger balance against the liquid's quenching nature.

Once he was sure it wouldn’t explode in his face, he commanded them to orbit the center point, adjusting their speed and proximity until the centrifugal force of their motion matched their natural desire to destroy one another.

A ring of pale steam formed above his hand. For once, it wasn't a violent collision. He had stabilized the superheated vapor.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have cast a new spell !

+50,500 Exp

Nick watched it spin for a few seconds, slowly adding more and more mana, until his concentration slipped and the halo dissipated harmlessly into the cold morning air.

A thrill rushed through his veins. Casting this spell was incredibly difficult, demanding a level of mental effort that made his head ache, but the matric was sound. He had found the proper path, and now he only needed time and repetition to turn that fragile orbit into a weapon of war.

Of course, the rewards would come with increased difficulty. If having two developed affinities wasn’t enough to turn the spell into , he would face an uphill battle to truly master it, but even this basic version had great potential.

In fact, had taken up to the amount he’d use for before collapsing. Even so, he could think of a dozen ways it could be truly lethal.

"We should veer off the King's roads," Gaelen announced, drawing Nick from his thoughts as he pointed toward a dense line of gray-barked trees rising in the distance. "If House Ultimer is hiring independent mercenary companies, the main highways will be crawling with their outriders. By sticking to the game trails and old logging routes, we should be able to avoid most of them.”

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Unsaid was that a quick ending would occur for the few people they encountered. Although this sounded brutal, they couldn’t afford to leave witnesses to what they did.

Getting rid of deserters was one thing, because no one would care even if they were found out. Going around murdering everyone they came across was another.

Still, he kept his misgivings to himself.

"Lead the way," Nick agreed, shifting his steed in the new direction.

As they rode farther from Alluria’s sphere of influence, the signs of civilization vanished. The lush greenery gave way to hardy shrubs and stone. The sky remained a perpetual, heavy overcast, threatening rain that never quite fell.

On the first day, they encountered no other travelers on the hidden paths, yet the wilderness was far from empty.

Without the royal army's regular culling patrols, the local predators had grown bolder. Packs of razor-boars and territorial snow-wurms occasionally tested their luck, and Nick used these skirmishes as target practice.

Instead of relying on his overwhelming mana capacity to instantly obliterate the threats, he forced himself to use the fulcrum method.

When a particularly vicious snow-wurm lunged at Rhea from a rocky outcropping, Nick cast a point of mana into the beast's path, sending a blade of wind and a surge of kinetic force spinning around the axis. The resulting fusion created a spiraling vacuum that sheared the beast’s hardened scales apart, leaving it vulnerable to a spear of transmuted earth that pierced its body, followed by two more, for good measure.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have participated in the defeat of ! x4

+105,500 Exp

You have participated in the defeat of ! x 14

+131,233 Exp

This new magic was slower to cast, requiring some prep work he could only hope would become redundant as it developed further, but the output required half of the mana for double the destructive yield of normal elemental spells. From the looks the others were giving him, it was clearly impressive enough.

By the second day of their journey, the landscape had shifted into the mountainous, treacherous terrain that marked the true beginning of the North.

"These passes used to be the pride of the province," Gaelen noted as they navigated a winding, icy pass. The ranger gestured toward the steep, defensible cliffs around them. "Our father served a tour up here when he was young. He said the Duke's border fortresses were so perfectly positioned that a hundred men could hold off an army of ten thousand.”

"And yet, they are all abandoned," Rhea murmured, her breath pluming in the freezing air. "To leave infrastructure like this unmanned... Even if the dark dwarves are keeping all their attention, this shouldn’t be happening.”

“It only makes no sense if you think they are fighting a war against the deep dwellers," Nick reminded them, scanning the ridgelines for movement with his senses. “But if you consider the possibility that they are clearing the board to stage a rebellion, these outer fortresses are useless to them. Their true enemy would be a royal legion marching from the southeast or the remnants of the army coming in from the northwest.”

As they crested the pass, the wind howling through the rocky crags, Gaelen suddenly raised a fist, signaling a halt. He slipped from his horse, drawing a dagger in a fluid motion.

Following his gaze upward, Nick saw a rocky peak jutting out over the valley.

Perched on the cliff's edge stood a formidable stone watchtower. It was a grand piece of architecture, designed to withstand siege engines and the harshest winters, and should have served as an early-warning beacon, manned by seasoned spotters to monitor enemy movements through the pass.

Instead, it sat in complete darkness. The iron portcullis at the base was raised, and no banners flew from its battlements.

“I would say this is abandoned, too," Gaelen whispered, his eyes narrowed. "But something feels off.”

Nick engaged his , pushing his perception up the cliffside and sweeping across the ancient stonework.

The structure was empty of living men, but the ether surrounding the tower was thick. To him, it was immediately clear that nothing normally found in the mountains could be the culprit, as it lacked any hint of naturalness.

No, this was a viscous energy that felt like blood and profound despair. The spiritual resonance was so dark it seemed to absorb the meager light from the overcast sky.

“Let’s leave the horses tied here," Nick ordered softly, sliding from his saddle and drawing the Shard of Human Ambition. "We should approach on foot. I don’t like the feel of this place, and they’re likely to get spooked and give us away.”

Tensely, they scaled the rocky incline, using the boulders’ natural cover and no magic, not wanting to risk their presence being noticed, even though Nick had yet to feel a single coherent presence. As they drew closer to the base of the tower, the temperature plummeted unnaturally. Frost coated the stone in unnatural patterns, untouched by the wind.

A few minutes later, they reached the open archway on the ground floor. The watchtower's interior was a charnel house.

Dozens of bodies lay strewn across the cold flagstones, stripped of clothing and armor and left to the elements. Even with that damage, it was clear they hadn't died in battle.

Their weapons were still sheathed, discarded to the side. Their bodies were arranged in a wide, meticulously drawn array. Runes of incredible complexity had been carved directly into the stone floor, filled to the brim with frozen blood.

“The gods preserve us," Rhea breathed, taking a horrified step back. “What in the hells happened here?”

After ensuring its magic was spent, Nick stepped over the threshold, tracking the flow of corrupted mana. The runes were an esoteric form of Irvinic, but he could recognize enough to know they were dealing in the currency of souls and torment.

"They were sacrificed," he murmured, his voice devoid of emotion, though disgust ignited in his chest. “Whoever did this slaughtered them to fuel a ritual.”

Before he could try to piece together the specifics of the ritual, the shadows pooling in the upper reaches of the tower began to twist.

The temperature dropped further, growing so frigid it burned the lungs. A low, wretched sobbing echoed down the spiral stone staircase, composed of dozens of voices layered over one another in endless agony.

In horror, they watched as a dark, amorphous shape descended toward them.

It took Nick a moment to make sense of what he was feeling, but eventually he recognized it as a Ghast.

This was not a naturally occurring undead born from a lingering grudge, as he’d feared they would find. No, if anything, it was even worse. Ghasts were artificial nightmares, an amalgamation of the betrayed’s souls fused together by the dark magic of the blood array.

Nick realized, cursing quietly in his head. Not Prestige, no, but close, and with the sheer amount of negative emotions in the ether, this would not be an easy fight.

It had no true face, only a shifting, spectral maw filled with jagged light and elongated, weeping eyes.

The creature fixed its dozens of eyes on the intruders, and its sorrowful sobbing twisted into a piercing, hateful shriek that rattled the walls.