《Babel - The Path To Ascension: Heaven》


 Prologue: The Day That Death Descended

    Ten thousand heavens on either side


    Came to a¡¯slaughter.


    Men did fall and heroes rose,


    The day that Death descended.


    A wolf - he fought, for ancient pride


    And made a massive blunder.


    Regret he did for past mistakes,


    The day that Death descended.


    He killed a lass, of heaven¡¯s ilk


    And tore her ¡®pool asunder.


    She did fall, a god was born,


    The day that Death descended.


    A lad did cry, his heart did break


    The sky did crack like thunder.


    A hero rose, a man did fall,


    He was that Death descended.

 Chapter 1: Plans

    Jace slammed into the mat and lay there, staring at the ceiling. It was the tenth time this week he has fought his master, and the tenth time he had lost. It was infuriating, but there was nothing he could do, he was only eleven years old. He knew that his master was a prodigy of some sort, and that he was nowhere near as strong as he had been at the same age, but he still felt sad about it.


    Even now it felt odd when he stood next to the other disciples of the teachers. They were all in their twenties and thirties and then his master was there, fifteen years old and dominating the room. There were even rumours that he was stronger than the grandmaster himself, but he could not believe that. The grandmaster had always seemed like some sort of unreachable paragon, an ideal rather than something truly attainable.


    He sat up, looking around at the almost empty hall. The soft mat floors were a necessity in the Empty Throne school, because the core tenet of the school was that the entire body was a weapon. ¡°Master your body and you will master your world¡±. That was what the grandmaster had always said. It seemed rather metaphysical to Jace, but his master had explained that it simply meant that if you could fully master your body then within your surroundings there would be nothing that could escape your notice. Within your reach you could become untouchable by normal means.


    That was what Jace aimed for. He wanted to become an untouchable figure like all the masters were, and the quickest way seemed to be to learn the skills and martial forms that they taught. Unfortunately that took a long time, and a lot of effort. Not less than he was willing to put in, but just the basic forms for each of the ten martial arts that his master had taught him were enough to set his mind spinning.


    Standing up again, he faced his master and bowed. His master raised an eyebrow, ¡°again?¡± the older boy said.


    ¡°Yessir. I want to master myself,¡± Jace smiled confidently. ¡°I don¡¯t think I will be able to do it in the same time as you, but I think... I think I could attain that skill by the time I¡¯m all grown¡±. He straightened the uniform he wore. It was a thin black costume with a white bar around the collar. Jace always hated that strip of white material. The bar was scratchy and tough, but it showed his rank. He had a special place in the school, as the direct student of one of the masters and the cloth bar was the visible representation of that, but it was so irritating on his skin.


    ¡°Good. I¡¯m glad to see that my disciple has some aspirations above just being competent. Well I have some good and some bad news for you. Which would you prefer first?¡±


    ¡°I guess the good news,¡± Jace said.


    ¡°Well,¡± his master replied. ¡°You are considered the disciple with the most potential so you are going be becoming a disciple of the grandmaster¡±. This shocked Jace. There were only ever ten disciples of the grandmaster, and they were all considered masters in their own right. His master had been one of the youngest ever, but in the two years that he had been taught by the older boy it seemed that Jace had been assessed as someone of a similar potential. He could not help but crack a slight smile when he heard the news. ¡°The bad news is that I will no longer be teaching you. In fact, I will no longer be teaching inside the school at all. My friends and I are taking the plunge and pushing on past the tenth floor, so I will be leaving Spirit potentially for good¡±.


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    Jace was stunned. He knew that his master was the hardest one to work under, apparently even harder than working under the Grandmaster himself, but he did not feel like this was truly a reward. He was simply not ready to become a leading figure of the school. ¡°Are you sure, master?¡±


    ¡°I spoke to master Alistair and he was the one who came up with the idea. You are the closest to attempting to create your own martial style, which is the key to become a master in the school, so you are the most deserving of the direct disciples to become a master. That said,¡± his master paused, ¡°you are likely not ready to teach a student of your own, but you will be taking more of a leading role in the general classes for the students. Are you alright with that?¡±


    ¡°I...¡± Jace did not know what to say. It was simply too much of a reward for him to process.


    ¡°There is one more thing. I have a gift for you, as I will not be around to see you. The only problem with the gift is you must swear not to tell anyone about it. Not even the Grandmaster. It could put you in grave danger, and that would be unfortunate as you would not be able to succeed with the task I am going to set you. You will have two choices depending on how quickly you excel into Sainthood. You can either climb the tower, or you can become a powerhouse of the region¡±. He walked to the side of the room and took out a small unordained box. The box was thin and squat, but about thirty centimetres long. It was made of a wood that Jace could not identify. The box was beautiful in its simplicity. ¡°In this box, there is what¡¯s known as the Book of Creation. It was my prerogative to give it to who I think could propagate the Book itself. I chose you, but you are simply not strong enough to defend yourself from those who might want to take it from you as of yet. By the time you are a Saint I should have succeeded in my plan, so you will be able to reveal yourself at that point. If I have not yet succeeded, then wait until you are of Heaven rank. I believe you can make it there, and that you have a long future ahead of you, so do not squander it¡±.


    ¡°Thank you master,¡± Jace replied. ¡°I do have to ask though, what is your plan?¡±


    ¡°Simple, I¡¯m going to revive the Hephaistia clan¡±.

 Chapter 2: Homecoming

    ¡°Of course I''m coming with you!¡± Said Winoa, her small foot slamming into the wooden floor. ¡°Someone needs to keep you and Law from each other''s throats, and no one else will do it. Yun unilaterally supports Law in all his actions, Louisa is almost as bad if only because she has eyes for no one by Yun, and Jim finds the whole situation hilarious. Why even go with them anyway?¡±


    ¡°You know full well why,¡± Cleo sighed. ¡°They have been half a step from becoming Heaven ranked challengers since they were eleven years old. Babel is only going to get tougher from here on in, so we need to be part of a strong group of we don''t want to be overwhelmed¡±. She wrapped her copper-auburn ponytail round her fingers as she spoke, squeezing it rhythmically. She thought back to when she had first met Law. He had been arrogant, unruly, and downright dangerous, but he had helped her in her time of need and she had eased up on him because of that.


    That turned out to be a mistake. After the first year that she had been a member of his gang, she started to notice odd things about him. He would talk to people as if they were in front of him, even when there was no one around him. He began having ideas that were simply more than any child their age should think about. His unruly temper flashed out more often, never at her or at anyone in Spring Street or the Empty Throne school, but if another gang encroached on his domain he would become a berserker. She still admired his combat ability, and she had a fondness for his willingness to learn anything he came across, but that was not enough to stop her from disliking his methods and demeanour.


    ¡°So you aren''t even going to think about me, you and Rose going up the tower together?¡± Winoa replied. Cleo could not help but think how much they had all changed in the five years they had been in spirit. She had grown taller, but Winoa had not so much. Winoa was quickly growing into a short, but voluptuous young woman, and her waist length brown hair seemed to give her the demeanour of a force of nature. It was reassuring for Cleo to know her best friend was growing into a strong woman.


    ¡°I looked for her. I looked for two months but couldn''t find her. I mean it''s understandable with the rumours about Peter being seen¡±. If Rose heard a peep about him being in the city, Cleo could not help but assume that she would go so deep underground that she would only have gemstones and Tuinians for company.


    ¡°They let that monster out?¡±


    ¡°Apparently. It seems like they have him on a tight leash now though. There haven¡¯t been any devourer incidents since him, so I guess whatever they did to him worked¡±. Cleo released her ponytail. She had always been impressed by Wiona¡¯s hair, it was so long. Hers was far shorter in comparison, but Winoa¡¯s length was her aim. She deeply regretted cutting it like Law had suggested when she first joined Spring Street, but at the time she had not realised how much she would miss it. The boyish bob cut that she had ended up with was another reason why she disliked her inevitable companion. She blamed him for it.


    ¡°Is Law going to do anything about him? I mean that is basically the only thing you will ever say he is good for,¡± Winoa said. ¡°He''s crazy strong. That said, Louisa says Yun is just as strong¡±.


    ¡°She would say that,¡± Cleo paused and bit her lip. Finally she bit the bullet instead, ¡°Win, will you come with me to the Ignis headquarters? I need to report that I''m ascending to them and I still haven''t been back¡±.


    ¡°Are you still that ostracised? Damn. I would have thought they would have started accruing like normal people over you now. I mean you are one of the most gifted fire practitioners in our generation¡±.


    ¡°Thanks for bringing me down to earth miss ¡®most gifted wind practitioner in the last three cycles¡¯,¡± Cleo said with a smirk. ¡°Very humble¡±. Both girls burst out laughing and began the relatively short journey to the Ignis home in Spirit.


    They were a rather mismatched pair as they walked through the city. One short with boyish clothes constructed mostly of a stout leather jerkin and cotton britches, and the other tall with a silk dress and soft cotton trousers. Their allure was still intense despite the oddity of their pairing, which was compounded by their cultivation. Their little imperfections, like blemishes, spots and rough skin were removed as they cultivated. The mana that ran through their body would cleanse them just as much on the outside as it would within, making them seem purer than any mortal should be. This did not mean that a person could not be ugly, but deformities that were caused by anything other than the cultivator¡¯s bloodline simply could not have any staying power.


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    They drew looks most when they arrived at the mountainous building that held the Ignis family in Spirit, though less of attraction and more of incredulity. The clans were all well known for snobbish behavior, but the Ignis were only behind the Caesar clan and the Lupe clan in terms of what people thought of as the most arrogant of clans. That said, they had a right to be. They were quickly becoming the most powerful of the four elemental clans through force of numbers alone; they simply outstripped the Zephyr, Briar and Tempest clans in terms of Saints, Heaven rankers and Immortals. It was only a matter of time before they broke the equilibrium of Ascendant Immortals and tried to become the leader of the clans of Chaos.


    ¡°Who goes there?¡± Said an arrogant voice as the two girls walked up to the entrance of the mountain. ¡°This is the territory of the Ignis clan. State your business or leave before I call the caretaker and make you leave¡±.


    ¡°My name is Cleopatra Tiberian Ignis. I have come with my ally and companion Winoa Zephyr to declare to my clan that I am ascending past the tenth floor within the week. I do not care for entry into the clan territory itself, I am simply doing my duty and informing the Elders of my continued ascent¡±.


    ¡°Oh, it''s the walking embarrassment. I will notify the Elders and the caretaker of statement, but be warned of you are not considered worthy, your ascent will end here¡±. The man was crisp in his response, but there was an underlying venom in it that he did not bother to hide. The longer Cleo thought about the statement the more she realised that it was time for her to leave.


    Winoa on the other hand was fuming. She knew that the clans could be awful to people in Cleo''s situation, but she had not realised that the Ignis clan was so bitter about it. Unfortunately Cleo knew only too well how her accent would be received. She had stepped on the toes of several promising members of the clan to become the prime golden child, and that had angered no small amount of their families. She, a second class citizen of the clan avidly dated to try for the position of golden child, and not only that, she had the audacity to succeed. It was a bitter pill for the majority of the clan to swallow, but there was nothing they could do until Spirit to halt her.


    In the end, Cleo turned around and walked away. She had tried to be amicable and play by their rules, but in the end it was going to bite her in the rear. Her only real option was to leave and head to Spring Street. It had been her home for almost as long as the Ignis clan had, but they had treated her far better than her own blood ever had. She pulled Winoa into a nearby alley and pushed a brooch on that held her dress together at her right shoulder. From the brooch sprung a simple black cowl that covered her completely bar her face. She then grabbed some mud from the floor and began smearing her face in it to mask her skin and make her look less perfect than she normally would have. Using the smallest thread of mana she could, she brought a flame into life and immediately charred a piece of wood, then using the charcoal she drew deep bags under her eyes. Finally she pulled out a thick wooden cane from out of a bag strapped to her side.


    From one end of the alley to the other, Cleo had gone from a worried, beautiful girl into a tired and dirty woman. It had taken her a few months, but she had picked up the skills of disguise from the leader of Spring Street, Orwell. He was in fact more gifted with painting his face to look a particular way than many of the women Cleo had seen in her clan. The two other things that would complete her transformation were the brooch and the cloak itself. The brooch was a gift from Laurence, and supposedly it could mask the wearer''s aura strength and frequency; effectively rendering them invisible to someone hunting their aura. The aura augmentation only worked one hour every forty, so Cleo could only hope that it would be enough.


    The cloak that Yun had given her was slightly different. It was what he called an distraction cloak. It made it harder for people to focus on its wearer. Not impossible, but just enough so that when trying to find someone by their description, they would not be able to work out what they quite looked like. It could not help you walk into a secure vault unannounced, but it would get you past guards if you wore their uniform and looked vaguely like a member of their team.


    These two tools, plus the camouflage makeup that Cleo had covered herself in should have been enough, but she still was not quite sure. She immediately moved off towards Spring Street, and hoped that anyone they sent after her would just ignore her.

 Chapter 3: Family

    The mess hall was quiet at this time of night. It was when Jim liked it most; just before the changing of the guard, and just after all the midnight returnees from jobs had gone to bed. Often, he would spend his scant time off in the mess hall and just listen to the gang as it rested. Even when the people of Spring Street were on near global down-time, they were not quiet. There was always going to be some sort of noise, people talking, fighting, walking about or making deals with their own personal devil. It was a fact of life, and Jim loved to listen to it.


    Tonight, however, he was here for another reason. Tonight he was here to say his farewells and to begin putting the plans that he and Law had spent the last two years drawing up and consolidating for into motion. It was a three step plan, with the first being impossibly embroiled in the lives of those that would run the executioners pen and the desolate strip after the boy''s had left. By all means, Jim did not think that he controlled either section of the city, but he had no illusions over what his role was. He was a knife, made to cut out any problematic occurrences that might appear. When you could not use the knife, when you could not destabilise an enemy force through bargaining, bribery or blackmail you brought out Law, the hammer.


    It had been four years since they needed Law, generally the threat of the masked demon would quell any sort of issues that might arrive. Spring Street¡¯s nuclear option had only become more of an urban legend when it was revealed that he had dealt once and for all with the devourer. It was useful, but when he and Law left the gang would have to use the memory of the masked demon as a form of deterrence for anyone who would become a threat to them.


    Jim viewed himself as a more subtle implement than Law was. When he had awoken his powers, he was worried to begin with. He had the capability to become a monster who could control the minds of those around him without recourse for any response, but after spending time reading the book, stripping away his fears and processing all the information he had gleaned from the purple Book, he had come to the conclusion that there was something rather poetic about the nature of the Book of Order. The Book gave him the power to reorder the priorities of things, be it physical, emotional or immaterial. He could walk into a room an unknown, pull the heartstrings of the people inside with a small amount of mana and walk out with them loving him more than they loved their own families. He could also make two lovers instantly burst into a fit of rage, or a miser give all his money to the poor. His power was subtle, slow and insidious, but it had to be. One step at a time he had to move his targeted idea deeper into the mind of the target, until finally the idea either consumed them, or simply did not matter to them.


    Because of this power, Jim had taken it upon himself to slowly transform many of the rival gangs in the region, eventually twisting them into auxiliary gangs that supported the head that was now Spring Street. It had taken him far longer than he would have liked to admit, but he had achieved something he thought would have been impossible. Now he was leaving, and he needed someone to take his mantle, to control the region through subtlety rather than brute strength. Law could stop mobs forming, and people like serial killers cropping up, but he could not stop another gang rising to power and slowly forcing Spring Street out. That was why he had asked Orwell and Nae to meet him. The gang in truth was theirs. It had always been theirs since they had been given it by their old leader, the man who had originally worn the mask that made Laurence so infamous. They had never told Jim who the founder originally was, but he did not care that much. Laurence had bothered them about it for a long time, but as the holder of the mask, he had a much larger vested interest in the knowledge than Jim ever would. For Jim it was purely academic.


    He got off the table he was waiting on and walked over to the far wall. It was one that was occasionally looked at by the gang, and one that served as a reminder of all the people they had lost in the time since Law had joined. After the festival of the dead, Law had come back and made the wall, a memento to those who had fallen in the battle between the Arrows and Spring Street. Jim had originally assumed that it was some sort of way of Law apologizing for not saving those people, but soon he had learned Law simply did not work in that way. He had discovered that it was instead a gift to those who came after him. It was a stele which contained the all the information about the fall of the Arrows, and the names of every single person who Law had considered was ¡®his¡¯ in any respect who had died. It showed them by troupe, and it was something lasting for them to be remembered by. In a sense it was Law¡¯s way of bringing them back to life, ¡®to fix the unfixable¡¯ in his words.


    Jim would often stare at the stele and wonder what went on in his friend¡¯s head. Sometimes he would be so impossibly unfeeling, completely missing social cues and shooting himself in the foot when it came to relationships between people, but other times Jim felt that he was the most vulnerable out of them all. He was brutish, sly, violent and possessive, but he was also stuck with a sort of childlike innocence about how people acted and should act. His moral code was so obscure that Jim had no chance to follow it in any way, and yet Jim knew the only way he could actually get on Law¡¯s bad side was by hurting someone who Law put value into, or breaking something of his. Without that, Law was simply a boy, almost a man, who simply wanted to know what was on the next page of the book he was reading, or what the world was like on the other side of the hill he could see. Sadly this could be seen as arrogance by some, and it had been by Cleo, which had made their continued friendship, or at least parallel existence difficult, and Jim was often left cleaning up the shards of their fallings out.


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    He mulled over the situation with Law and Cleo, and was still thinking about it when the two people he had been waiting for finally showed up. Orwell and Nae were the diamond duo of the Spring Street bashers, and they had run the gang for over seven years at this point. They were both in their mid twenties, and stood with an air of command that could only be achieved through years of work and effort. It was not the regal aura that seemed to appear around some golden children, or Law''s aura of command through pure strength. Instead it was an aura that demanded you listen to their commands, because they had long since earned the respect of better people. Jim respected them anyway. They had taken him in when his drunk of a father was no longer capable of looking after him, and had become his true family long before the man had actually died.


    He hugged them both before retrieving a linen sack from where he had been sitting. It was a big sack, about the length of his forearm and half that for the depth, and seemed to contain something box shaped. Placing the bag on the nearest table with a thud, he smiled at the two leaders of Spring Street. ¡°Orwell, Nae, I want to thank you for raising me for the last few years. You know I will be leaving within the next couple of days, and I wanted to give you something before I left. You two honestly deserve the world for looking after me like you did¡±.


    ¡°I wouldn''t go that far,¡± Nae replied, smiling at the teenage boy who was quickly showing that he was approaching adulthood. ¡°You are our greatest success, Jim. I would never have believed that the six year old boy we found playing in the gutter would become... well, a Saint to say the least. I''m extremely proud of you¡±.


    ¡°I agree with Nae, though I knew you were destined for greatness the moment you brought in Laurence. It takes a certain amount of luck to become embroiled with someone like him. I''m no soothsayer, but that boy has a destiny like few others¡±. Orwell grabbed Jim round the shoulders. ¡°You''re like a son to me, Jim, so I will worry about you when you leave. You best become strong and then come back to visit¡±.


    ¡°That''s what the present is for. I will come back and visit, to see the both of you, but to lap check on how you are dealing with the Books¡±. Jim smiled and opened the bag, letting two purple leather bound books fall in front of them.


    ¡°What... are those?¡± Orwell and Nae said simultaneously, their eyes twitching at the sight of something they could tell had great value.


    ¡°Those are two copies of the Book of Order for both of you. Somehow the Book knew I needed a surefire way to protect you both and the gang, so created two copies for me to give to you. With these you will be able to control any gangs that spring up like I did with every single one that began causing us trouble. You don''t have to change anyone''s world views, just point them in a direction where they will need to help us rather than hinder us and you will do excellently¡±. Jim beamed at the two leaders as he said this. It eased his burden if they mastered the Book in any respect, and if they became Saints, then he would have even less to worry about. The only people stronger than Saints in the city, were the ten Immortal guards and the occasional Heaven rank individual who stopped by.


    ¡°I can''t take this, Jim,¡± said Orwell, his forehead frowning like saying that caused him great pain. ¡°This is a legacy of your clan. If I took this then I would be denying you it¡±.


    ¡°You don''t get it,¡± Jim replied, ¡°I still have my copy, the Book just reproduced on its own¡±. He stopped, putting his right hand out and then frowned. ¡°More to the point, why do I care what the Caesar clan does? They never did anything for me. Spring Street is my family, so I am leaving it a legacy instead¡±.


    Orwell continued frowning, but Nae burst out laughing. Normally it was the other way round, with Orwell being the more boisterous one and Nae being the serious, ice queen like figure, but she had never really been able to take Jim seriously. She could not help but think that this was his final prank on the clan, giving them two of the most valuable objects in the universe, but two objects that were impossible to sell. The books were worth ten thousand times their weight in gold shards, probably more, but no fence would take one. The heat was simply too much. If someone was caught trying to sell one, and they would be, they would become a meat puppet for the clan they just offended. It had happened before, and happened almost every hundred years, when a fence simply got too big for his boots and thought he was untouchable.


    Orwell knew this too, which was why he had originally tried to return them. Having them near him would torment him likely for the rest of his life. In the end, he sat down heavily on a chair next to the table and began swearing continuously.


    ¡°Orwell,¡± Nae said. ¡°You kiss me with that mouth?¡±


    He smiled weakly and looked at Jim. ¡°Fine, I''ll take mine. But you better come back and give us something we can sell that is valuable¡±.


    ¡°Don''t worry,¡± Jim replied, ¡°I will. Now if you''ll excuse me, I have to chase up Law and Yun before we go¡±.


    He walked out of the mess hall and left Nae and Orwell in a continued state of shock. Neither one of them had properly processed what they actually had in front of them, but after a couple more minutes, Orwell began swearing again.

 Chapter 4: Ringmaker

    It was mid morning for Laurence. He knew he only had six hours to work on the artifacts that his group would need for their journey, but he had so much to do. The wrappings and armour he could do on the road, and likelihood was he would find better materials to work with as they climbed. He had long since run out of the orik leather, and he only had a small amount of maelstrom snake skin, bone and muscle left to use. The rest had been used or traded off for a variety of materials in the hope that one of them would inspire Laurence into working out what his Manifestation would be.


    In the process he had made all his clothes out of Saint tier materials, and had managed to bulk up his defenses considerably. His old armour was strong, but that was all it was. It was also flawed in its design, as it used itself as a battery to repair any damage it took. Eventually the leather would no longer have been able to support itself and collapsed. In the end he had come to the conclusion that the way to fix this was either a super fine gemstone thread that was structured like chainmail and micrometres thick, or a pocket dimension that was built to house a battery. Unfortunately pocket dimensions were not very stable, so Laurence had to use the former method, which was more resource intensive.


    He sold a ten metre square of snakeskin to a very surprised tailor in order to get enough shards to buy any of the Saint tier gemstones that had been on offer at the jewelers in central Spirit. The cheapest one, a piece of Argosan onyx the size of Laurence¡¯s fist, was twenty platinum shards. The gemstone was worth a hundred times more than Rosie¡¯s Demise had been when it had been made, and that was cheapest one Laurence had seen. Laurence had to sell a fifth of the snake to afford to make the clothes that he wore, bone muscle and all, and even after that there was nothing left over. He knew that if he sold the clothes at an auction house he could probably get ten or twenty times what he had paid for them, but the clothes were the ones he wore, not ones he had made to make money.


    His target today was to make everyone a set of rings. One would be for storage, one as an escape route, and one for a last ditch attempt at killing or maiming an enemy. He did not need any of them, but he knew that his friends were not as comfortable with their strength as him. In front of him, on the cold stone table were three bars of frozen heart copper about three fingers wide and a finger long, fifteen small pieces of Argosan onyx, and a small bowl filled with burnt dragon gold. If any one of his friends saw what the materials for the rings were they would have spat out blood. Any one of the materials he had in front of him could keep a rich family running for a decade, and the total value of the items on the table was no less than forty platinum shards, or rather four billion stone shards.


    Taking one of the bars of metal, Laurence summoned his hammer and began to work away at the blue tinted copper. With each strike, he bent and warped the metal until it was thin and malleable, then he looked at its deepest parts for impurities or fractures with his truesight. With each fracture Laurence found within the molecular structure of the metal he would meld it together with nearby complete meshes and then move on, while with each impurity he would isolate it and incinerate it with his inner flame.


    After he had completed his purification of the metal, he moved on to the gemstones. They were all roughly the same size, but for Laurence¡¯s ribs they needed to be exactly the same size, else his workload would increase by five times. He ordered the gems by size, and then began stripping them away until they were all identical to his truesight, then split them into three groups of five. The waste material he took and held in his hand, focusing for a moment before fusing it all together into one new gem about twice the size of any single gemstone that he had just cut.


    Lining the gems up with the first bar of metal, he split it into five parts and began working each thin strip into the shape of the ring he was intending to make. He inserted the gem into the soft metal ring and began reshaping it with his fingers and his mana, until the setting was perfectly flush on the shank, the body of the ring itself. He checked the first gem once more before performing the process four more times.


    Once he had set the gem in the shank of the ring, he began working on the filigree. The filigree was important because that would be what designated the use of the ring, but the more complex the ability, the more numerous the glyphs would have to be. After a moment''s thought he sank his mind into the makeup of the ring and began writing. Each glyph he drew with his mind, infinitesimally small to the point where it was invisible to the naked eye, made up another larger glyph that was one of the six major glyphs that represented the Books. One glyph for the space to hold anything they need, for Order, one glyph for a way to save themselves, for Life, and one for a last ditch offensive blow, for Destruction. He had long since planned out the rings, but only now was he finally letting the glyphs come to fruition. There would be thousands, hundreds of thousands of glyphs that would make up the single glyph on the ring. In the end, to do the first ring it took him twenty minutes of solid work, even though the moment he thought the glyph it would appear on the ring.


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    When it was done, and the glyph of Order was inscribed onto the ring, he began pouring the burnt dragon gold into the rivulet made by the filigree and then watched as the gold began hardening. Burnt dragon gold was a special material, beyond all other it was important because it allowed for the power in the gemstone to restore itself with the energy of the world, which mean that not only would the gemstone be a much more stable battery, but also it would never reach the point where the battery itself would drain power from the rest of the object''s essence. It was something that Laurence had retrospectively had to add to a lot of his tools to make sure that they would never collapse when he needed them. Fortunately for him, Inklight would repair itself using the light from the surroundings, so he had one less tool to worry about.


    After the metal began hardening over the filigree, Laurence began working on the other rings. The first three took over an hour to make, but the last twelve took two hours in total. It was a lot simpler for him to make the rings once the glyphs had been inscribed once before. Rather than copy them hand by hand he just had to copy them from one ring to the next. It was actually something that he enjoyed doing.


    Finally, he had to apply the three prepared arrays on each kind of rings. The first was a stability array, to lock the dimensions of the storage ring. The second was a boosting array, applied to the offensive ring and defensive ring to buff them both up, compounding and increasing their strengths to the point where they would be usable against even a Heaven ranked challenger or member of the clans. The third array was the only one that was applied to all three kinds of rings. It was what was known as a life binding array, which would never allow the ring to leave the possession of the person it was bound to. If the ring was removed by another person it would return to the owner in some way within minutes. It was the array applied to most valuable heirlooms, and one of the most complicated arrays that an arrayist could create.


    Like clockwork, Laurence placed each array symbol into the ring and connected them together, until everything was bound either through material, or mana, to the battery in the setting of the rings. They were complete, so he grabbed a cloth and just polished them until they shined. You could do a lot with mana, create forms and hard tools in midair, but for some reason anything created with the substance would end up looking slightly unnatural. the edges would be too sharp or the flat would be too flat. There was something unsettling about it, so to get around this, Laurence would get a cloth and some sandpaper and just scratch up the rings with sandpaper, then buff them until they shone and were smoother with the cloth and polish.


    After four hours, Laurence was finally finished with making the rings. Each one was a masterpiece by anyone else¡¯s standards, but he knew that he could do better. These rings were by no means his magnum opus. They were by no means his manifestation.


    Within the Book of Creation there was a set of rings that could be created as a manifestation, they would allow you to manipulate the elements as you pleased and were made by an ancient member of the Hephaistia clan to woo a woman from the Zephyr clan. It had not succeeded, and the man had later committed suicide as he could not bear to live without the woman who had become his muse for ascension, but they were well known treasures. Any set of rings would inevitably get compared to the rings in question, the Williamshold Set. Five rings, the first four to control each of the four elements, and the fifth to control them all in concert. The rings on their own would allow a person to excel in their understanding of the elements, but together they would have complete mastery. Laurence had thought about the Williamshold Set when he had created the rings in front of him, but he knew that whatever his manifestation was, it would not be that.


    He put the rings away in five simple cloth bags that he had prepared the previous day and gathered them together. It was time for him to meet his friends and continue their journey. They would be prepared for anything, and if they were not, then he would make something that would allow them to be.

 Chapter 5: Warm Farewells

    Laurence left his room and began walking towards the mess hall. The group would be meeting there, and then once they had made sure they were not missing anything they would head off. It was a simple procedure, they just needed food, clothing, and shelter for the journey. Everything else could be scrounged or hunted until they got to the twenty fifth floor. The next fifteen floors were the crucible that prepared those of Heaven rank. Many would try to ascend, or at least die trying. Unfortunately for Laurence and his friends, or perhaps fortunately, they were all destined to climb the floors of the great tower, they would either live as gods or die. There was no room for failure.


    As he reached the mess hall, he could hear noises. The tunnels of Spring Street were lively. Far livelier than usual, but that was expected. The group that had made the greatest name for themself in the history of the gang were leaving to ascend what many members of the gang thought was a myth. They knew that these children, these young adults, were stronger than belief, almost super human, but there was some inherent sense of distrust at the idea that there were worlds layered above them that was a tough pill to swallow. Laurence could understand that. Many of the children were brought up on the streets. They were the children of prostitutes or foundlings, or simply from families too poor to actually support them anymore for one reason or another. They had nowhere else to go, so Spring Street and all the other gangs in the city took them in. The gangs were where the down and out children found their homes, so it became very difficult to believe that there could be something worlds greater than them. All they knew were the streets. Laurence was different. He knew of the myriad worlds that were just beyond the steles, he had seen them with his own eyes, and he had documented every new thing he could within his codex. Even now, when he would find a new item or see a new kind of person he would write about them. There was simply nothing that would not be of interest to him. He had even taken time out to write his musings and ideas in the codex. It became the physical extension of Laurence¡¯s experiences.


    He arrived in the hall and saw the gaggle of people surrounding Yun, Louisa and Cleo. Winoa stood to the side with Jim and Orwell, but Laurence could not see Nae anywhere. It was unusual because although she was classically an ice queen, she was also the matriarch. Nothing went on without her being able to see it happen, and so the fact that five of her best men were leaving and she was not there to see them off was incredibly strange. Laurence did not dwell on it however, he just walked over to Orwell and asked.


    ¡°Orwell! Where¡¯s Nae? She normally wouldn¡¯t miss a scene like this for the world¡±. Laurence understood the concept of tact, but the process of enacting it always escaped him.


    ¡°Oh, hello Law,¡± Orwell replied, a light, far-away smile flitting across his face. ¡°She¡¯s seeing a doctor. It turns out that there might be a new member of the gang soon¡±.


    ¡°Oh? Is the child injured or something?¡± Both Jim and Orwell laughed. Winoa, on the other hand, frowned and took Laurence to the side.


    ¡°Are you an idiot, Law? Nae might be pregnant. She and Orwell could be having a baby if everything goes to plan, so be polite¡±. Winoa flicked his nose, even though she was over a head shorter than him, she had no fear of the boy. Laurence smiled, confidence was never something Winoa had been lacking. He liked her for that. No rubbish, no bickering, just a straightforward person who could tell when Laurence was not picking something up.


    He walked back to the group and smiled. He still had not mastered a natural smile, but he was getting there. The people found his normal smile much more natural now, it was still slightly off, but that was not something he could help. Jim nodded at him and Orwell smiled back.


    ¡°I assume Winoa scolded you about the situation with Nae and me?¡± Orwell said.


    ¡°Consider me thoroughly told off,¡± Laurence replied. He looked at Jim, ¡°Is everyone ready?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, we¡¯ve got the bags of food in the corner of the room. Clothes are ready, in another bag, as are the covers, bedding and tents. Have you got another one of your boxes to put this all in? Or are you going to carry it all yourself¡±.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ve got that all sorted out. I don¡¯t want anyone else in the gang to see it though, they might get antsy¡±. Jim raised his eyebrow, but nodded and moved on. It was simple for him to trust Laurence, he had relied on him so often that it was second nature at this point.


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    The group mingled with the rest of the gang, saying goodbye to everyone, but soon Orwell ushered them out so that the six could get their items in order. It took a while but eventually they were all alone. They sat at the table in the centre of the room and Laurence threw a bag at each of his friends. Without a second¡¯s thought, Yun opened the bag and poured the rings out unceremoniously. The rings clinked and rolled out in front of all of them, spiralling, spinning and stopping. The glint of the rings, and the aura that they produced immediately caught the eye of everyone in the room. They were beautiful.


    ¡°Each one of you has three rings in your bag. These are to help us in the future. One is a defensive ring; it can instantly transport you a kilometre in any direction you wish, but it takes a week to recover. The second is an offensive ring, it¡¯s designed to let out a shockwave that can knock away anything within a five metre cone in front of you. It should even knock away a Heaven ranker, but that¡¯s not tested. The third ring is a storage ring. There is over a hundred cubic metres of space in each ring, and it¡¯s as stable as I could possibly make it¡±. There was silence as everyone comprehended what Laurence had given them. They were priceless gifts, beyond the value of anything that they had held before. It was a great gift.


    ¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong,¡± he continued, ¡°I¡¯m not giving you these because I want to spoil you. Rather, I am giving you these because I want you to survive. If any one of you survives a situation that you would not have with the rings, then it increases the chances of all of us surviving. You know me. I¡¯m not an optimist about these things. I¡¯m a pragmatist¡±.


    ¡°So what do you want in return?¡± Cleo said, her pale forehead frowning in thought over the rings. ¡°I know you, Law. You would not do this expecting nothing in return. It¡¯s not like you. Not only that, I cannot imagine that procuring all these rings were cheap. It must have cost you more than all the money we had together, and the storage rings alone must have cost you at least five diamond shards. I don¡¯t want this if we¡¯re just to become your indentured servants¡±.


    ¡°I don¡¯t expect anything, Cleo. These are to help you survive, and in turn that will help me. Sure, they aren¡¯t entirely altruistic motives, but by Babel I intend to keep us all alive. You, and everyone else at this table are my friends. You are the people I trust most. I lose any single one of you and it¡¯s going to be hell for us to find a replacement¡±.


    ¡°But you could find a replacement¡±. Cleo stood up, ready to throw the bag back at Laurence. She looked at it one more time before closing her hand around it. She was obviously biting her lip, trying to hold back another comment. He could tell that she was trying to deny the use of the tools to herself, but they both knew that her denying the rings was shooting herself in the foot. Not only would she be able to carry less, she would be two abilities less in a situation that called for her escape.


    ¡°Cleo, you know that you would probably be just as fast to find a replacement as Law would be if one of us died or split off¡±. Said Winoa. Even with Cleo, she was still as abrupt a person. She simply did not give face to people, it was a foreign concept to her, to the point where stepping on toes had become her specialty.


    ¡°That¡¯s a hateful thing to say Win. You know I would...¡± Cleo trailed off. She was not going to lie in front of everyone. It was a fair comment, even if it was a pain on her ego. ¡°I would at least wait to see if you came back if you went missing. I¡¯d wait a few weeks, what are those in the long run? It¡¯s not like we¡¯re on the clock anymore¡±.


    ¡°It''s not a problem, five companions is safer than four and we both know it. No one would feel bad if something happened and we were replaced. Law is just less tactful about it, as usual¡±.


    At that Cleo cracked a smile. Winoa was right about Law being tactless, he knew it, but did not mind. It cut a lot of corners in conversation that he was not willing to put up with.


    ¡°Is there anything else we need to go over?¡± Jim said. ¡°If not, we should pack up and get going. The gateway awaits!¡± There was a momentary silence as no one brought up any more topics. There was a lot to think about, but no one had anything else to mention. They all knew that it would be hard from this point on, that some of them might get injured or even die, and that they had no idea what they would encounter. They were truly going in blind, but as far as Laurence was concerned, they were prepared.

 Chapter 6: Waiting

    The eleventh floor testing area was a rather simple affair. There was no need to test the mettle of anyone attempting to climb, or even for the adjudicators to cull the herd of Challengers that came through. There was a hard floor on entry to the eleventh floor, and if a person did not pass then they were not allowed to move on.


    Laurence and his friends stood in the long, nondescript hallway as they waited for their turn to come up. Generally speaking they would not have to wait long, as the check seemed to take a matter of seconds, but occasionally people would kick up a fuss over the fact that they were not allowed to move on. It usually happened once every six or seven hundred people, but every so often a real hothead would show up soon after the last indignant figure, and then the people queuing were given a real show.


    There were about a thousand people in front of Laurence in the insane queue, but at the speed they were moving, it would likely only take them an hour before they reached the adjudicator. They were lucky they had arrived at a down period. The fact that less than five minutes into them waiting, the length of the queue had doubled. Laurence could tell that led than one in five people would pass the tests, but it still amazed him that there were so many Saints in Spirit. The fact that the executioners pen and the desolate strip were so poor was likely the only reason he had not seen more of them.


    As they waited, Winoa frowned. She seemed like she was battling something in her head, a concept that was particularly difficult to swallow. Laurence could not tell if it was right for him to intrude on her thoughts and ask though, as the last time he had done it she had scolded him. He did not really care if he was told off, but life was a lot simpler if he went without it. Eventually she decided that whatever was bothering her had to be shared, so she began walking towards him.


    ¡°Laurence, I need to tell you something. I don''t want people to worry, so you''re the only person I can really tell about this, but I think you should know that Cleo is severing her ties to the Ignis clan¡±. Her voice became a whisper, ¡°She''s doing it because her last encounter with them would have stunted her journey. It was pretty obvious that it was done out of spite¡±.


    ¡°What has she done to deserve that? I know she doesn''t like me, but she''s a nice girl,¡± Laurence replied. What Winoa said made sense. Cleo had been her usual contrary self when it came to Laurence, but she had rushed their exit along as much as she could, and even now Laurence could see how panicky she was looking. Every couple of minutes she would glance behind her and scan the crowd, then return back into the group with her head low and hood up.


    ¡°She''s just cultivated better than any of her peers. That''s all. Didn''t you ever wonder why she was living in Spring Street with you, and not the Ignis clan headquarters?¡±


    ¡°Of course I did, but that was after you told me off over looking into people''s issues of they don''t ask you to. I just kind of sat on it¡±. Cleo had told him about her issues with her clan when they were still talking, but he had never looked into it further than that. Not too long after he had begun drafting up plans to revive the Hephaistia clan, and Cleo stopped telling him anything.


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    ¡°Damn it, Law. I didn¡¯t mean for you to stop looking into everything, I just meant don''t spread around what you find out. I know you have difficulty understanding people at the best of times. If you understand Cleo a little better, you two might get along better. The point I am trying to make here, Law, is that when we left the clan someone chased after us. Someone chased after Cleo to stop her climbing Babel, and I¡¯m worried they will come after us¡±. Winoa looked off to the side and began fidgeting with the rings on her fingers. ¡°Look, Cleo is a bit too proud to tell you of all people this, but we may need to run at the drop of a hat if someone comes for her¡±.


    They looked meaningfully at each other as Laurence thought about what they would do if someone really did try to hunt them down. It was a difficult thing to think about, as it involved someone they had been friends with for a long time. In the end Laurence smiled, he tried his most honest smile, but he still felt awkward doing it. ¡°Look, Win, you guys are my friends. If it was anyone else, I wouldn¡¯t care, but you¡¯re mine. We¡¯re going to keep Cleo safe, no matter what. You have my word on that¡±.


    Winoa looked surprised. This was obviously not what she was expecting from Laurence. ¡°You never fail to surprise me, Law,¡± she said. ¡°I assumed you would eventually accept, but I didn¡¯t think you¡¯d be so decisive about it¡±. She paused, letting go of her rings. ¡°Thank you. It¡¯s a weight off my mind if it comes up in discussion. I know she won¡¯t say it, but thank you for Cleo, too¡±.


    Winoa smiled, and they were about to continue chatting, when a man pushed past them. ¡°Excuse me, don¡¯t mind me,¡± he said, quickly walking to the front of the line. It seemed like he had pushed past the majority of the people queuing, leaving a string of disgruntled people behind him. No one was willing to interrupt him, however, because one had to have a certain level of bravery to push past everyone in the queue. They could only really assume that his bravery was backed by one of two things. It could have been strength, and if that was the case then it would be suicide to try and call him out. If it was not strength, then it was likely stupidity, in which case they would wait for him to be sorted out by an adjudicator.


    He walked up to the adjudicator and handed him a small metal tablet, by this point the group was only twenty from the testing zone. ¡°Good sir, I was sent here today to deliver this. With that, I would also like to take the test with the blessing of the clan written on the note¡±.


    The adjudicator looked him up and down. ¡°Twenty seven years old, low Saint strength. Pass, but barely. Be careful on the eleventh floor,¡± the adjudicator said, quickly ushering him on. The man looked at the slate for a moment and just waved the next thirty people through, including Laurence and his companions before finally looking up. He looked back down at the face that was printed on the tablet and although he was sure he had seen the face before, could not see it amongst the people in front of him. He sighed and put the tablet aside before continuing his job and testing whether people were capable of going through to the next floor.

 Chapter 7: The Land Of Red Skies

    They stepped into the stairwell and the doors slammed shut behind them, sealing the group in. As usual, there was a rumbling underneath them as the six of them ascended up each step. After fifteen hundred steps, they finally crested the staircase and stepped out into the eleventh world. Laurence, in the lead, made the group halt as they looked out at the land before them. Soft hills stretched out in front of them and a deep red light covered the sky, giving the plants and trees a scarlet light to them.


    They funneled out of the stairwell and looked beyond, wondering how the world had become so sparse. It reminded Laurence of a slightly more florid version of the wasteland of the second floor. It had not been ravaged by the Chaos Storm, but there was something else that had torn the land asunder. It had not ruined the landscape, but there was a noticeable silence that permeated the land. There were birds, but no mammal sounds, and no insect noise. It was too quiet.


    Yun looked at Laurence and the rest of the group. ¡°There is something very wrong with this place. There is no earthlife here. No insects, or animals. There are only birds for miles around. This is very unsettling¡±.


    ¡°Is it something like the Chaos Storm?¡± Said Cleo, her heart in her mouth. She remembered that storm. It had been a nightmare to her, but she and Winoa had found a solid mound to hide inside.


    ¡°This was not a storm. Cloudbanks have come and passed, but this... this was something other. This was something worrying¡±. Yun frowned. Laurence understood why. There was a sense of wrongness about the land. Like someone had ripped strips of mana from the very land and air itself. Not all the mana was gone, but it was like someone had taken a plow and ripped apart the lifeline of the land. ¡°We need to find a place where people are. We need a settlement to find out what¡¯s wrong with this place¡±.


    ¡°Surely we should just use the pointer ring to make our way to the stele as fast as possible. This world... We should leave it quickly,¡± said Jim.


    ¡°I agree with Jim. We walk, and if we find why this land is like this, then we can leave with some understanding, but we should focus on leaving,¡± said Laurence. He held out his right hand and watched as an image of a great stone doorway appeared in front of him. Below the doorway there was an arrowhead with the number one thousand two hundred and seventeen etched below it. Everyone stared at the number and took it in. It was the largest number between steles yet, and none of them were really prepared for it.


    ¡°Four years...¡± said Louisa, her hand at her mouth. ¡°At this rate, It will take centuries to climb to the top of the tower¡±.


    ¡°Well then, let¡¯s get moving,¡± Jim replied.


    They walked for three days before seeing anything like a settlement or place of rest, but eventually they came across a disused road. It stretched one way into a forest, and the other towards a flatland region with three hills popping out of the centre. They were not mountainous, but they caught the eye, as did the settlement that appeared as the group got closer and closer.


    The fact that they had found a settlement was a blessing to most, but to Yun it was disconcerting. He was frowning more than ever, and Laurence could see that his heart was in his mouth. This town was the nexus, or at least a nexus of the issues that had struck this land and rent it of so much life.


    With each step they took the settlement loomed closer and closer. It was not a large place, but the sense of wrongness and foreboding loomed over them. This town had been greatly affected by whatever had happened to it, but they could still not tell if it was the cause or conclusion, or even a middling point of the terrible blight that had struck the lands.


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    After about three hours from when they first caught sight of the town, they arrived at the outskirts. The town was dilapidated, roughshod with carts strewn everywhere and broken walls in half the buildings. It had been torn apart by beasts and by people obviously fearing for their life as they ran. Laurence climbed over the rubble and detritus to get a look at the main highway that ran through the settlement. It was a mess. The street was shattered. Large rocks were puncturing through the walls of the various buildings, obscuring the entrances of two of the larger buildings while leaving the skeletal remains of two or three people left to desiccate outside. There was no way to tell how long they had been dead for, but the way that the corpses had just been left under rocks or on the side of the street. The wind and rain had thoroughly scored and cleaned the surface of the sets of bones that had littered the street paths, but oddly enough there was very little plant life that grew in the city. It was like the plant life itself was afraid of growing there.


    ¡°This place is creepy,¡± said Cleo. ¡°It¡¯s setting me on edge. Something awful happened here¡±.


    ¡°No joke... We should look around to find out what happened. I don¡¯t feel comfortable staying here, but it seems like whatever killed all these people has long since passed us by¡±. Jim frowned, hopping over to one of the buildings and peering into the dim building. ¡°We¡¯ve got a couple of hours until nighttime. I¡¯d suggest holding up in here for the night and exploring in the morning. This place looks like a house¡±.


    ¡°I¡¯m all for it,¡± said Laurence. He walked up to the building and began looking at the windows. ¡°What are you guys waiting for? There¡¯s got to be a way in without us disturbing anything, come help me look¡±. Following Laurence they all began to look over the building for ways in. One of the large rocks was in the way, blocking the doorway from them using the entrance, but other than that, the building seemed to be completely intact.


    After around twenty seconds, Louisa shouted from above, ¡°I have an entryway. There¡¯s an open window up here¡±. Immediately, they all attempted to leap up to the floor above, but as they tried to soar into the aether not one of them could employ their world defying strength. ¡°You¡¯re going to have to climb up the side, guys. I probably should have mentioned that. The messed up mana means that we may not be as strong as we should be normally. It seems like our natural abilities are still usable, as I ended up shrinking to open this window from the inside, but our strength is suppressed. It¡¯s bizarre¡±.


    ¡°Alright then,¡± Laurence said, and moved his hands apart. As his hands split the side of the wall pulled out and gained clear handholds. As he did this, only Cleo and Winoa looked bothered. The stared at each other in shock then back at Laurence, but they did not say anything. They followed the rest of the group and then entered the room through the window that Louisa had opened, and entered the room beyond. It was dusty, and dark, but looked like some sort of barracks that had not been lived in for a long time. Quickly the group settled down and Cleo began igniting torches to give more light to the building. Laurence sat down and immediately pulled out some food for people to eat from one of the rings on his hands. After making an impromptu fire pit, Laurence set up a grill and began grilling the meat and vegetables together on skewers.


    He began handing his food round and said ¡°I¡¯m sorry that it¡¯s simple, but there¡¯s nothing else I can really cook in the situation¡±.


    They nodded and all sat down to eat and mull over what they had seen that day.

 Chapter 8: The Altars

    ¡°How goes the excavation?¡± Declan said as he looked across the great gorge. The sandstone walls dipped in thousands of metres, but they were finally beginning to reveal something. They had been searching the fifteenth floor for months and finally it was paying off. He would be so happy once the master saw his work, and the restoration of his master¡¯s full power would propel the Lupe clan to much greater heights. Almost a thousand years, the pain and torment of a member of the beast clans climbing the tower without a book, and the harshness of the hunt for his master, but it would all be worth it if they could propel the Lupe above the Book clans.


    ¡°The pit is amazingly deep, sir, but we¡¯ve finally reached the strange black rock that you mentioned. There¡¯s a lot more to reveal, but it should only take a few more weeks to reveal what was here. May I ask what we are looking at?¡± The Lupe clansman managing the digging said. It had been a lot of work, so Declan had pulled in as many of the clan as he could. Thousands of people were toiling below, clearing away dirt and stone, digging out large swathes of land, and dumping rocks either side of the gorge. There were two mountains that had clansmen nearby, to make sure there were no rockslides or collapses as the spike-like protrusions stabbed out of the earth and framed the hole. Slivers of black could be seen in the ground over seven separate spots of land, making a very loose circle that could only be seen from high above. The stage was clear, it was time to make the Lupe ascend from the second rate clan they were treated as and let them finally reach the peak.


    Declan turned around and began walking away from the edge of the gorge without answering the question, back towards the campsite that he had set up in. It was a sparse affair, but Declan was unwilling to let anything distract him from his cause. He had left his trappings and special items back in his room in his testing floor. He would not need them, and the Immortal who he had coerced into taking his place would never be able to go in there. He was the monarch of that little floor; his control there far outstripped even the influence he had within the Lupe. He walked through the camp, ignoring the workers who were lamenting about the back breaking work they were having to partake in. Even with bodies hardened and strengthened by mana the work was still backbreaking. There were so many men and women who had given their lives to the project, but Declan gave no heed to them. This was for the greatness of the clan; they would understand. They had to.


    Walking into his tent, Declan moved to a relatively unadorned sheet of metal and sat down on the plain oak chair next to it. The chair creaked under his weight as he stared at the metal, despite his short and thin frame. He looked into the dull surface of the sheet and finally spoke.


    ¡°Tony,¡± he said simply and the metal gained a sheen. It rippled until it looked as clear as a window, but rather than the other side of the tent, it showed a canine humanoid much like Declan. His ears were low, and his eyes betrayed his tiredness as he stared at the man who had called him.


    ¡°Brother,¡± Declan continued. ¡°We are almost complete with phase three of the plan. Once I have helped my master out he will raise our clan to greatness. We will walk amongst the stars like gods of old. We will see the space outside the tower, laugh in the faces of the old fools who run the Book clans¡±. His eyes lit up as he spoke, the fervour bubbling off his face and his strength easily causing rents in the arms of his chair.


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    ¡°Calm down, Dec. I don¡¯t know what¡¯s gotten into you since you met this master of yours, but I¡¯m not a fan. Sure, you¡¯ve worked harder at whatever phase three has become, but I don¡¯t see how getting some ancient cultivator their powers back will get you any closer to harnessing the power of the fallen morning. We need that weapon to corral the Book clans into obeying us if we want any chance of actually getting power. You know this far better than I do, don¡¯t get distracted by your strange errand for this man, Luke¡±. Tony sighed, a strange look on his face as he watched Declan bubble away. The two of them had been working together for so long, but now they were drifting apart. It seemed to pain Tony, but Declan was so consumed with the idea of helping his master that he could not see the wood from the trees.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you understand, Tony? My master is far greater than anything we could have done with the fallen morning, but once he has his powers back to full strength he will direct it to me anyway. We will be rulers beyond anything the tower has seen in hundreds of cycles. I¡¯m doing this for us,¡± he stopped, a bitter look replacing his fervour. ¡°End conversation¡±. The image shifted back to the matte grey metal that it had been before he had spoken to Tony.


    Sitting in the dark of his tent, Declan fumed. There was a splintering sound as the arms of his chair shattered into hundreds of little shards. The wood could not pierce his flesh, but Declan was still annoyed by the fact that his chair could not stand up to his strength. He growled in frustration, and then heard a shuffling sound at the entrance flap. Turning round, the outline of the aide he had ignored before was visible, head bent in supplication. ¡°What?¡± he said, spittle flying from his mouth as his anger built once more.


    ¡°Sir, you never answered me, or dismissed me so I followed you back to your tent, then I heard you shouting and I heard wood shattering and was worried something might have happened...¡± the man stammered.


    Declan snarled. A mere Heaven ranker worried about him, he had not fallen that far yet. ¡°You fool. Get back to work! If the altar to my master is not revealed by the end of the month I will have your head¡±. His eyes wide, and deep red, full of blood. ¡°When I leave, you will go back to work. If I want to see your face, I will summon you, do you understand?¡±


    ¡°Yessir!¡± The man barked, before trying to scurry away, bowing as often as possible out of fear.


    ¡°Halt. I did not say leave. You act without thinking once more and I will begin acting without thinking myself. I will just crush your skull, like I have been holding back from for the last few seconds. You are to find me Saints. One of every Book. No excuses. When you have all six, I want them delivered here. If you fail me I will cut your line from the tree of our great clan, now go!¡± Declan pushed past the worker, back into the light of day. It was time to begin collecting the keys to open his master¡¯s true prison.

 Chapter 9: Primer

    ¡°What is the plan today then?¡± Louisa said as she put some meat on the fire they had made to cook. Camping in the building they had found was fortuitous because it seemed to have been a set of barracks for the policing agency of the town before its collapse. It had been made of solid stone and contained enough beds for everyone, so they rested well for their first night in the eleventh floor. The scent of meat wafted through the building, waking the four sleeping bodies who had not been on watch for the final hours of the night with Louisa and Jim.


    Laurence was the first down from his bunk, still slightly bleary eyed and wrapped in six blankets. He sat down heavily in front of the food and grumbled something about waking earlier than Babel had intended. After some thought, and a momentary chuckle at Laurence¡¯s state of being Jim replied.


    ¡°It seems,¡± he said, ¡°like the best options are to either explore the town to find out what the hell happened here, or to move on and hope for the best. I''m an advocate for the former, though there is some prudence to the latter. I''m all for moving on as soon as possible, this place gives me the creeps, but I think we need to find out what happened here¡±.


    ¡°I guess I can see what you mean. There¡¯s gain on both options, though they both could go horribly wrong for the same reason,¡± Louisa replied. ¡°With how quiet the night has been though, I am unwilling to believe that staying for an extra day will cause us harm¡±.


    ¡°Agreed. If we find out what the hell happened, then even better. We should probably find out if there¡¯s a roof before climbing on top of the building¡±.


    ¡°Eh?¡±


    Jim sighed, looking back towards their entry into the eleventh floor. ¡°It''s a turn of phrase used in Spirit. Honestly I''m surprised you never heard it before. It mean to research before you decide to do something you might regret¡±.


    ¡°That''s interesting. I never heard people use many of those, but then I didn¡¯t talk to a lot of people in Spring Street. A lot of them assumed I was either as laconic as Yun, or as insane as Laurence. Of the odd phrases I did hear, the one I always wondered about was ¡®you¡¯re climbing into a barrel of wine¡¯. I seriously don''t understand what it is supposed to imply¡±.


    ¡°That¡¯s based on a story about a man who was supposed to be so annoying that a mob came to his house and stuffed him in a wine barrel. It¡¯s also where ¡®purple skinned¡¯ comes from, as his skin was supposedly purple when the bobbies pried open the barrel and found the body. Grim I know, but it is where the phrases come from¡±.


    Louisa turned the meat cooking on the spit, with gobbets of fat dripping off into the sputtering flame as she sat in silence. After two minutes she took the meat off the spit and began putting it into slices of bread, handed one of the sandwiches to Jim, then to Laurence, and finally spoke. ¡°I think I want to stay. There¡¯s too much going on here that I don¡¯t understand, and I don¡¯t want to leave that kind of thing looming behind us. It doesn¡¯t seem right¡±.


    ¡°I agree,¡± said Cleo as she walked through the door, rubbing her eyes. ¡°I want to look around. This place gives me the creeps, and I want to know why¡±.


    ¡°With me,¡± Laurence said through a mouth full of meat and bread, ¡°that makes four. We stay no matter how everyone else votes¡±. He quickly finished the bread and licked off the excess grease from his fingers. ¡°I want to learn what happened to this place. It interests me, and I don¡¯t understand why our mana doesn¡¯t flow properly. None of this makes sense¡±.


    Standing up, Laurence removed the blankets that he was wrapped up in, and shook the wrinkles out of his clothes. He turned and walked to the exit of the room and looked at Jim. ¡°You want to come with me, Jim? You¡¯re the only other person who¡¯s actually ready to go anywhere, so do you want to come with me and case this place?¡±


    ¡°Sure, where are you thinking of looking?¡± Jim stood up and walked with Laurence to the window on the ground floor they had opened after entry.


    They hopped through the window and began walking through the ghost town, looking into the dusty windows of each building. In the sixth, Laurence finally saw something he was interested by, a room full of books. He waved Jim over and pulled out Jormugand before smashing the hammer into a pane of glass. It cracked once, and then shattered on the second strike, letting Laurence lean in and unlock the window itself. The window rattled and there was a crunch of glass as the frame slid up and Laurence hooked himself into the building itself.


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    The building was dark and musty, filled with the scent of old books and the writing of people long since gone from the world. It was a mausoleum to the knowledge and creativity of the land they were in, but was covered in several thick layers of dust. Without waiting for Jim, Laurence walked out into the main room and gasped in excitement as he saw books on every wall, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. There was a disused fire pit near the main entrance of the building, surrounded by torn up books and two chairs, as well as several sets of bones. Laurence walked over and realised that they were animal bones, immediately discarding them and looking at the books that surrounded the pit. There was only one that was intact. Bound in soft leather, the book was title-less and sealed by a thin strip of dark brown silk. It was a book that reminded Laurence of his codex for some reason, so he could not help but open it and look inside.


    He heard Jim walking around behind him, looking at the books in the shelves, before moving further and further back into the deserted library. Laurence paid him no heed as he turned the first page and read the words inscribed there. He frowned. There seemed to be some sort of global writing language that Laurence could read spread through the entire tower, something that he did not quite understand. He mulled it over and came up with several hypothesis, but did not dwell on them. He would find out in due time, and if he did not, then he would simply discuss it with Jim and Winoa for many days.


    On the first page the words ¡®Diary of Manas Magellus, Primer of the Kingdom of Biqiril¡¯ were spread across in a cursive pen. The clarity of the penmanship was nothing less than breathtaking to Laurence, but like the issue of language he did not dwell on it. He flicked through the pages and began reading the diary, quickly learning about Manas and his life inside the town, Aledia. The town had been a military outpost, made to experiment with the concept of sentient arrays. Being the greatest arrayist in all of Biqiril, Manas was invited to test the idea and work on creating a single array that could comprehend and was able to run without interference from an outside source. He had spent several years doing it, and near the end there was even a second arrayist brought in, a man called Qema, but something obviously went wrong and Manas slipped up somewhere. Laurence could not tell however, as the last few pages were ripped out of the book, perhaps to fuel the fire in front of him. It was painful to Laurence, but the book had left him with more questions than answers. He knew what the place they were in was called, and what they were working on, but he had no idea what had actually caused all the damage, or the whereabouts of the man who seemed to have caused the mess in the first place. It was a predicament for him but he smiled at the fact he had learned something more by chance.


    As he was mulling over his issues he heard Jim shouting from the back of the Library for him. He ran towards the rear of the building and came to a room. It was an odd room that was much like the previous one filled with books, however there was a faint red light exuding from the back. Jim was staring in confusion at the source of the red light that was hidden from Laurence¡¯s sight by a book case. He turned and looked at Laurence.


    ¡°Law, I think you have to see this,¡± he said, eyes open wide. He took a step back and Laurence walked into view of the lightsource.


    In front of them was a gemstone with an array carved into the centre. Above was a crucifix with a skeleton of a man bound to it. The man had been dead for a long time, but that was not the issue for Jim, nor the issue that Laurence found with it. Behind the crucifixion the wall was covered in pieces of paper with the same news article printed on them. Over those articles were words scrawled in what looked like long dried blood, dirt and ink. ¡®Betrayer¡¯, ¡®You did this¡¯, ¡®Traitor¡¯ and ¡®Folly of Man¡¯ were written around the corpse, with arrows pointing at it. Someone was being punished here, and to Laurence the way it had been done screamed of a mob mentality. But if there was a mob here, where had they gone? Where were their bodies?

 Chapter 10: Alamis

    After Law and Jim left the campsite Winoa came down and grabbed some food to eat. The meal was a short affair, as she and Cleo quickly left to follow in Law''s footsteps. Neither of the girls were willing to play second fiddle to the boys, even if both of them had less experience than Jim or Yun at hunting in general. Winoa often lamented at how sheltered she had actually been in her life. Unlike the other clans of Chaos, the Zephyr clan would often spoil their children. It meant that they could come out a lot more selfish than the average Golden Child, but also that they felt the plight from starvation and from exposure that much more. The Zephyr clan was on the hunt for the most inventive survivors, and they believed that the best way to go about reaching that was through periods of softening and quenching in the harshest of fires.


    ¡°Where shall we go?¡± Said Winoa, as they walked out into the main road of the town. She looked to the left and right of where they were standing, and saw two large buildings in either direction.


    ¡°Well, Jim and Law went over to the right, so I guess we should look at that large place on the left,¡± Cleo replied, taking a moment to look at the building she had just declared would be their target. ¡°It looks kind of like a town hall doesn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, perhaps we can find out what was going on here if we look inside¡±.


    The two girls began walking towards the hall, glancing into the buildings as they passed. They saw very little that could shed light on the way the town had been deserted, but they did notice that a lot of the buildings were deserted far quicker than if it was an exodus, or something planned. The set tables, messy beds and turned over chairs told a story of fleeing from something unexpected rather than any sort of great looming threat that allowed any sort of organised exodus. Both girls had a glum look plastered over their faces as they arrived at their target.


    ¡°I¡¯ve not walked through a place this saddening since the villages that got set upon by Peter,¡± said Cleo, her hand shaking the doorknob slightly as she voiced her problem. The door swung open, revealing a dusty reception hall filled with the same kind of overturned chairs and paper strewn about as had littered the town before them.


    ¡°Seconded. There''s something rather unsettling for me about going through places like this. So many people experiencing their last moments, running for their lives,¡± Winoa replied, following Cleo into the building.


    ¡°At least they had a chance to run here. Do you remember that castle we found? The one where all the people had been killed while they were having dinner, just sat at their seats¡±.


    ¡°Don''t remind me. I still have nightmares about that one. I swear their half rotting faces stared. They didn''t have eyes, but damn could they stare¡±.


    Cleo shuddered in response, before walking into the building proper. The two girls split up and began peeking into each room they could find, checking if it was useful and then moving on. Room after room all they saw was desks with strange arrays on them. Cleo tried several times to use them, but she could not help but feel that the arrays had a specific purpose, and yet were also woefully incomplete. Unfortunately she did not have enough of a grasp upon arrays in general to understand what they did. In the end all she could do was move on and look for something more concrete further down.


    Cleo and Winoa met up at the last room on the ground floor. It was a large room, but only had one entrance, so they could not help but go in it together. The room was obviously important, because had it not been for the fact that someone panicking left the doorway open, neither girl would have been able to go inside the room. The entrance itself was something like a vault door, littered with arrays and made of an extremely tough metal alloy. It was not perfect, as both Cleo and Winoa had no trouble entering the room, but was quite clearly a Hephaistia clan creation. If they had not been able to guess by the craftsmanship quality, they could easily tell by the gemstone mosaic in the shape of a furnace on the back of the vault door.


    ¡°I wonder what actually happened to the Hephaistia clan,¡± said Cleo as she took a step into the room. It was full of filing cabinets, stacked row after row that were barely visible in the light-starved room. Winoa stepped in and the girls heard a click, immediately making them stand completely still. One of them had obviously started something working again, but they did not know what. There was a whirring and a flash as lights came on in the room, and the gemstones on the door burst into life. Winoa turned her head and stared in wonder at the beautiful mosaic battery that only had five of the hundreds of gems that made it up actually working.


    ¡°So do I. It makes me wonder though,¡± Winoa paused, before she began opening drawers one after the other and perusing the contents. ¡°I really wonder, was whatever Law did trueforming? It fit the description perfectly, but that''s the dominion of the Book of Creation¡±.


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    Cleo followed suit, opening drawers and looking inside for something that could tell them more about the town they were in. In each drawer were thirty or so thin slates with a completed version of the array Cleo had looked at on each desk. Each one was set up to record information and show it on the panel in text form. After scanning a few pages of the text in the array, Cleo gasped in surprise. ¡°These are documents kept by the military of the kingdom we are in... Biqiril? I think that''s what the country is called. Keep looking, there might be something useful in here¡±. After a moment of checking through the files, Cleo spoke up again. ¡°I don''t know. Something about Law has always rubbed me the wrong way, from the first time I met him to a few days after he dealt with Peter. What he said, it was just too outlandish to believe¡±.


    ¡°But now you''ve seen his dominion, you are doubting yourself?¡±


    ¡°Well, yeah I guess. It seems kind of dumb to hold a grudge against him for so long because the third day I knew him he declared that he was going to revive the Hephaistia clan. But it struck a nerve. He seemed... He just seemed like those other children who had bullied me when I was living in the Ignis homeworld. They would pretend to help me then declare they would overturn the rule about the fourth child entirely, but soon after they would just give up and laugh at me. From when I was four until when I was six I hoped that someone would come and save me from that hell, but no one would.


    ¡°My family, rather my immediate family, were worthless. Three mediocre brothers, a mother who died in childbirth and a father who no one accepted the existence of. It seems childish but I just can''t trust anyone who makes great claims about changing the world with nothing to back it up. And Law...¡±


    ¡°May actually be able to do it,¡± Winoa said, quickly looking up at the worried and slightly distracted Cleo. ¡°It really seems that you''re being unfair on him, for something other people did¡±.


    ¡°I know. The more I think about it, the more unfair I think I have been... But I had no proof he could change things. He spoke of making a place for me to live in when I told him what I told you, about life in the Ignis clan and I couldn''t separate him from the others. I still... I still don''t know if I can¡±.


    ¡°Well we have a long time to try and find out. You can ask him about his Book when we get back to camp, and perhaps try and get over your problem with him. Hold on...¡± Winoa stopped and looked at the array in her hands, before pulling it out and reading it again, this time out loud. ¡°... Project Alamis... Array studying settlements... Oh wow, autonomous array soldiers? I think I just found out what they were doing. Listen to this.


    ¡°Day 1772, almost six years since the start of Project Alamis. Primer Qema has come to the General with a working prototype for the array soldier, and in my professional opinion it is disturbingly simple but it works. The general has ordered creation of ten soldiers that we have coined generation 1 and will be testing them a week from now. If all goes well then we could see the face of war change a month from now. The General has sent off the array schematics to HQ, so even if the traitor got word out to her conspirators no invading force will be able to stop the rise of the New Biqiril Array Army. Biqiril blood will never have to be spilled in combat again¡±.


    Both girls looked at the slate and then at each other with wide eyes. Neither one could imagine the skill and ingenuity it would take to make an array sentient, but they had both heard of strange artifacts that had been made by the Hephaistia clan that possessed intelligence. They were things of legend, so anyone emulating that with arrays was beyond their scope of reasoning. They both immediately turned around and attempted to find out more about the array soldiers, peeling through each draw and discarding anything that was either before day 1772 or not to do with Project Alamis. After almost half an hour, they had cleared the room and Cleo was sat at the single desk in the vault. She poured over everything they found, but there was nothing after day 1782, the day of the test. Finally she slammed her fist into the table in frustration and the array on the desk lit up. From the array, a single image began floating in front of the girls. It was an article of some sort of missive or news bulletin with the words ¡®War Has Changed¡¯ printed in a bold font above the image of a hundred stone soldiers walking in uniform step. Neither girl could talk, but a thousand possibilities of what happened went through both girls heads.


    However, before either could talk about it they heard a crash from a nearby building and Louisa¡¯s voice came out of their Challenger Rings. ¡°Everyone, help! Yun and I have found something and it seems to be violent. With the mana acting so strangely in this area we need to work together to get rid of it!¡±

 Chapter 11: The Stone Soldier

    Yun arrived at the same time as Winoa, but stayed and sat with Louisa instead of rushing off. The two of them knew they would not have much chance to be alone together much over the next few years, so they decided that they would enjoy the time they had without others bothering them as much as they could.


    Originally Louisa had been opposed to the way their relationship had progressed, but she idolised Yun. He was like a god to her, which made their life all the more painful. Yun, on the other hand, had accepted Louisa with open arms. Originally he had simply liked the woman because her natural scent was pleasant to him, but after he reached Sainthood and began teaching her it evolved into much more than that. Yun was a White Tigerwolf, which meant he was vastly different from his companions in two respects. First, he was originally an animal who had gained the ability to transform thanks to Laurence and his Book. Second, he matured far, far faster than any of his companions thanks to not actually being human. His actual age may have only been seven, and he may have looked like a fifteen year old boy, but in actuality he was an adult. The only reason he took the form he did was because of his brother.


    After ten minutes they separated themselves from each other. Louisa often got lost looking into the depths of Yun''s eyes, but today they could not afford to. They were in unfamiliar land, so every second counted. There was truly very little time for the lovers to frolic, but they managed to cherish every second they got.


    Yun grabbed the meat that was left in the fire pit while Louisa put the fire out. It was unlikely they would stay for more than a day, so she had no qualms with quenching the flame. If someone needed the pit then Cleo would have no trouble relighting it, and Louisa did not wish to set a building alight, letting whatever killed the people in the town have a beacon to lead them back towards new life.


    They cleared up the camp in short order before finally moving out and beginning the search like the other two groups. Unlike the other two groups, Louisa followed Yun¡¯s nose rather than picking a direction and hoping for the best. The nose of a Tigerwolf was peculiar, as not only could it detect scents of almost all varieties, it could also pick up the ¡®scent¡¯ of discharged mana. Unlike other cultivators, mana pathways that were active, Yun¡¯s scent capability could tell him when the mana was released into the air and for how long, allowing him to hunt with greater proficiency. Even in the town that they were in, where their own mana was so stilted, he could follow the route from the mess that was the origin point in the middle of the town to wherever the creatures left the town. If they left the town.


    For the entire time that Yun had been in the town, he could feel that there was something wrong with the scent of mana in the area. A lot of it had gone, but some of the paths had returned to the town. It was like whatever had caused all the damage had gone through the town a second time, but they had muddled themselves up within the exit paths. There was no way to easily tell if the routes were of five creatures or fifty without checking each path out individually. Which is what Yun ended up having to do.


    He walked with Louisa to the nexus of the event and took in a deep breath of the crisp, cold air, letting the broken up streams of mana in the air flood through him. He shuddered before following a path out of the town. After five minutes of walking he turned around and walked back to the town to pick another path. This one was clear.


    Again and again, Yun picked up a scent. He followed the scent until it left the town, making sure that it did not loop back. It was quick work, as most of the creatures walked in a straight line out, causing as much damage as possible. The few who did walk back into town took slightly longer to vet before he could clear the place. Some would burst through buildings, and some of the most damaged buildings were caused by creatures that had come back for prey before turning round and leaving again. There was no definitive route that the creatures left in, but the paths all slowly seemed to direct themselves westwards, with the majority of the looped pathways coming from the eastern side of town. The only exception was one of the last routes that Yun had to check. The route left through the eastern side of town and turned back at the five minute mark, just like the rest of the easterly oriented creatures. He walked with Louisa back into the town and followed the route all the way towards a bar near the western side of town. There was no solid door into the building, just a hole where the door would have originally been, with shattered wood and glass strewn away from the scar that seemed to puncture the building as a whole. There was a thick slab of wood that crossed the room making up the bar itself. It was still intact, but there were two massive dents in the edge nearest to Yun. Yun could only imagine what happened, but to him it seemed like the creature had used the bar counter as a springboard to leap at a target, perhaps the bartender, and had smashed through the back wall, leaving a hole in the wall the size of two men.


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    Following the trajectory of the creature, Yun leapt through the hole and was confronted with a hole full of rubble. On every side there was a room that had lost its wall, and in the middle was a small hill made of stone, wood, roof tiling, carpet and metal. Yun frowned and sniffed the air again, carefully walking over the rubble and looking for anything odd. He avoided the centre of the mound, and was about to leave when he saw what looked like a stone glove poking out of the tip of the hill. Looking at the surrounding material he stepped over, summoned his needle-blade, and prodded the glove.


    It did not move. Staring at the glove for a moment with a frown plastered on his face, he turned round and walked back to the room with Louisa in it. He was stumped. The path that the creature had taken ended here, and he had assumed it was something to do with the stone glove. That had not panned out as he had expected, so he returned to his partner with the intention of continuing his hunt. He climbed through the hole, and as he was just about to hop back into the bar he heard a crack and a crash behind him. There was a rumble and a series of crunches as Yun turned round to see the hill that he had walked round fall apart to reveal a man-like figure ascending from the detritus. Its thick, stone arms broke free of the piled up rubble and began working on releasing its legs from the weight that trapped it in the ground. As it struggled, Yun motioned at Louisa and she retreated through the door of the bar, letting him deal with the threat by himself. He watched curiously as the stone creature climbed out of the ground, slowly at first, but as his body freed itself from the rubble it became quicker and quicker until finally it was able to stand up.


    It stood at almost double Yun¡¯s height, and triple the boy¡¯s width, with thick chunks of marble forming most of its body mass. There were extremely thin lines of mana that stretched over the ¡®skin¡¯ of the creature, all culminating at where its face should have been. Instead of the face, there was simply a smooth surface, making the creature look almost entirely alien to Yun, and worrying him immensely.


    After a moment of being free, the creature leapt forwards and smashed into Yun, sending him flying back through the bar. He smashed into the far wall, through a window and straight into the street, before sliding to a stop in front of Louisa. Immediately she touched her pointer ring and began broadcasting to their team.


    ¡°Everyone, help! Yun and I have found something and it seems to be violent. With the mana acting so strangely in this area we need to work together to get rid of it!¡±

 Chapter 12: Strength

    Cleo sprinted out of the records building the moment she heard the call from Louisa. She did not know the girl as well as she would have liked, but they were allies and she knew that if Yun was not in real danger, then she would not have called. She knew Louisa had absolute faith in him.


    She arrived to see a giant stone man extracting itself from a building near the middle of town. The man dwarfed Yun and Louisa who were both standing in its shadow, seemingly petrified at the creature that loomed before them. Cleo pulled out her Salamandrite knife and immediately began trying to inject her mana into it. The knife flickered several times but for some reason she could not get a firm grasp on her power once it left her body. Finally, after her seventh try in less than three seconds, something stuck. A thin bar of boiling hot flame shot out of the tip of the blade and slammed into the giant in front of them. The statuesque figure shot back into the building and there was a crash as the flame dissipated. Cleo frowned, but did not dwell on the situation and instead ran to check on Louisa and Yun.


    ¡°Are you alright? Did the stone soldier hurt you guys?¡± She said, checking them both for any injuries. Yun was the only one with any wounds, but his were severe. There was already masses of bruises forming on his chest, and it seemed like his right arm had been broken from three separate impacts.


    ¡°I''m fine, we need to get Yun to Laurence. He''ll be able to help. That stone soldier just popped out of the ground and began attacking us. If Yun had not warned me to stay away it would likely have been both of us injured,¡± Louisa replied. She stroked Yun¡¯s hair and kissed his forehead before standing up. ¡°But first, we need to sort out that thing¡±.


    The stone soldier smashed through the wall as Louisa spoke, destroying more and more of the building behind them. There was an ominous light flickering behind it, then an explosion and shards of glass were shot out of the building into the back of the soldier and the street proper. Cleo looked shocked as the soldier stumbled and then stood up tall, looking like the marble that it was made of was even more pure and clear. It was getting to the point where whatever material the soldier was actually made of was becoming like white jade.


    With the increase in purity of the material it was made of, the strength of the creature seemed to increase as well. Its body was more agile than moments before, and it seemed to recognise Louisa and Cleo as targets now, rather than focussing solely on Yun. Cleo began trying to summon another bar of fire, but the struggle that she was under had only increased in difficulty. It was like trying to put a thread with split ends through the eye of a needle, and with each passing moment the eye of the needle was shrinking. Finally she managed to galvanise her mana through the blade and produced another bar of white hot fire that sped towards the soldier. As the bar sped through the air, the soldier let out a crackling sound and stopped in front of the flame, letting the bar of light and heat hit it. There was a soft squelching sound as the stone that the soldier was made of began to liquefy, but before long the liquefaction stopped and the clarity of the stone that the soldier was made of increased almost to the point that it was past white jade and moving towards being completely clear like diamond.


    Cleo¡¯s eyes shot wide open, and she immediately stuck the blade out flat in front of herself before shouting out. ¡°Fenrir!¡± She screamed at the top of her lungs, and the flames inside the blade immediately galvanised. They sped out of the dagger and shot towards the ground, taking the shape of a giant, grizzly canine with wild hair made of flame and teeth dripping lava-like spit. The beast roared into the sky and a cone of flame blasted out into the stone soldier.


    Unlike the flaming bar of light, the stone soldier desperately batted the flames away from it. There was something different about the new flames, but Cleo did not have time to dwell on it as she heard a cry from far above her and a blade comprised of wind smashed into the soldier. There was a screech and an explosion as the soldier was pounded into the ground by the attack. This only seemed to empower the creature further, however, as its skin became clearer and clearer, even as the flames from Fenrir were having the opposite effect.


    ¡°No one use attacks that contain mana!¡± Cleo said into the pointer ring as Winoa swooped down to the ground, her wings that had held her aloft quickly shrinking and transforming into a bird which perched on her shoulder. She skittered to a stop and stood beside Cleo, watching the stone soldier struggle against Fenrir.


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    ¡°Why? What is wrong with it?¡± Said Winoa, looking at the spectacle for a moment before letting her bird, Garuda, enter the fray.


    ¡°I don''t know, but the soldier seems to get stronger every time we use mana based attacks on it. Fenrir seems to ignore the issue by the fact that my spirit seems to keep all its mana in. The only drain I am feeling is keeping Fenrir¡¯s impression upon the world¡±. Cleo frowned, ¡°Do you reckon we will be able to use our affinity skills for dealing with it?¡±


    ¡°I have literally no idea. What¡¯s the plan?¡±


    ¡°Umm... Okay I will seal its movement, you make it light as a feather and Louisa? You''re the strongest of us physically. Bat that thing into the stratosphere. We need to get that away from us¡±.


    Both Winoa and Louisa nodded at Cleo, before focussing on working together. Cleo began focussing on the soldier as it battled Fenrir. Gradually as they exchanged strikes, the soldier became more and more sluggish, before finally it ceased moving all together. Small crystals of ice began to form upon the soldier as it stood still and Fenrir moved its explosive body away. Winoa, seeing the soldier begin to freeze in place, took a wide stance and thrust her hands out, palms forward. There was a vibration that shot out of her and struck the soldier, but other than that there was no change to the world. Finally, Louisa began running at the soldier , quickly shrinking in form as she did, she jumped and shrank to the size of a mouse before slamming her fist into the centre of the stone soldier¡¯s mass. There was cracking and the soldier shot into the sky with a force completely opposed to what you would expect from a girl who looked twelve years old at best.


    As Louisa returned to her normal size, she pushed the blue hair out of her eyes and rushed towards Yun, not caring about the stone soldier anymore. Cleo and Winoa, however, watched as the stone soldier shot into the air and ignited, burning up as it flew high into the sky.


    ¡°How weak did you make gravity affect it?¡± Cleo asked, returning Fenrir to her body as she watched the soldier soar and burn up.


    ¡°Umm... Around a thirtieth of the strength of normal gravity. It is my current upper limit, so I tried to push that as far as it would go. It''s kind of odd how much easier it is to make things lighter than it is to make them heavier. My lower limit is around five times normal gravity now¡±.


    ¡°Then that soldier is going to fly far away. It should not be a problem any longer, huh¡±.


    ¡°Sadly, you''re wrong,¡± said a voice from behind them. They turned and Law was there, kneeling by Yun and looking at his wounds. ¡°That golem is not anywhere near dead. I happened upon the journal of the guy who originally designed the stone soldiers, and he was a master craftsman when it came to arrays, beyond anything I have ever seen before actually. I could grasp some of what the array did, including the reason why it failed. He made the arrays relate to each other intimately, so the more stone soldiers there are, the better their golem hive-mind works. He also made it eat mana, so as to be destructive on a scale that would wipe out a country, but he could never truly get it to work and was going to scrap the concept before the plans for the array got stolen...¡± Law stopped as he was pressing lightly against one of the bruises on Yun¡¯s chest. He reached into his bag and pulled out three large dried leaves. They looked vaguely like palm leaves and they smelled like medicine, but the moment he placed the palm leaves on Yun¡¯s chest, the pain all across his body visibly lessened. ¡°Augercalm does wonders. Now where was I? Oh yes. What you need to know is one; the creature can only be destroyed if the array is broken. Any damage to its body is effectively superficial, though the damage you do will force it to restore itself. Two; It eats mana and uses that to restore itself. Three; the fact that you tried destroy it means that they know where we are and we should get moving as soon as Yun can walk. This place is no longer safe for us¡±.


    Silence spread over the group as Jim finally caught up with the others. He looked over the group and seemed to be thinking about something, but Cleo did not have time to ponder what. She could not help but wonder whether what they had done was best for the safety of the group or not, especially as the person she considered a braggart was kneeling on the floor and helping his friend. She knew she had a lot of adjusting to do.

 Chapter 13: Stone On All Sides

    Laurence swung Yun onto his back and began shoring him up, so he would not fall or jerk about too much. The leaves were still wrapped around Yun¡¯s body, but Laurence was careful to not let them on his own skin. He knew that while Augercalm was a blessing for helping people in great amounts of pain, they were awful for anyone who wanted to be productive.


    ¡°Let''s get moving. We need to find a place to hide and fix up Yun, because otherwise he could die. I can''t tell how badly his organs were affected by the blow he took, but if his broken arm is anything to go by then I am surprised his lungs are still working¡±.


    ¡°You had me at let''s get moving,¡± Jim replied. ¡°I don''t know if anything we will find here is worth more than what we have already found, or our lives¡±.


    ¡°Seconded,¡± said Cleo. Laurence could not put his finger on it, but there was something that had changed about her. He hoped it was for the better. The contrariness that Cleo often had when he was working with her was almost infuriating. If it was not for the fact that she was an excellent face and was equivalent in power to any other member of the golden children, he would have long since stopped working with her. He did not care much about how he felt about his team, as long as they did their job he was happy. No matter how they felt about him.


    ¡°Yun and I grabbed everything that was back at camp before we left, so there is no reason for us to go back to the campsite either,¡± said Louisa. ¡°Are you sure he will be okay, Laurence?¡±


    ¡°If we can get to a safe place, then I should be able to fix him up. If we can''t though, Yun''s situation will be the least of our problems¡±.


    They moved out, with Laurence making sure to keep Yun stable and Jim keeping watch on their direction. Winoa and Louisa were up in the sky, on top of Garuda, looking in every direction for a sign of incoming golems. With Cleo taking up the rear guard, the entire group worked as a convoy to protect Laurence¡¯s injured brother, protecting themselves and their injured companion as much as they possibly could.


    They reached the first real piece of uneven terrain about an hour after they left the town. Laurence stopped the group and moved towards the hill, taking care that there were no golems in the immediate region. He raised his hands, palms touching, and as he split his hands and spread open his arms a tunnel developed in the hill in front of them. There was a thrum and a crack as the tunnel continued to split, opening up into a larger space for them to stay in. Laurence clenched his fists and began walking down the path into the darkness ahead.


    ¡°Follow me!¡± He shouted, as he walked, and the rest of his friends quickly walked into the tunnel behind him. They reached the cavern that Laurence had made and he let his hands relax. As he did, the tunnel that lead to the exit slammed shut behind them, sending the entire group into darkness.


    Cleo summoned her inner flame, but the moment the light spread across the room, Winoa said ¡°Don¡¯t, you¡¯ll burn up the oxygen in the air¡±. They were plunged into darkness once more, where they heard a grunt and light began to spread across the room once more. In the centre of the floor there was a single shard of salamandrite, about the size of a child¡¯s head. It spread light across the room and allowed for the flickering shadows of the children to be present against the walls.


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    Laurence immediately put down Yun¡¯s body and looked around the room, before moving his fingers like he was playing an invisible harp. With each movement a symbol appeared on the walls, or a gemstone appeared on the floor, until finally the room was lit up by thirty gems of varying colours and surrounded by sigils of unimaginable variety and quality. There was a slight rumble in the room and Laurence finally stopped moving, before collapsing onto the ground in a slump.


    ¡°This is the second time I¡¯ve made a bunker in a hill, but damn... this was so much harder to make¡±. He paused, wiping off the sweat that had accumulated over his face, and breathed out deeply. ¡°There should be no worries about anyone finding this place, and no worries about the lack of oxygen. Although most of what I made was to avoid the golems detecting us, there are four stones of tornadrite in the floor that will be providing us with air until we leave here. Now give me some time to restore my mana reserves and I will see if I can get Yun back on his feet¡±.


    There was an air of oppression that hung over everyone as they watched Laurence sit in silence, his pointer ring glowing as the boy let the copious amounts of stored mana flood into him. Finally, Cleo spoke up.


    ¡°Is no one going to bring up the elephant in the room? Is no one actually going to ask Law about how he can make all of this?¡± She waved her hands at the cavern. ¡°He¡¯s a member of the Absolution clan, not a child of Hephaistia. How can no one else have a problem with this. It makes no sense!¡±


    ¡°Cleo,¡± Jim said. ¡°I know you¡¯re not Law¡¯s biggest fan, but don¡¯t tell me you haven¡¯t realised that both he and Yun practice the Book of Creation. They may not be of that clan, but they are the only people who really have the right to claim such a thing. If you ask him, I am sure that Law will happily tell you, so get off your high horse for once and work out what the hell is wrong between you two¡±.


    Laurence exited his meditation session as Jim finished talking, and smiled at everyone as if he had not heard Cleo¡¯s complaint, nor Jim¡¯s response. ¡°Okay then, it¡¯s time for me to see if I can sort out healing my brother. Seeing as the mana here is a bit funky, I may need you guys to help me with preparation of some herbs. I have the tools that will do most of the work for you, but I would normally work with mana hands, so doing five things at once would be no issue for me¡±.


    ¡°Alright,¡± Cleo and Jim said at the same time. Neither one seemed to be letting up, but Laurence did not mind. As long as they worked well together he would never have any complaints.


    ¡°Then let¡¯s get to healing up Yun¡±.

 Chapter 14: Operation

    Laurence began by placing Yun on a large, flat outcropping he had made out of a salamandrite and nereidite blending. The stone was crafted with exquisite runes and was made for two purposes. First, the nereidite would cleanse the body of any impurities that were on the skin, and then the salamandrite would burn away any infectious material in the surroundings. Laurence smiled. He was quite proud of the surgeon''s table he had created, he even added a slot for a higher quality gem that would slow down the time of the subject on the table, allowing for quicker and more complicated procedures. It also had a simple numbing array placed on it, that would work like an anaesthetic without the danger. Laurence knew that any normal anaesthetic had to be applied carefully as it could completely stop vital processes and kill the patient. Augercalm was no exception. If pulped and ingested, or smoked it would stop the heart and lungs in short order. Only in using the leaves as some sort of wrapping could he ensure that the leaves would not cause death.


    After setting Yun down on the slate, Laurence pulled five boxes from his bag,as well as a pestle and mortar, a large erlenmeyer flask filled with slightly salted water, a small knife, and a series of glass tubes that were propped up on a stand. He opened up the boxes, one by one and looked at the herbs in front of him. His first two boxes contained perfectly preserved stems, leaves and roots of the first genesis mixture. There were a variety of ways to make the Malmas Tincture, the first mixture, but it usually required pairs of weaker herbs. These herbs were generally quite safe because other than the basic medical properties they held, they aided in healing by galvanising the mana of the world around them and drawing it in, slowly and safely restoring the body while not causing more problems from overdrawing mana from the body. For these reasons, any plant that can become a Malmas Tincture variant could be used as an emulsifier, a binding agent, for several plants while only slightly reducing medicinal properties within the more toxic ingredients, and could be considered an earthen tier medicine.


    Unfortunately, because of the nature of the mana on the eleventh floor, they would be rendered useless other than with reference to their natural capabilities and mixing properties. Their form of healing through mana was rendered completely worthless.


    The third and fourth boxes were filled with rarer saint medicinal plants. They generally had similar natural capabilities to the earthen tier medicines, but were much more toxic than their earthen counterparts. They also drew from within and without, using a combination of mana from the world and from within the body to use their greatest healing capabilities, however this could cause the body to overdraw on it own mana if the medicant, the healer, was not careful and the patient could end up in a coma or much worse.


    Laurence looked at the fifth box before shutting it and putting it back into the bag. ¡°I don''t need that just yet,¡± he muttered to no one in particular before taking out a variety of Earthen medicinal plants and began pulping them. He filled three vials with a combination of pulps and the water from the odd flask, stoppering them and mixing them and watching as the fluids became red, blue and green. He looked at the fluids before closing the first box, tapping its side twice and reopening it. Inside the box was now two large seeds that looked like a black and white pair of chilli peppers respectively. An odd aura poured out of the box, combining a feeling of purity and life with a thick stench of death and decay.


    At the smell of decay that sprung from the box, almost everyone began gagging and looked towards Laurence. Jim strode over and looked at the contents of the box, before pointing at the two seeds and saying ¡°What the hell are those things? One is making me salivate and the other is making me gag¡±.


    ¡°These are the two most potent and valuable earthen herbs. The Dead Man¡¯s Tongue, and the Angelic Deception are two pivotal plants that make the basis for any true life or death elixir. One is used for restoring life to damaged tissue and the other is purely for degrading and removing bad cells¡±. Laurence stopped talking to pull a set of tongs out of his bag and then carefully grabbed the lustrous, fleshy, white seed. He then cut the tip off and returned the seed to the box as carefully as he had removed it before pulping it, emptying and diluting it and then thoroughly washing out the mortar bowl. He even went as far as getting a small salamandrite stone out of his bag to cleanse the bowl with flame before continuing.


    ¡°I thought that was the life one, why are you being so careful with it? It smells so good!¡± Jim said, reaching out towards the box.


    Laurence slapped his hand away almost immediately. ¡°There''s a reason why it''s called Angelic Deception. It''s the fruit of a man eating plant, one that specifically grew to kill Saints. It lures them in with a sweet scent and then when they take a bite of it, the poison within paralyses them and stops the brain from working, killing the victim. The poison then gets to work making the flesh soft enough for the tree the fruit comes from to swallow with its tentacle-like roots. It''s pretty interesting really, but not as interesting to watch. The decaying process takes around three days, which is way too long to watch a corpse for¡±. Unlike how Laurence had treated the first seed, he grabbed the black, withered fruit and bit the tip off. He moaned happily before putting the fruit down and cutting a large chunk out of.


    ¡°Dead Man¡¯s Tongue, on the other hand, is honestly one of the most delicious fruits I have ever come across, even if it does smell like arse. It also rejuvenates your skin and makes you feel calm. It''s so good that it was almost forced out of existence. It only survived by developing that awful stench that would even put off carrion, so nothing in its right mind would eat it. I assume such was the case for the man who found out about it¡±.


    Jim frowned before taking a step backwards and sighing. ¡°This is too weird. I will just let you do what you need to¡±.


    ¡°It''s probably best if you do,¡± Laurence replied before continuing to pull out herbs and mix them with the five vials, now red, green, blue, white and black. As he continued to work uninterrupted, Cleo and Winoa looked at each other with wide eyes. He was living up to his family name, even through the oddity that was the little hidey-hole they were in and the fact that he practiced the Book of Creation, the clanless book. ¡°Red, for coagulation, Aguara Leaf base to mute the effect of the Kingsbane¡±. He picked up the red vial, slipped in two thin seed pods and shook the tube, watching it until it began to glow. ¡°Blue, for blood production, Iconis Rose and Alasa pulp working together... And black, Dead Man¡¯s Tongue working with a Starflower for extreme rapid healing¡±. Laurence clapped his hands together, grabbed the three tubes and shook them until the herbal essence had been thoroughly diffused within the fluids. Retrieving a sieve from his bag, he proceeded to drain all the fluids through it into the empty vials, leaving him with four tubes of coloured liquid and one of watery paste.


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    ¡°Time to begin,¡± he said, picking up the knife by his side and making a simple incision across the bruised area of Yun¡¯s chest. Blood sprayed out as the pressure from the fluid that had been building up since Yun was injured had finally released itself. There were three shards of bone going into his liver, a large vein, and his intestine. Somehow, the bone that bisected his vein had managed to jam into the ribcage and get stuck while also stoppering the blood from leaking out of his chest. It was the only reason why he was still alive.


    Laurence swore. ¡°I didn''t think it would be this bad... But I can fix this¡±. He pulled out a brush, one made by Yun for Laurence to use when applying potions non-orally. It had a super-fine nib made from the hair of a Saint level Komodo Snake, a body made from Saint tier Mother Onyx, and clasps made of softer Memory Iron. It was a truly valuable item, and was the product of rewards from several jobs that had gone smoothly back in Spirit. Yun had spent several days making it, making sure it held fluid as long as there were three fingers touching it, two fingers would allow for the release of fluid and one finger would cleanse the brush of any fluid at all. It was both excellent for healing and for painting, although Laurence rarely did the second.


    Dipping the brush into the red liquid, Laurence began tracing any points of the body leaking blood, letting it clot. He knew that the clotting would generally not be a good thing, but in the right places it would stop Yun from bleeding out while Laurence removed the bones in his organs. He traced over the incision, then over the large vein that had been severed, then over both other major injury points. The blood became solid almost immediately, letting Laurence pull the bones out of Yun. They had snapped off, and would need to be affixed back in place, but that would have to be done last. Before that, Laurence had to cleanse his brush and begin working with the black fluid.


    He dipped the brush into the black tube as lightly as possible before putting no more than a droplet on the punctured intestine, making sure to spread it evenly across the wound. Once he finished he watched as the hole itself closed up, leaving nothing but a thin white line on where the intestine had torn before. Next, he did the same thing to the liver, but took a small amount of the Dead Man¡¯s Tongue and pulped it, placing it inside the hole that the bone had made before covering it with the black fluid. As the fluid drained into the organ, the pulp wriggled and churned, meshing with the body, and restoring the liver to its peak state, albeit slightly off coloured.


    Finally, Laurence turned to the prominent vein that had been hemorrhaging blood. He found both ends of it and held them together, making sure that he did not damage or deform either one. He knew that they would bounce back and reform quickly, but if he warped the shape of the vein it would make aligning them properly a pain. He held the two tiny tubes close with one hand and knocked off the built up clotted blood that had formed over the wound with the brush before flipping it round, dipping it in the black fluid and drawing a quick, precise line over the area connecting the two parts of the vein. Like the intestine, in mere moments the vein was back in one piece. Laurence sighed, and relaxed slightly. The most dangerous part of the surgery was done.


    ¡°Winoa, could you come over here and pull the excess blood out of Yun¡¯s body with a funnel of wind? I can''t leave that in there or it might cause more trouble,¡± he said, taking a moment to clean the brush and wipe off the sweat that had accumulated all over him while he had been working. He had only been in surgery for five minutes, but the focus of it made Laurence feel like he had been running a marathon for hours.


    ¡°Of course,¡± Winoa replied, quickly summoning a jet of air that allowed the excess blood flowing about in Yun¡¯s chest cavity to leave. She kept it floating just in case Laurence needed it, but he ignored it and went back to work. There were three bones that had split off from the body, as well as seventeen fractures over Yun¡¯s ribs. Most would take a few weeks to heal without mana, but Laurence did not have that long. He grabbed his brush and once more went to work with his black fluid, carefully tracing breaks and realigning offset bones until all that was left were the three chunks and to close the body up.


    Taking the longest bone, he set it in place and immediately traced a line with the brush over the break. He held it in place until it set and then immediately went to work on the next bone. This was harder as a chunk had been broken out of the bottom. He grabbed a piece of the pulp he had used to fill Yun¡¯s liver earlier on and placed it where the bone used to be, before sealing up the other side with a quick swipe of the nib of his healing brush. All that was left was the smallest bone.


    The last bone was the hardest, unlike the other two there was no simple way to hold it in place or to fill up the gap that was causing the issue. The bone had splintered like a flower blooming and had left one end of the rib as sharp as a knife while the other was uncomfortably wide. There was no easy way for Laurence to fix this, but after a moment of thought he came to a conclusion. Using his truesight he measured the lengths of the opposing rib and measured the total length of the bone plus the shard. Comparing the two he worked out he would need to use about a fifth of his only Dead Man¡¯s Tongue to repair it, which gave him pause but Yun¡¯s life was more valuable. He pulped the herb so it wa ready to be affixed to the bone and then grabbed his knife. Before he could fix the bone he had to deal with the calcium flower that had been created during the accident.


    He grabbed his knife once more and quickly severed the protrusions of bone from Yun¡¯s rib before collecting them up and placing them to the side. He attached the pulp ¡®bone¡¯ and began aligning the real bone into place. The moment he felt that the measurements were equal to the other side he let go and watched as the pulp began writhing and morphing into bone. After a minute, the bone set and Laurence began pulling Yun¡¯s chest closed. Dipping the brush into the healing fluid once more, he ran a line up Yun¡¯s chest and watched as the skin knitted back together, leaving an off colour line on Yun¡¯s already pale skin.


    As the wound finished closing, Laurence sat down in a heap and breathed out. The entire procedure had taken twenty minutes, but they were the longest 20 minutes he had ever experienced. Yun was simply too important to Laurence¡¯s plans for him to die in some no name mound on the eleventh floor, so he had put his all into healing his brother. He lay down and let the chatter of the others wash over him as he recuperated from the immense mental drain he ha just experienced.