The Taros Blackthorn device was smaller and considerably more elegant than Lucus had imagined.
It was the size of a thumb-joint, housing its crystal storage inside a casing of alloyed brass and what Taros identified, with brief pride, as "a trace of mithril-infused copper from the third vein in the Valhalla central deposit, which means it doesn't attenuate the mana field it's sitting in."
The trigger mechanism was passive and environmental: when the ambient void secondary indicators crossed a preset threshold — temperature drop, resonance disruption, light-spectrum absorption, all calibrated to the specific signature of void-spectrum mana's environmental bleed — the recording crystal activated automatically. No manual interventions were performed.
"How long until it fills?" Lucus asked, carefully turning the device in his fingers.
"At full-activity recording: four hours, forty minutes. At the environmental bleed levels you are likely dealing with — indirect, controlled, non-aggressive use — the trigger will activate for shorter periods in each session. Estimate twelve to fifteen sessions of recording before the crystal saturates."
"And the recording is retrievable by a standard mana-reader?"
"By the model I gave, yes." Taros produced a second device, the size of a palm, with an integrated display crystal. "
It reads the storage output and translates it into a visual representation of the void secondary environment over time. It shows the concentration, directional gradient, and intensity curves of the data. Enough to demonstrate deliberate, targeted application rather than ambient exposure."
Chain of evidence. Demonstrable and deliberate applications are also discussed. Exactly what they needed for a report that would hold up to institutional scrutiny was provided.
"How much do I owe you?" Lucus asked.
"The twenty I already have covers the recording device. The reader — another fifteen."
He had four marks after making an initial payment. He had three months before the dungeon trial and a complex operation to complete. He looked at the reader device and thought about Seraphina Von Solaris and the Solaris family's resources.
"Can I pay fifteen in a week?" he asked.
Taros looked at him. "Can ye, or will ye?"
" I will arrange the funding this week. Pay you by the eighth day."
The dwarf held his gaze for a few moments, before looking away. The reader was then slid across the workbench to collect data.
"Eighth day. Not ninth."
Lucus pocketed both of the devices. "Before I go. I need to ask you something."
"Ye usually do." Taros was already returning to his primary work — a larger mechanism spread across the far end of the workbench, complex enough that Lucus could not immediately categorize it.
"The void-mana infusion operation in the academy — the one I have been investigating. Do you know about it?"
The dwarf's hands continued to move.
He continued working on the mechanism for exactly four seconds before answering, which was long enough to be deliberate and not impulsive. "In what sense?"
"In the sense that you've been operating in the eastern quarter of Nevis City for — how long?"
"Seven years."
"Seven years, adjacent to an academy with a two-century history and a mana grid that has been slowly corrupted for at least nine months. You build mana-detection equipment to detect it. You have the analytical skills to read environmental mana signatures." Lucus watched him. "Did you know?"
Taros sets down his tools and walks away. Turned on his stool. She looked at Lucus with her bronze eyes at full candlepower — the look that was assessed rather than observed. "I knew that something was wrong with the grid near the maintenance sector. I didn't know the mechanism or the target."
"But you suspected."
"I suspected. I didn't investigate, because I'm an artificer, not a hunter, and the people who run investigations into void-spectrum operations in this city are the Imperial Security office, and the last time I brought them an anomaly report, they spent three months not acting on it while the anomaly resolved itself into a dungeon breach that killed twelve people in the outer districts."
He said it without particular emotion, the way people cite histories that have become permanent fixtures in their landscape.
"I didn't have enough to talk to anyone who would act on it. Reporting an anomaly without evidence just gets the anomaly moved."
Lucus thought about Seraphina's Solaris family secured channel. A private line to the Imperial Security Office, which bypassed the standard intake process, was established. "If you had sufficient evidence — documented chain of void-application, identified operative, identified faculty contact, documented timeline — who in the Imperial Security structure would act on it immediately?"
Taros had been staring at him for a long time now. Then, she reached into a drawer and produced a card — heavy paper, formal lettering, a seal in silver.
"Commandant-Inspector Elise Vorn. Third Rapid Response Division. She addresses abyss-adjacent threats at the institutional level. She did not have a queue. She has a door." He slid cards across a workbench. "That card gets you past the intake process to her office directly."
Lucus picked it up. The seal was legitimate; he recognized the Imperial Security crest from his world-building notes, and the specific division insignia matched the Third RRD designation.
"How do you have this?"
"She came to me eighteen months ago with a detection problem," Taros said. "I built her a solution. She gave me the card in case I ever had information that warranted direct access." He met Lucus's eyes. "She meant it. However, she is also the kind of officer who carefully checks her sources. If you approach her with evidence, it must be real.
"It will be." Lucus pocketed the card beside his two devices. Three items in his inner pocket — the recording device, the reader, and a direct line to the one authority in Nevis City who would actually move. "Thank you, Taros."
"Eighth day," the dwarf said, returning to his mechanism. "Not ninth."
Lucus left the shop and stood on Artificer's Row for a moment, feeling the weight of what he was carrying — literal and otherwise. The autumn evening was cold and sharp, and the mana-crystal street lamps were beginning their soft blue ignition cycle as the last daylight left the sky.
Seven things he now possessed that he had not possessed when the story began:
A place in Class B instead of dying in Class C. A contact in Taros Blackthorn built tools that officially did not exist in the game. He formed an alliance with Maris Thorne, who noticed things he had missed.
An entry point to the restricted section of the academy library, a theoretical framework for his unique skill that changed everything he thought about himself, and an alliance with Seraphina Von Solaris and the Solaris family's institutional resources. A direct contact for an Imperial Security Commandant-Inspector specializing in Abyss-adjacent threats. A recording device that is small enough to be installed in a maintenance corridor without detection.
Additionally, a clearer map is required.
He opened his notebook in the cold street light and wrote, *The operation is larger than the dungeon trial. However, the dungeon trial remains the trigger mechanism. Everything converges here in this study. If the trigger is stopped, crossing does not occur. Stop the crossing, and we buy time not just for the students, but for the city.*
*Two months and two weeks. That's the window.*
He closed the notebook. He walked back toward the academy through the lamp-lit streets of Nevis City, among people going home to their evenings, none of whom knew that the grid running below the city's foundations was slowly being eaten from one point.
Recording device on the forty-third night.
It took four attempts at timing — Caelen Vor's three-night schedule was regular, but the maintenance corridor had intermittent faculty traffic that required observation before he could identify a reliable window. He did not go alone: Maris was positioned at the northern entrance of the corridor as a lookout, with a prearranged signal system built on mana-tapped stone along the corridor wall. Simple, low signature, and almost undetectable.
The installation took 90 s. The device was adhesive on one surface — another piece of Taros's engineering–and he pressed it into a crack in the wall at the specific location where his wind mana could confirm that the void-secondary bleed was strongest. He then withdrew, walked casually back through the maintenance section, and went to sleep.
The device ran for nine sessions over three weeks before Lucas pulled it out for reading.
What the reader showed him was a consistent void-mana application pattern, directional and concentrated, applied to the academy foundation grid at a point approximately three meters below the corridor's floor.
The intensity curve showed a clear upward trend; the grid absorbed the void mana, and the corruption was building. The directionality showed that the application was targeted at the underlying mana architecture of the dungeon gate and not the surrounding grid. Precise. Deliberate.
The work of someone with specific technical knowledge of how the dungeon gate structures were built is required.
Vane is the faculty's contact. Instructor in Combat Theory, but someone with theoretical knowledge of dungeon gate architecture. Specialization was not random. They placed the right person.
Lucus copied the relevant data into his notebook in a shorthand that only he could read, then brought the documentation to Seraphina in their now-established library meeting point in the restricted section, where Ethan had become an occasional third presence that neither of them had explicitly invited but neither had discouraged.
The first time Ethan appeared while they were working on the third library session with Seraphina two weeks after their initial agreement, there was a moment of recalibration for all three of them.
Lucus had watched Seraphina and Ethan exchange the kind of look that two people exchange when they know each other well and have some standing disagreement about the situation they're looking at. Ethan then sat down, opened his books, and the three of them worked in parallel silence without discussing the elephant in the room.
To be Continue