"Raya Lucaria Academy is definitely up to something. Before, they..." Throne cut himself off. He wasn't sure if the academy had ventured down there before. Both places shared that ominous black sphere, but the details were a blur. "Never mind. What matters is they're up to no good, and I'm here to ruin it."
He grinned, a sharp edge to his voice. "I'll deliver their heads to Her Highness as a gift."
Melina muttered under her breath, "Aren't you just another schemer?"
He didn't acknowledge her. As he walked past, he added, tone laden with implication, "Melina, you're actually quite useful at times."
Useful. She rolled the word around in her mind. Melina knew her strengths—dutiful, straightforward, reliable. She hadn't bridged Runes and power, not yet, but a peculiar arrangement had drawn her closer to Throne. Unbeknownst to her, a quiet transformation was underway, one she hadn't signed up for.
Sometimes, in moments of stillness, she wondered why she was so invested. But that word—useful—it lingered. It wasn't unwelcome.
Throne didn't waste time pondering her thoughts. He cast 'Unseen Form,' crouched low, and crept forward. His sharp eyes scanned the area. Sorcerers were scattered about, but so were Tarnished. The two factions worked together in a tentative alliance, though distrust simmered beneath the surface. Their cooperation was transactional, nothing more.
Throne estimated Raya Lucaria Academy had outsourced the exploration, likely seeking specific materials. His mind raced. Report back, or investigate further?
He stroked his chin, weighing the options. Sneaking in would be risky, but turning back felt like a surrender. Whatever the academy was plotting, it spelled trouble for Caria. Lives were at stake, comrades he couldn't abandon. And then there was Ranni. Guilt gnawed at him for not seeking her sooner. Showing up empty-handed? That wouldn't do.
"Let's take a look," he decided aloud. "I hope Her Highness Ranni won't think I've eloped with a piece of wood."
Once resolved, Throne moved with precision. He mapped the sentries' sightlines, tracked their patrol routes, noted the shift changes. Carriages arrived intermittently, unloading goods and reloading others under heavy guard. Throne spotted multiple Sorcerer Professors, including Oritis and Yug. The burly battlemage carried a grotesque shield shaped like an ant's head, laughing with the Tarnished beside him.
An Ant's Skull Shield, Throne thought. Useful, yes. But damn, it's hideous.
The academy's plans were unfolding. They were tapping into whatever lay beneath their feet, though it seemed they hadn't ventured deep yet. An outpost, perhaps. Ten years of inactivity had clearly come to an end.
Throne stayed for half a day, Melina by his side, motionless and patient. By late night, he finally retreated.
"Are we making a move?" Melina asked. Their time together had bred a tacit understanding, unspoken but unmistakable.
"I've seen enough," Throne replied. "There's at least one Sorcerer Professor named Aira down in the well; combat strength of the others is unknown."
He began to undress, movements deliberate, as if mentally charting his next steps.
"What—what are you doing now?" Melina's voice carried a hint of irritation.
"Naturally, I'm changing disguises," he said, pulling on a brown burlap cloak and drawing the hood over his face. "Let them keep guessing."
He looked darker now, more dangerous. A staff in one hand, the Cleanrot Rapier gripped tight in the other. "It's been a while since I've played the assassin. Melina, you can sit this one out." The girl clenched her teeth, irritation flaring. He was the one who always pushed her to act before. Now he was the one shutting her out.
"Do you think I want to help?" "Yes, and you already did." Throne chuckled softly, watching her vanish into the shadows. He shrugged. Had he said something wrong? The moon hung high, its light catching the edges of the trees, obscuring his figure.
The high ground wasn't a key defensive point. If an alarm sounded, there'd still be time to investigate. Throne crept to the cliff's edge, peering down, as if transported back to his assault on Raya Lucaria Academy's archives. Same opponents. A completely different man.
"Five sorcerer lecturers at the top. Six or seven guards at the entrance. Three Tarnished patrolling the perimeter. Their sightlines overlap—no openings." Throne's fingers rubbed the hilt of his rapier. The clatter of hooves echoed from the path. "But when the carriage arrives, the guards will scatter to help with loading. Only two will stay behind.
Those two don't seem to get along. They'll face outward."
The carriage halted in front of the building. Tarnished and sorcerers moved together, hauling heavy wooden crates. Only two remained at the entrance. Dark clouds drifted across the moon, plunging the area into deeper shadow.
The group by the carriage stacked goods on the ground, waiting for the lift.
Now.
Throne surged forward, his body flickering with Night Sorcery. The roar of waves masked his steps. Bloodhound's Step carried him too fast—the torches were useless.
The entrance glowed brightly, bustling with activity. Two sorcerers in Twinsage Glintstone Crowns turned at the faintest sound of footsteps. Throne rolled past the intersection of their gazes, diving for the yawning hole ahead.
The sorcerers felt a breeze stir their robes and spun around. Nothing. The hole still exhaled gusts of wind. An illusion? They didn't dwell on it. No one would jump into a pit hundreds of meters deep.
Throne plummeted, gravity yanking him down. The abyss swallowed him whole, the bottom nowhere in sight. Wind howled past his ears. A fall like this could kill a hundred Tarnished.
A purple sigil bloomed on his wrist, wrapping him in a faint glow. Gravity loosened its grip. His body lightened, the updraft slowing his descent. But it wasn't enough.
He thrust his rapier into the rock wall. The blade screeched, acting like a brake. His speed dropped sharply. But Throne didn't wait to stop completely. He yanked the rapier free and let himself fall again.
"One more minute." The gale roared on.
Throne counted silently. Melina stayed quiet. The sensation of plunging into the abyss was exhilarating. Skree—
The rapier occasionally stabbed into the rock wall to decelerate. As his vision pierced the thin mist, Throne already saw the bottom of the well.
The lift loomed massive, its surface etched with cyan runes glowing faintly. Crates and cargo already piled high, waiting. Hundreds of meters tall, it wasn't powered by gears or pistons. Magic hummed in the air. Figures moved around its base, their shadows mingling with strange structures. Below Throne's feet, people scurried like ants, unaware. The lift surged upward, fast and relentless.
Impact would kill him. No question.
"Watch out." Melina's voice sliced through the air, sharp and urgent.
"I know." Throne thrust out his palm. Gravity Magic erupted in a burst of purple light. Repulsion Wave. The force hurled him sideways, his body twisting midair.
He rolled clear of the gap, fluid as water. A heartbeat slower, and the ascending lift would've crushed him. Using it to decelerate bought him distance, but he still landed a dozen meters above the ground. No one looked up. The height obscured him, and the chaos below masked the sound of his fall.
Midair, he cast Unseen Form. His silhouette vanished. He hit the ground with a muted thud, crouching behind a stack of crates. Two sorcerers nearby glanced around, saw nothing, and turned back to their duties.
Damn. That was close. Throne's heart hammered in his chest. Infiltrating under their noses—it was exhilarating, terrifying.
Melina watched, stunned. This man moved like a shadow, more like a Black Knife Assassin than the assassins themselves. Skill mattered, but it was his precision, his cold calculation, that set him apart. Who could deny he was a master of infiltration? For Throne, though, this was just another day.
Once, his body had betrayed his mind. Now, he executed maneuvers flawlessly, every motion deliberate. Let's see what you're hiding here. A hundred meters away, a stream trickled lazily, its banks lined with makeshift houses. No Cuckoo Knights in sight.
Incompetent, lazy—clearly, the academy hadn't trusted them with this mission. Between the houses, sorcerers and Tarnished moved like ants in a colony. A camp, not a fortress.
The rock walls cast long shadows, crawling with Marionette Soldiers. At the center, Abductor Virgins patrolled, their metallic forms glinting in the dim light. Impregnable, they seemed to declare.
Heavily guarded, no doubt. Good thing I slipped in. Throne never let arrogance cloud his judgment. Killing Godrick didn't make him invincible. Charging in blindly was suicide.
People who thought they were unstoppable always met grim ends. On either side of the riverbed, caves yawned open. One led to the ant nest, the other to the main stream of the Ainsel River. A waterfall roared nearby. The academy wasn't stupid. If they couldn't climb it, they'd build a ladder.
So what were they doing here?
Throne eyed the crates in front of him. With his rapier, he pried open a gap and peered inside.
Black, viscous liquid pooled like jelly. Silver Tears.
Why were they collecting these slimes?
Artificial creatures, slow and shapeless, capable of morphing into deadly forms. Childhood nightmares brought to life, like the T-1000. These things only existed in Nokstella. Had the academy already delved that deep?
Nokstella worshipped the moon, didn't it?
Throne's mind raced. Ranni, the Dark Moon—he'd felt its power firsthand. What was Raya Lucaria Academy planning? The suspicion deepened. The secrets here were vast, tangled.
Throne associated this with Ranni, the power of the Dark Moon—he'd experienced it personally. What does Raya Lucaria Academy want to do? The suspicion deepened. The secrets involved here were too vast.
They sought power for protection—Oritis had spoken of combining Seluvis's experiments to forge some secret weapon. But the worst-case scenario lingered in his mind.
Why was Nokstella, the Eternal City, buried beneath the earth? Why had its brilliance been entombed? He swallowed hard, the thought settling like a stone in his gut.
This subterranean place harbored the one who had shattered a civilization, and behind it all loomed the Greater Will. No—it couldn't be. The Lake of Rot was the focal point; the Tarnished and sorcerers couldn't possibly reach it. Besides, the Two Fingers wouldn't unleash such horrors, would they? He racked his brain—what else lay beneath the surface tied to Ranni?
Melina remained silent, unsure what the man was muttering to himself. But Throne's thoughts soon sharpened into clarity. The Baleful Shadow—the Two Fingers' enforcers.
Bold assumptions, cautious verification. Throne held a wealth of knowledge, though not in fine detail. He grasped the broader strokes well enough, and his vivid imagination conjured countless possibilities. Imagination, though, was merely that. He needed to see for himself.
The first step was straightforward:
Silver Tears were exclusive to Nokstella. How, then, had these people made their way from the underground well in eastern Liurnia? The lift descended with a hiss, laden with crates and Tarnished reinforcements.
Throne hesitated, then stepped out into the open and onto the lift. Melina gaped. "What are you doing?" This wasn't infiltration—this was walking straight into the lion's den.
He grabbed a crate, stacking heavy components aside with practiced ease. The sorcerers glanced his way, some nodding in gratitude. "That crate has ballista parts. Set it over there." "Got it." Throne played the obedient laborer, working twice as hard as anyone else. "Surprised?" "What the hell are you thinking?"
"These groups don't know each other, and the Tarnished don't wear uniforms. Why would they recognize me?" Melina paused, recalling the constant flow of personnel. Some hailed from Roundtable Hold, others were local recruits, and some had long since defected to the academy. "You're exploiting their assumptions?"
"Been around me long enough to pick up a thing or two, huh? Now you're talking about cognitive bias." Throne chuckled. Melina, the so-called wooden-head, had indeed grown sharper. It was a matter of cognitive bias.
The Tarnished couldn't exist underground—those below assumed he was surface support, cleared through layers of scrutiny. The reinforcements thought he'd been stationed below, assigned to move goods. Communication was sparse, and no one bothered verifying identities.
If infiltrators had slipped through, the surface would've sounded alarms by now. Throne worked tirelessly, unloading crates and shifting materials onto the lift. He wiped his hands and stepped off the platform. "Hold up." A sorcerer's voice called out behind him. Throne paused, flexing his fingers.
Killing everyone here wouldn't be a problem; it was just a different way of "infiltrating." He turned to see the sorcerer stride over, handing him two pieces of bread. "Good job. Take a break—we'll need volunteers to explore deeper soon." "I've taken the money; it's the least I can do."
Throne turned the bread over in his hands, testing its weight. The sorcerer clearly thought he'd descended from some higher place. "How far's the exploration gone?" he asked, casual, like he didn't care.
"A ruin," the sorcerer replied. "But it fought back. The Ainsel River's rich, but it's twisted. Act rashly, and you'll lose your life." He jerked his chin toward the campfire flickering in the distance.
Around the fire sat Tarnished, their faces blank, their bodies battered. Stretchers lay nearby, draped with white sheets hiding the dead. "I knew them," Throne said, his voice steady. "They weren't weak." He paused, then asked, quieter, "Who did it?"
"Nokstella," the sorcerer answered. "Don't fret. We'll wear them down in time."
The sorcerer, seemingly afraid of scaring Throne away, gave a quick salute and vanished into the dark.