Lyraen is a mber of The Silent Veil. Just that guild’s na alone reeks of so kind of phantom invisibility assassins, cloak swirling, voice dropping to a whisper, eyes glowing in the dark for no practical reason, bullshit class. Their guild isn’t in the top 5, though it often shows up in the top 10.
It’s well known for an elite guild with relatively few mbers, the lowest of them holding an A rank. People tend to think of it as an elite rcenary guild. Hela apparently used to run with them before she bailed for so reason.
As for Lyraen, he’s placed among the top 3, maybe even the strongest. Nyssa, Lyraen, and Solae M’Karn, the guild master of Bloodline. I’ve asked about those three before. Out of those nas, Nyssa has the most ti left, Lyraen cos second, and Solae has the least. Not much different from Hela.
What’s interesting are the rankings.
Individual Rankings
1. Adrian (Ivory Tower)
2. Lyraen (The Silent Veil)
3. Nyssa Volare (Primordial Knights)
4. Solae M’Karn (Bloodline)
5. Zarith K’Traal (The Darkmoon Collective)
They reset once every thousand years, and the next reset isn’t far off either. It’ll probably happen soti in the next 10 years. Yet the top 5 already have 3 currently active people. That fact hasn’t escaped , and it sure as hell hasn’t escaped anyone else in Beyond either.
So say it’s luck or coincidence, others say it’s always like this, with maniacs from the last rounds of the tutorials pushing hard before the thousand year reset. This generation has the highest number of risk takers and the most casualties, and the most clawing their way higher. Others claim it is yet another sign that big changes are coming to the outer world, with ancient monsters stirring into wakefulness and new talents rising to carve their mark into the system.
These individual rankings co from your performance in the tutorial, while exploration rankings are tied to Beyond performance. Mostly floor exploration, with so weight from quests and events.
Exploration Leaders
1. Adrian (6th Floor)
2. Voss (5th Floor)
3. Nyssa Volare (5th Floor)
4. Orion (5th Floor)
5. Zenith (5th Floor)
In this iteration of the top five, only Nyssa remains active. Rumors say she might soon overtake Voss, a beyonder from almost three hundred years ago, and might eventually co to match Adrian.
Sotis I wonder what drives her to push like that. And sotis I wonder how she turned a bastard like Morwag into the kind of person people call her hunting dog. I wonder about a lot of things. For example, why is Biscuit so cute, and why is his nose so pleasant to boop? Important things like that. ꞦÀＮố₿ʧ
It’s already night again. Monsters are roaming outside the safe zones, and Weslin and I are serving as Morwag’s entertainnt. After what he pulled today, there’s a mark on his forehead for everyone to see, a black tower, branded into his flesh by the tower´s master. A local Champion, or sothing close to it.
It works like one of those ankle bracelets for house arrest. And damn, how the most demonic demon to ever demon hates it. It’s probably costing him ten years of his life not to storm the black tower and tear it down. Every ten minutes. Or five. He only held back because soone reminded him of Nyssa’s words, or sothing along the lines of what she would think if he went against her. She sent him up here without much oversight, but this ti, he figured she wouldn’t approve. So he gets to remain alive instead of being exiled into the night.
Now the only places he can walk are our branch, then straight out of the city through the streets. No other buildings. And I might have ntioned it already, but damn, how he fucking hates it.
While everyone else avoids him, I’m sitting in a chair right across from him. I’m already sure he’ll leave this outpost tomorrow, either to hunt Hela or to cause trouble in another one. I might have worried more before, but now I think I’m better prepared to face Hela.
“Can you tell about Binding Primordial Energy?” I ask him.
“No.”
“What about the item Nyssa sent to the Doc?”
“No.”
“Can you tell about Nyssa?”
“No.”
“Say no if you’re dumb.”
“No.” He answers with an aggressive smile crawling across his lips.
“Interesting.”
“Human with two hearts.”
“No.”
“Say no one more ti, and I’ll tear off your arm.” He threatens.
Sothing about the way he says it irritates suddenly and intensely, the kind of irritation that crawls under the skin. It is the way he tosses it out dismissively, not even bothering to look at .
“You’ll have to co up with sothing more threatening than that,” I answer.
“Do you want to? Unlike the lumoran triplets back then, you’re a mber of the sa guild as . That earns you a certain level of goodwill.”
Once again, that tone.
“I know, it’s one of the pros of being kidnapped and forced to join the guild everyone’s been calling the Primordial Lunatics,” I say.
“They call us that?” Morwag asks in surprise, "I hadn’t heard that one."
"What would you do if soone called it that in front of you?"
Morwag smiles widely. "That might be one of the reasons. But, human, who taught you how to use kinetic energy for movent?"
"Soone must have taught , otherwise, there is no way such a la human like could use it that way?"
"Sothing like that."
"Since you are an ass who never answers questions when I ask them, I’ll only tell you a little. It was a lurker, the others call him Whitey."
"Ahhhh," he says with an expression that clearly ans he knows who I am talking about. He observes for a while, then laughs shortly and shakes his head. "I see, I see."
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
"So damn mysterious. Not very demon-like."
His expression hardens. "Who are you to decide what a true demon looks like, human? You may have a pair of strong hearts, you may have learned from a great one, you may even share so of our tendencies. But your judgnt ans nothing, because you’re still just a human."
"And you’re wrong."
"What makes you think that?"
"Because if I prove myself stronger, then my opinion is right and yours is wrong. Even if I claim that proper demons wear pink dresses at all tis."
He starts cackling, clapping a few tis. "Exactly. Until then, you are wrong and still just a human. Now, tell , how did you learn anything from that demon?"
I look back at him as the mood shifts.
The quiet of the room grows louder, the kind of silence that screams in your ears, and I know what is going to follow. Yet still, I have already picked my answer.
For so reason, I do not feel like sharing this at all.
As a smile climbs across my face, I look at him and answer.
"No."
Of course, I put up a fight. I try to hold him in place. I strengthen my body with kinetic energy and mana. I am even quick enough to create a barrier around my skull and launch a burst of kinetic force at him.
Yet he still moves like a tank, grabbing my arm and pulling it off exactly like he said he would.
Then, instead of destroying it, he drops it on the floor in front of . It is sothing halfway between a polite gesture toward as a guild mber and a laugh at my expense. A gesture that says he did not destroy my arm, so I would have an easier ti reconnecting it without having to regrow it or beg the healers for help.
But to , it seems like he spat in my face, a clear provocation and challenge.
For a while, I stare at my arm in that ss of the room, nearly all of it evaporated in our short clash. Dozens of alarms are ringing out loudly sowhere in the background.
I reach down, pick up my arm, and stare at it for a short mont. It is a weirdly unnerving feeling, the weight of it, the way it balances in my hand. And, of course, it’s my left arm again.
Then I throw it at him.
Morwag catches it with a short cackle. He opens his mouth to say sothing, but the arm in his hand explodes, holding nearly all of my mana, which I had channeled there in that short mont I held it, forcing it to destabilize. Nothing too fancy or powerful, just the kind of simple, inefficient explosion I used to make on the early floors. A single droplet of blood falls from my nose from the strain.
The arm swells up, fingers twitch, and all that mana detonates.
Morwag’s binding energy goes into overdrive. He not only hardens his body but twists the explosion into pale blue mist that bursts through the room like a crashing wave.
For a heartbeat, the room settles into that pale glow, quiet as falling snow. The mist like particles curl between the shattered furniture, soft and almost beautiful.
Morwag stands in the center of it, shoulders loose, expression unreadable. He brushes a flake of ash off his chest like it was nothing at all.
Then another arm lands at his feet before he can say anything. My right one.
This ti it contains, as so might say, a shitload of thermal energy from my Ignition Heart. I lifted the second seal entirely to fill it.
As the golden light starts seeping from it, ready to explode, I look at Morwag.
And I say, "I said NO, you bitch."
Another explosion fills the room. This one becos a golden mist that crashes outward like a wave, but like a shockwave, bouncing off the walls.
Bursts of kinetic energy rocket through my body, carrying in front of the demon while two arms made of mana grow from my stumps. The air around us drains of color. Running on what I would call fus, but still holding enough to be equal to the mana pool of an average attendee, I reach him.
He keeps his eyes locked on my mana arm as it reaches for his face. Just like before, his primordial energy rises to unbind my mana.
But not this ti.
My mind, my skills, my passives, my domain, my focus, everything flares up to stop him, and even despite his attempts, my fist reaches him and crashes into his chin.
His face does not show pain or recoil, but his surprise is obvious.
This is my mana, and it will not be unbound so easily.
In the next mont, multiple people rush in, Weslin included. So of them literally throw themselves at Morwag, in a rush to hold him down, though he just stands still, looking only at . His deep red eyes glow, and his heart tells the truth. It thumps through the wreckage louder than the alarms and louder than the shouts of the people. He looks as if he hasn’t even noticed them swarming around him.
Then, as if nothing had happened, his heartbeat stops. In the next second, it returns to normal, and the mood around him shifts just as quickly.
Without saying another word, he leaves the room.
A few days pass, and looking back at that clash, I start to think Morwag left so the bla would fall on . But as amusing as that would be, I believe he left before he had to fight with everything he had.
So would call it very undemon-like to walk away from a fight like that, but to , it fits demons perfectly. Maybe not the younger ones who throw themselves into every brawl, desperate to show aggression at every chance. But from Morwag, it felt right. Demonic.
Even while he carries the sa violent energy as the others, he can still bring it all under control if he chooses. After all, from his perspective, wouldn’t it be pathetic to let anything control you, even your own emotions?
Since that day, I have not seen him, only heard rumors from Weslin about his clashes with the Ethereal Clown Band. More rcenaries keep appearing, too, but even with their numbers, it’s not enough to stop him.
The sa goes for the attacks on our outpost. Without a powerful demon heart in the area, they don’t amount to much.
The days roll into next week, and Hela disappears from the third floor. Rumors say she went to the fourth.
Morwag follows just a few hours later.
Multiple powerful A-ranks, especially from the top guilds, head down there as well, all of them acting on information I don’t have.
But it’s obvious. Sothing big is going to happen there, on the fourth floor, deeper inside the First Dungeon.
I am growing impatient to head there, and thankfully, the rest of the outpost construction goes well, up until only the last step remains.
This ti, more people from the guild are with us to “claim” the outpost. It is not like we’ll actually own the safe zone after we ignite it, but as the ones who built it, we’ll get a cut of the taxes and a good bit of influence in how things are run. At least that’s how Talon explains it to , simplifying things since he knows I’m not really all that interested. I’m sure it’s far more complicated than that, dealing with locals, finding soone strong enough to defend the place and enforce order like the master of the Black Tower, all that shit.
The ignition itself is… well, sothing. After all our work, the mining, the gathering, there’s a big circular platform, wide enough to hold a large building. This will be the core of the base, the sa way the Black Tower is the core of, well, the Black Tower safe zone. The attendees really don’t seem to give a fuck about creative nas.
In the center is a single hole in the ground shaped like a cube, and above it floats another cube, about the size of a package, large enough to hold a few thousand slabs of deer jerky all cramd in together. It’s extrely delicate, and made of a number of rare materials, and represents hundreds of hours of labor following so blueprint the Primordial Knights bought. It drifts down and slides into place, locking in perfectly, leaving no visible seams or gaps.
And that is it.
There’s no insane waves of mana, no thunderous eruption of noise, no control panels to light up one after another while soone in the background screams about the power levels being too high.
There are no sudden accidents turning out to be sabotage, or summonings of monsters for us to fight in a panic as half our mbers end up dying, no need for Weslin to bite off the monster's fingers, and nothing forcing to lose my left arm just to finish it off at the last second, as I break through my limits and level up, unwillingly, to 350, unlocking a body upgrade only to die in the very next mont.
None of that.
All in all, it’s a good day. At least I get a notification this ti.
Congratulations on completing your Beyond floor quest!
You have received:
14-day Stay Token
100,000 shards
Activation stone for the portal leading to the 4th floor
So cheap. After I finish reading the notification, I glance over at Weslin, who already seems to know what I am thinking.
"Let’s head down to the fourth floor," he says.
User Comments
0 comments from readers