B5 Chapter 34

Zegrath was already waiting when I arrived at the Grand Hall. Her glaive tapped impatiently against the floor, and ether rippled through her body all the same.

“Finally. Took you long enough, Pyaera,” she said as soon as she saw me, but then paused. “You do know that you look like a mess, yes?”

I looked like a mess? That couldn’t be. I washed up before meeting with the Fire Caldera woman. Not only that, but I was on time as well.

“What’s wrong? Why are you so tense, Zegrath?” Something didn’t seem right with her.

“You… Do you not know what’s happening these days?” she asked like it was the most obvious thing in all of Razarn. “Have you been outside the Temple in the last few months? Please tell me you left the Temple at least a few times.”

I could only shake my head at that. Then again, that wasn’t entirely true. I did leave the Temple a few times to visit the Mikoniv kid, though that was not nearly as often as I probably should have. The Vortex Gate technique changed a lot whenever we met, but we had yet to figure out how to create a permanent vortex. If I’d visited the young Mikoniv a few more times in the last few months, we would have progressed further. Then again, they went as far as to visit me instead.

The kid’s crazy. That made me smile, which only irritated Zegrath more.

She let out a groan of exasperation and waved me over. “We have to depart. Just so you know, we’re going to hunt a few Spawns today.”

I rolled my eyes at that. If there was one thing I knew about today’s meeting, it was that we’d hunt a few Spawns. That reminded me of something.

“Is that why the Proto Knights and Spirit Knights haven’t been in the Temple for a while now?”

Zegrath didn’t even bother looking back as she approached one of the Portal attendants. She flashed her badge as a high-ranking member of the Spirit Guard Temple and was guided to one of the smaller Portals on the upper floors.

“More Spawns have been located in the last few months. Their numbers are increasing, likely due to the appearance of more Fractures. Volca and Glacia found some Fractures that went unnoticed and closed them, but they’re too drained and busy recovering to search for the hidden Spawns. Voidtrail traces have been located in the Decuet Region, which is where we’re going right now.”

Aureus and Sapsie seemed excited at that. Not that the Spirits were drained from closing Fractures, but at the prospect of combat. Or, at the very least, that we were going to kill a few Spawns to remove the cancer of Razarn.

“Sounds good to me. Finding them shouldn’t be too hard.” I agreed happily enough.

Months had passed since I joined the Temple, and it had been a crazy time. Magnificent even, with how much my Soulkins and I had been growing. There was only one issue slowing our progress now that the months had passed.

I was dirt-poor.

Essence was already expensive as it was, but hiring a True Alchemist to concoct a dozen Elixirs and then create versions with different efficacy levels? That was even worse. It cost a lot more than expected to prepare all the ingredient sets as well, especially with how many times my concoction attempts failed.

Analyzing the finished products thoroughly every day for weeks had been helpful, but I failed every serum at least a few times before I hit my first goal. Improving the efficacy – since the purity level of my refined ingredients was near perfect thanks to my ether control and the spirit flame’s purification properties – was a slow process.

Or, it should have been.

Studying the difference in efficacy between the exact same serum, one having a low efficacy and the other exactly meeting the requirements of a mid-efficacy serum, helped me understand what I had to improve next.

It took a lot of tries to move up to the mid-efficacy levels, but once I did, my rise through the ranks was quite simple. Learning from a True Alchemist was quite helpful as well, but I quickly realized that whoever Truthseeker Max hired was not on Volix’s level. So I worked alone, rummaging through my mind for fragments of the knowledge the Elemental Phoenix planted in my brain a long time ago.

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Volix’s death may have removed his empowerment and traits, but it did not remove the imparted wisdom. It was just a little harder to access.

One way or another, Alchemy was expensive, and not even the discount awarded to Proto Knights was enough to protect my poor wallet. I had to do some work as a Proto Knight as well, hit a quota of missions with a certain success rate, or I would be demoted. Unfortunately, and I had to acknowledge my mistake here, I hadn’t bothered with that. I was far behind my quota and would be demoted or thrown out of the Temple unless I completed a few missions soon.

That was why I was here. Why I joined Zegrath when she came knocking on my door for the umpteenth time, asking me to join a mission.

“I do not know where your confidence stems from, Pyaera, but it won’t be easy to find the Spawns. They’re well-hidden somewhere in Decuet, or the Spirit Knights would have caught and dispatched them several months ago already.” Zegrath sighed while she dismissed the attendant with a wave. “Decuet is a massive Region and, if not for the Voidtrail trace found two months ago, we wouldn’t even have realized that one or multiple Spawns are, or were, hiding there.”

“Don’t worry about finding them. Sapsie can do that for us, right?” I smiled down at my pocket where a portion of the World Tree sapling’s body was hiding. She was too large to stay with me even in her compressed form at this point, but she learned how to materialize a part of her body. So while her main body stayed back in the World, one of Sapsie’s roots wiggled excitedly as it peeked out of the chest pocket.

“The sacred beast can find the Spawns? Not even the Spirit Knights could find the concealed creatures.” Zegrath looked over in surprise, the corner of her lips curling upward. “That’s perfect. Let’s not waste any more time.”

That said, Zegrath stepped into the Portal. I followed behind with swift strides. Space around me distorted in a familiar way, and it wasn’t long before the Grand Hall faded away. In its stead, a plateau adorned with a beautiful monastery unraveled.

Looking ahead, all I saw was sky and hundreds of mountains piercing through the clouds. The sight was mesmerizing, yet it was confusing all the same.

“Where are we?”

“The Decuet Region, but you know that already,” Zegrath said lightly, only to cover her body in flames as soon as she stepped closer to the edge of the plateau. “Spirits’ grace. What is this place?”

“The Decuet Region,” I copied the Fire Caldera, which was rewarded with a glowering stare.

“What? You asked.” That said, I too covered myself in ether as a cold breeze brushed against my face. The Portal leading to the monastery was located in the middle of hundreds of mountain peaks. It was the summit of one and was as cold as one expected the peak of a cloud-piercing mountain to be. Maybe even colder, given all the ice-attuned ether coursing through the region.

Don’t be such a wimp, Adam! While you and your friend cried about how cold it is, I found what we’re looking for!

Sapsie chided, sounding a little too hyper for my liking.

“Sapsie found the Spawns.” I called out while fusing with the World Tree sapling.

Something in my eyes shifted, and I used Lifesight to find the targets. A dozen masses—voids of life and ether. Most of them weren’t as large as the masses of the Spawns I’d seen before. They didn’t feel particularly dangerous, however, they did not leave behind pathways of carnage. No Voidtrails that spread out to consume the life and ether of the vicinity followed their path.

All that hinted at the Spawns’ existence were those masses underneath us.

“She found them already? Where?” Zegrath looked positively excited at the news.

“Underneath. I don’t know if they’re somewhere in the mountain beneath us, but they should be deep down there. A dozen of them.”

“A dozen?” Her smile died a little but she nodded again. “That should be fine. They’re likely weaker Spawns, or they wouldn’t have escaped the Spirit Knights’ senses. Yes, we can do it. A dozen are more than fine.”

I thought so as well and changed my Soulfusion from Sapsie to Aureus. A set of wings sprouted from my back and I shot high into the sky.

“What about me?” Zegrath called out before I disappeared into the clouds.

Turning to the tall Caldera woman, I closed the distance in a moment, picked her up, and returned to the sky.

“That was not what I meant!” she exclaimed, but was silenced as we shot through the air. One moment we flew in a straight line to the clouds, and in the next we dove down—that too in a straight line.

Zegrath screamed, her grip around my neck tightening as much as possible. Cold air blasted against my face as I flapped my wings even harder to accelerate once more, but it wasn’t long before I was forced to slow down and look around. Not that there was much to see, but that was the problem. The clouds were no longer the problem. They were replaced by dense fog that seeped into my pores, spreading a freezing cold that seemed adamant about killing me.

“Coat yourself in fire!” Zegrath shouted against the wind before summoning Volca’s fire. It coated her in a paper-thin membrane which appeared enough to block the freezing fog’s effect. I had to call upon the spirit flame to do the same, but it was rather draining to coat myself in spirit fire without looking like the Light Spirit incarnate. The flames burned as bright as the sun, eliciting a pained groan from Zegrath, so I summoned the flames within me rather than outside.

Using fire-attuned ether from the Blazing Gates, I turned my skin into the equivalent of a boiling pot. It was annoying, yet it destroyed the freezing properties of the fog, leaving behind ether as dense as liquid ether. Only the fog’s ether was gaseous. It could still be liquefied.

Might as well make use of that.

But first, we had to slay a few Spawns. A dozen, to be precise.