An expanse of densely concentrated mana exists at the center of this world. Deep below, beyond mortal sight, lies the Abyss. Through some vile machinations of the unnamable has the intent of the demiurge been brushed aside. Free from the guiding hand of the divine, evil minds have taken hold.

It is a realm of utter darkness, for light does not exist in this place. It is a land with no direction, for the pull of the land towards the center of our globe has no sway. It is utterly cold, for there exists no heat. All that we take for granted, all truths which we ascribe to the world do not exist in the Abyss.

For one weak of mind or body, merely entering means certain destruction. One must enforce their own vision of self into existence without the aid of Yaldaboath should they wish to traverse this accursed realm. Lifeless objects are obliterated without fail, their forms wiped away by the pure energies of creation. Only objects imbued with powerful Ideals can withstand the Abyss for any measure of time, but even such artifacts are eventually corroded to nothing. Only the corrupted forms of the Demons seem at home in the silence.

On the edge of the Abyss rages the eternal struggle. The Demons who plot to expand the domain of the Abyss, and the servants of the Archons who hold them in check. I wish I could say we are succeeding, but history has only ever shown the realm of the abyss to expand. Unless the expansion is slowed, then it is only a matter of time until the Abyss breaches the surface. If such a thing should ever come to pass, then all hope is truly lost. Life as we know it will cease to exist.

-Excerpt from Containment of the Abyss

Time was a resource of uncertain value at the moment. How long Jabrax would require to begin moving the mansion, and how long Mud had to prepare before any soldiers arrive. It was even possible that they would never arrive at all.

To be safe, Mud would assume the worst-case scenario that it was still possible to prepare for. Many low strength enemies arriving in less than an hour. Mud began by calling out the human resources it now had available to it.

Responding to the golem's mental summons, four humans quickly made their way outside. Novus was shocked when two humans that she did not recognize exited the mansion's front door into the yard; an elderly man in an orange robe and pointed hat, and a thick human male with a pony-tail and a blank expression on his face.

"Oh, so that's where you went off to, Jericho." Getting no reply, Cob waved his hand in front of the thick human's face, who again did not react. "Creepy..."

"Um, hello there, are you Mr. Cithlar?" Novus shifted nervously as she spoke to the old man. "I've heard some amazing stories about you, sir."

"Of course that's not Cithlar, I already told you he's dead. That must be a body double. Try to keep up." Cob walked confidently over to the old man and circled around him, leaning to examine him closely. Stopping in front of him, Cob reached up and pulled open his mouth, examining his teeth.

"Wow, is this Bark? That's a hell of a makeover." Cob stepped back and crossed his arms, seeming to lose interest now that the mystery was solved.

"Humans, begin constructing traps around the house. You have thirty minutes."

"Thirty minutes? That's not enough time!" Protested Novus.

Cob rubbed his chin. "I could maybe make some pitfall traps."

"Begin immediately."

"Hold it!" Cob held up a hand. "Do you expect me to dig with my bare hands?"

"Yes."

The swordsman shrugged and shook his head slowly. "I need tools. At least give me a shovel!"

Mud contemplated for a moment. There were no simple tools in the mansion, the Great Enchanter perhaps seeing no need for such mundane objects. That being the case, and not having the time to waste returning to Geltheas, the only option was to quickly make tools.

Mud held one muddy arm aloft. Concentrating its will, it pinched its elbow smaller and smaller until, with a plop, the arm completely separated and fell to the floor.

[Maximum hp reduced by 4]

Making use for the first time of its new Rare skill Division, Mud focused to maintain control of its removed limb. Surprisingly, the task was no more difficult than controlling the flesh while attached to its own body. With a shift of Amorphous Form, Mud transformed its removed limb into the shape of a shovel, then hardened the tool to the strength of solid stone.

After throwing the first shovel to Cob, Mud repeated the process three more times. By the end, Mud's main body had been reduced to only 2/3rd of its original size. Novus expressed concerns about using her boss's removed body parts as a tool, but Mud disregarded her complaints as illogical.

As Cob continued to dig with earnest, he called out to Mud. "So Mud, seeing your shapeshifting gave me a little idea. How wide can you spread yourself?"

Three Republic scouts slowly crept their way through the woods east of Gletheas, up the winding path into the woods. An order had come down that they were to reconnoiter the home of a powerful individual who lived near the city. Their first task was to confirm if he was present. If the house was abandoned, then the scouts were to secure the location and claim any valuables to be redistributed to the people of the Republic.

Unfortunately, the three assigned to the task were not actually trained scouts. Due to a lack of qualified personnel, the elected commander had simply selected three soldiers which had the Sneak skill at the highest ranks.

A lean man with greasy black hair led the way in a low crouch, having been elected to the position of mission commander by his two colleagues. Behind him followed a similarly thin woman with green hair and pointed ears, and a demi-rabbit with a particularly animal-like face poking from his thick metal armor.

As the trio advanced through the forest a short distance from the trail, the silence was broken by a clang of metal.

"Shhh!" The mission commander turned towards the demi-rabbit, who gave an apologetic look while sniffing at the air.

"S-s-sorry sir. My, my, my equipment is not suited to this ma-ma-mission." The commander knew this soldier. He had a nervous personality and possessed a slight stutter. If they should have need of combat, he would become their most valuable asset, being a skilled brawler.

"Just be more careful. The clearing with the house should be just ahead."

Once again pushing through the thick underbrush, his intuition soon proved correct. Around a copse of trees came into view the Cithlar estate.

"Commander," the female elf spoke up from beside him in a low whisper. While the elves were not a populous group, and therefore had little voting power in the Republic, he didn't agree with the way others would look down on them. Every species was a valuable cog in the society of Phagia. He would not hold her politically disadvantaged background against her. "This house does not match with our intelligence."

"What do you mean? The design looks the same to me." The group had been provided with a memory imprinting of their target before leaving the temporary camp set up outside the Geltheas city walls. Pulling the scroll with the imprinting out of his messenger bag, the commander compared it to the building in front of them. It was, without a doubt, the same structure.

"I mean how clean it looks. Someone has cleared away the moss and birds nests from the roof, removed the trash from behind the building, and even cut the grass in the yard." The elves sharp eyes darted between the image in the commander's hand and the building. "That dirt path through the yard to the front door is also new."

"S-s-so he cleaned the place up. Is-is-isn't that normal?" The over-armored demi-rabbit on the commander's opposite side mumbled.

"It would have taken many years of neglect for it to have gotten that bad." The elf jabbed a finger into the picture. "A change like this doesn't happen for no reason. We should be wary of what brought it on."

"Right. We were going to be careful regardless. Refrain from making useless observations." Despite his altruistic respect for elves as citizens, he wasn't just going to let someone with barely any clout tell him what to do. After looking around for a moment, he crept out into the yard. "I don't see anyone around. Let's take a look through the windows."

Moving up to the window, he was disappointed to find them all well covered from the inside by curtains. No matter how he angled his head, he could not see into the house itself. Circling around the building, being extra careful to peer around corners first, he found all of them to be in the same state.

Upset with the repeated failures, he rounded the corner to the final wall. His flagging spirits were lifted as he spotted a window with open curtains. After exchanging glances, the trio advanced with utmost care towards the window.

Carefully peeking over the edge, he spotted his target. Sitting at a table in what appeared to be a kitchen was an old man in an orange robe, slowly eating a bowl of soup. Although he could only see the back of the man from the window, he was confident that was Cithlar who they were looking for.

Turning back towards his group, he waved them over frantically. Moving with extreme care, they each rose to look in themselves. The elf seemed reluctant to join him under the window, but a more aggressive hand order finally got her to join him below the windowsill.

At that moment, the floor vanished from beneath them. Their lack of proper training exposed itself as both men screamed in surprise, only the elf managing to remain silent. After a short drop of only two units, the trio slammed into the dirt below. Such a short fall wouldn't be dangerous to even a walled civilian, so to professional soldiers it was only mildly disorienting.

The same could not be said, however, of the swirling maroon mist which awaited them inside the hole. After a few panicked breaths as they tried to comprehend the situation, the commander and the demi-rabbit quickly fell into a peaceful sleep.

Unlike her graceless companions, the elf managed to land lightly on her feet at the bottom of the small pit. Recognizing the mist as some sort of poison, she quickly covered her mouth with a bandana she had worn loosely around her neck. Before she could leap out of the pit, however, the sky closed up above her. Just as quickly as the floor had vanished, it had now regrown.

Pulling her rapier from her side, she desperately struck at the obstacle, managing to pierce clean through. As soon as she retracted her sword, however, the dirt simply flowed back into place. When she tried to strike at the surface with a jumping kick, it stretched and deformed with surprising elasticity. Calling on the Ideal of Nature, she tried to pull apart the dirt with grass. Just like her blade, the mud simply flowed around the grasping roots like water.

Desperately, she even tried to control the flowing mud itself with the Ideal of Earth, an Ideal which she had very little insight into. As she feared, she was unable to overcome the will which already animated the dirt. Giving up on piercing the roof of the pit, she shifted her mana towards the walls and found success. Unlike the moving mud above her head, the walls of the tunnel appeared to be made of normal dirt. She had to work quickly, however. Already, the gas was slipping through the imperfections in her mask, and she was beginning to feel tired.

Cob crawled out of the pit in front of the window. Taking a rag from the blank-faced Jericho who stood nearby, he wiped the blood from his curved blade. "I took care of them." Turning around, he looked down into the pit while still cleaning his weapon. "I'm amazed this worked out so well. I thought we might get one with this trap, but to think all three of them would stand there at the same time..."

"Cob, when should we expect more enemies?"

"Hard to say." Cob returned the now clean weapon to his sheath. "When the third one gets back to camp they'll organize a response. I didn't see any long-range communication tools on the one that was acting like the boss, so they probably were meant to report back physically. That gives us some time. When they respond, though, it will be with force. It won't be this easy again. Then again, they might not attack at all if they're scared enough of Cithlar."

"Give me a conservative estimate of how much time we have to prepare."

"I don't know... maybe half a day? If they suspect that Cithlar is here and hostile they won't attack carelessly. They probably never expected their scouts to be in mortal danger with this task, hehe." Cob giggled while looking down at the two corpses. "Normally I would think they wouldn't come back at all but, well... something about the way Jabrax was acting earlier makes me think there's something else going on. We should expect a response."

Mud was pleased with that timeframe. Jabrax had made reasonable progress on determining the control mechanisms of the mansion. With luck, they may even be gone before the second group of humans even arrived. With that in mind, Mud once again called out to its pets.

"Humans, we will return to the slums for my next plan."

"Simple is better than complex for plans, you know. Why don't we just dig more holes?"

"My plans have a high success rate. Therefore, any plan I create is likely to work. Digging holes wasn't my plan, so it doesn't benefit from this increased success rate."

"I don't think you're using statistics right..." Despite his protests, the scarred human followed the golem. Whatever the weird construct had in mind was sure to be hilarious.