Tracking down the knights was easier than Nero thought. Crystal had a lot of things in her pouch, including her full princess wardrobe and jewelry. No, not that. Mementos from her Knights. Carved coral figurines, seashell ornaments, braided seaweed fiber handkerchiefs. Those were mementos of a life she abandoned out of sheer disgust but were still precious to her. He knew because of the tender gaze he shot at the objects as she told short stories about each of the knights that gave them to her. Calder was their leader and she took a seahorse carved out of mother-of-pearl. Nero saw the man die, and only the fact that he nailed the asshole that dumped all this shit on their lives kept him from screaming at the injustices of the world.

She also had a tracking Skill card for some odd reason. Nero suspected a premeditated setup and some fairy fingers in the pie but it was too late for cold feet. He had to run hot to get to the knights before the prince. WAY before the prince, he hoped. It was a faint one.

Orange [Rogue] on, Nero ran like the wind. Faster, actually. Thirty-three times faster than a normal person at his top speed. He had to stop every fifty miles or so to swap Classes and get his bearings, which meant about two stops per hour. Amazed, he checked his Status with the Rogue build.

Strength +215

Vigor +261

Endurance +238

Agility +257

Dexterity +499

Reason +12

Willpower +12

Perception +428

Charisma +219

Move Speed: +732 (37.6 times faster than a normal person).

Stealth modifiers for detection:

Sound: -1017 Perception

Sight: -724 Perception (Base 589 + 135 Footwear)

Scent: -1017 Perception

He was using a new set of boots specifically intended for stealth made from cards they found farming Yrkandia. It replaced his old [Combat Boots].

[Lightfoot Shadow Boots of Stealth +3] - yellow equipment - Footwear.

+4 Strength

+4 Vigor

+4 Endurance

+4 Agility

Special: Your passage does not disturb the environment or leave a mark under your feet if what you are standing on can hold your weight. You leave no tracks and increase the difficulty to track you by 103%.

Special (From lightfoot): Treat your weight as 78% lower to determine if you can stand on a surface and jumping distance.

Special (From lightfoot): Your terminal velocity when falling is reduced by 78%.

Special (from ...of stealth): Increase the difficulty to detect you by 23%.

With his Attribute strain problems, he didn't want to go overboard with the modifiers. He could've tried with the purple modifiers and gambled for a set of boots that would give at least plus seven to eight out of the nine Attributes but the odds of the two roguish modifiers sticking to the item would be crap. He needed them more than he needed something that would hinder his growth later. And he would find a purple or orange set of equipment later. Baby steps, he told himself with a snort.

Nero should probably try and make some themed equipment sets. Despite the annoyance of having to switch some hard-to-don-and-doff pieces like armor or clothes, it was a good ideal. For example, he vowed to get a decent yellow or purple cloak for stealth later. Navy blue with silver stars wasn't the latest fashion for skullduggery.

Nero opened a portal and Crystal stepped out of it. As he was tracking the knights, they surely were tracking her. She was fully dressed and adorned like the princess she once was. It was even hard to tell it was the same person.

"Stare as much as you like, little brother," She smiled at him. "I hope it is the last time I wear such attire."

The dress was flowing blue with purple accents and fit very well with her pale green skin. and hair. It had sparkling crystals sewn like waves that drew the eye to her jewelry. The skirt wasn't a balloon, like some noble landbound ladies. Instead, it flowed around her body with a large slit for her leg. She was wearing high stockings that covered her skin and blended with the dress.

"Don't say that. I like it." Nero shook his head and beamed. "You are gorgeous. The dress suits you like a dream."

"I'm sure it does, it was custom made by the best seamstresses in the kingdom. But it belongs to someone I am not anymore. I... can't go back," She said with deep sorrow in her eyes.

He understood her need to reinvent herself. He too lost his sense of self when his level cap was revealed. "It's okay. You are whoever you bloody want. I'll make sure you can."

She smiled and hugged him. Nero sensed his quarry closer and ushered her back. She still gave him a reinvigorating kiss. That Skill of hers was weird. What he didn't notice was a very peculiar lipstick mark left on his cheek.

Not an hour later, he saw the knights coming toward him. Not in a straight line because even Huron was having problems sensing him with his upgrades but close. Probably to the last place he took Crystal out. Nero jumped up and spun, looking around. He saw another group closing in at a fast pace. Not as fast as them though. If he had to grade their speed, Nero was faster, the knights from Coriander second, and what looked like to be Aslanbek's knights last. It made sense because the infiltrators were chosen by Calder for their speed and stealth.

Nero ran toward the invading group. He needed to solve things with them before Aslanbek arrived. Once they were a hundred yards away, he opened two portals as perpendicular to their position as possible linking to two temporary shelters and jumped into the pitch-black transition box, closing both as he entered. From there he went to the other box where Crystal was waiting and opened the portals linking to his brand new trap shelter.

This shelter had a vast and hundreds of feet deep ocean underneath. Five hundred feet above the ocean, a pillar-like stalactite descended from the sky and had a cubic hole at the bottom. On one of the diagonals of the cube, two portals opened back-to-back, one linking to the real world right where Nero exited and the other to the box they were in. Four mirrors arranged along the cube created the illusion that both portals faced each other a dozen meters apart. Nero looked out through the portal and watched the plains through the optical illusion. Nero stood to the side so only Crystal was visible.

Soon the knights from Coriander came upon the opening.

"By my authority, halt and kneel," Crystal said with a solemn but in a singing voice as if she was reciting a poem like a minstrel.

"Your Highness! Is it really you?"

He looked with both admiration and suspicion. Crystal smiled and waved her hand.

"You should know better, sir Marsyous. Enemies approach and it would bother me if they engaged you. Jump into this portal and we shall talk. Quickly."

"We'll give payback to those that wronged you!" Another knight popped in front of the portal and shouted with rage.

"Those that hurt me were already punished with a fate worse than death," Crystal declared. "I got the documents from the late Sir Calder along with supporters of the 23rd Regiment. Hurry inside."

They looked around, suspicious. "I hear crashing waves," Marsyous said.

"I have a powerful magician as my ally and benefactor," Crystal explained. "If your mission is to rescue me, you'll find me in the waves below."

She moved to the edge of the box and the hem of her dress crossed through the portal, waving in the wind. Turns out you can't make waves in a fake ocean without wind.

"How can we be sure it isn't a trap?" Another nereid, that looked and felt like he was in charge showed up.

"I could tell your names and something that happened in my youth about each one of you. It could all be intelligence taken from me through torture. You need to trust me. Abandon your rage and plans of vengeance. That is not the path forward. Sir Chalkalon, I beg you. For Elsie's sake back in Coriander."

Chalkalon scowled at the mention of his young daughter. Another voice came from out of their narrow field of view, "Enemy approaching! Fifth and Sixth tiers!"

"We have a battle to fight, your Highness," Chalkalon said.

"Please don't!" Crystal shouted and reached out. "[Mana Shield] - [Siren's Song]!" She cried and started to sing.

Nero's willpower of twelve put him in a trance immediately. The knights were mildly affected but the racial exclusive Skill convinced them.

"I'm jumping in, captain sir! It is the real princess!" Marsyous saluted and leaped into the hole, plummeting into the ocean.

"Dammit! I must draw Leonal blood!" Chalkalon said.

"We should stay together sir. We confirmed the princess' whereabouts. Punishing Bast is secondary!" Some other knight said.

"Let's go in! I suggest we do it! Sir!"

"Enemy numbers are over thirty!"

There were only eleven of them now that Marsyous jumped.

"Everyone inside, go, go, go!" Chalkadon decided.

With great coordination and speed, the nereid infiltrators jumped into the shelter and fell down on the ocean. Less than a minute later, Prince Aslanbek was lured by the song and reached the portal.

"Princess Serena! What a fortuitous encounter to meet you here!" He said as he stopped running on foot.

The other knights from Coriander approached. Crystal stopped singing, her chest heaving with fear.

"You cannot touch me, prince Aslanbek," She said, trying to cover her fear with defiance. "There's nothing but ruin for you here. Go away!"

The two royals locked gazes with each other but the leonal's dominance over the frightened nereid was as obvious as the difference between their levels.

"Is this the portals that my brother so deeply desired?" Aslanbek glanced at someone outside Crystal's field of view and nodded. "It means the famous Nero Zero is here too! Where are you, my little ape-kin friend? Show yourself!"

Nero was still under the five-minute duration of Crystal's spell. Afraid of giving too much information, she didn't try to wake him. Crystal didn't even shift her eyes, a lifetime of training under stern tutors giving her the skills needed to stay centered during this face-off. She could only wait for him to shake off the effects and close the portal. She didn't know the keyword for the outer one and saying it out loud would allow Aslanbek to open it.

"There's nothing for you here, prince Aslanbek. I beseech Your Highness to go back," She tried to negotiate but she had no leverage.

"My tracker says that Nero is there with you, not a dozen meters away. How are you doing that? Illusions? Mirrors? [Ghost Light]! Yes, mirrors! Very clever. But not as clever as you think. I'm in my domain, nereid. I'm the Crown Prince of Bast! My word is the law!"

"Please, Your Highness!" She begged.

"NO!" Aslanbek shouted. "I WILL have answers! [Greater Command]! - Nero, come to me as fast as you can!"

Nero stirred next to Crystal. She looked to her side and saw with the corner of her eye the external portal closing as he created another at the same time. A stone sank in her heart. His Willpower was twelve in his stealth build! Sunlight filtered out of the portal and Nero walked outside faster than she could grab him, closing the portal and leaving her trapped.

The former princess fell to her knees. "Nero, No!" She screamed.

He was gone. She couldn't protect him.

She could hear the knights from Coriander calling her between the waves below. Crystal would do what she could. And the first item on the list was to give those haughty idiots a scolding they would remember for life. But she couldn't move. She waited for ten, fifteen minutes. One hour she knelt on the black rock of the box she was in. Nero didn't return.

Crystal jumped out into the ocean shelter, her skirt flapping before she turned around and dove.

Nero walked out into the band of knights from Bast. Taller than Tyre and a bit less lean, prince Aslanbek towered before him. He shook the mental influence of the two Skills that were used on him but before he could react, Aslanbek grabbed his neck and lifted. Nero held the leonal's bracer and braced himself but didn't struggle.

"I got you. Now, tell me before I finish you. What did you do to my brother!" He roared and spewed on Nero.

Nero didn't answer. Instead, he made gagging sounds. Aslanbek was strong but not that strong. He had a magician's build and his limiter was activated as they were not in a Dungeon. With Nero's two hundred and sixty-one Vigor, he could resist for a while.

"Kan-tch chalk," Nero gasped. There was no demerit in playing weaker than he was to lull his foe.

Aslanbek eased his grasp. "Speak. Did you murder prince Tyre?"

"I murdered no Leonal called Tyre," Nero replied.

"Truth," one of the knights said.

Oh, great. A truth-teller, Nero mused.

"Do you know where my brother is?"

"Yes. You want to see him," Nero replied, looking up to avoid meeting the prince's gaze. Nero experienced in the flesh with that Skill. The truth-teller could only tell the raw truth of his statements, not his motive.

"Truth and truth," The knight answered.

"Yes! I want to see him."

Nero gagged. He wasn't the only one downplaying his strengths. Aslanbek increased his grip. He choked for a while before the grip eased.

"Do you want me to take you to see him?" Nero asked the prince.

"Yes!"

"Now?"

"YES!" The prince roared, a throaty growl following his words and shaking the world around them.

Nero had a hunch but he didn't test it because of the hundred-day cooldown. The Skill said nothing but his intuition told him he could take whoever was touching him with him if he teleported there. And so he did. Thanks to his timepiece, his mana pool was the only thing mostly unaffected by the monstrous drop in Willpower. He paid a hundred mana and teleported to his Dungeon.

The knights were flustered, annoyed, and flabbergasted when both the young minnid and the prince vanished out of thin air.

Nero appeared in the savanna and felt the hand around his neck. He kicked the arm with his (doubled) four hundred Strength and wriggled free of the prince's grasp using his nine hundred and ninety-eight Dexterity. Suddenly weakened by the drain on his limiter, prince Aslanbek was staggered.

The young minnid didn't doubt that he should exercise the best part of valor. Wounding the prince was a HUGE no-no. Instead, he had something else more important to do. Nero dashed through the tall grass, ignoring the monsters he came across, going for one specific target. As he remembered the lay of the Dungeon, it took him literally not a minute to reach the boss area. With his rifle, he shot the shameful prince's head at the same time his bayonet dug into the boss' solar plexus. He ignored the claws of the monster and fired shot after shot until he got a message.

Compatible Boss Anima detected. Grade gray. Energy absorbed above the threshold. Processing upgrade. Weighing Attribute strain.

For defeating a foe fifty- four times your level, you gained +2 Agility.

Nero released his rifle, trusting the sling to keep the weapon close to him and dove for the drops. He grabbed the cards and the crystal, willing them to go into his dimensional pouch and triggered [Skull & Dagger] immediately after. He ran out of the boss' peninsula and around the crescent-shaped lake while the prince raged.

"Impudent fool! A Dungeon? How did you drag me to a Dungeon!" Aslanbek roared and burst.

Nero saw the wave of flame roaring from the prince and turning the whole Dungeon to cinders. He had little time to react and dove into the lake, swimming to the bottom as fast as he could. He almost lost his breath as he felt the need to sigh in relief that his footwear didn't affect his buoyancy. The flames licked the surface of the lake and brought the upper layer to a boil almost instantly.

He reached the bottom and fumbled to swap Classes. Nero had no idea if he would boil or not but the water around him was quite cold yet. He geared up for stone manipulation and remembered one curiosity he had. There was no catfish monster in the water, in fact, there was no monster in the water at all. The lake wasn't a hidden zone like in Rafflesia's.

Nero started to dig a hole in the rock to hide in and felt he wouldn't be able to do it without breathing. He paid thirty-two thousand Essence to open a portal to the wheat shelter and was sucked inside by the water pressure as the lake rushed to get inside the shelter.

He shut the portal right after him, slushing down nad making a furrow through the wheat as the water pressure dragged him. Nero cursed and clicked his tongue.

"At least I can bake as much bread as I want," He joked out loud. "FLAT bread because I have no yeast."

That won't do, will it? No. Nero bit the bullet and made another shelter, one filled with as much water as he thought the lake was deep and then rose the depth by twenty feet because the water was a good thing and he had to fight Aslanbek's flames.

He could just stay in the wheat shelter and wait, but he needed to block the Dungeon's respawns. At the gray-grade, it was small enough that he could block it all if he got just a bit closer to the center. The worst that could happen now was Aslanbek finding a [Egress] card. That's why he rushed to kill the boss. And to stop the prince from committing fratricide.

In a perfect world, Aslanbek would calm down and they would talk out their differences, become Dungeon brothers and ride into the sunset. In the real world, only one of them could live.

Nero paused as something floated to the top of his mind.

He really needed to stop having these weird dates with Royalty in Dungeons. It wasn't good for his health.

More like, they needed to go the fuck out of his way. Seriously.

Nero paid the Essence cost and made his waterfall paradise shelter. It had a freshwater lake a hundred and fifty feet deep, surrounded by something he once heard from travelers. Fjords. Glaciers. And some massive waterfalls that brought even more water down into the lake. Because the shelter didn't need to make sense, the lake never flooded. Nero paid another thirty-two thousand Essence to attune that other shelter with the rank-X Dungeon and walked over.

He regretted it immediately. The shelter was basically freezing. With a groan, He returned to the flooded wheat and dismissed it. Wasting another few dozen thousand Essence, he made another but this time it only had glaciers on the far side of the lake, with a tropical island on the other side. He went to the island.

For some reason, there were palm trees with huge strange green nuts hanging from them in bunches. The poor palm trees strained and bent from the weight.

No time for that, He chided himself.

Nero dove underneath the island, finding the water very cold but not freezing. He set several caves with breathable air underneath the lake and once he found one with the adequate depth, he linked it back to the Dungeon right below the surface of the water next to the cave. The air was heavy and thick but the water didn't rush in.

The water outside in the Dungeon wasn't too warm also. Did Aslanbek stop? Nero looked up and saw the surface boiling. Weird. Shouldn't the whole lake boil? He felt stupid. Of course. Winter near Hom was never too rigorous, but he knew that when a lake froze, only the surface became ice. It made sense that when a lake boiled, only the surface boiled. Or something like that. He felt he should go to the Lyceum and get a freaking degree. No more country bumpkin Nero.

Enough stupidity. Time to work. With the air problem out of the way, Nero dug in the direction of the center of the Dungeon. Aslanbek still raged above and he could feel the heat through the rock. The roof of his tunnel was warmer than the bottom. Once Nero reached a distance that he felt was adequate, he created an air pocket and linked it through a portal to the glacial air of the fjord.

Then he set his spawn-blocking [Rogue] build, activated [Zone of Peace], and waited. It would take quite a while, as he knew Aslanbek must have an infuser just like his brother.