Fang explained the situation to Ame as he led the way.

“We cannot return to Leone,” he said, reiterating the most important detail of the long-winded explanation. “With the amulet from the Adventurer’s Guild, I can arrange for small trades outside the city itself, but they are going out of their way to make this happen. It won’t last for much longer.”

“Because they want building rights,” Nissa added. “They are going out of their way because they want building rights.”

“We already gave them th’ rights,” Cassandra said.

Fang smiled. “Verbally,” he said. “We haven’t made it official yet.” Fang was a devilish businessman.

“You own Rakab then?” Ame asked.

Fang nodded. “That’s why those adventurers followed you,” he said. “I suspect they want to harass us until we give up Rakab. Maybe even all-out war.”

“And no one will ally with you,” Ame said.

Fang nodded, smiling bitterly.

“They don’t have a reason to,” Aren said calmly. “All the big clans and alliances here are already pouring all their resources into Leone. The cost to build up Rakab to the point where it would pay back their investment…” he trailed off.

“No one wants to take that risk,” Ame said, nodding calmly.

Nissa stared at Ame, silently. Her black cloak billowed in the light wind, offering a discreet glimpse of the bow hidden beneath that fabric.

In this instance, they moved as a group. They did not have a specific formation or scouts — they had already done the scouting. But they were not heading in the direction of their temporary base.

“So why do you want to join in?” Nissa asked, and Damien echoed her question with a nod of his head. The quiet assassin always kept an eye on Ame. It was difficult to tell how Ame’s skill affected the silent rogue because not only did he not speak, but he also hid his feelings very well.

“I have my reasons,” Ame said. “Whether you succeed or fail, it doesn’t really matter to me. My reason is personal, and has less to do with you, and more with those coming after you.”

“Enemy of my enemy?” Cassandra offered.

Ame turned his head to look at Cassandra and nodded. “Something like that.”

“Either way,” Fang said, cutting into the conversation. “It is good to have you, Ame. To be entirely honest, I was against this at first.”

“Oh?” Ame hummed. “Why did you change your mind, Fang?”

Fang shrugged. “I have my reasons,” he echoed Ame’s earlier words, causing Ame to burst into laughter.

After a moment, Ame sighed mysteriously. “So what is your plan? You can’t trade. You can’t run. I doubt you can fight them if they come at you with full force.”

“We clear the Catacombs,” Fang said.

Ame closed his eyes, his smile fading. “Under Rakab? Those Catacombs?”

Fang nodded.

They walked a dozen meters in silence before Ame spoke again. “Why?”

“We need to get into the Abyss,” Fang explained.

“I see,” Ame said, expression thoughtful.

“What does the Abyss have to do with the Catacombs?” Aren asked. This was news to him. Every bit of Fang’s statement was news to him. They were going to the Abyss?

“The big alliances won’t ever let us have a sniff of the Forgotten Abyss unless we prove ourselves,” Fang explained. “We can’t stay in Rakab, Aren. Even if by some miracle we manage to fight off the alliances and clans of Leone, and keep Rakab, there is nothing here.”

Aren hissed in a breath. Fang was right. Of course he was right! If Aren wanted to see the Tower of Gods, he had to become famous — without being able to attain fame directly. If he wanted to impress the big alliances, he did not have to attain fame — the kind of thing that Singularity could measure — but he had to obtain the kind of fame that adventurers respected. If they, the adventurers, could not become famous, then there was only one other way — to make Exalt itself famous.

“For now, we will keep our options open,” Fang said. “Whether Rakab becomes a permanent base for us or a luxurious resort, time will tell. But for now, we need two things.” First, he lifted his index finger. “We need money. We gave away the loot from the orcs, and I think that was the right choice to make. We can’t sell it anyway. If we had someone — a friend — that we could trust to do the trading for us, then it’d be worth discussing what to do with the loot, but in this case, improving the fame of Exalt and impressing the Gods was the right choice to make.”

Aren smiled and nodded. When he let the villagers keep the loot, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. He hadn’t really thought it through, he simply did what he felt was right. They ruined their village, and perhaps if it wasn’t for Aurora’s Blessing, they might have cursed and chased Aren out of the ruins. But thanks to Aurora — as much as he thought of her blessing as a taboo thing — he was able to make things right. Perhaps, he realized, the Goddess was testing him. She gave him a tool and he could use it as a villain or as a hero. He could use it to twist the hearts of Aurora’s flock, or he could use it to mend deep wounds and to bridge divides between people.

Fang raised a second finger. “Second, we need fame. The Catacombs have not been cleared in years. The riches and monsters beneath are probably unimaginable right now. Lately, the push to reclaim Rakab has been increasing in intensity and that makes me believe that someone out there understands how the passage of time correlates to the plunder available in a dungeon.”

Nissa scratched her cheek. “Hold on,” she said. “How are we going to make money if we can’t sell anything?”

Fang shook his head. “It is not that we can’t sell anything. It is that the traders do not want to risk their reputation with the alliances and clans for loot that is not incredible.”

“The orcs had sweet loot, though,” Nissa said.

Fang nodded. “For you and me, yeah. It was incredible. But to traders who sell that kind of stuff every day? It is nothing. Remember the shadowblade problem?”

“We couldn’t find any except on the auction,” Nissa said.

Fang nodded. “Weapons and armor, especially of that grade and realm, just don’t sell too well. No one wants to risk their entire business over something like that.”

Aren pondered the vestige core the shadow-wolves dropped. “So we are not going to sell weapons?” he asked.

Fang shook his head. “We are selling materials, mostly. As for items, only Sky Realm or higher.”

Nissa snorted. “Sky Realm? That will never happen. From the Catacombs? No way.”

Fang smirked. “Nissa, you are forgetting the important part.”

Nissa narrowed her eyes. She realized it the moment she said those words. The Catacombs — as a dungeon — was too low-level to have items of the Sky Realm. Normally, it was. But in the world of Singularity, the less popular a dungeon became — that is to say, the less it was cleared — the more impressive the items became, and the more powerful the monsters became.

Fang glanced at Nissa and saw her expression. “There might be Azure Realm items down there, by now.”

Nissa almost howled at the thought. She pressed both her hands on her cheeks and stared at the sky. “Can we really clear it though?” she asked, her mind rejecting the possibility of the idea that they might actually find an Azure Realm item. It was too good to be true.

“I don’t know,” Fang said. “It is very unlikely.”

The group was silent. Estella and Ame did not seem that interested in the discussion about the Catacombs, but the others, Cassandra and Damien, quietly pondered the conversation.

“There are only so few of us,” Fang explained. “Even if we had a larger group, it will take weeks to find the routes to the lower levels, and then we have the fabled Labyrinth to contend with.”

“The Labyrinth?” Aren asked.

Fang nodded. “Generally, dungeons have an area that always changes. New items and things are discovered in the Labyrinth. For us, it is a pain to get through, but for monsters, it is their evolution ground. There, they fight and compete with each other to become more powerful. One of them will eventually move on to become the Dungeon Lord. That is how Singularity recycles areas.”

“And the items? Where do they come from?” Aren asked.

Ame glanced at Aren, an intrigued expression on his face. His gaze said it all. He had that are you a newbie look.

“Don’t know, actually,” Fang said. “Some say the items have always been there, and as the Labyrinth shifts, it opens new areas. There is a lot we don’t know about these mechanics, and even empirical research gets us nowhere. That is why people are still pushing the big alliances to go explore the frontiers, and why many still try to do it. They think the frontier is like a dungeon — the longer it is unexplored, the greater the riches.”

But big alliances aren’t interested in that logic. Aren knew that. Actually, Aren suspected that big alliances knew more about the mechanics of Singularity than anyone else. How couldn’t they? Top alliances don’t exist because of sheer, dumb luck.

“With a little luck,” Fang said, “We won’t get bogged down defending Rakab while scouring the Labyrinth for the path forward. We are not exactly looking to kill the Dungeon Lord, that is most likely impossible for us, but if we manage to kill a Legendary creature, or an Epic or two, that will be more than enough to get us into the Abyss. Especially if we then sell the maps of the Catacombs, and basically, act as trailblazers for the big alliances that decide who enters the Abyss and who doesn’t.”

Aren swallowed when Fang said the word Trailblazers. Was fate making fun of Aren? It felt so ridiculous that his thoughts halted and pondered the cosmic coincidence. Was it possible to have at least one day when he did not have to think about Codes, Mandates, and AGMI?

"But best-case scenario," Fang added, "We manage to clear the Catacombs. Then, everything is possible."

“It seems you’ve thought this through,” Ame said. “But how will you fight back against the alliances who want to take Rakab from you?”

This time, Fang was silent.

After a moment, Ame glanced at Fang. “Do you not know, or do you not want to tell me?”

“Maybe a little bit of both,” Fang said, smiling mysteriously.

Ame returned Fang’s mysterious smile. “As long as you tell me where to be when the fighting begins, that is more than enough for me,” he said. “You don’t have to share your strategy with me.”

Fang nodded, his smile disappearing. “You will get what you want,” Fang said.

Ame nodded in reply. He didn’t say anything.

Eventually, the group made it into the Catacombs. They walked down the winding stairway of the same cathedral that Aren did, not so long ago, and made it into the first chamber where Aren suffered a mortal blow from the very first creatures.

This time, however, the creatures were not there. Neither was the vestige core that Aren left back then or any trace of the fighting that took place there.

Fang retrieved a sword from his satchel and offered it to Aren. “It is a good thing I got a few extra ones of these,” he said. “It is not a shadowblade, so try not to overuse your powers. I only have one spare left.”

It was the same type of sword Aren used before his shadowblade. The alloy was resistant to heat, which allowed Aren to use his abilities, but it did not have macros like the shadowblade. Without a shadowblade, it would be much more difficult to open his buffer, but Aren wondered if he could replicate the enchantments on the shadowblade, to reduce the heat stress on this particular weapon. It was probably beyond his abilities, though.

He didn’t really understand how magic worked, after all. He did everything on instinct.

“As for our fighting tactics,” Fang continued. “Estella, can you take the front row with me?”

Estella smiled and nodded.

“Ame and Damien, you will be on the flanks,” Fang said. “Aren, you protect Cassandra.”

So, without a shadowblade, he was on rearguard duty. He couldn’t argue with that decision. It was sound.

“The creatures here are mostly Dark Howlers,” Fang explained. “That information is still current, but beyond this point, who knows what we will run into.”

The information, of course, was Aren’s retelling of events from the last time he was here.

“Dark Howlers can only be killed in three ways,” he said. “Decapitation, destroying their core, or Divine magic. But we only get an intact core if we decapitate them. Ame, I am counting on you.”

Ame nodded. Damien did not seem disappointed that Fang was not counting on him. It was absurd to expect the assassin to be cutting off heads with two tiny weapons. Sure, he could probably do it if he tried, but why risk his life when he could let someone extremely proficient at head-hunting do it instead.

“We will take it slow and get used to this formation first,” Fang said. “Our teamwork here is the most important thing. Do not take risks. Do not overextend. Once we nail that down, then we can focus on the clear properly. Let’s begin!”