Michael dismounted his horse as it came to a stop. The trip from New York to Chicago had taken over a month. The horses were mostly spent, as were his team.

Their first stop had been two days prior, at the forward relay station, or what was left of it. There were obvious signs of a large fight that took place, in and around the communication tower. Whoever had attacked had taken any bodies that had been left behind by their people. The corpses of the Black Dragon sect members had been left to rot.

Michael knew it had been people that had attacked the building. There were clear signs of weapon damage to the bodies. The rest he was able to determine through a skill of his called recall. It allowed him to sort of render a hazy image of what the deceased saw in the last hour of their life.

The skill wasn't perfect, each passing day left the image slightly worse off. After a month he could only tell that the attackers had been human, details like faces were a blur. It was a good thing they brought a long-range communicator with them.

He had relayed the information to New York, then they had moved on to see what remained of the Chicago headquarters.

It was worse than he had expected. The gate they entered through had been torn from its hinges and lay on the street outside. Old dried blood was splattered across the entry. When he checked the decaying bodies he found that they were attacked from inside.

He got his first break when one of the bodies turned out to be a dead slave.

"Learn anything?" Grant asked.

Michael stood, dusting his hands off. The others were here to defend him while he did the investigation. Grant wouldn't have interrupted him unless he felt uneasy about being here.

"Yes, let's move on."

Grant nodded, motioning for the others.

The group of six moved further into the abandoned area that had once belonged to the Black Dragon.

It didn't take them long until they came across the remains of a battle. Michael checked his map, verifying that it was the correct building. It was. He surveyed the remains of the building. Someone had used powerful explosives to collapse the building, the rubble covered the entire street. It had also damaged nearby buildings.

"Let's move on, I can't do anything at this site."

The next stop was... odd. That was the only way he could describe the scene at first glance. One corpse, missing an arm, lay well away from the others. The rest of the corpses were scattered about as if they were fighting their own target. Then there were two women, one whose face was splattered against a building, the other with the throat torn out.

As he used his skill a clearer picture began to appear of what transpired. It was clear that a single man had killed everyone but the two women. Those were killed by Obidiah, who he learned was the one-armed corpse.

The team had one more stop to make. They entered the building that had been the seat of power for the Black Dragon. The team cleared each floor as they went up.

It was clear to Michael that nobody had been on the upper floors recently. That wasn't true of the lower floor or basement. Dusty footprints littered the entry and all of the mana engines and mana hearts had been taken.

What they found on the penthouse floor was no surprise, at least not after what he had seen so far. Their leader's brother lay rotting in his bed, his throat sporting a jagged slice across it. Michael wrinkled his nose at the smell of rot that filled the room. He had become mostly desensitized to it over his life as a police detective. The body of Harold Cotton was still hooked up to medical equipment. Michael checked the bag, noting that it was a sedative.

"Probably used to keep him under until his legs healed," Michael mumbled quietly.

"Sir?"

"Nothing, just thinking out loud, your men find anything of interest?"

"Someone was watching us outside but they didn't follow us inside."

"Alright, leave one man with me and go take care of our guests. If possible bring one back for questioning."

Grant motioned to the others and in less than ten seconds four men disappeared from view. Michael had faith that they would succeed, these men had been military specialists even before the System. All either hired after they finished their duty or recruited for private wetwork.

It was less than twenty minutes before he heard them coming up the stairs. The man left with him didn't take any chances, covering the entrance with a glowing shield while pulling a crackling sword from his sheath.

There were three knocks followed by two, then four. He dropped the shield but kept the sword out until he saw who it was. Grant walked in followed by two men dragging an unconscious third man.

"Put him in the magical restraints and wake him up."

The man was tied securely to a sturdy chair and magic nullifying cuffs were placed on his hands.

Grant stepped back and slapped the unconscious man across the face, jolting him awake. The man struggled for a few minutes before he gave up.

"Now that you have calmed down, Destin, why were you following us?"

"Bite me!"

Grant cracked the kid across the face with a straight punch.

The kid groaned as blood leaked from his split lip.

Michael sighed, "perhaps you can tell me what happened here," he said, gesturing to the room with the corpse, "or what happened outside?"

The man responded by trying to spit blood at him but missed.

"Take a finger."

Michael wiped the stray blood from his hands. The kid had been a tough nut, it had taken nine fingers to get him to talk. Now he had a name to go with the mysterious individual that killed Obidiah, Harold, and the others.

The kid had said he had belonged to the Stygian Order but they had left him behind to keep an eye out but nobody ever returned. The kid wasn't sure where they had gone, only that they had gone through a portal.

That was all Michael needed to know. It was the same group that had been hampering their progress in New York. At the time they left on this assignment it wasn't determined what that group's objective was, other than hindering them. The only clear thing was that every member of the Order had some ability to hide. It hadn't saved the Order's members in New York, and perhaps that was why they came after the Chicago HQ.

"Sir, we also found this as we chased the kid," Grant said, pulling the remains of a mangled arm from his storage ring.

"Obidiah's?" he asked.

"I believe so, it still has the receiver ring attached."

"Hmm, then maybe the girl is still alive."

Michael pulled the ring from the rotting hand and put it on. In his mind, he could feel the other ring's location.

"The other ring is somewhere far to the south, It must be outside the pinpoint range because I don't get any specifics."

"Will we track it down?"

"Perhaps, our orders, for now, are to remain in the area and wait for the boss."

***

It took me over a week to recover from my injuries. Mostly because I had to test something and reinjured myself again. At least now I knew I wouldn't be able to use my aura for the immediate future, even a single extra point made my body feel like it was on fire.

Martin was still gone, I mean he did come back, and then he left again. Turns out it wasn't easy to find the specific vendor that could undo the charm that trapped Fiona. There was one in the Bazaar but they weren't always there. So he had to go back and check.

I told him to just stay in the city until he located the man, I could cover his absence in a few days when my body fully healed. I gotta say, not being an invalid or bedridden is nice. Nobody likes getting their ass wiped by a stranger or pissing into a bedpan. I imagine the people helping me with these tasks were probably just as happy if not more.

I stood up and stretched my weak muscles. It wasn't like my stats decreased due to my injuries but whatever I did, the system couldn't completely take away the pain. It did ease with each passing day and soon I would be back to a hundred percent. I held off on looking at my new level or possible skills for now. I wanted to be whole and healthy before I made a choice.

In the meantime, I hobbled around my house and worked on improving my tattooing and rune crafting in general. I managed to talk one of the new patrol guards into bringing me an animal corpse. It didn't matter what kind, I just needed something to experiment with. The man reluctantly agreed after I told him I would offer him one free rune crafted item.

The man had jumped at the opportunity and managed to bag me a cat-sized rodent of some sort and the biggest iguana I had ever seen. The damn thing was six feet long.

In the man's own words. "Somabitch spit acid at me figured it needed ta die."

I could understand the man's sentiment, I hated acid wielding enemies. Now you may ask what I needed some corpses for, well... let's just say experimentation. Let me expand on that further, I needed to figure out a way to strengthen my body to prevent the situation I was in from occurring again. That meant I needed to make my bones stronger, my muscles more resistant, and my organs better able to cope with a massive change.

I honestly didn't know if I could accomplish this, hence the experimentation. I thanked the man as both corpses disappeared into my ring. I would wait until he left before starting my ghoulish work.

I started with the rodent. My tests weren't scientific but it was the best I could do. I placed one of the legs out at an angle and put increasing pressure on it until the bone inside snapped. I needed to remember how much force I applied to see if my runes changed it any.

To remove any other variables from the test I removed the other front leg and striped the bone clean. I thought it would be simple, stick some strengthening runes on it and voilà. To a point it did work. The bone was tougher to break, but it somehow made it shatter instead of just cleanly breaking.

My next test wasn't any more successful. I had to rethink my runes, or the order I was using them in. I would need to start testing on other bones as well, so long as it had a twin that I could use as a control, it would be fine.

It took ten more tries before I came up with a combination of runes that worked to both strengthen the bone and not make it too brittle. The only thing was I wasn't going to be cutting myself open and carving runes into my bones. But at least I had a starting point.

I would need to get some more corpses to test on, this would take time.

Another week went by as I received a few more corpses. Martin still hadn't returned and I was starting to get antsy. I was well enough now to not hobble around but an extended trip to Biloxi was still out of the question. I did a few jobs for the locals, enhancing weapons and armor per their request. I only did this to keep up with paying for the house. The minute I missed a payment I knew Constable Jenning would kick me out. I wasn't about to give her the satisfaction. Plus each time I enhanced others, it slowly eroded her control over the town, so, win, win in my book.

Unfortunately, my continued tests hit a roadblock when I tried tattooing the same runes I used to enhance bone, onto the skin. It only made the skin tougher. While not a bad thing it wasn't the effect I had been going for. I knew now that my first approach of bypassing any variables had been a mistake.

I had to step back and reassess my process and the runes I was going to use. I came up with a few combinations that might work and I set to tattooing the runes, along with the design onto the skin.

When the body exploded, splattering me with blood and guts, I figured I did something wrong. I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the downstairs studio. Of course, Martin picked that moment to finally show up.

"Holy heck, what happened in here?"

I looked up from my cleaning. "You're back! This... just an experiment that went wrong. Did you speak to the person that can help Fiona?" I asked, looking around and expecting her to appear.

"Well... good news and bad news. The good news is... he said all we have to do is break the item and she will be released."

"And the bad news?"

"I tried everything I could to break the thing, and couldn't put a scratch on it. According to the man it was made by a master craftsman out of a mithril-infused mana heart if that makes any sense."

"Fuck!" I stated.

"So you know what that is?" he asked hopefully.

"Not exactly, I know what a mana heart and mithril is. Both items are used in my armor. You remember the gem set in my chest piece?"

"Oh... so are they hard to break?"

"I'm not sure, I've never tried. I have a few spares I purchased, lets head out back and see if we can break one of them."

"You sure about this, seems like an expensive item?" he asked as we headed toward the back yard.

"I'm not worried about credits," I replied.

I had to shoo Bella out of the way, she had been sunning herself on the concrete slab that I wanted to use. She nipped at me grumpily but moved to the other side of the yard.

I pulled one of the tiny spare crystals out of my ring and set it on the concrete. Since I didn't want it to go flying away I set a metal plate on top that I found off to the side.

With the crystal sandwiched between the concrete and metal plate, I pulled out my staff and swung it down as hard as possible.

There was a resounding gong as my staff impacted the metal.

I waited for everything to settle before I moved the plate aside. The crystal had been pushed into the concrete halfway. The other side dented the plate.

"Ok, let me try just hitting it with my weapon, maybe its magical nature will break the gem."

Martin nodded, stepping back to avoid any flung up rocks.

I let mana flow into the runic enchantment on my staff and swung down again. The entire concrete slab shattered with the blow, sending tiny chunks pelting across the back yard. After the debris cleared, I had to dig through where I struck. When I found an intact and unblemished crystal, I swore.

There must be some trick to it, the gems were cut and sized to fit whatever application they were used for. And obviously, you could destroy them or the person that crafted the item wouldn't have been able to mix it with mithril.

"I'll think of something," I told Martin, thinking on the problem. Perhaps I could use my runes to disrupt the enchantment.