Fiona and I examined the obsidian-colored pedestal in the center of the room. As we neared it, glowing characters emerged along the top. They were not in any language I was familiar with and the system didn’t translate them for me. I looked over to Fiona and she shook her head. Well, guess there wasn’t much we could do with this.

“So, I know what a node is, but why is it such a big deal?” I asked, the sound of my voice seemed to get sucked up by the room so it only came out as barely above a whisper.

Fiona motioned to back out of the room and I followed.

“That was weird,” I stated as I crossed out of the room. My voice had returned to a normal volume.

“Yeah,” she said, eyeing the room with an odd look upon her face. “…I only know a bit about node chambers. I haven’t ever seen one though. Most of what I know is only rumors spread across centuries so I can’t say for certain any of it is accurate.”

“Fair enough, I would like to know anyway.”

“Well, most people believe a node chamber allows people to switch classes without losing their levels. I’m pretty sure that is not true. If it were, the Royalty would have done it just because they could and to flout their status. Another rumor says it allows the node holder to communicate across the planets with anyone else that holds a node.”

“Well, I can certainly see that being useful, what else.”

“Teleportation to any Bazaar location,” she added.

“Really,” I replied, eying the chamber with a bit more envy. “Wait… if that were true, why didn’t they all just flee that way?”

Fiona shrugged. “As I said, these are all just rumors. It could be that they are all true or all just lies. I can only say for certain that the writing on the pedestal is an originator language.”

“Originators?”

“Well, the system didn’t just spring into existence. Nobody knows who truly made it but it was likely one of the first three species to be inducted, perhaps all three. But they don’t allow outsiders to their worlds and rarely if ever mix with other species.”

“… hmm, that doesn’t help us with our current situation. How valuable is this place?”

Again she shrugged. “Considering they were state secrets, I would assume highly valuable. But only if you can figure out how to use it.”

I glanced once again at the dark and forboding-looking room. “We can’t hold it. If it’s that precious, they will come back for it. No, best to deny them access. Come on, let's take anything of value and meet back in that first chamber.”

Fiona agreed with my assessment and we split up to take anything that survived our assault.

It was easy enough to figure out how the Stygian Order, or whoever found the node and got to it. A concrete-lined bore tunnel was in the ceiling of one of the chambers. Nobody was going to be coming down that anymore. It had been sealed off by at least a few hundred feet of concrete. It was rather newer than the concrete that made up the floors and I guessed it had been poured after the world switched over.

The chamber itself had been excavated. You could see remnants of the blast holes used to carve away rock from the walls. There were a total of twenty chambers ranging in size from a few hundred square feet to a couple thousand. While the main entrance had been blocked off, they had left the air circulation systems intact.

My first surprise came when I entered what looked like a lab. The body of the man that tried defending it against us lay in a broken heap along one wall. I walked over to pick up the weapon he had been wielding at the time. When I turned it over I got an unwelcome view.

The blade had rough runes, not enchantments, carved into it. I couldn’t yet tell what the runes did as I didn’t recognize any of them. I found this odd and slightly unnerving. The work was sloppy though. It didn’t even incorporate the geometric designs needed to break the patterns up. I found out why as I continued my search of the room and came across one of my early designs. It was one of the stamps I had used to free myself from slavery.

It was in rough shape and they had done something to damage the runic structure that hid its intended purpose. Still, if this is what they worked off of it was concerning.

While I knew my knowledge of runes and how to incorporate them into items wouldn’t remain secret forever, I had hoped for at least a few years of keeping it from other sources. It seemed like that was a pipe dream now.

I did not doubt that the Stygian order had other sites full of researchers working to unravel the secrets.

I stuffed everything of value into my ring. Then I gave the room one last look before I placed another device I had created for this mission on the table. Not knowing what I was getting into I had prepared a dozen different contingencies to deal with the aftermath. I was glad that it was an underground facility. It made it much easier to employ this one.

Fiona and I continued to clear the facility and I placed a device in each room, as well as one just outside the node chamber. I didn’t want some weirdness, from inside the room, to affect the device.

“That’s everything,” Fiona said, giving the main chamber one last look.

“Not quite,” I said, looking around before I jumped and snatched a floating invisible ball out of the air. I twisted it to deactivate the device and stuffed it in my ring. “There, now we can go,” I added with a smile.

She just shook her head and stepped onto the thin white platform that was a match for the one back in my warehouse. I braved the chill as I activated the platform.

There was a flash of light followed by a hissing bubble as the small white disk dissolved leaving the hidden facility silent.

A soft click echoed through the abandoned facility twenty minutes later followed by more as the place filled up with a haze. After a while silence returned, the objects placed throughout the facility had stopped spraying their vapor. There was a final click as a surge of icy mana shot out from all of the devices, freezing the droplets and causing them to form massive chunks of ice, encasing the entire facility.

***

“Whew, glad that return pad worked,” I stated, hoping off the pad and avoiding an irritated slap from Fiona.

“You didn’t know if it was going to work? How did you expect to get back here then?”

I shrugged. “I would have figured something out. Besides, it worked out and you even managed to get to level nineteen.”

She glared at me for a bit before walking off and muttering, “Ugh, men.”

I just smiled. It was a good day. I had dealt proactively with an issue that had been plaguing me for months and my friend had leveled. I assumed with this level her ability to remain in her human form would expand. I could ask her about it later. For now, I needed to go over my gains.

I had used Sunder Skill to try and get one of the abilities that made these people so hard to catch. Be that turning into smoke or flitting through shadows. When I looked through the five skills I grabbed, my face fell in disappointment. They were all garbage. I hadn’t been able to try any more times as that had taken up the remaining open skill slots I had. I sighed, using Void Lottery on a pair to see if I got something worthwhile.

Forest Stride: Instant movement to another tree within sight. Must be touching a tree to trigger. Cost 100 mana, cooldown 1 hour

The skill seemed tailored to a druid-type class. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I thought of a movement skill but it would still work. I was also either lucky to get it or the void could somehow tell my intent. That was a scary thought in and of itself and I decided not to dwell on that too much.

That left me with only one open slot for future abilities. I decided to try something I hadn’t thought to do since it wasn’t necessary until now. I used Multicast on Void Lottery and sure enough, I was able to dump two more skills.

Pearlescent Vortex: Create a glittering vortex around a target, that confuses senses and renders them trapped in an illusion. The effect of the spells is based on your Intelligence score and will fail to take hold if the target has a higher Perception. Lasts 20 sec or until disrupted. Cost 200 mana, cooldown 20 min

That was an interesting spell if a bit on the expensive side. Still having the ability to lock down a creature for twenty seconds was no small feat. I would have to see what the spell considered disruption before seeing how useful it was.

I mulled over one final thing before I went to speak with Martin and Kurt. I knew my main class was going to take ages to level past twenty. But it had felt like I was throwing experience down an endless well before I had finally leveled to twenty-one. Seeing as I was also running out of free space to acquire new and powerful abilities, I decided to switch my experience back over to my second class. There were a few more skills I may decide to dump but that was going to run out quickly.

If I got my second class to twenty I could finally upgrade Strength, Endurance, and Agility into the second tier. Having four stats in that tier would give me quite the leg up. Which was something I was going to need considering I wasn’t a specialized build like some of the arena competitors. I still thought I would have a fair chance of beating any of them if I had gone all out but who wanted a fair chance when you could go for overwhelming.

With my decision made, I left my warehouse and made my way to speak with Martin and Kurt.

Saint June was becoming quite lively since I had arrived here. Some of the displaced people in Houston had made their way over by barge. That was stopped though with it now clear that the Enchanters Guild was backing Edward Rosewill. We just got rid of one set of spies, I didn’t need to deal with another group so soon. Though I doubted we had gotten them all, or even prevented some of Rosewill’s own from making their way over, those would be dealt with soon.

I needed the town to be as secure as possible so I could finally leave and level. More and more people were catching up with me and it was a bit irksome. This had been the whole reason I had not wanted to get bogged down with politics and running a city, I knew I would eventually get out leveled and some asshat would come along and challenge my position.

That landmass with the Gorlophants would be my first stop. Past that I wasn’t sure yet. The rift near Ska’s old village would be a fantastic place to level if the creatures there weren’t two times my level. No, I would have to wait to go back there. I doubted my poisoned meat trick would work a second time.

There was one last thing I needed to do for the city but they would have to come up with the resources. I wasn’t about to go running around the country to dig up more mithril and mana hearts to create mana cannons for the city walls. But I had already spoken with Kurt about this and his people were doing a valiant job stockpiling the necessary items, despite the man being such a disagreeable asshat.