“Is everyone here?”

I looked around, as did others within the group, rubbing my eyes in exhaustion.

“My party is accounted for.”

“As is mine.”

Iris looked around, likely searching for me, as I wasn’t part of any party; I needed to be accounted for individually. Catching her gaze, I gave her a quick wave, the tiredness leaving my body as I flushed my system with mana, feeling alert and awake instantly.

I could have easily kept myself in a constant state of keen awareness using mana if I wanted to. With how little mana was needed, my Sage rings could have supplied it and then some. The issue was that while I could, I’d learned that if I over-relied on mana to sharpen my awareness, it would gradually lose effectiveness as my body acclimated to it. Best used sparingly, I cut off the mana after a quick flush to snap me out of my sleep-deprived state.

“Once we head in, pay attention to your senses. These ruins are formed within a meta-space, meaning physical space won’t always be what you expect it to be.”

Defying the physics of space. Sounds like the doings of a Sage alright.

We were stood before a crag of stone, but notably, one of the larger boulders had been shattered, revealing an intricately carved set of stone doors, like doors to a cellar, flat on the ground. Whatever had caused the boulder to shatter had exposed the entrance to the ruins, the Citadel of the Moon as they were called.

The heavy-looking doors were propped open, a flight of carved stone stairs descending into darkness below.

Not the least bit concerning. Not at all.

“Vanguards, form up.”

From the gathered crowd, fifteen adventurers walked forward, the most heavily armored of us all. Many of them carried shields as tall as them, Tower shields that could repel all but the mightiest of magical beasts. Forming into three ranks, five deep each, they began to descend the stairs.

“Casters!”

Another two ranks formed of four each, notably missing Iris, who was currently busy directing.

“Towers!”

This time a single rank formed, the six members who would be the core support of our team.

“And Lancers!”

The final seven of us, Iris not included, gathered up, but rather than form into standard ranks, we took a position where each of u had space to maneuver, more like a scattered pack than a unified advancing column. At least for the initial descent, Iris joined us as we marched toward the stairs.

I felt my grip on the pommel of my sword, one of my swords at least as the other two were strapped to my back, tighten, my knuckles turning white.

No turning back now.

Darkness looming before me, I took one last gulp of above-ground air before plunging into the inky blackness of the descending steps. Only a few steps down, I felt a chill pass through me, a chill that I instinctively knew wasn’t simply from the temperature that was quickly dropping.

Someone or something had noticed me, like the feeling of being caught by the gaze of some giant monstrosity.

The Citadel.

It sensed me. It had noticed all of us.

Well, I’m sure that can only mean good things.

“Halt!”

Our march was called to a stop, the darkness all around us. We had been descending the stairs into the gloom for over an hour, with nothing appearing during that time.

Which is just as well.

I was thankful we hadn’t already dealt with some sort of ravenous monster, but I felt uneasy. After an hour of descending into the darkness, we had still yet to discover anything. If it weren’t for a mage light hovering above one of the Towers, we would have been entirely blind.

“Man, these stairs go down forever, don’t they?” A woman behind me, one of my fellow Lancers, was stretching her arms overhead before casually leaning against the stone wall of the endless stairs.

“Uh, yeah. Guess so.” I answered, trying to be polite, given I didn’t know the woman.

“You ever been on a quest like this?” She asked me, eyeing me with curiosity.

“No,” I admitted. “This is my first quest, actually.”

“You’re first-!” I swore her jaw almost hit the ground before she regained her composure. “Well, that’s something. I’ve been on, I think, twelve or so before this?”

The woman didn’t seem that extraordinary old, maybe in her early to mid-thirties at best.

“Which group are you from originally?”

“Shangsattva.” She gave me a wink. “I’m our secondary scout.” She stuck her index finger up, to which a ghostly blue flame flickered to live above it. “Kin magic. It uses mana to burn.”

“Doesn’t all magical fire use mana to burn?”

“Not quite.” She smiled at me, still relaxed against the stone wall of the descending corridor. “Other than the initial flame conjuration, it doesn’t use my mana. If a magical trap is found, all I need to do is throw a little flame at it, and poof, no more trap.”

I felt my eyes dart around, ideas already coming to mind as I raised a finger to ask a question.

“Before you ask, it doesn’t work on magic being actively flung around.”

“Right.” I felt my question wither away at the tip of my tongue before I even asked.

She was just beginning to open her mouth to say something else when she froze.

I, much like her, froze as well, the rest of the group copying us as they felt it.

“Eyes up.” Iris called out, her steel-colored haze faintly visible with the light given off by the mage light hovering overhead.

It had been slight, the tiniest of tremors passing through the earth. By all rights, it could have been nothing.

But it also very well could be something.

I slowly reached down to the pommel of the sword currently belted to my side, my falchion, when I was suddenly blinded by a flash of light.

What the hell?

For a moment, I wondered if perhaps the Tower controlling the mage light had gotten skittish and accidentally pumped too much mana into their spell, but I changed my mind instantly.

No, I doubt it’s something that harmless.

My instincts screaming danger, I flushed my body through with a wave of mana, my blinded eyes recovering instantly.

What I saw shook me, but I had no time to ogle the change in the scenery around me. The endless dark stairs descending into the earth had vanished, as had the rest of the group. I was within a glade of rolling fields, grass with an odd metallic gleam reaching just below my shin.

But that wasn’t what caught my attention first.

No, what did was the lizard, roughly half the size of a person lunging straight at me.

Still mentally accelerated by the mana I had circulated through me a moment prior, I reacted instantly, my sword sweeping out and catching the lizard in the neck, intending to take the head off in one clean blow.

The good news was I got the lizard away from me, the force of the strike knocking it aside.

The bad news was my sword rebounded off the black scales of the lizard with a resounding clang, reminding me somewhat of the sound of a bell ringing.

Well, that’s not good.

As the lizard recovered, I had a moment to examine it, recognizing it several beats later.

A low-land monitor? Wait, no, that’s not right.

Low-land monitors were common in the south near the continental capital, annoying pests that, when in large packs, could be dangerous for those unprepared for their rapid assault. They would dash toward whatever they were hunting before flinging themselves atop them, rapidly writhing over those unlucky enough to be caught before using their needle-like teeth to shred through their neck.

They were dangerous to those unaware of their behaviors, especially if several were in one area, as they had no qualms with hunting as a pack. Still, they were nothing a group of seasoned coppers couldn’t deal with.

The difference between this one, and those of the south, was the low-land monitors of the south had scales they could be cleaved through without difficulty. Instead of thin-looking scales, the one that had attacked me was covered in black scales formed into absurdly thick plates that seemed to cover the entirety of its body.

After recovering from its fall, the mutant monitor turned its attention back to me, shooting forward like a black bolt across the oddly metallic-looking grass.

No you don’t.

Sliding one finger down the length of my blade, I whispered under my breath.

“Aulous.”

The lizard leapt through the air, but I met it again with my sword, the blade’s edge now covered in an oscillating layer of water that could carve through steel plates like butter.

Got you now.

I felt a smile tugging at the corner of my lips, but before it even had the chance to be born, it was dashed away. My blade, which I had so confidently believed would cleave through the beast, rebounded with a muted clang.

“You’re joking.”

The monitor lizard was knocked back again, but this time it was ready, flipping midair to land right side up, charging me the moment its feet touched the ground.

Other than a slight cut in one of the scale plates, the creature was unharmed, all but undamaged.

Gritting my teeth, I readied myself as the lizard continuously leapt at me, again and again, and again. I could feel my arms slowly growing tired from the extended assault, but I was making next to no progress. The grooves I had managed to carve through its scale armor were too sporadic and randomly placed to be taken advantage of.

Think.

Like an itch, I felt my subconscious turn its attention to the hidden rings beneath my arm wraps. Null would be useless here, but I was sure I could strike the persistent beast down with the aid of Flow, empowering me beyond what ordinary mana could.

No. Don’t be pulling your trump cards out already.

Without knowing if there were more out there or things even more dangerous, it would be unwise to jump straight to relying on my rings. Forcing my thought direction to shift, I examined the lizard as closely as possible as I continued to fend it off. Yet the more I studied it, the worse my situation seemed. Even the interior of its mouth was heavily protected by the absurd scales.

“What the hell is wrong with this thing?”

It was so armored to the point of nonsensical. Nothing about it made sense; I doubted it would even be able to get food down its throat, considering how thick the scale plating was inside its throat.

The damned thing doesn’t even have eyes to attack! How do I beat this?

The mana generated by my rings was enough to sustain either my mana state or my water edge indefinitely, but not both simultaneously. I was slowly draining the sparse reservoir of mana my Sage rings contained, but they were a far cry from a proper mana core; they would run out within minutes of extended fighting.

The lizard lunged toward my throat for the umpteenth time and, beginning to feel my anger and annoyance taking over, I swung down with a two-handed overhead chop, smashing the lizard flat to the ground but still failing to break through its armor.

“Gods damn it!” I roared, cracking it in the head with repeated hits from my sword.

It’s a good thing I got new swords.

Had I been using any lesser swords, the stress I was putting it through would have likely already begun showing, but mana-tempered silver was something else entirely. Silver ordinarily was hardly something one would think of using for a sword or weapon. Unlike more typically used materials such as steel or bronze, silver could be mana-tempered when alloyed with trace amounts of nizeium. Granting strength and durability second only to pure nizeium or ornnax while being a fraction of the cost, the number of weapons in the world made of pure nizeium or ornnax could be counted on two hands for that reason alone.

Swinging down one more time, enraged as I was, I was taken off guard as the monitor lizard suddenly snapped its head back, catching my blade within its mouth and flinging it away.

Cheeky bastard.

Stepping back and away, I reached for one of my other swords strapped to my back. Intending to grab my gladius, I stopped myself, my mana-enhanced eyes noticing something.

The scales protecting its joints had fallen away in brittle-looking flakes; my continuous enraged assault with my sword had strained them to the breaking point as I had repeatedly brought my weapon down on the lizard, more club than slicing blade at that point.

I get it.

It needed some give around its joints to be capable of moving; the scale plates there thinner and more fragile. My brutal beat down with my sword had put enough pressure on it to stress the joint scales that they had reached their critical failing point.

Meaning, at last, there was a vulnerability I could capitalize on.

Rather than grab my gladius as I had intended, my fingers wrapped around the pommel of my rapier. The fracture between its scale plates was too small for my gladius to sneak past, but my thin rapier would be perfect for the job.

“Alright, then, you stupid gods damned lizard,” I growled, the overly armored lizard watching me for a moment. “What are you waiting for then? C’mon, get me!”

Perhaps the creature was tired of waiting, or maybe my taunt had worked, but with one final burst of speed, it lunged toward me again. Holding my rapier, I pulled my arm back like a person would a bow.

In this case, the arrow was my sword. What felt like ages later but was no more than a fraction of a second, the monitor drew close enough that, using as much mana as I could afford, I thrust forward with all the speed and power I possibly could.

My aim, guided by my mana-enhanced sight, was true. I slipped past the lunging lizard, thrusting my rapier into the joint of its leg, splitting through tendons and muscle in one lightning-quick thrust. Drawing my sword out in the same motion, I watched as the lizard tumbled past me, crashing on the ground.

Notably, with only three functional legs, the joint of the leg I had severed through now uselessly dangling.

While the rest of the struggle wasn’t easy per se, there was a methodical nature to it that I set about taking care of. Slowed down now that it only had three functional limbs, it was simply a matter of maneuvering around until the opportunity to strike through another joint appeared.

Minutes later, the creature thrashed about helplessly, immobilized without functional limbs. Confident I was okay to turn my back toward it, I walked over toward where my sword had fallen.

Stupid thing.

I reached down, about to grab the handle, when I hesitated, something warning me against it. Rather than the sword, I put a finger to a single blade of grass, gently pressing my finger against it.

Instantly blood began to spill from where the grass cut through my skin as quickly as a knife through butter.

“Well.” I puffed out an exhale of weariness. “That’s alarming.”

I hadn’t realized the danger of the grass during the fight, my feet protected by armored boots, but if I had fallen over at any point, the grass would have shredded me like confetti. Using my foot, I nudged my sword until the pommel was safely above the grass, grabbing it and making my way toward the lizard. Unable to escape me, the lizard could only thrash as I pressed the blade of my falchion against its neck, once again coated in a sheathe of slicing water. It was slow going, but placed against a singular groove, the water slowly sawed through the scales until, at long last, I finally took the head free from its neck.

I was tired, my muscles exhausted, and I’d used up far more of the mana within my rings than I was okay with, but I was finally done with the stupid lizard. Giving it a satisfying kick, I turned my attention to…

Well, wherever I was.

The glassy glade stretched as far as I could see, the only disruptions in the terrain gently sloping hills off in the distance.

Now, if only I could find where everyone else was.

As if on signal, I saw massive gout of fire blasted into the air from behind one of the far-off hills.

Well, that was easy.

There was always the chance the fire had come from something else, but the only thing I’d seen here, aside from the dangerously blade-like grass, was the overly armored lizard which, thankfully, hadn’t been able to breathe fire.

Meaning….

Meaning sometimes, the most obvious answer is the most likely. Taking off at a sprint, I ran toward the hills, which rapidly grew closer, a refreshing wave of mana erasing the aches I had begun feeling in my body. While it was wise to not make it a habit of over-reliance on mana to overcome the body’s warning signs, now wasn’t the time or place to play it safe.

The hills, which had been around a league away based on my earlier estimates, quickly came into view as I ran at full speed. At the very least, now that I wasn’t also using mana on my sword, I had more than enough mana to sustain my run without concerns about dipping into the reserves of my Sage rings.

Making it to the hill, only perhaps two or three of me tall, I ran up, making sure not to slip and fall face-first into the grass, something I reckoned wouldn’t be altogether dissimilar from falling face-first onto a sword, or swords plural. Clambering to the top of the hill, I took a second to survey what lay on the other side of the gentle hills.

It was a sight I had expected based on the sounds I’d heard as I’d gotten closer.

A battlefield. The rest of the adventurers I’d been split away from appeared to be gathered all in one place, and they weren’t exactly having a pleasant picnic, that was for sure. We’d already suffered losses; several bodies were strewn about in…. less than great shape. I wasn’t sure what had happened while I was off battling my lizard friend, but at the very least, I could see that they had fallen back into something reminiscence of a formation. The vanguards, which thankfully appeared to be in full force, were holding the front line, pushing back against the swarm of lizards with their massive shields.

Right, that was the other thing. I had struggled to deal with one of the lizards.

They were fighting a horde of them, anywhere from three to five lizards per adventurer.

The vanguards were excellently repelling the horde, rebuffing them as they lunged forward. Yet even as heavily armored as the vanguard members were, I could see dents in their armor where the jaws of the lizards had begun crushing and warping the metal of their armor. Standing a short distance behind the vanguards were our Casters, throwing magical attacks at the lizards as fast as they could, but just as I had struggled to deal with their scale armor, the Casters did as well. There were depressingly few lizard bodies lying on the ground; standard magic simply lacked the raw concentrated power to punch through their scales which were far sturdier than nearly any metal I’d encountered.

The few bodies I did see had been taken down through fire or water from what I could see, fire capable of cooking them regardless of their scales, and water capable of drowning them where they stood.

“Now!”

My head snapped toward the voice that had shouted out, Iris standing near the front of the Casters. Her steel haze was in full effect, formed into a razor-sharp thread of freely flowing steel, capable of getting in between even the most minor of gaps between the segments of armored plates covering the lizards.

It wasn’t Iris who I should have been watching, though. On her command, the rank of vanguards split in two. The lizards surged forward in a frenzy, seeing their chance, a swathing sea of flightless dragons.

Yet, as much as they may have had a dragon-like ferocity, only one living thing here could claim the title of a dragon, and it wasn’t the lizards.

It was the lone woman who strode out to meet them head-on.

Seeing the lone figure, it must have looked like easy prey. The lizards charged in an hungered frenzy, driven forward on instinct to consume, to tear into her.

They never stood a chance.

One moment they were a ferocious tide of scales and fangs, the next, they were burning alive as the world was set ablaze, a forest of raging scarlet flames bursting forward from the woman, power emanating from her like I’d only experienced once before.

Holy shit.

Tez was a living sun, the rest of the adventurers had fallen back from her, and for a good reason too, everything, and I mean everything, that got too close to her was instantly ablaze, the fire greedily burning the world to ashes.

So. I stared in awe as she walked through the lizards who were too preoccupied with dying to bother her. This is what the power of a dragon is.

It was nothing like what I’d seen at the precipice of Sun-splitter Peak years ago when the unknown mage had ‘harnessed’ dragon mana for himself. The same True Dragon he had been siphoning that power from had been the one to explain to me how what that man had touched upon was nothing but a mockery of his power, diluted into something digestible to a mere human mage.

This… This was what the power of a Dragon was supposed to look like. When draconic mana was used to its most authentic degree. Dragon mana wasn’t meant to simply be ‘potent’ mana.

It was the primal aspect of destruction given form.

At last, I saw the fire dying as Tez collapsed from mana exhaustion. Everything within her vicinity had been reduced to molten wasteland. The entirety of what she had shown off had only lasted ten, maybe fifteen seconds, but in that time, she had wrought destruction on a scale I’d never seen from any mage.

Ever.

Perhaps I’d seen people with more power than her, but even they had never showcased such wanton destructive magic.

What would it look like? I pondered. If that same raging fire was used by one with the necessary mana to do it justice?

The battle over, I trotted down the hill I had been standing atop. Earthen mounds had been raised for the adventurers to rest upon without worrying about the grass. I ignored them, heading straight toward Tez, who seemed unbothered by glowing red swamp of molten matter she was partially submerged in.

“’ Whoa there!” I was stopped as an arm was thrust in my way. I looked at the face of the unknown arm before I recognized them as one of Tez’s party.

“I can see you probably want to check on her, but you’re either going to have to wait for the ground to cool or for Tez herself to wake up and come over here.”

“Can’t someone just cool the ground?” I raised an eyebrow at the man.

“Nah. Her Kin magic makes it so whatever was burnt by her fire can’t be cooled outside of regular old temperature cooling, meaning water made from magic is a no go.”

“Kin magic? What Ki-” I stopped myself midsentence; I’d been so caught up in watching that I’d nearly forgotten that to everyone else, the secret of her magic was simply that it was some exceptionally potent Kin magic. “Well, what about just bridging over to her?”

“Sure, go ahead.” The man laughed before shaking his head. “It may not be directly visible, but the air above her is hundreds of degrees. You’ll cook before you reach her. Just give it a rest, for now, okay?”

“You seem pretty okay with this.” I crossed my arms. “She does this a lot?”

The man chewed his lip for a moment before shrugging. “Like this? Nah, not even close. She had to eat up basically all the fire magic we could get her for her to manage this level of power.”

“Excuse me.” I felt my forehead scrunching. “Did you just say she ‘ate’ magic?”

“Oh right.” He nodded to himself as if reminding himself of something. “You knew her before she awoke to her Kin magic, didn’t you?”

“Y-yeah.” I lied.

Well, sort of lied, more of a misdirect.

“I’ll tell you, her Kin magic is weird as hell. Fire hotter than any flame ought to be, resistant to other magic, she can even eat other fire attribute magic, she literally sucks it up, and then can use that mana for herself.”

If that’s the case, I think I can understand why the True Dragons were considered peers to even Great Sages.

“Anyway, you just got here, right?”

“Yeah.” I rubbed at my neck, suddenly feeling awkward as if I had been the one who had tried to end up separated. “I was sent somewhere else after that flash of light.”

The man narrowed his eyes before jerking his head toward where Iris was currently giving commands to a group. “Well, probably want to go talk to her then. Maybe you’ve seen something we haven’t since we were dropped in the middle of that fucking lizard pack, swarm, whatever the hell you call a group of ‘em.”

“I’m not sure how much that will help. It was all grass plains as far as I could see.”

“It doesn’t matter what you saw, kid.” The man shook his head at me as if growing weary of lecturing a petulant child. “It matters what Iris says you saw. Anyway, we need to figure out how to salvage this damn situation. Fucking not even an hour in, and we’ve lost nearly a fifth of our group.”

I stared in surprise at the bodies strewn about the ground in the temporary encampment, at least those which hadn’t yet been retrieved from where they had fallen.

One…two…six… fuck me, eight dead.

We had started with thirty-seven members and were down to twenty-nine already.

I felt my throat dry up, and the guilt washed away anything I’d been ready to say. I’d been so transfixed on Tez that I’d missed the scale of what we had already suffered.

Turning away from the man, I marched toward Iris, who was all things considered taking things in stride, issuing orders to several people around her.

“We need to set up a defensive position in case more of those show up. That means walls and trenches. You-” She pointed to a silvery-haired woman of roughly forty. “Clear this damned grass from the area. Don’t want any more cases like Ilene.”

Iris finally noticed me, turning to face me with a cross between anger and surprise.

“Zero. I didn’t see you during the battle.”

“I was sent somewhere else,” I answered.

“Hmm. I find curious why you and you alone were sent somewhere else.”

“I’m not lying.” My jaw stiffened, her words sounding deadly close to an accusation.

“I’m not saying you are.” Iris shook her head at me. “I would have noticed you hiding if that were the case. I meant it quite literally when I said I find it interesting you were sent elsewhere, but that is not the issue for now. You said you were sent elsewhere. Since you’re here now, you must have seen anything on the way here, right?”

It was my turn to shake my head. “No, grass and the single lizard that attacked me when I appeared.”

“Oh?” Her eyebrows arched. “So you were forced to deal with them as well?”

“Only one.”

“Still, the fact that you managed to deal with one by yourself is impressive. Their scale armor is impervious to physical attacks, or at least anything we were capable of. Magic that could bypass that physical defense was the only thing that proved effective.” She gestured once toward the crematorium that Tez had created. “So unless you didn’t show off everything you could do during our duel, I’m surprised you managed to deal with one in the first place, no offense, but you seem like the exact wrong person to be able to beat one.”

“Their joints.” I pointed toward my elbow as I spoke for extra effect. “The scales covering them are weaker and more flexible to allow for movement. If you manage to get through, you can directly attack the connective tissue between their joints, allowing you to immobilize them long enough to keep them still and wear them down with conventional attacks.”

“Hmm.” Iris crossed her arms, looking pensive for a moment before sighing. “While any information is good, it won’t help us for another large-scale encounter; the style of fighting required to attack their joints with pinpoint accuracy doesn’t lend itself to a fight like this.”

“Sorry.” I shrugged my arms, feeling somehow responsible for not having better news.

“No, it’s not your fault. More importantly, you said you only saw more of the same on the way here?”

“Yeah. As far as the eye can see, it’s just glades.”

“Shit.” It was the first time I’d seen her frown with such a look of worry and concern.

“What? What’s wrong with that?”

“Because.” She looked up, staring at the sky overhead. “I was hoping for some sign of what the nizeium adventurers saw, but if there wasn’t any, it could only mean one thing.”

“Which is….?” I felt tense. Whatever could put Iris on edge like this was sure to be deadly serious.

“It means that this isn’t just some ‘magical ruins.’” She stared me directly in the eye. “This place is a dungeon.”