As the forum was exploding, with parts of the few videos of Hatterion being shared and re-posted, I slept fitfully, strange dreams haunting my sleep. It was one thing to feel righteous anger and take revenge for a murdered companion, but had I truly hit the right people? They most certainly had suffered and would continue suffering as the nobles had to scramble to respond to hundreds, if not thousands, of dead in one of their major towns and I had a feeling that there would be utter chaos. But had that been worth condemning everyone to the same fate? The innocent, alongside the guilty, they all had become collateral damage, a necessary sacrifice, simply because I lacked the power and ability to strike only at those truly guilty. I couldn’t even accurately identify those guilty, leaving only a broad, ruthless attack as my only option. If not for a massive area of effect attack, I couldn’t have touched those guilty. And even that touch was mostly secondary, the pain inflicted on them came from the destruction I had caused and the effort needed to clean up the mess that left, not directly from me. Was that worth it?

At the same time, I wondered if striking those responsible for Olivia’s incarceration and subsequent death would leave the populace actually in a better spot. If the dead were concentrated amongst the nobles and guards, there would be just as much chaos, only without the likely stunning effect that a catastrophe on such a scale had.

When I logged back into the game the following morning, the itchy, uncomfortable sensation from being in too close mental contact with Lenore after the end of our Avatar-state immediately assaulted me and, without thinking too much about it, I pushed myself out of my Hallow with only a brief glimpse to ascertain Lenore wasn’t flying high in the sky.

Instead, I materialised right where I wanted to be most, safely held in Sigmir’s arms, as she demonstrated incredible reflexes and maybe the power of our connection when she managed to catch me right as I appeared.

“Did anything happen while I was gone?” I asked, even as I was busy strengthening my concealment in the Twilight as I was certain that there would be diviners looking for me. After the attack on Hatterion, there had to be, the Empire had failed to stop the attack so someone had to pay a price for that. If that someone was me, they’d be happy but I had a feeling that some nobles would just as well trot out some Rebels or rivals and have them tried and executed if they could make it stick.

“It was surprisingly quiet,” Sigmir assured me, a note of amusement in her voice. “There were some beings in the air but we managed to remain undetected.”

“Teacher, if you could take over the concealment?” Rai asked, looking incredibly stressed out and haggard. It was so pitiful that I couldn’t help but smile as I reached out with my magic, getting a feel for the mantle that shrouded the four of them. It wasn’t just Rai who had done it, I could feel Adra’s magic in there as well, but adding to it, so he could let his efforts fade wasn’t too difficult.

“It’s done,” I assured him, feeling his magic fade as he let out a sigh of relief.

“They’ll be looking for you, that’s for sure,” Adra reminded me, “I felt the amount of power you unleashed, that was no laughing matter. I doubt you managed to get it all where you wanted it to go, but you caused some damage.”

“You can bet I did,” I grinned savagely, thinking of the images I had seen the night before, “Hatterion got struck, and struck hard. I don’t know how many I managed to get but the ferry down there should be quite filled at the moment. Olivia won’t have to ride it all on her own.”

“Then we have taken our vengeance and need to move on. No need to give anyone an opportunity to strike back at us,” Sigmir pragmatically reminded me, getting a nod from everyone. There was no need to stay in the area, not when the heat would come soon. There were few EXP to be gained unless we began to actively work with either of the major factions and we had neither the time nor the inclination to do so. Thus, continuing to move, it was.

Still carried by Sigmir, I decided to check the notifications for my ritual and the first that I noticed greatly disappointed me. Or rather, it was the lack of notifications that greatly disappointed me. There were no notifications that told me about EXP-gain, everyone I had killed had been so far beneath me that they were considered negligible, or maybe I had just been too far away. Either way, there were no gains in EXP for massacring so many humans.

On the other hand, there were a few skill gains that delighted me.

I had gained one point each in Darkness-Rune Mastery, in Ice-Rune Mastery and in Mind-Magic, bringing them to seventy-five, seventy-eight and twenty-eight respectively. In addition, I gained two points for Blood-Rune Mastery, bringing it to sixty-five and Astal Meditation, pushing that to sixty-one. But the biggest gain of the night was undoubtedly the five points in Death-Magic, bringing it to a nice thirty.

Additionally, there was a pair of traits, one that was merely an increase of a previous trait, the Magician of Massacre, further increasing damage and skill-gains when using magic to affect large amounts of people, while the other was new and sounded quite ominous. I was now a Bane of Humanity, which likely meant I’d have to make extra sure my Twilight-Cloak didn’t slip and that towns would only be visited while hiding inside my Hallow. Not that I really minded, the trait increased all damage I dealt to Humans and was given after killing a thousand humans, making me wonder just how many people had died in Hatterion. Maybe there would be an achievement at the end of the Beta, greatest destruction caused or something like that and I’d know, but for now, I could only guess.

But either way, the gains were quite nice, even if it had required the sacrifice of the corrupted Mooncrystal to get my way. Well, and a few people, but who was counting?

As we continued moving, trying to stay in the shadows and the forest as much as possible, only crossing open fields and meadows in the depths of night, it was almost amusing just how little happened. Given that I had wiped out a sizable portion of a major city, I would have thought there would be countless people hunting for me, and, judging by the conversations on the Forum, there were.

While it hadn’t been confirmed that I had caused the Cold Night, as the incident had been dubbed, the discussion on the forum had postulated me but only a few people had taken it seriously, mostly due to the fact that the majority of my activities had been on Aretia, on the other side of the Mare Tempest, but also due to the scale of the incident. No players truly believed, or maybe wanted to imagine, the ability to wipe out that many people in the hands of a player. It strongly demonstrated just how problematic high-level spellcasters would be and how little the normal populace could do to withstand their attacks.

Nobody knew just what had gone into the magic I had wrought, how much Astral Power had been involved, even I could only guess and estimate, but by my understanding, I had managed to channel roughly ten times my normal pool into the Ritual, mostly thanks to the combination of life-sacrifice, Blood Magic and a strongly death-attuned source of condensed Astral Power. Without the Mooncrystal, I wouldn’t have managed to get even a fraction of that power, even with the sacrifices, while without the sacrifices, it was more probable that the crystal would have torn me apart instead of empowering the ritual.

During our travel south, that very fact and the sheer synergistic effect we had managed to achieve was the main topic between Lenore and me, The question of how Astral Power could form into solid, permanent objects had been one we had been wondering about for a while. For some elements, mainly Ice but likely Earth and its associated elements as well, it was relatively simple, merely an extension of their conjuration aspect. But how could Fire be made solid, or how would solid Air work? One of the major aspects of Air was its ability to move, even more so than water.

While I had no clue how to create solid Death or even how to conjure Death in material form, applying some of my earlier ideas to Darkness started to glean results. The experimentation went slowly, as one would expect, but I more and more managed to form temporary voids, areas of space where there was nothing, spaces that even Light couldn’t pass through, by expanding the Darkness between matter with my magic. It took a lot of power but with each passing day, my understanding increased.

Though, whether or not I’d be able to understand in time was a different question.