In a room with a crimson red carpet, walls matted with cream paint, and furniture covered in gold trims, an elf in silky turquoise robes sat on a velvetted chair with his feet up. Beside him, a small table carried a decanter and crystal glasses for him to drink from, along with a small bowl of glistening and glowing fruits.

“Pretty lousy selection, guess they’re fed up with me by now. Have you cleared out the pillar?” Chewing on a sort of dark blue grape, he asked a question to the two nearby who just entered the room.

Of the two, one was a taller elf, much like the sitting one. He wore a full suit with red and gold embroidery running over the outer sides of both legs and coating the jacket’s lapel. The golden ribbons stitched on glistened like divinity… But the red which surrounded it was strange for an elf to wear.

The suited man replied as a question had been asked, “Almost, lord. Currently, two personnel teams are repairing the affected locations, but we have everything extracted.” He used the same subtle euphemisms that his master liked to use.

“We will set off in a few days then. Remind me, where is the next one?” Still not turning, he swallowed the glass of golden brown whisky in one gulp, what many might say ruined the experience and an overwhelming number of weaker wizards would call a downright waste.

The second being spoke, a young girl who barely seemed to enter her teenage years. But anyone with half a brain could tell she could not be human with the gold tier mana within and the thin cat eyes stuck on her shrewd face. With reflective brown hair, the red strands hidden within were unnoticeable, but most important was that it fluffily flowed up from her head.

Beneath which were the stubs of two smooth horns.

Her voice, high-pitched yet smooth like she sung in a choir, replied, “Arisil forest, the Fortress city Fragheim has already been informed of our appearance. Also… I need more blood.”

“Then it seems we can leave tomorrow. And return with your decorum intact. You are no child.” He waved her off, and she vanished from the room in teleportation. Just a little bit longer, she had to hold on just a few more hours.

And then the aching, quivering, desperate heart of red crystal would be happy.

* * *

It was just a few days until the so-called official’s arrival at Fragheim now. The group spent quite a bit of time discussing how to deal with the matter as they had yet to find the pillar themselves. If this individual truly was searching them out, then Mala and Icy would sound out their power and follow behind if a bridgeable gap existed.

Besides that, in the past three months, he assimilated less to maintain the current All-sight bloodline. Evolving was good, but he deeply needed the mana cost reduction the Nexus offered alongside it, especially now that he wanted to investigate an individual of unknown power.

Tonight mattered for a huge reason, that being the forest’s closure began as a forward message had been sent to note Fragheim of the approaching individual.

It seemed that no one actually knew this person’s position, but the place he came from seemed to word him as a ‘Luxury-seeking noble’. This could be read as ‘Treasury draining pig’ depending on how extreme one’s thought process was. Obviously, Korridan already asked for the name of where that noble came from, and actually got a clear answer. A moderately wealthy city called Advila, slightly well-known due to the swamps nearby being a production site of several excellent plants.

And it didn’t take a long search for a book mentioning it, which also described the dragon pillar within the swamp just north-west of it.

This alone proved that this elf was targeting dragon pillars… But why?

He hoped to get an answer in a few days, supposedly the target was not far out. In the meantime, Raccelline’s education more than progressed as she easily made use of two digit numbers for all operations, and finished memorising ways to survive in simpler situations.

Monster information could wait, instead they began to focus more on her reading and writing. While she could read somewhat well, handwriting required practice to put it to muscle memory. How many people deeply thought about the movements of their hand whilst writing?

“So you just forgot about it for three months? If this was something serious…” For the first time, perhaps ever, Korridan actually looked at him disapprovingly. It was uncanny, but he could see how all the others similarly quietened down and didn’t take his side here.

Rebecca even turned away from her leader.

Had they all been chewed out in the past as well? Where the hell was this side of the man for the past year! It was hard to hold up his usual mental fortitude as the surprise of the situation already left him a bit vulnerable.

Besides, no one ever actually berated him. He’d seen mad… But never this sort of disappointment.

Even so, he whispered a response loud enough that everyone heard it, “If it were serious, then I’d have alerted you all.”

“Not the point! There have definitely been times we almost died on a job cause someone forgot a little detail. Things have been unbelievably easy with you, even with what’s happened so far, but this time I’m putting my foot down. If you know something, even if it’s a tiny wiggling doubt, then mention it.” Korridan’s tone finally relaxed, and he could tell that the man didn’t want to shout or scream, but some degree of harshness went a long way in these situations. Anyway, he could tell how the leader’s words would have ended, had it gone on.

‘Because that might be what saves us.’

The sudden change in attitude could be explained by many things, but perhaps it was simply a merger of him truly feeling like a teammate and needing the young dragon to understand what was wrong.

Fortunately, all he’d forgotten to mention was the existence of his Authority. It surprised him to know that everyone beside Raccelline knew what Authority was to some degree, but that was down to the fact that the stuff is legendary. It might not be the most common information, but to anyone making use of the Nexus, the existence of such a thing may as well be called a holy grail.

But what is it?

Simply, the right to exercise control over the Nexus. A title as simple as the concept it is named after. Those with Authority are granted more control and use of the Nexus, but more importantly, it allowed users to gather more information from the Nexus.

Like asking about the wider universe, the Nexus’ inner workings, and even seeing classified information.

Not just things about the Exeter bloodline, or the ‘Ancient rules’ it cared about so deeply, but things about magic that the eight worlds had yet to discover. In other words… They could make use of the Nexus’ universal gathering of magical knowledge to bolster their own, revealing and solving flaws long since ingrained in their lives.

And what more could he need than a method to enhance his soul without blocking off further soul armaments?

[Authority is currently at 6.06]

That was expected, in the first place, the Nexus only revealed the existence of Authority at a value of 6, and to access that value was just a matter of asking. For now, he needed to hit 9 points as soon as possible.

When the next ‘level’ of Authority unlocked, he received a qualitative change in the Nexus. Just like how it became a lot more personal and generally watchful quite a while back at 1 point, that marked the requirement for Authority level 1. Then sometime later, its suspiciously blank messages were likely due to him hitting 3 points, Authority level 2 in other words, but the Nexus deleted any information above his Authority.

His current point was a step halfway between Authority levels 2 and 3. The latter at 9 points. And to reach that, he needed one thing in particular. “Where are my new missions, Nexus?”

[No new missions have been generated yet. We are currently deadlocked in regards to what constitutes a reasonable and informational set of missions]

There it went using ‘we’ again, then again, that wasn’t a surprise. How could something which offered such use and power to trillions of beings at once be a single mind?

Unable to rush things along, he absentmindedly commented, “Well, if they’re that tough, you could just give me more Authority for them.” It was a statement which people knew never worked on the Nexus. At least, those who received missions in the past had tried to bait the omnipresent thing into granting challenges, and it never worked.

[Suggestion accepted]

As he read the two simple words, his mouth opened several times, but he struggled to choose between speaking in Draconic or Baranot, finally pushing out some in his native tongue, “What? Wait… Really? Why now?” He was surprised, definitely, but the overwhelming confusion defined his actions and words far more.

[Arbitration has made no progress in the past 109 cycles of your zone, an unfounded acceptance is better than none at all. Please wait as new missions are generated]

He found it strange to see that terminology from the Nexus. It was perhaps the only being that talked about cycles and zones in that manner. To explain simply, a cycle was simply a day, while the zones were… Alright, that was harder to explain. To the Nexus, all of the eight words were considered a single ‘zone’ controlled by a small part of the whole Nexus. Their zone actually included the surrounding twenty light years of space around the eight worlds too, but given that no life lived in that space, many localised it to their home.

“It seems that I just did something unprecedented… On accident.” It didn’t take long for everyone to be caught up on what happened.

Mala stared in disbelief at first, but that atmosphere was soon replaced by all five adults either laughing or chuckling. As Jaren put it best, “Of course you’d end up doing it.”

And it really couldn’t have fit his entire existence better.

* * *

In the citadel of stone, deep below ground, the tallest peak remained filled with a single, meditating individual in pure darkness. His figure remained blended in perfectly. Even if one spent all of eternity trying to find him in his room, no larger than a boxing ring, they would never be able to touch him unless they too reached a similar level.

“Enter.” The darkness spoke, and an eternal biting his lower lip, gently opened the door and stepped inside such that minimal light from outside disturbed their emperor’s time.

“We have confirmed the human emperor’s life remains intact. However, only a god can break that shell. His brother is nowhere to be found, and we suspect he finds the empire a lost cause.”The eternal that entered, an advisor of sorts who was one of the few with personal access to their emperor, did his best to avoid stuttering and spoke at a consistent pace. He prepared the answer word for word before arrival.

The darkness seemed to shift, but he did not falter or show fear. After all, he could not possibly be more fearful than at this very moment. In dread of what came next.

The emperor considered a solution some time ago, and replied, “His daughter. As long as we get her, we can remove the remainder with minimal conflict.”

He gulped. His advisor gulped…

And said, “We tried. Some divinity blocked all our tracking, divination, and time-search methods… Her spatial presence was also scrubbed clean. W–We truly have no way to know where she is,” he almost diverted his attention and tried to cover his face while staring at the endless darkness of the room. But every moment he spent with the emperor screamed at him to never try such a thing.

Nothing changed in the room, as much as he imagined the darkness transforming into a mire that devoured him on the spot. Instead, his master simply spoke, “Then you have a new mission. Do not fail now.”

Do not fail… He couldn’t afford to stop here. Two successful operations in a row, of such scale as well. But in a way, this one was far harder than convincing some power-hungry fools to kill their equals.

Beneath the citadel, and specifically beneath the palace this tallest spire sat on, one could see dozens of Eternals tied together with chains and shackles of a pale white metal. The metal released a dull resplendence akin to the moon’s light, illuminating the surroundings slightly, but more importantly, searing the skin of the Eternals wearing them.

Some of them were silent, others looked on blankly, but a few were not willing to go down so easily. They screamed and shouted, arguing that they, “Completed their missions,” or, “successfully made the deal.” All of these Eternals were Gold ranks, and all of them met with the rulers of miniscule nations to make an agreement…

And all of them sacrificed their teams of Steel ranks to achieve those missions. But here and now, the pawns were executed. As the emperor ordered many months ago, the advisor took careful steps to gather each of them back here, and captured them without any leakages.

His second successful operation. But now he found this one absolutely impossible…

To search a whole continent for a single, little girl. And he was already over a year behind.