Why the infiltrator had committed suicide only became clear when she deigned to pry his jaw open, using her left hand as to avoid the filth of course. In the back of his throat was nestled a dead Black Rope worm.

“Note to self, Heartstopper Venom works on ancient Ankhezian bioweapons.”

Just as her investigation drew to a close, Zel saw Lydia walk into the front of the barn, only to recoil at the stench, though only briefly. Upon craning her neck and finding Zel squatting down at the loft’s edge, she questioned: “Did you find anything?”

“An infiltrator and an empty seal-jar for Black Ropes, it was an act of simple terrorism,” she remarked, jumping down with the empty jar in hand before putting it in storage. She walked past Lydia, adding: “I’m leaving, don’t fall behind if you want a ride back to the Fort.”

“Er, if you don’t mind me asking… Who do you think was behind this? I admit that I am not entirely familiar with the post-war climate, seeing as I ah… Spent most of the great mess hunting Alpes in Dammerung.”

Zel began explaining the logic behind why she thought it to most likely be either the Empire itself or Occupationist elements and thus the Empire by proxy, but she doubled back to ask: “Actually, I’ll finish my answer once you answer me this: What’s an Alpe and where is Dammerung?”

“Oh, Dammerung’s a small kingdom in the mountains, the name means “Dusk” in Old Ikesian ‘cause something fucky about the region causes the dusk to take up a third of the day for most of the year. And an Alpe is uh… It’s a sort of bear-ape. White fur, huge three-part mouth full of inward-facing teeth, lanky limbs. They “eat” livestock and people in their sleep, paralyze them with a sort of gas, and by eat I mean they somehow feed on your sleep. You wake up having slept for half a day while feeling like you’ve not gotten any rest at all. Grekuria pays through the nose for Alpe corpses to make their nonlethal grenades, so hunting the things is always good money. Now… You were talking about how the Pateirian Bureau of State Security-”

“-Brainwashes PoWs and uses them as disposable infiltrators, yes. Geasa, parasites, they even have facilities where they groom Ikesian kids from birth to be spies - that little chestnut came to light after the cunts tried assassinating Willowdale’s governor, once our friends went through the personal belongings of certain treacherous senators…”

They’d reached the Sturmgandr by now, and Zel remembered that carrying a razor-sharp magic sword without a scabbard just wouldn’t be a very good idea on a motorbike ripping down a forest dirt road at three-digit speeds.

“Let me take a look at the sword, I’m sure these came with scabbards…” she said, taking the blade from Lydia’s hands and putting it in Fog Storage. The sword’s name revealed itself when it appeared next to its corresponding scabbard in the item list.

x1 Fulgur-burned “Vysaga” (Pattern-XIIa Dragon Knight Longsword) x1 “Vysaga” Scabbard

After merging the two articles in the list and retrieving the resultant sheathed blade, she handed it off to Lydia only to realize that the sword would more or less become just a nice sword if its wielder didn’t have a means to charge the fuel gem. So, she asked: “You wouldn’t happen to have an affinity for lightning magic, right?”

“I can use Fog-breathing and some basic kineticism, but that’s it…” the mercenary answered.

“Alright…” Zel sighed, scrolling through her storage again. The Thundercharger module - which she’d named one of her own techniques after - of a Sturmgandr motorcycle ran on Fulgur cells, necessitating a Fulgur Accumulator to recharge the cells once they were spent. As such, she had decided to just give one of these devices to Lydia, seeing no real reason against it for two reasons: firstly, she still had a spare since both of the party’s Sturmgandrs came with their own accumulator, and secondly, she didn’t actually need the trinket since she could just generate her own Fulgur.

“What is this?” the mercenary questioned at the sight of the curious device, which resembled a copper bonsai tree with the charging chamber being in the base, stylized as the pot. It was quite chunky, though small enough to fit inside a backpack.

“You want a magic sword, you’ll have to power it somehow. This one runs on fuel gems, the way Inquisitor swords do, so you’ll have to recharge it somehow, and unless you can create Fulgur or Fulgur-coded Pneuma, this is your only option. It draws ambient Fulgur from the atmosphere, if you just follow the user guide plaque on the back you’ll be fine.”

“...Right, of course,” Lydia nodded along with the sort of confusion that betrayed a lack of deeper understanding, though she seemed to get the gist. After the older woman put the device away in her backpack, Zel finally fulfilled the other promise to give her a ride back to Fort 57. Both of them made their way to the bar tent immediately upon arrival, with the barman’s face poking over the counter at the woosh of a Fog vortex opening, immediately followed with the thump of Zel setting down the Alkasnail’s beak.

“Ah, it seems you’ve… Completed the contract, as promised,” the barman said, briefly glancing over to Lydia before ducking down below the counter once more. The sound of a safe’s dial turning could be heard, then the creak of a heavy door on rusty hinges. Clinking of coins in a bag followed, and soon the bulging sack of money with Zel’s payment was on the counter.

The fifty-something mercenary woman right next to her must’ve appeared like a small child by contrast, perhaps in part due to the disproportionate size of the blade which she had rested across her shoulders, resting her hands on it. It was, after all, a longsword designed for men a full meter taller than Lydia.

“That’s the base payout,” he said, ducking down again and retrieving another, smaller pouch. He counted out a few large, cold-iron coins before stacking a number of silvers and coppers. “And your negotiated bonus.”

She dropped the entire sack into the Fog vortex, checking the Tablet’s currency count to ensure the money was all there before looking over the bonus and taking it as well.

“Good, looks like it’s all there,” she nodded. “I assume the authorities intend to reclaim the homestead?”

“Dunno, probably. It’s good farming land, if it’s even one-fifth intact it’s worth the effort I’d say,” the barman shrugged. “Assuming the infestation ain’t too bad.”

“I left it more or less purged, though… You may want to pursue further investigation. The infestation wasn’t accidental,” she said.

Concern came over the barman’s face.

“Hm? What do you mean?” he asked. By the time he finished the sentence, Zel had already pulled the near-empty jar out of storage.

“I found this next to the corpse of an infiltrator in the barn loft, alongside a suicide dagger coated in Pateirian Heartstopper Venom. There was a hole in the back wall through which he had likely entered.”

“Aye, this is… Unmistakably a Pateirian sealing jar. I’ll bring it up with the higher-ups, the corpse would come into their attention if they plan to reclaim the homestead either way. I do not wish to uh… To insult you by questioning your judgment, but please, explain how you know it was an infiltrator?”

“The jar, the knife, his haircut… The way he was dressed was an easy clue. Once you see the pattern a couple times you can’t stop noticing it,” she shrugged. “Either way, my job’s done here. It’s your job to follow up on it, now.”

With these words she left, feeling the piercing gaze of hateful eyes upon her back. Fort 57 wasn’t physically large enough for anyone to follow her into a back alley, but there were plentiful hidden corners in a half-ruined military installation. She made her way to one of these on purpose, meandering about with the intent to appear lost before finally heading to an abandoned section of the fortress with a faux-misguided confidence. The whole time, she could feel that presence somewhere in her vicinity, her Slayer’s Instinct coordinating her senses to always point out the figure’s general direction from her.

As she looked out from the top of a terrace, arms crossed, the figure’s presence vanished and she felt a sudden impulse of danger in her gut. She didn’t move a muscle, but she did ignite the spark inside her brain to begin Engine Breathing. To the would-be assassin’s credit, she closed the distance before Zel could breathe two lungfuls, and made no attempt at using a weapon. Zel felt the presence re-emerge overhead, with an overwhelming flood of arcane energy rising in the same direction. The figure was approaching, freefalling. Had she not readied herself, she wouldn’t have gotten out of the way in time as something stabbed into the ground where she had stood.

She landed some fifteen meters back, briefly glimpsing the assassin: An inconspicuously-dressed, dirty-faced, and altogether far too young Ikesian woman. Between the fingers of her right hand she clutched three huge, jade claws, shining and crackling with arcane might. The patterns upon them were unmistakable, marking them as Jade Dragons. The highest currency of the Divine Empire and among the only standardized measures of arcane power on the continent. A single Jade Dragon could be made into five Emperor’s Mercy talismans, a form of arcane suicide pill that could trigger a catastrophic chain reaction that would fray the user into hair-thin ribbons. Estimating their size, each claw must’ve been carved from at least two-thirds of a Jade Dragon. Zel’s gaze was finally drawn to the object which had been targeted at her, a large milky-white, gold-inlaid spike of some sort.

One second had passed since it struck, and already it glowed a blinding white. The would-be assassin’s face began twisting into a sad smile before a ghostly dragon of pure white erupted out of the Mutton-fat Jade Talisman, briefly spiraling around her before it dove straight into the woman’s form as she convulsed in place, screaming, beams of blinding-white shining from her mouth and eyes into the sky, even piercing the clouds.

It was over in seconds, and when it ended, the talisman had crumbled to dust; a fate which soon befell its user as well. She stood there, her head tilting down as bloody tears ran down her face and her sad smile grew into a relieved, even spiteful grin of broken teeth. Her skin was turning ashen, crumbling and cracking like the soil of a desert, starting at her fingers and rapidly moving upwards.

With her half-skeletonized right hand, she held out her jade claws and, nearly voicelessly, mouthed a phrase in unnatural Ikesian - of the accentless sort only spoken by foreigners. Moreover, it wasn’t a voice that matched her face, but one Zelsys recognized. It was the same, inhuman tone that she’d heard in the Willowdale Dungeon, but the utter boredom was gone from it, replaced by amusement.

It was the Divine Emperor, speaking through this would-be assassin’s mouth. He had to have anticipated this exact course of events to put such a contingency in place.

“But if so, why not just make the contingency something like a magic bomb?” a thought went through her head.

“That you hear this message means you’ve evaded another attempt on your life."

At this point, Zel noticed the colour of the assassin's eyes and hair shifting - a silver right eye and a golden left eye, while her hair flashed from black to pure white. The innumerable cracks covering her body shone with iridescent flame, betraying the fact her very soul was being burned as fuel.

"I, Xiān Dì, the White Dragon of the North, hereby acknowledge you as a threat to be eliminated, Zelsys Newman, Founder of the Newman Sect. Congratulations, no more are you a mere pest to me - an honor many warlords have sacrificed their lineages in pursuit of. For the truly exquisite, nostalgic amusement you’ve provided me with thus far, I shall share with you this: The gates of Hedan’s Wall grow wider by the day. Neither the machinations of the Kargareth nor those of the Grekurians go beneath my notice. Knowing full well that I as of yet do not possess the means to suppress your efforts to unearth knowledge of True Cultivation, I shall no longer keep those loyal to me in the dark. Soon, the Greater Sects shall bring to bear weapons and techniques the likes of which you cannot fathom.”