The warping circles were opened up again, and so the adventurers' guild hall once again saw traffic.

Adventurers from Reddington and Blurich entered and exited the building in a constant drip and various parties littered the winding passages between the crooked firebrick.

Those that entered the main hall from the foyer could see Quiet diligently replacing the painted shields.

There had been some rebellions, some redemptions, and a new member of the greater brood mother family. Since the adventurers were used for suppressing sectarian violence, the shields that told them who to kill needed updating.

The little boy stood precariously on his teetering scaffold that still had the tree bark, lifting the heavy metal things off their hanging nails. They each contained a beautiful painted heraldry, signifying their colony. But only the heraldry displayed in the guild hall offered protection, the others could be exterminated freely by adventurers.

"Quiet," Cobaline steadied his ladder, "there's some adventurers here that want to register as a party. Could you sign them up?"

"I think... Puella-"

"Quiet," she whispered, "these guys are 'with the program'."

The posse behind her were a somewhat smug looking gaggle of mercenaries. Rather well-equipped for beginning adventurers that were only just party-ing up. One of them had a piercing in her left ear, the sign of a dark sorcerer.

"I'll finish the board."

-

On the second floor, in a back-office, the paperwork could be completed and send to the main office via dove.

It wasn't a lot of paperwork, and Quiet had them scribble their names into the form without much ado about it.

The dark sorceress scanned the folders, candles and mat glass window idly as the process unfolded. "Is there even such a thing as a 'day goblin'?"

Quiet didn't answer her, occupied with her team mate and where his signature went.

"Never heard the term day goblin before in my life. And the goblins you're having people slay are just your kin that turned against you, right? So if they're not 'abhumans' then neither are you."

Quiet turned to answer her, but his voice was stuck in his throat and he mumbled a bit.

"What?"

"He said it's nunnofya business and to stop asking questions." Her comrade laughed heartily.

She huffed.

"All of us are with the program," another said, "we knew the thieves' guild was crooked when we signed up. Let's not develop any high-minded ideals now."

"I didn't say that I did."

Quiet looked up at them from under his brow. The sorceress and the mercenary were feeling each other out, they hadn't traveled together for long and did not really know each other. But they knew what kind of people they were. Streetwise, self-interested, not bound to any taboo. The kind Scratch likes.

He gathered enough of himself to produce something intelligible. "If you are with the program, you know that the Promise hides a dungeon. The survival of the Promise, and your stipend, relies on it staying hidden."

The sorceress tapped her nails against her teeth. "It's not... a wyrm shard, is it?"

"A what?" Their leader said.

"A dungeon core. They're called wyrm shards 'cause they say they rained down on the world after the Great Wyrm was defeated by the first hero. A dark sorcerer would gladly give their left arm- no, the kings of this world would start a crusade to get their hands on a wyrm shard if the location was leaked."

"It's a dungeon." Quiet said, now quite sternly. "And a smuggling route. What are enrolling into the adventurers' guild for anyway?"

"It's all part of the shadow bandit's playbook, we're keeping an eye on adventurer activity. Blurich may have ended the war, but that doesn't mean there's no bad blood. Some religious fundamentalists even blame the Promise for what happened."

"What happened?"

"Don't you get any troubadours here?" The sorceress raised an eyebrow. "Heiligdom is gone."

"Gone?"

Scratch was at the underground market when he received the news.

"Zhere is still much uncertainty on zhe cause. Dietrich Stahl vere at zhe holy city to confront zhe papacy, zhere was a confrontation und... vell..."

The baronet looked up and waved at some guests he had been expecting. "What? They trashed the place?"

"In a manner of speaking."

-

The guests were bandit leaders from the border regions.

"Bondlieu, Felya, welcome. Thank you for coming."

The fleet captain looked around him with a look of slight concern. The goblin's enterprise had grown beyond his ability to grapple with. Even with the smuggling routes opened up again, the black market was filled with dozens upon dozens of thieves, bandits, dark sorcerers, and dungeon masters. At least half the world's criminal organizations had some presence there right at that moment.

"You will be re-united with your collateral once you leave," Scratch said, misunderstanding the reason for his furrowed brow.

"Something to keep hostage so we don't cause trouble, is that it?" The other bandit leader said.

"It's mostly to make sure you can pay up if you lose money day trading." He gestured to the stock exchange, where a few haggard goblins were frantically exchanging certificates with frantic buyers and sellers of various shares and options for criminal activities the continent over. "So... yes. But you're not here for gambling."

Before he'd gotten his cue, Noss proudly pulled the veil off the display. Exposing the shiny metal underneath.

"Ah- Thank you Fleder. These are the boy's inventions. Magical artillery."

Count Bondlieu picked up one of the blocky metal contraptions on the table. It was surprisingly light. "Mythril?"

"Lightweight aluminum." Noss said. "Extracted from zhe bauxite using lightning magic. Zhese are energy-ingesting-und-excreting-artificial-manabladders within a fully connected thaumatic circuit. Activated via trigger."

"Spellrods that don't require mana." Scratch simplified.

"What do you mean?"

"If you just..." the baronet gestured towards the straw dummy a few paces away.

Bondlieu aimed at the target. The metal spellrod fit perfectly in his hand, using it was intuitive. His index finger simply closed over the release trigger and...

*FWOMP*

A bolt of elemental fire shot out of the box and into the straw, leaving a deep burn mark.

"No magic training necessary. No mana reserves. You drum up some junkies with sweet crimson and put these in their hands, you've got a mage squadron." Scratch said.

"The nobility is in disarray... with enough of these we could take the throne in a week." Felya said.

"We're not a rebellion, captain," Scratch said disapprovingly. "You won't be able to drum up the capital for that sort of thing in this house unless you've got a real good monetization plan."

"...How much are these anyway?"

"Zhe price of zhe materials, production, profit margin... if ve vere still dealing in precious metals zhese vould cause logistical concerns on transport of zhe currency. Naturally zhe artillery vith more reserves or more powerful gems are larger und require more funds."

"What about that one?" Bondlieu stepped up to the largest spellrod. A massive gem cannon sticking out of the stripped framework of a carriage.

Scratch laughed. "That one's just for show."

"Zhe inscription on zhe diamond is zhat of a dark sorcery spell." Noss explained. "It strips zhe victim of zheir inherent form, so zhat any subsequent polymorph may become permanent."

"If you have a clear shot and this much mana at your disposal, you can kill anyone it would work on three times over. It doesn't win you the fight, just lets you humiliate your opponent."

Bondlieu recoiled from the machine but Felya got a sparkle in his eyes. "Dark sorcery at our fingertips..."

"If you start making out with the machine, you buy it." Scratch said.

-

Eventually, some were able to come to an agreement and a contract was signed.

It wouldn't have surprised the fleet captain if it had been sulfuric, signed in blood. Or maybe the implication that this outlaw could enforce written agreements without any sort of demonic magic was scarier still.

They left on good terms.

-

"Your magic guns are making us more money than my bank is." Scratch said to the vampire afterwards.

Noss looked at him counting his promissory notes. "Pity to hear your efforts vere for naught."

"Well... no. It's only because they can pool their resources with investments that they can even pay these prices. It's just to say we personally profit. The only other source of direct pocket money is when I can get seignorage on a growing money market."

"Zhen I should be entitled to some of it, should I not?"

Scratch stopped counting.

"It's fine. Keep your money, zhe undead have no use for it."

He breathed out and continued. "Don't mind if I do." Then he stopped again and looked at the vampire questioningly.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Noss looked back at him and neither said anything for a short moment.

"Zhe mysteries of magic." He finally explained. "Zhat is vhat I pursue. I have come to realize zhat my master did not put me here to be rid of me, but to help me. A dark sorcerer must make zheir own magic after all, und I have completed fruitful vork vith goblin metals und witchy ritual."

"...you did get replaced though." Scratch was quick to remind him. Noss had a heart defect that made him useless in defending himself.

Noss dismissed the slight with a gesture. "A master sorcerer must alvays have an apprentice. He vill have taken on zhis Podesto to gather resources und steal secrets vithout having to take his eye off his own black library. Zhe replacement is necessitated by my departure, not zhe ozher vay around... I feel sorry for zhe boy, really."

He was in a smug, self-satisfied mood, so Scratch decided not to disturb it any further. "Maybe it's time to get an apprentice of your own. Any of my kids-"

"No, not hobgoblins, not enough magical potential. A subhuman vould have to be of at least... vell anyvay I am not ready to be a master yet. Zhe Promise protects my library, und I am still young."

It was worth a shot. Scratch gave up and went back to the money. "Your parents must be proud, completing your degree at only 80 years old." He said out of hand.

"Nay, I am in hiding from my ancestry. Zhe lich took me in vhen I had to flee from zheir mutual battle for dominance... I can only hope zhey somehow had ended up in Heiligdom vhen it vas desintegrated."

"Oh..."

The boy had suddenly dropped something heavy into the conversation and it made for an awkward silence.

"Desintegrated?" Scratch asked. "You said it had gotten trashed."

"No... zhat is vhat you said."

The landscape was a perfectly flat dirt surface, stretching out up and over the horizon. One could believe themselves to have set foot on an empty, featureless, planet if it weren't for the gentle peek of a mountain range over the meridian far north. The only reminder of a world with geography.

"We never suspected Dietrich possessed this much..." Beatrice searched for the right word.

"Firepower." Scratch said, in a daze.

They wouldn't have meeten up again, if it weren't for the weaponsmith's clash with the highest ecclesiarch escalating so tremendously.

"Power." She repeated. "It might have been some magic by the church father..."

"And Stahl is nowhere to be found either?"

"We don't know."

Either fled the scene, or blown up with the rest of them. Scratch bit his thumb.

"Do you know more about this?" Beatrice asked him. "The dungeon lords... Abyss-?"

"This Dietrich, he was an engineer?" Scratch said.

"Hai. Yes. He told us he used to assemble mech figurines in his last life."

"Right. In his last life, played with robot toys, in this life he got to be lead robot designer. In your past, you read a romance novel and *that* became your reality. The same with the others, right?"

She looked over her shoulders at the other reincarnates spread out over the nothing. They had paired up or walked away to contemplate the enormity of the catastrophe.

Donato who always wanted to be a musician, Adel who got to live the life of his video game avatar, the rest... "Yes." She said, "it's the same with the others."

"This place was made for you. Specifically for the likes of you." Scratch said. "It finally makes sense... The incessant ranking and classification of everything, the feudal titles with none of the land tenures... adventuring..." he kicked the dirt, "it's all a great murder theme park."

"This isn't what we wanted!"

"It's what you got!" He turned to look her right in the eyes. "None of the gods of this world can give you what you got. A human soul is not that strong, a god has to rip out a party of their divinity to make you like this."

"...I know that... I..."

"Someone is making all of this happen, if nothing changes they'll create more living nukes like Abyss or Dietrich. You *need* to find the author, reach out to them somehow."

She nodded. "But what about Abyss?"

"Abyss too, and- Christ, Benesant. She's wreaking havoc on Earth right now."

It was too many problems to count.

"Benesant is affecting our home world?"

"Yeah she... I don't know, has gone inter-dimensional or something." He looked away, it was probably more worry than she could handle right now.

But she cheered up instead. "Then she might be able to find him for us!"

"N...no. Actually, you should focus on Abyss first. Yes. That's the more immediate threat. I think the Ravenous Lich keeps track of dungeon core locations. If you can defeat him, that may lead you to him." *The last thing I need is for you to cosy up to that pig.*

-

The heroes had begun noticing tiny dots on the horizon.

Other attendents of the eerie wake pacing out over the dirt to feel the distance.

It had only just begun to become pilgrimage to all Benesant's faithful in this world.

"Should we go to meet them?" Adel suggested.

"Scratch-san is not welcome in this country." Beatrice came to say. "Klumpus, could you warp him home?"

The wizard nodded. "Be safe, friend, you are one of the few we can trust."

Scratch smiled pleasantly, as if there was no awkwardness, before being taken away by the spell's light.

Warping back and forth, Scratch had missed dinner.

"Where were you?" Quiet asked, warming up some leftover sausage and bread in a pan.

"Pfff... I don't even want to- why don't you tell me about *your* day?"

"I got to talk to Puella six times today!"

"Is that right?"

"And I enrolled some shadow bandits into the adventurers' guild."

He brought over the meat and toast and Scratch began to eat it with his fingers.

Quiet looked at him. "Did you find Second?"

"Hew's shomwhere near the outer colonies." He said with his mouth full. "It's only us now Quiet. You're my last brother."

"No... we've got allies."

"We've got enemies too. Kato Ken, Benesant and her beneteens.... the Blurich nobility wants us dead and so does half the Reddington court." He chewed pensively. "There's rebellious broodmothers and ambituous thieves, overly investigative constables, and evil gods."

Quiet nodded and pretended to recognize everyone being summed up. "So you can make them fight each other?"

"What?"

He looked a bit startled and embarrased not having guessed Scratch's thoughts. "Oh... never mind."

Scratch wiped his hands with a tablecloth. "Why did you say that?"

"Well it's just that... we're always making our enemies fight each other, right? With the adventurers, and the orcs... other tribes..." Quiet's voice sort of disappeared as he shrunk back, ever less confident.

"I... well maybe. Maybe I got tunnelvision on this nationbuilding business. Maybe we're still in that space, where a spanner in the works can only benefit us... You've got a keen mind Quiet."

The boy grinned so wide it could split his face. "I do!"

"Could you get the writing paper from the study? I'm going to write a letter."

Pinchin's voice was a screeching chalk. It would've hurt Ritter's ears if still had the weakness of flesh.

Sitting alone on his throne, in the middle of his darkness, it was all that filled his world.

"Yes lord," he said. "I will... yes, my lord."

The evil god of death and undeath was not entirely blind to the affairs of the living. He could see the adventurers attacking his undead valleys, the farmsteads overrun by his hordes, and the protective barriers of the church that kept them away.

He could see that they were getting weaker.

"No my lord, I can not say."

As always, Ritter offered no insights of his own to his patron. But internally, he could see the gears shifting into place.

Too much gold.

Apparently, there was such a thing.

The adventurers were no longer motivated by their guild's paltry sums for skeleton extermination. The rising prices in all things had farms bestowed by the royals into shelter for the bestowee's entire extended family. And the generational riches of the church had lost their value, so that cuts had to be made on its charitable services.

Scratch was conquering the world with money. Not by accumulating it, but by poisoning it.

A crackle and a thunderclap interrupted Pinchin's seering demands. The heroes had reached the tower.

Ritter's skeletal hands intertwined. He had seen them coming, but done nothing. It wasn't often that mortals were able to withstand the omnipresent aura of death.

"I have tasked Podesto with awakening the zombie dragons. They will not come within these walls."

But they already had. His apprentice was dead, and so were the mightiest of undead, the zombie dragons.

The lich stood up. "Then I will stand guard at the shard, I- ... yes my lord. Yes, I shall seek them out."

-

The lich's black library was protected by many a curse. Mental, physical, and spiritual attacks rained down on any poor soul that dared touch his secret knowledge without permission.

But Beatrice and her friends weren't looking for spells.

"No my lord, I do not know how they could know about this place." The lich entered the space by filling it up with his black smoke. It served to compound the death aura and blind them, but a sudden flash of light magic swept away the inky blackness and exposed the minotaur skull.

The adventurers stood radiant, covered in protective magic, amidst the jade tiling of the map room.

Parchment and paper were strewn about, lecterns knocked over, and the towering shelves emptied.

They readied their weapons at the towering lich. "Is that a sorcerer or a monster?"

"Both. Please use Turn Undead."

"Turn Undead!"

A nation's worth of mana poured into holy and healing spells, eating away at the lich's various protections and throwing up the strewn around paper into a whirlwind of forbidden knowledge.

He was so enraged that he could not speak. Rather than complicated sorcery, he produced elemental death until it was so thick in the air that the paper could no longer move and hung still in the air.

The violent sounds became stifled by the oppressive aura. The wood contorted into deathly visages. The jade began to crumble.

The lightshow of opposing energies then exploded when Adel, the edelweiss hero, swung his sword and cut the tower in two.

Sound returned as Ritter's death escaped the room.

All around them, the desolate sky was visible and the rushing air cleared the last of the smoke.

The lich had been split at the waist. Both he and the tower remained suspended in place, like a painting that had been vandalized by a single stroke of grey paint.

Then, the lich began to chant.

Magical circles formed around him and ever larger behind.

"This guy is the real deal!" Adel said in a panic.

He drifted out into the winds while casting, but his silhoutte became only larger in their world as countless shadowy arms spread out from his insides and filled the room with grasping talons.

"As if I'd let you!" The wizard summoned his own swirling runes of arcane energy, which faced Ritter's and tried to unmake them. "This will stall his attack. Hurry up and finish him off."

Adel jumped and rolled to avoid the arms. "How can we? The skeletal body is just elemental death. Where is his core?"

"We just need to stall him." Beatrice yelled over the sound of magic. "Until we find the map of the wyrm shards."

Ritter's magic faltered. A fraction of a second he lost focus hearing learning their purpose. That was all it took for Klumpus' magic to catch up to his and unravel the spell.

With a sudden leap, Adel was in front of him midair. "Lightning Charge!"

He shot through his enemy like a projectile, bisecting him the other way. Many paces behind him, he turned around, his feet finding purchase on some invisible resistance in the air that crackled with lightning. He bended his knees and shot at him again.

This time, his attack was deflected. The lich's shadowy talons disappeared and instead chains of elemental metal were conjured around him as a shield.

Not slowed down in the slightest, Adel, the wind magic user, turned around and charged. Over, and over again, a bolt of lighting that was really a person chipped at the lich outside the tower. Keeping him occupied.

"Keep searching." Klumpus said. "I'll use Walgis' Mirror World to trap him."

"What about Adel-"

"KEEP SEARCHING!"

-

Ritter had enough clarity of mind to notice space and time becoming enchanted around him. But while fending off the constant attacks from the Edelweiss hero, he couldn't follow how.

Until he suddenly couldn't feel the other heroes' presence anymore.

His lifeforce vision detected only a grey, lifeless visage of the wizard and friends in the room below.

Another lighting charge. The gafly was still real.

"ENOUGH"

He regenerated the shattered bones, each in their own skeletal body.

At first, the new numerical disadvantage didn't slow the flying hero down. He hacked and blasted the liches away with ample magical power. But his movement slowed down as began to notice the many curses clinging to his weapons. Like worms the self-sustaining magical patterns crawled up his arms and tried to drill through his protective buff.

He began to fall out of the sky. Effectively retreating from the clash to tend to his affliction.

Ritter did not pursue him. He turned his attention to the library, opened up to outside. "Never in a thousand years have I..."

But his elemental attacks did not reach the other invaders. They disappeared into an infinite distance behind which the ruined floor and its ruiners were a projection upon the firmament. "I see."

The tower was inverted. A mirror image.

Every attack he could launch, any magic he could try, would fizzle out in an infitesimal fraction of endless space. There was no core of the spell that could be destroyed, no lock to open.

"Twelve hundred years."

Adel had clear the curse and came rushing at him from behind.

This time, he was quicker. He reached back and grabbed the young man's face with his enormous skeletal hand.

"For twelve hundred years I've had to hide from your kind."

"Gah!" Adel yelled as he got flung around by his neck and his skull impacted something hard.

"I've had to fight." He bashed him again. "I've had to kill." Cracks began to from in the emptiness of space. "I've had to enslave myself to an evil god to stay alive. But the more I protect myself..." He hammered the crack another time.

Adel tried to struggle loose, but with the elemental death flowing directly from the lich's palm, he was closer to dead than he was to life.

"The more determined you get to DESTROY me!" With every word he pummeled the opening until it shattered.

The mirror world broke up into a kaleidoscope of shards, reflecting an infinite recursion of dead heroes and furious liches.

He broke out with an open talon outstretched towards the burglars, and his death grip was just about to close around the wizard's neck. But the party was swallowed up by light and disappeared into a warp spell.

Gone.

By the looks of it, they had gotten what they came for.

Liches do not have lungs, and alongside the many other venal pleasures denied to the undead, can not feel the catharsis of a healthy scream.

Yet ritter made some sort of noise, as the bricks of the floor above separated from each other and were flung across the landscape. A million and one comets of rage.

Area Boss: Felya

Type: Bandit

Threat Level: B

Reward: The title of Count Riftwood

The Riftwood is under the control of a brutal elven outlaw.

His bandits extort traders for traveling fees and have made it impossible for the king's army to travel through Riftwood. Raiding parties send by Felya have burgled various treasures from nobility.

Their base of operation is somewhere in the denser forest north of the mountain, but the exact position has not yet been located. Currently, there is a secondary reward for marking the camp on a map.

Adventurers must take heed that any camp within the woods is at risk of a bandit ambush.

While searching for the bandit camp, one may encounter bandits, drop bears, and ents.

NOTICE: please remove this entry. With the discovery of the bandit city within the forest, Felya is now considered a military matter and the guild is asked to back off.