Tatiana stood at the window with her arms folded behind her back. The sunlight was warm on her skin. Gertrude Collins sipped her tea, set the cup down, fussed with her hair, and then picked the teacup back up. Then, as though the dean of the soon-to-be-opened Kharon Academy wasn’t aware of her actions, she put the teacup back down absentmindedly.

Meanwhile, Tatiana studied the world outside of her window. There had been a minor earthquake a few hours ago. Obviously, it hadn’t affected Kharon itself much, as the legs naturally soaked up much of the reverberations, but the miners who were inside the excavation site nearby needed to rapidly evacuate and return to the Wandering City.

Those tremors in the ground had passed, but the subtle changes in the air had not. Sunlight continued shining down, but Tatiana couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something… different in the atmosphere. Still, that same feeling assured her that the change was a positive one, so her examination of the sky was done only to satisfy her curiosity.

Even in this world filled to the brim with Classes and Skills, Tatiana found knowledge to be the most reliable weapon.

While Tatiana mused, Gertrude continued to fidget. The young woman eventually raised her gaze and bit her lip. “Do you… truly think it’s alright to leave that Ancient Fang in the final chamber of the labyrinth as is? I believe the Ghosthound wanted the process of descending through those trials to be akin to a pilgrimage. The fang is interesting, especially for youths, but… perhaps other items should have been left there, to add to the mystique of the location.”

Tatiana tilted her head to the side, still facing the window. “I believe the difficulty to reach that final sanctuary will be more than enough to make any one place special importance upon that room. As more children make it there, they will be able to carve their names on the walls and gradually create a treasure that is all their own. And besides that…”

Birds chirped merrily outside of the Town Hall window, hinting at the long-awaited return of spring. Tatiana narrowed her eyes as she looked at the sky. Truly, she was vexed by how mundane everything current seemed, despite her instincts.

Then Tatiana released a long sigh, but afterward the corner of her mouth quirked upward. “...I just have a feeling we won’t need to worry about the ancient fang. Though… isn’t it intriguing? That the System notification told us that buried on Expira were the partial remnants of an ancient beast relating to a deep secret in the Nexus? We’ve been here digging for days and all we’ve managed to excavate is a single fang; the other remnants are too enormous. I believe that we will soon discover that these remnants are more impressive than we can even imagine…”

Gertrude Collins frowned as she considered that. Before either could speak again, there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Tatiana said, still facing the window. The door opened and an aide walked into the room. Gertrude straightened her posture and took another sip of her tea.

The aide glanced at Gertrude but quickly bowed toward Tatiana. “The report you requested is ready, Madam.”

Tatiana waved a hand. “No need to hide it, it’s not anything serious. What did they say?”

The aide nodded, “The leadership in the other Zones reported that they located similar archways across all of Expira after the earthquakes. They are relatively few and far between, but their location means it is impossible that they were somehow unearthed by seismic shifts; there are examples on top of mountains or on previously deserted islands. Miss Vye says she senses something will happen soon, so she’s going to linger a bit around them to investigate.”

“Thanks, James,” Tatiana said quietly as she stared upward toward the blue sky. Something was definitely different today than it had been only a few hours ago. Her intuition connected to Randidly assured her it was the case.

*****

Congratulations! Your Fatepiece the Visage of Obsession has grown to Level 100!

In the depths of the shaft, Randidly wheezed and sat sharply upward. Coughing and hacking, he barely could control his body. His muscles were alternatively spasming and so stiff they refused to move.

He blinked rapidly, which was a mistake because his eyes immediately fed him a slew of information that his brain wasn’t used to receiving. So he pressed his eyes shut to cut off a growing headache. Still coughing, Randidly was hyper-aware of the noise his body made as it moved after having it be completely silenced for quite a while. He could hear the beat of his heart, the gurgle of his blood, and the slimy squelching noises of his stomach. Somehow, the whole process was sickening.

And the nausea didn’t help alleviate his headache.

Pressing his eyes closed, Randidly tried to keep his breathing steady as he once more acclimated himself to the unfiltered sensations of being alive. Holy shit, this is rough… this is worse than some of the terrible hangovers I used to get after a night out with Ace and Sydney… ugh… and these noises that my body makes…

What a haphazard and shitty Fatepiece…

Still, the feelings of discomfort and unfamiliarity that Randidly felt from his body were soon washed away as a wave of invigorating Nether surged into his Soulspace. He barely suppressed a gasp as a feeling akin to lowering oneself into a piping hot bath came over Randidly. His body relaxed and some of the internal confusion was wiped away. Perhaps most importantly, that warm flow of significance between himself and his Nether Core surrounded him with a film of energy that made the pull of the Aether Refinery below irrelevant.

Slowly, a lazy smile stretched across Randidly’s face. Energy rotated through his Nether Core and then reinforced his body, strengthening his physical form even further. Heh. But in the end… I can finally get out of this place…

For a few minutes, Randidly took the time to examine his state. The first thing he noticed was that some of the aches and discomfort in his body weren’t just due to the return of his consciousness after experiencing his Fatepiece; he also was extremely famished. While his projected consciousness was working on the Nether Core, it had taken most of his image strength as well. Only now was Yggdrasil feeding energy into his body so it didn’t continue wasting away.

Second, although he now shared a powerful connection with his Nether Core, the shade was currently hiding that valuable item in the Seventh Cohort. Randidly would need to retrieve the Nether Core and Expira at some point. He had a foggy understanding of what the shade had done, but he would know more when he got out of the shaft and merged with the shade.

Along that lines, Randidly’s own Nether within his body was rather feeble; the shade had taken the Nether Nebula with it when it had left.

It was about that time that Randidly’s confused senses suddenly detected ambient emotional discomfort in the air, not coming from him. Randidly opened his eyes and then squinted for a second to get used to the sensory information. Gradually, his rusty eyes got used to the act of seeing. But his slow adjustment gave Randidly a little bit of pause.

Exactly how long has it been since I started the Visage of Obsession…? Hah… hopefully I went deep enough that the recruits haven’t been sent to the frontlines...

When Randidly could focus on surroundings, he found himself floating in darkness. But nearby was a dusky-skinned creature that was clearly a Nether Gatekeeper. Just as soon as Randidly felt alarm from being vulnerable while next to this creature, he noticed again that the figure opposite him was staring at him with alarmed eyes.

Apparently, his awakening came as quite a shock to the antlered Nether Gatekeeper. And through his suddenly exquisite ability to read other people’s emotions, Randidly released that he was actually the more sociable individual between the two of them.

Randidly cleared his throat awkwardly and spoke in a husky voice. “How do you do…”

The speaking set him to coughing, so Randidly reached into his interspatial ring and removed a jug of water, which he promptly downed. For good measure, he removed some dried boar meat and devoured that to give his gurgling stomach something to gnaw on. After licking his fingers to clean them of crumbs, he produced another jug of water and drained that one too.

Much more confident, Randidly smiled at the Nether Gatekeeper. “Hello, it is nice to meet you. I’m Randidly Ghosthound. Thank you very much for protecting my body; I wouldn’t want to fall to the bottom of this hellhole.”

The Nether Gatekeeper in front of Randidly continued to frown. The strange sensation of seeing the expression, sensing the ambient emotions, and also feeling the shifting features through Nether Sensation was a strange one. But Randidly suddenly sensed a thin tendril of Nether reaching out toward him.

After a hesitation, he accepted it. Suddenly, he understood through the bridge the Nether Gatekeeper’s worry. Randidly grinned at the him he faced, because the thoughts he could read felt very masculine. “Don’t worry, I may not be the same as the shade, but I’ll honor its promise. I can take you out of here.”

Finally, the Nether Gatekeeper’s expression eased. Just from its obvious display of emotions, Randidly could tell how honest and naive of a being this Nether Gatekeeper was. Compared to the violent monsters that Randidly had fought on the frontlines…

This might be a Nether Gatekeeper in its true form.

But then Randidly raised up his hand. “I know it is a little dishonest to impose restrictions on our agreement now… but I’ll need your word that you will stay with me and assist me with the usage of Nether… for at least…” Randidly considered briefly. “...one year. But during that time, you will also have my protection. I’ll teach you about the current state of the Nexus. Because…”

Randidly was monitoring the reactions from the Nether Gatekeeper in front of him very carefully as he spoke. But to his relief, through the Nether connection, the Nether Gatekeeper seemed very accepting of this deal. It even agreed that such a pact was in both parties' best interest. So Randidly sensed the truth of his statement even as he finished saying it. “...because you’ve never been outside of the shaft. And I don’t want the authorities of the Nexus to capture you and find out what happened to me here. Our interests are aligned.”

Sensing the Nether Gatekeeper’s continued assent, Randidly opened a portal to his Alpha Cosmos and warned the fellow not to cause any trouble or fight anyone. With that problem solved, Randidly pulled out his Philosopher’s Key. But he clicked his tongue when it still couldn’t connect to outside this prison.

Randidly could reach outside to his own Nether Core, but he couldn’t connect the spaces.

But honestly, he preferred to make this journey the hard way. Grinning, Randidly looked upward and cracked his knuckles. Then he began to accelerate, pushing himself faster and faster with Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart until the air began whipping around him like blades. His heart began to pound.

When Randidly passed the place where the automatons were floating, he accelerated further in a massive display of his shrieking Stillborn Phoenix image, producing a sonic boom that blasted away all the porcelain dolls in his path.