Proper planning prevents poor performance.

It was a rule that Zuken Banksi followed to the letter. So when Shogun Naowa had all but forced him to lead an anomaly-exploration mission, the first thing he did was attend a crash course on the subject and visit veteran adventurers for their expertise. The days afterwards were then spent gathering his team and doing personal research on the anomaly.

The results were rather surprising.

In layman’s terms, an anomaly was a place that spawned monsters, and an adventurer’s job was to hunt down these monsters. The more of them he killed, the more experience he gained and the higher his soul capacity rose. If he were lucky, he might even level-up a Skill or two, which would allow him to venture deeper into said anomaly.

A vicious cycle, if there ever was one.

This process would continue until the adventurer either came across a pack of monsters too powerful for him to resist— at which point he’d be killed — or he’d escape the anomaly with an incredible amount of luck, though usually at the cost of one or more of his teammates being killed instead.

And that was it. Anomaly-101 for beginners.

But Zuken was no aspiring beginner. For the expertise he desired, this wasn’t even half the prologue.

Anomalies were mind-boggling organisms. They were energy-based creatures with the ability to terraform their surroundings, able to mutate creatures they came across and compel them to serve their own needs. Once an anomaly grew enough in size and gained enough acolytes, it created an extremely fast-paced survival ‘experiment’, in which the strong killed the weak and grew even stronger. The soul architecture of the dead would then be absorbed, studied, replicated— again and again and again, until the creatures became better and faster and more enhanced.

Modified versions of the originally compelled acolytes.

These were called monsters.

The study of anomalies, their growth, and their evolution was an incredibly profound, complicated subject. Great mages often spent their entire lives trying to uncover the mysteries of a single one, often to no avail.

Either way, one thing was certain. They were about to enter a Class-3 anomaly.

The most dangerous of its kind.

It had grown as much as it could, accelerating its development through extensive trial and error. And now, it was a monster-house, filled with all sorts of things that went bump in the night.

And it was underground.

He looked up at the sky. Dawn was on the horizon, the first bits of sunlight radiating out and bathing the desert in a harsh crimson. It was the perfect time to execute his plan— enough light to get it done, but not enough to invoke the desert’s curse.

“Elena,” he murmured, his breathing gaining speed. Oxygenating his brain before summoning was standard practice. The more aware you were, the lower the chances of mucking things up.

“Yeah?”

“You sure this is the place?”

“Joey seems to think so.”

Zuken mentally sighed. Joey, as much as it pained him to think about that little creature, was possibly the greatest sensor he had ever encountered in his life. So if it thought that this particular location was the best place to try for an opening, then this was where he’d make one.

Inhaling, he extended his right hand outward. Concentric magical circles of bright chestnut began to appear around his lower arm, extending all the way from his wrist to his elbow.

Avriel, he summoned. Come.

A good spiritist always summoned his familiar— more particularly, his kami —in silence. There was no revealing of the spirit’s name, lest the world would hear.

A clear conscience, a direct order, and an offering of power— the three ingredients of the summoning ritual —called forth the symbiotic being that was both guest and prisoner inside his own mind.

And Avriel answered.

Zuken opened his mouth, but what came out was a dull, rusty rasp, like gates of iron grating against cement.

“Gift of the Shifting Sands.”

Barely ten feet away, the ground slowly began to churn. It was imperceptible at first, nothing more than microscopic grains slowly floating around as if pushed by a gentle breeze. Then, a stronger flow came, and with it, layers of sand began to swirl in elegant shapes and patterns.

Slowly, the sands began to sink away as his spell swirled around, digging deeper and deeper as it progressed underground, displacing sand and chipping at gravel at a uniform pace.

Zuken exhaled, allowing himself a moment of respite.

Every anomaly opened up orifices to allow entry to prey. After all, without new information and souls to feed on, the anomaly would stagnate. The trick was to figure out the location of these orifices and enter through them.

Another one of the many reasons why he’d asked Elena to join him on this trip.

“It’ll take a while for the spell to reach the bottom,” he spoke up, glancing at Tanya. “Can you create an air bubble around us for an easy descent?”

The blonde spiritist nodded and raised her arms in a radial arc, gathering a cloud of mana at her fingertips and creating a sphere of condensed air within it. The outer surface looked flimsy, almost as if all that separated them from the rest of the world was a layer of thin ice.

“Ice?” Zuken curiously asked.

“Not quite,” Tanya muttered, maintaining her concentration all the while. “Just solidified water vapor. Adjusting temperatures is also a part of wind manipulation.”

“I didn’t know that,” he admitted.

“Just a nifty little thing I picked on my travels.”

“Your kami must be a strong one to allow you to deal with sub-aspects of elements like that.”

The blonde spiritist shrugged as the bubble, now encompassing all three of them, began to slowly descend into the newly created hole.

“Hey, uh, thi— this isn’t going to burst or anything, right?” Elena shivered, looking distinctly uncomfortable as she tightly hugged Zuken’s arm.

He nearly forgot— Elena was afraid of heights.

“Don’t look down,” he advised.

“Kinda hard not to,” the brunette murmured, a tiny amount of fear seeping into her voice. She quickly glanced down, only to tightly shut her eyes and scrunch up her face. “Please make this quick.”

Hiss.

“It’s an underground anomaly, and we’re breaking in. It’s going to take a while,” Tanya retorted.

Hiss.

“But you said there’d be orifices!” Elena exclaimed, shooting a betrayed glare at Zuken.

“There are, yes, but we’ve spent three nights looking for them and I’m out of patience. I’d rather use a spell to break in than waste another minute.”

“But what if something goes wrong?”

“Elena—”

“Right, sorry! How long is this gonna take?”

“Are you serious right now? You sound like a child. ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’” Tanya mocked.

“I’m just not great with heights,” Elena murmured, closing her eyes.

Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.

“Eeeeh!” Elena squealed. “What is that?”

She looked up. Something was falling on top of the icy bubble around them. From the noises, it felt like something thin and flaky was slowly pelting down upon it, sedimenting the surface.

Zuken looked up.

Hiss…

And stared in incomprehension.

The Gift of the Shifting Sands was a spell he had created four years ago, based upon the workings of a corkscrew. It created a mana circle at the point of application and then dug downwards, creating a hollow cylinder, with mana lining the walls to keep the cylinder from falling apart mid-spell. Zuken had used the spell many, many times during his training with his Kami and in the few missions he had partaken. But never had he seen something like this ever happen.

Hissss……

Sand was falling. It fell from the top. It slithered from the sides.

He looked down.

Nothing.

He looked to the sides of the bubble.

Sand was slowly slithering through the cylindrical walls, depositing itself onto the bubble.

And more was falling in.

It was almost like—

Zuken couldn’t even finish the thought as the mana construct shattered above them.

A veritable ocean of sand came rushing down upon them, ready to swallow them whole.

It hurts.

The first four days had been terrible. Running around, trudging along, alone in this god-forsaken place filled with monsters out to eat you— all that without a speck of sleep was a nightmare in itself. Now, a week since then, it was nigh unbearable.

Insomnia haunted his nights and fatigue ruled his days. His taste buds felt muted— monster meat or moss, it was all the same to him. His brain begged for unconsciousness, but all it received was that mindless trauma that only got worse. Every time he shut his eyes, there was nothing but pain and misery. At some point, sorrow would become sleep. His body would fall down, paralyzed and tired, but his mind would never rest.

He was living, but only barely.

Even death seemed like a blessing now.

It hurts.

His mind began playing tricks on him. Some days, he’d find himself back in his apartment, seeing phantoms where there were none. He’d hear Emma’s voice— the fading feeling of a lithe figure straddling his waist, her hands atop his chest — whispering in his ear that it was all a dream, that it would end the moment he woke up. Other times, his mind conjured images of his head laid gently onto railroad tracks as if they were soft pillows, as he waited for a train to arrive.

Every time he managed to snag himself a bit of rest, his mind wandered untethered, new possibilities of danger and pain and death forming inside his waning consciousness.

Even Inanna’s words were reduced to murmurs and meaningless gibberish.

“As if you ever grasped my locutions, mortal.”

“Go away!” Lukas groaned. His insides hurt.

“And where would that leave you? Alone, beaten down, walking into the mouth of some monster? Dying in the darkness without seeing the light of day?”

“G— go away,” he muttered, pleading at this point.

It just hurt so much.

Pumping lifeforce through his body and constantly breathing in and out had become instinctual by now. Sometimes, it would even net him a few moments of sleep, but then he’d wake up after a few hours, feeling like an entire day had passed, filled with nothing but nightmares. He’d roll over and doze off again, but sleep would evade him, as if laughing at his plight.

It drove him insane.

Sometimes, he’d be hunted by monsters. Even in the face of monsters he used to casually defeat, he was now helpless. He’d run and run and run until he could hide in the safety of an errant shadow. He’d curl up against his knees and hide his head in the darkness and cry— only silent sobs, so the monster couldn’t find him.

All this, because one single person chose to—

“Do not blame me, mortal. You brought this onto yourself.”

Lukas cracked open his eyes.

Or tried to, anyway.

It was difficult. So difficult.

“Mortal.” He could see her dainty fingers. “Look at what you’ve done to yourself.”

He opened his mouth. His lips quivered.

No words came out.

Please...

—me!

The goddess didn’t answer.

Please…

“You have to say it, mortal. Speak it.” The goddess’s voice was cold and spidery like winter. “You chose to reject my offer. Now beg me to offer it to you again. Beg.”

Please…

“Out loud.” Her voice was mockingly chiding, as if delighting in his pain. “Beg me to make you my worshipper, and I’ll make your problems vanish.”

Lukas opened his mouth.

“Y— you— you— me—”

His vision was getting cloudy. Nameless objects and faceless people were flying in front of his hazy eyes.

“Almost there…” The goddess seemed ecstatic. “Say it.”

“Kill— me.”

His breath was starting to get ragged.

Lukas gathered the last bits of lifeforce he could muster. Breathing was all he could do at this point. “Please…” he croaked, “kill me. I won’t— you lose— kill me—”

Darkness consumed him.