I woke up with my head on Dawn’s lap, drenched in sweat. She had a worrisome look about her as she channelled a gentle wind onto me.

Donna was leaned over a counter and looked at us with just as much worry as Dawn displayed, yet somehow smiled a little. She downed the rest of the wine in her glass and sat next to us. With a gentle touch of her fingers through my hair, she simpered, “You must have so many questions.”

“Yeah. What? How? And why?” I said.

“The properties of your mana has, changed. It’s become closer to pure mana,” she explained.

I scoffed. It felt like the more I knew, the more I was ignorant. “Continue.”

“Well, when you used Purist like that, it probably put your mana power in a place that allowed your mana itself to evolve. It’s not exactly pure mana like Emily yet, but it’s nothing like the normal mana you know about.”

I opened the palm of my hand. I see. I checked my status and found that nothing looked out of the ordinary. Even my base mana power still stood at 2,160%. What a curious thing. “Do you two feel any different?”

Dawn nodded, “Yes, it’s a huge difference. I think you should try it out,” she smiled and kissed me. “Now, send us back to Methelia, will you?”

“Ah, right,” I created a clone and had him use Riftshear to send them home. Miriam peered out at Cogland from the apartment’s veranda. “Where’d those guys go?”

“To make deals with manufacturers, and probably a little sightseeing.” She mused and enjoyed the afternoon winds on her fair skin. She looked at me contentedly, “This engine will help us get back on track as a great inventor family. Really, Eric, I’m grateful.”

“How grateful?” I asked her.

She stood up and undid her blouse’s buttons. Her undergarment was loosened and thrown to the side shortly after. Well, this is new, I thought, finding her body to be much leaner than I expected. Her breasts stood over my head like the elves. They were supple, had a nice shape, and a much more handheld size compared to the balloons that the normal elf had.

I definitely needed a strength potion to survive her libido.

We laid in bed, snuggled under the sheets after I had to transmute them to fresh and clean sheets. She asked me many questions about my world, my home, as did I ask her. Her family, the Bronzels, were one of the most prominent groups in Vaingot, but a lot of other families that were renowned for their skill began going under after generations of people were being kidnapped. Now that we suspected Firemoon to be behind those kidnappings, Miriam had a bit of rage in her.

“Go ahead,” I parted the hair from her face. “Ask me.”

Her face became squeamish as she contemplated. “I, don’t really know the question I need to ask, but I want our family to have closure. I want to know what happened to our parents. I want to know if Firemoon really messed with us and if the Craghammers hired them to do it.”

I zoned in on her, “And if they did?”

“I want to take them down,” she said with resolve. “So many families have gone under because of missing people, so many people dead, so many people starving. If they really are responsible, I want them to meet justice.”

Now it was my turn to contemplate like Miriam just did. Despite August and I having our clones do our training for us, would it be okay to undertake her request? Truthfully, if the obstacles that stood before me were living beings, the combination of void and mind manipulation was unstoppable. If I threw Timedial into the mix, I’d probably be able to solve the mystery and bring Miriam the justice she wanted within one day. But what’s the right thing to do here? After so many adventures, and misadventures, I learnt that there were always two sides to a coin. “How do Thak and Varna feel about it?”

Miriam laid on her side and faced me; her hand rested on my chest, “Varna is, forthright. She was affected by it the most. To this day, she still openly grieves and worries. She began to use anger to deal with it, but sometimes she doesn’t even have the energy to be mad. And Thak became more withdrawn. He doesn’t talk about it; or anything, really.” Her forehead crinkled, “To be honest, I’m worried about him the most.” Her eyes suddenly focused on mine, “Can I trust you, Eric?”

I nodded, “Of course.”

“I feel like the only reason he hasn’t taken his own life is because he knows we still need him as an inventor. I placed so much pressure on them to continue the family business,” she balled her fist and clamped her eyelids down, “and I don’t know if that was the right thing to do.” Her voice cracked, “I’m, scared. I’m scared, Eric. I don’t know what will happen if I tell them we don’t need to continue the Bronzel business. I keep thinking that I’m a horrible person for making them work in the same place that remind us of our family, yet I don’t know if relieving them of their positions and letting them go their separate ways will make their lives better. I was just scared of losing them so I pushed for us to continue doing business! I don’t know if it’s the right–”

I planted a kiss on her forehead and immediately smoothened the wrinkles in it. I then embraced her and weaved a little light magic so that she’d calm down. It was obvious she gave her woe a lot of thought, but was afraid of making a decision that could lead to an unfortunate outcome. I sat up, maintained a meditative pose, and cast Scry. It took me through what would happen for a month.

In the first simulation, I convinced Miriam to leave things as they are. The engine they made was successfully patented, they returned home and continued working on other things. But within the third week or so, the Craghammers slightly changed parts of the engine after they got their hands on one, then filed a claim that the Bronzels illegally copied their work and profited off it. That didn’t end well.

The second simulation had me cripple Firemoon, and although the constant kidnappings and other crimes slowed to a crawl, the Craghammers still messed with the Bronzels’ engine and claimed it as their own. I was beginning to see now that the power-hungry family had connections in certain places.

The third simulation was where I told Miriam to forget her family business and try to convince her siblings to live their own lives. Varna became quite a slug-slinging drunk and eventually disappeared. Thak worked for another company, but he was fired and became homeless.

In the fourth simulation, I went into it fully. I beat Firemoon, uncovered the Craghammers dirty ways and revealed it to the public, and at the end of that month, the Bronzels had about a dozen or so people in their workshop, happily working together. I didn’t know if that was their family or not, but they seemed to resemble.

Hmm, so I have to intervene? I can’t say simulation four is the best for long term, but at least Thak isn’t homeless and Varna isn’t a raging drunk. Firemoon and Craghammer are gone, so the Bronzels were quite successful with their engine and began working on other projects. I decided to go with the fourth option. It seemed the least conflicted. I nodded mentally. “I’ll stop Firemoon and the Craghammers. But I need a lead.”

After asking her where I could find Firemoon goons or Craghammers, I was pointed to a huge building that was operated by the Craghammers in Cogland. Later that night, I told August my plans. He agreed for the most part, but he didn’t want me to be reckless just because someone gave me a sob story. I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I gave it more thought, but Ylda put me back on track.

Maybe the Bronzels weren’t worth potentially screwing over the economic landscape of Vaingot for, but Ylda was. Children who had nothing was worth it. And if my intuition was right, and the people I saw in the Bronzels’ workshop were the missing family members, then perhaps there was a chance to find the kids’ parents as well.

I flew to the Craghammers’ building and entered a void plane. I made my way up through the floors. Anyone in a room by themselves, I would pay a visit to. The first person seemed to take care of records in a filing room. Once I entered the corporeal plane, I stacked Timedial until everything else moved 50% slower, then weaved a little sleeping spell on the woman. She began to fall, but I made sure it was a safe fall with void manipulation. From there, I used Scour to find specific information held in her noggin. What I really wanted was a name, a face, and a location, all of which I got.

I flew up to the branch manager’s office and found a round man. With much of the same series of magic, I put him to sleep and cast Scan to map his entire mind. More clones made acquiring his information a lot faster. In a couple minutes of normal time, I was done. I knew where the Craghammers’ headquarters was now, and who was who in the business.

With my base mana power now resting comfortably at 2160%, flying to Primeforge, the capital of Vaingot, wouldn’t take very long. I had an idea of the country’s geography after I Scanned the branch manager’s mind. Using Voidwalk to bypass solids at breakneck speeds would see me there just a little under five minutes. After getting closer to pure mana, all my spells and manipulation felt much more powerful and efficient. But my amazement of my mana’s upgrade didn’t distract me from the marvels before me.

When I first came to the town Reamer, I was impressed at all the moving trams, the metal architecture, the ingenuity of it all. The city of Cogland however, had me awestruck. There were amazingly wide roads for vehicles, trams, and even underground trains.

But Primeforge, oh sweet Primeforge… The capital was a city-state. The sheer overwhelming size made you feel like an infinitesimal speck of sand on a beach. There were trains reaching heights in the air that made me queasy just looking at it. Concrete and metal designs, moving contraptions, marvellous buildings unlike anything I’ve seen. It was a surreal experience.

Stay focused, Eric. I remembered the locations of twelve branches and the headquarters of the Craghammers, but not the Firemoon hideout. Well, no matter, we’ll get there. I continued to the headquarters. It was a bit isolated from the city, weirdly enough. They had so many acres of land that I wondered how long a vehicle would take to drive through the winding roads and get to the front door of the headquarters.

Much like their family name suggested, the headquarters was crested in an arching mountain that had many crags surrounding it. I flew into the absolutely massive building. The place made the Order of Magic look small. I admired the designs inside as well, but kept focus on the task at hand. Once in the building within the guise of Voidwalk, I made fifty clones and had them divide and conquer, with subtlety.

Timedial, Clone, and Scan, were indispensable spells for gathering intelligence. In fact, it was so much history, that when my clones began pushing what they learnt to me, I took a while just floating in the air and processing it. The top echelons of the family were all my unwilling informants so I learnt a lot of stuff, some quite gruesome.

Man, this country is fucked up. I need to do something about places like Gassity and Aquan’s southern district. Well, another time. Right now though… I turned my attention downward into one of the most messed up places I’d seen in a long time, Factory. The generic name was chosen so it could be talked about without my suspicion. The Craghammers had a lot of factories after all. If someone pointed a finger at them and accused them of being a part of Factory, then the accused could simply claim they were talking about their normal factories.

I entered the place through the diagonal lift they used to transport their cargo. Well, I didn’t actually use the lift, I instead simply floated by in Voidwalk and passed through their gates and doors. Sure, I already had the memories of most of the Craghammers, so I had a pretty wholistic grasp on the situation. However, I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

The lift stopped in a large room that served as a hub to other rooms. Those other rooms were mostly storage rooms for raw materials like ore, metals, and other stuff. In the same direction as the lift was yet another lift, going further down the rabbit hole. At the next plateau, there was a scene similar to an office. A lot of files were there. The workers there were ignorant of what was going on further down, in the deepest levels of this underground hell. A huge door blocked the way. Even if they tried to ram it, there’s no way it would budge.

In the deepest levels was where you would find the miners of the underground cavern. All kidnapped and enslaved by Firemoon to work tirelessly for the Craghammers. It was a messy, bloody, and depressing scene that didn’t belong in modern society. These were the people stolen from their families, now in chains, manacles, and made to endure all sorts of outlandish tortures and punishment if they showed even the slightest signs of rebellion.

These people had their personalities beaten out of them. They mined ores and loaded it onto mining carts. After working sixteen hours a day or more, they would be allowed to return to the deplorable living quarters where they had no personal space. At least the Craghammers didn’t skimp on the volume of the food; they knew slaves would need the energy. But the food itself was not much better than rations. According to the log that kept headcount, there were approximately 27,000 people kidnapped and enslaved over the decades, and about eight thousand currently alive and working.

Dead slaves were thrown into a big pit and covered up so the smell wouldn’t get out too much. Some of them even fought and killed each other over food and water. Most were in tattered rags, and some were completely naked. The Firemoon taskmasters would have their way with the slaves that were still young. If a woman became pregnant because of this, the mother would be killed while pregnant depending on her age, beauty, and how the taskmasters felt at that particular point in time.

All these things I knew because I Scanned the Craghammers. You’d think they would be pissed that Firemoon was wasting their slaves, but they didn’t care as long as their supply of workers were replenished. I entered farther into deeper parts of the cavern to see the main event.

There was a room that felt like a sanctum. On entering, one would be greeted with a couple lifts that took you to a higher point. Once up there, I saw it, the legendary artefact – Burra’s Seal.

It was mixture of dulled green and dark gold, and rested atop a huge pedestal. It was about half a metre tall and quarter metre wide. It sat on a few metal pipelines that ran out of the room and into other places in Factory, but mostly to a place where they processed the ore to make ingots.

Miriam was right about Burra’s Seal; it did disrupt mana and thus made casting impossible. This artefact was why dwarves couldn’t use magic. Qora was also right about seeing their ability to use magic.

According to the Craghammers, the true history looked exactly like what they were doing now. The old tales about dwarves being enslaved was true, but the masses assumed it was done by some other race. However, the true culprits were the Craghammer ancestors. Slavery was their family business.

I looked at the artefact in silence. I could go in spells-blazing and take care of the Craghammers and Firemoon, but I knew that wasn’t the way. Hydra’s ass, I have a bit more work to do. But first… I rued what I was about to force myself to witness, but chose to do it anyway.

The pedestal that Burra’s Seal sat on was linked to a very special place under the room. There was a certain device underneath there that showed the most disgusting part of this whole jig. I slipped down through the ground and entered the ‘generator room’. It was a huge grinder that would crush dwarves like minced meat. The reason for this was to expose as many of their cells as possible, in order to extract mana from them. They would sacrifice about three people every week, or even more if they needed to step up production. The extracted mana would be redirected and stored in Burra’s Seal in order to power the artefact.

I’d had enough of this.