The Ether Undead proved their value immediately. The original plan to have Erik handle all the Etherman’s physical attacks having already fallen apart, Hekate felt it appropriate to step in. Her connection to her newly-created undead blossomed, feeling more potent and detailed than anything she’d had with summoned undead. Dave hadn’t been lying when he’d told her about the benefits of using undead you raised yourself.

Hekate had over one hundred Ether Undead at her disposal, and she wasn’t about to skimp. One third went for one arm, one third went for the other, and the last third went for the face. They hadn’t even tried to attack the massive Etherman yet, and Hekate felt like they no longer had the luxury of leaving it alone. If they could distract it, that would go a long way to stopping whatever the founder was doing to improve its capabilities.

The effect was immediate. Hekate had a vague sense of her undead’s abilities, but nothing prepared her for just how strong they were. Ten of them working together caught an incoming fist, seemingly with little difficulty. That was a fraction of the number she’d expected it to take. And they didn’t just stop the fist, they pushed back.

Immediately, Hekate noticed that the auras each Ether Undead exuded had overlapped now that they were working in unison, and the result had reinforced all the ones involved. They could act collectively. At the same time, she saw the Ether Undead attacking the Etherman’s face using a multitude of different weapons and even some minor Necromantic spells in some cases, so they were all individually capable.

“Well, this might be cheating a little.” Hekate laughed. Dave landed next to her, no longer having to focus his efforts on helping Erik stop attacks.

“Yes, you’ve made some interesting undead this time around. I wonder just what they can do. We’ll have to run some tests after we’re done here.” He mused, looking over the three separate groups. The first two had the physical attacks well in hand, while the third was cutting into the Etherman’s head at an acceptable pace.

“Hey Erik, want to switch? You handle the shrouds, we’ll take care of the body.” Hekate asked, using the ethertech comms to make sure he didn’t miss what she’d said.

“Yeah, sure. Any insights?” The response came back quick, Erik having been freed up just the same as Dave.

“The bronze one affects direction or momentum somehow, while the red one just destroys whatever it touches.” Dave relayed to Hekate, who told Erik. He was the one with the most experience dealing with the two shrouds.

Another soul attack rippled through the room. Dave disappeared, but the Ether Undead and the whole team were unaffected. Hekate snorted. She’d inoculated everyone against a brute force, half-assed method like that as soon as she’d seen it. It only took her a moment to call Dave back once more.

“It seems like the founder has noticed our efforts and is getting antsy.” Dave rolled his shoulders, throwing an annoyed look toward the topic of conversation. Hekate didn’t doubt that being wrenched back and forth wasn’t very fun, even if he didn’t take any damage from it.

“It also means that we’re likely to see another Etherman soon. And we’ve barely done anything to this one.” Hekate sighed. “This is getting progressively more difficult, and we can only improve so many times before he matches us up against something we can’t deal with. Or we run out of resources. Without the Blade Forge to pop back into for a quick rest, we’re going to run out of shroud before long.”

Already, Hekate was under half her total reserves. Even the massive amount of time they’d spent in Caeden’s pocket reality training and increasing their IP hadn’t been enough to take them up the level of her grandpa, who could fight for literal weeks without running out of shroud.

“I’m probably worse off than everyone else.” Hekate groaned in annoyance. “Those Ether Undead were resource hungry.”

“Of course they were.” Dave chuckled. “Even if you managed to avoid the usual hurdles, you made undead that would normally require weeks of work in a matter of moments. Compressing that process is going to incur greater costs. Lucky for you, everyone else likely has a much higher moment-to-moment shroud expenditure, so you won’t tap out too much sooner than them.”

“True.” Despite agreeing with her familiar, Hekate didn’t feel much better. Especially when a groan of metal shifting ran through the whole room, and a second massive Etherman hefted a hand out of the pit the first had come from.

“Well, there you go.” Dave waved his hand at the new opponent. “Right on time. He’d getting predictable.”

“Yeah, but that doesn't help us deal with the problem.” Hekate pointed out.

“A fair point.” He conceded.

Hekate directed some of her Ether Undead to block the blows of this Etherman as well. Unfortunately, it seemed that this one had received the same improvements as the first, it’s fists starting out fast and potent without the ponderous start of its counterpart.

And Hekate was stumped when two more shrouds flared into existence, throwing out attacks toward Lily and Asherta, who were still trying to drill through the energy barrier.

Damon blocked one, while Dave handled the other. They were endlessly fortunate that the improvements to their physical capabilities didn’t extend to their shroud usage, which was still subpar.

Then, a third set of hands emerged.

“Oh, fuck this!” Hekate threw her hands in the air. She didn’t have the Ether Undead for a third Etherman. She’d already pulled all the ones attacking the first to make sure no attacks slipped through and caught her friends unawares. “Lil, this is getting untenable. How close are you?”

“I don’t know! The barrier is adaptive, it keeps responding to whatever we do and changing the type of energy its made of it invalidate most of the damage I deal” Hekate could hear the raw frustration in her voice. It seemed that nothing was going well on her end either.

“Well, I hope you can un-invalidate it soon, ‘cuz we’re going to need a miracle on our end in about…ten seconds.” Hekate warned.

Not even a second later, a boom shook the whole island. Then it shook again. Then, the lights flickered. Another shake, and they went out. The ether engine, contained behind the energy barrier, sputtered, before kicking back into gear, bringing the lights back on.

“We got it!” Lily cheered. “The power outage let me make a gap, I just need to widen it!”

“Well, you better do it quick, because we still don’t have time!” Hekate yelled, throwing out a blast of Necroflame to block a shroud manifestation from the third giant Etherman. Then she cursed, throwing another ball as the cold elements in the attack weakened her flames enough to push through.

That was when the wall behind the Ethermen’s backs exploded in a screech of metal and burning shards. A blade as wide as a house cleared the path, before shrinking down and revealing a sword. The weapon was familiar and yet not, with a golden edge and a core of royal purple and steely grey in a flame motif. A hint of rainbow light flickered briefly along the gold, the light feeling heavy to Hekate’s senses.

Then, Caeden floated through the gap.

“Sorry I’m behind, fixing things led to some unexpected complications.” He smiled.

“Cool, mind helping with this mess? Lil’s about to hand it to the founder.” Hekate snarked, but she was internally pretty relieved. Things were about a half-second from spinning out of control. Especially when Caeden’s arrival was heralded by a fourth set of hands coming out of the pit.

“What? But I- You should be dead!” The founder had, of course, noticed Caeden’s dramatic entrance. “Whatever, fine, fine. You all are too late anyway!”

Then, the founder hopped into the bed-like piece of ethertech, just as a spear of light lanced toward his back through the finger-width gap Lily had created. He screamed, his grotesque body searing. But a wall of metal slammed up around the device before the attack could end his life. Hitting the metal, the light vanished into it without any noticeable effect.

“Oh, come on!” Lily stomped her foot. Her light beam getting eaten had also allowed the energy barrier to close again. “Please tell me you have some kind of way through this thing, Cae, because I’m absolutely done with it.”

Then she turned and smiled at him. “Also, I’m glad you’re ok. I was a little worried, but I knew you’d be fine so long as Father was fine.”

Caeden grinned back. “Yup, handled everything. Took a while, but I can’t die in the Forge. Even from soul destruction, apparently.”

“Yay, Cae’s fine. Can we focus on the massive-ugh.” Erik started snarking before the fist he’d blocked suddenly accelerated with a surge of shroud, bursting through his hold and slamming into him, bouncing him into the wall.

“Right, big Ethermen.” Caeden cracked his knuckles, his eyes flaring with rainbow light. “Dual-shrouded giant Ethermen? That’s interesting. Something to study later.”

He reached out, shroud flaring. Hekate felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. One of Caeden’s shrouds had definitely changed. There was a weight to his Ki that went beyond anything she’d ever seen. It distorted the air like a heat haze, even before he manifested it.

Points of rainbow light appeared, rapidly growing into two giant hands of molten grey and gold metal, with veins of purple running through them. Each was easily as large as one of the Ethermen, and they radiated an energy more potent than normal heat.

With a clutching gesture, the molten hands gripped the two Ethermen farthest from each other like dolls. Then Caeden brought his hands together, the Ethermen seemingly unable to resist the raw force of the attack. All four were unceremoniously slammed into each other.

The Ethermen didn’t die, revealing their durability to not be any less than the smaller, single-shrouded variants. But they were pinned in place by the rapidly cooling metal. A metal which was wholly unphased by every effort they made to escape, shroud or physical.

“Well, that’s handled. Now let’s get a look at this barrier.” Caeden brushed his hands off, floating down to land next to Lily. He gave her a hug before focusing on the bubble, which she returned. Once more, his eyes flared. “It’s adaptive? Interesting.”

“You got a new shroud.” Hekate said, moving toward the couple. It wasn’t a question.

Caeden shrugged. “Sort of. It’s more complicated than that, but not really relevant right now. I’ll just say that the Forge is a lot different now, and so am I. A lot happened.”

“Can you break through? It’s potent.” Lily asked.

“I think so. I have access to some new materials now, they should work.” Caeden flicked his wrist, holding his hand to the side as if waiting for something to be handed to him. Before anyone could ask what he was doing, the sword from earlier flew through the air to land in his grip.

The moment it made contact, the sword flared with power, rainbow light flowing off it in a halo. It flickered, shifting between a dozen shapes and styles, the look of the sword rapidly changing. At the same time, Caeden’s eyes continued to leak rainbow light, just like the sword.

Finally, it settled into a shape. The purple accents which had previously been so small had taken over most of the blade, which was now closer to a rapier than a short sword. Caeden thrust it into the barrier, which split around the tip without any visible resistance.

“Cool, that worked how it was supposed to.” Caeden grinned like a kid with a new toy they hadn’t had the chance to play with. Another gesture had four pillars appearing around him. They had sharp tips. Like massive stakes, and their coloration perfectly mirrored the sword’s. Pointing forward, the pillars followed Caeden’s motion and slipped into the barrier. The space between them flickered and died without an ounce of resistance.

Turning back to the team, which had all gathered around him at that point, Caeden gestured to the gap. “Tada! Entrance.”

Erik, who’d been working with Dave to end the four Ethermen before they managed to escape, crossed his arms with an angry look on his face. “What the heck, dude? It’s that easy?”

Caeden laughed. “Not really. But static defenses like this wouldn’t be able to stop me now. Forged Infinity changed.”

He waggled the sword. Suddenly, Hekate remembered her soul senses. She peaked at Caeden on the soul plane, before slamming her vision off. He blazed like the Pillar at noon in her vision, a well of power and potency beyond anything she’d ever seen. Her best point of comparison was literally the Pillar. He looked like a human-shaped Pillar on the soul plane.

“Caeden, what the heck happened to you?” She asked, her voice shaking.

Caeden’s smile faltered. “You looked at my soul, right?”

She mutely nodded.

Caeden sighed. “Let’s deal with the founder and I’ll explain.

Without any real reason to argue, they all moved inside the barrier. Though Hekate did take a moment to convert the four giant Ethermen into Ether Undead after having Caeden free them. She wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to add something like them to her arsenal. They turned out even better than their smaller peers.

Once more, Caeden looked at the walls around the ethertech hiding the founder, his eyes leaking light and his new shrouded weapon flickering through hundreds of different forms. This time, Hekate noticed how the shifts started with broad sweeping changes before narrowing down further and further, the weapon changing less and less as time went on.

“Huh.” Caeden’s eyes stopped leaking and he just looked at the wall, perplexed.

“What?” Lily asked.

“There’s a lot of soul energy running through that thing. Like, a lot.”

“So?” Hekate huffed.

“So, I’m still not any good with souls. This-” He waved his shrouded weapon, which had taken on the form of a spear, around. “-only really works with stuff in physical reality.”

“So, you can’t break in?” Hekate raised an eyebrow, not believing it after his previous displays.

“Oh, I can break the physical walls. But that won’t affect the soul energy, which will likely rampage wildly once the case holding it in has a hole in it.” He shrugged helplessly.

Hekate peaked at the box with her senses, careful to keep from focusing on Caeden. “Oh. I see what you mean. It’d flood out, and we’d…Probably die. Really horribly.”

“What? Why?” Lily asked.

“You know the wave of soul pressure that knocked you and Asherta out?”

Asherta grunted, crossing her arms.

Hekate nodded. “Yeah, not pleasant. It would be like that, but times a billion. Your soul would be obliterated. Mine too, despite how much stronger it is. Even mister crazy here would probably die.” Hekate gestured toward Caeden. “Souls don’t work like physical bodies, the damage is different.”

“So, what? We just let him finish? Get the shroud he wanted?” Erik asked a very relevant question.

Caeden shrugged. “I don’t see why not. At this point, that’s the safer option. After all, he’s probably going to die from this experiment anyway. All that chaotic force…I can’t see it going his way. And even if it works, he’d come out of there with a basic, untrained shroud he’s never used before. I think we can handle that at this point. The Ethermen are more of a problem.”

“So, we’re waiting?” Hekate asked.

“I agree with Caeden’s assessment. If you guys think messing with the process would kill us…” Lily shrugged, giving up. “We’re better off dealing with what comes out.”

“Cool.” Hekate’s focus shifted back to Caeden. “That means you’ve got some explaining to do.”