Chapter 548

Nick matched Lasazar’s pace, staying a few yards behind his right shoulder.

The Battlemage glanced back. His expression was a rigid mask of disapproval.

“I can tell you survived an encounter with the Void," he said over the rushing wind. "That makes you lucky, Nicholas. But it is not wise to push your luck.”

Nick pursed his lips. "I know the risks. I needed a tool to counter an overwhelming force, and it worked, but I didn’t use it recklessly.”

"You do not understand the danger if you can say something like that,” Lasazar snapped, banking slightly east to align with Nick's hidden camp. "The Void is not an element. It is the absence of reality. It is a tear in the fabric of the World. The World abhors a vacuum. When you pull the Void into existence, the World immediately attempts to crush the caster to heal the wound. It is a Sin, and not a small one!”

Nick considered the consequences he had endured the last time he used it: the agonizing ache in his pathways, the sensation that his own existence was in true danger, and the whispers. The whispers were the worst part, and that was before I got [Harmonic Anchor].

It had taken him days to recover from the fight against the Shaman, and since then he’d been careful not to use that power again, but that didn’t mean he was willing to let go of such a useful spell. And he knew, from his mood, that Lasazar knew it too.

"To wield the Void without being consumed, your mind must be iron," the man continued grimly. "Your intent must be absolute. You must be convinced that your reason for tearing the World apart outweighs the World's own laws. If you hesitate, if you use it for petty reasons or selfish gain, Its wrath will find you. It will twist your fate and crush you. It is a last-resort weapon, Nicholas. Treat it as such.”

Lasazar banked sharply, dropping toward the ancient oak where Nick had set up his meager camp. He followed the descent, flaring his mana to arrest his momentum before he touched the soft dirt.

The teacher hovered a few feet above the ground, his mana churning around him to sustain his flight. He looked down at Nick, shadows obscuring his eyes.

“I will not tell another Master of Magic what to do, but you should be very careful when delving into such powers. Even the best among us can be ripped apart while attempting to control forces beyond their understanding, and the Void is the greatest of them all by its very nature,” Lasazar warned quietly. "Remember what you saw tonight. Remember what reaching too far can lead to.”

With a sudden burst of wind, he shot back into the sky, disappearing over the tree line on a direct course toward Alluria.

Nick stood alone in the dark forest. The image of the broken village still clung to his thoughts, but Lasazar's words about the Void had sparked a different, far more personal realization.

He walked to the base of the tree and sat among its roots, wanting to finish the thought before doing anything else.

He had spent the past two days experimenting with his Saga-spells, anchoring elemental magic to narrative truths. The Thunderbird. The First Flame. He had intended to apply the same conceptual framework to his Void spell, binding the singularity to a myth to give it the structural integrity needed to withstand a Grandmaster's cut.

Cold sweat prickled the back of his neck.

Saga-spells worked by forcing a story on the World. They took a concept the World recognized and imposed it on reality. The Void, however, was the antithesis of reality.

If he had succeeded in turning such a force into a Saga-spell—and that was a very big if—he would have given a narrative framework to nothingness. He might even have given the Abyss a conceptual foothold to anchor itself in the World. The resulting spell would have possessed apocalyptic power, but if it had slipped from his control for even a fraction of a second, the tear in reality would have become self-sustaining.

That would have caused a disaster dwarfing the Incursion at the Tower. The Void itself wasn’t demonic, but it was close enough to the abominations that they could have slipped through such a tear, and he knew from experience that only the weaker demonic creatures weren't waiting for such a chance.

Some Lesser Demons walked the land, but many more of their kind lurked just beyond the deepest recesses of the ether, while Greater Demons planned for centuries, if not millennia, for their eventual materialization.

No ritual would let me disrupt them, no Divine Force or Genius Loci would take over and grant me the power to repel them.

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After all, such a Breach would be self-contained, opened by his very magic, yes, but imposed upon the World. If the planet didn’t kill him for his abuse, it would be forced to maintain the very opening that would kill it.

I am playing with matches in a gunpowder room, Nick realized, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. I need a much stronger foundation before I attempt to weave the Void into a Saga. I need absolute control over my intent, not just my mana.

He spent the rest of the night in deep meditation, fortifying his mental bulkheads and ensuring his mana’s powerful flow obeyed his commands, but it still wasn’t enough to reassure him.

For most mages, intent was simply a component of a spell, less important than mana. Humans could naturally visualize basic magic; it was power they lacked.

Nick had never considered himself lacking in the former, and now that he had more than enough of the latter, he’d let himself get arrogant.

Fucking hell. I lost to Xander and still think I'm the greatest of them all. I even lost control of the waters and thought about touching one of the primordial forces.

His sleep was fitful, but dawn eventually broke. Nick rose, brushed the dirt from his coat, and resumed his journey. He wouldn't abandon the Void; he couldn't, but he'd approach it with the proper care. That was all he could do.

He walked for hours, letting the sights along the Highway center his thoughts and purge his fears. By midday, he came across a different part of the forest and had to revise his initial assessment.

What he’d just walked through was tamer than the Green Ocean, yes, but it was still wild. This, by contrast, was entirely artificial.

The trees around him grew in precise grids, separated by wide, cleared firebreaks. As he expanded his senses, he saw a cultivated expanse of unique trees useful for enchanting and alchemy, ironwood, and controlled beast habitats, likely designed to feed the central provinces' industrial furnace. The Highway’s paved stones continued on, but several new paths branched into avenues of gravel, packed hard by the constant passage of merchant wagons and logging convoys.

A few minutes later, his spiritual senses brushed against a cluster of souls ahead.

Nick stepped off the road and into the shadow of the grid-planted trees, activating the Stillness and folding his aura inward. He slipped silently through the underbrush, closing in on the source of the life signs.

A wide clearing opened before him.

The crests stamped on the wagons marked it as a logging camp operated by the Cinder Consortium. Huge stacks of stripped ironwood trunks lined the perimeter. In the center, a makeshift village of canvas tents and wooden lean-tos sheltered the laborers.

They were Beastmen. Feline, canine, and ursine traits marked their features—tufted ears, patches of coarse fur, and elongated jaws. They worked in teams, using their inborn strength to haul timber toward a processing area.

Mana flowed naturally from their physical movements, an innate ability that differed from human practices and granted their species superior physicality at lower levels.

Not that it seemed to help them much, given their status. These weren’t slaves, for Berea had outlawed the practice, but their clothing was ragged and their gait unhealthy, and it was doubtful any of them would have been here if they had had any other choice.

Human guards stationed around the camp wore crimson and gray livery and carried loaded crossbows and short swords, yet their posture was relaxed. They stood near braziers to ward off the chill, chatting among themselves and watching the perimeter more than the laborers.

Near the center of the camp, an overseer sat at a sturdy wooden table. A line of Beastmen stood before him, exhaustion etched into their faces. As each laborer stepped up, they placed a collection of tokens on the table. The overseer counted them, made a meticulous entry in a ledger, and handed back a few slips of stamped parchment instead of coin.

These, Nick realized, were indentured laborers working off generational debt contracts. The Consortium provided their food, tools, and shelter, likely charging exorbitant prices for every necessity. The daily quotas were mathematically set just out of reach, ensuring the principal debt grew faster than wages could pay it down.

It was an administrative subjugation. Bloodless, legal, and utterly inescapable.

Yet, amid the grinding reality, people persisted.

A small merchant caravan had set up shop near the clearing's edge, their colorful wagons a stark contrast to the drab canvas of the laborers' tents. They traded coin with the Consortium guards and company scrip with the Beastmen. A group of young Beastmen children, too small for the logging teams, chased a carved wooden ball through the dust near the wagons. They laughed, their voices bright and untethered from their parents’ crushing debt.

An older bearkin sat on a stump near the tents, carefully stitching a torn shirt. She looked up as the children ran past, a soft, weary smile touching her muzzle.

Nick watched the scene with cold detachment. He knew similar practices had existed in Floria decades earlier. His father had systematically dismantled them, granting the Beastmen there actual citizenship and fair wages, earning House Crowley the local enclaves' trust. Nick had relied on that trust to prevent a rebellion and even leveraged it to turn them into full citizens.

That didn’t mean he could do much for these people, though. He could easily kill the guards and the overseer, but violence wouldn’t solve the problem. The debts would still sit in the Cinder Consortium's vaults in Siderea. The Crown would declare the Beastmen outlaws for breach of contract, and a regiment of Royal Guards would ride after them to restore order, leaving the children as collateral damage.

There was a chance they could reach the Green Ocean and melt into the wilds, but he doubted they would reach Alluria before they were taken, given their condition and the number of children and elders they had to bring along.

It was yet another sad realization that, for all his power, he couldn’t resolve this kind of injustice. At least not yet.

And we’re still in Duke Von Alluria’s lands. I imagine the Kingdom’s farthest reaches have even worse conditions for Beastmen.

To take his mind off his helplessness, Nick shifted his attention to the merchant wagons. Two guards stood near a cart selling cured meats and dried fruit. They handed the trader a few coins and accepted wrapped bundles.

"...three days late," the first guard complained, tearing off a piece of jerky with his teeth. "The supply convoy from Trelan should have been here by now. The men are getting restless with this salt pork.”

"They aren't coming through the northern path," the second guard replied, keeping his voice low. "I spoke with one of the outriders yesterday. The road is blocked.”

"Another mudslide?”

“They’re not sure,” the second guard corrected, a nervous edge in his voice. "The Consortium hired a Silver-rank adventuring company from Lorraine to clear it out. They found something digging into the bedrock.”

“And?"

“They ran.”

The two kept complaining and speculating, but Nick's attention was drawn to a catwoman slinking back from where she’d been listening in, a satisfied look on her face.

Huh.