Chapter 331

When Grid logged in the next morning, they were waiting for him.

Luvian stood at the foot of the chief's house with the Deepvein Spear on his back. Behind him were the two white-haired elders, and Tuvar, and a dozen others, all in long formal robes embroidered with runes. They looked like people who had been awake all night preparing for something very important.

Grid, who had been hoping for breakfast, slowed down. "...What's going on?"

Luvian knelt. The others knelt behind him.

"Great Hero," Luvian said. "We have come to make a request. It is the oldest request of our people. We have waited a thousand years to make it."

Grid shifted his weight uneasily. Requests usually meant work for no money. "Okay. What is it?"

"When the foremother led us into the deep, we came by our own choice. The surface had turned its back on us, so we turned our backs on the surface. We built this city, and we sealed the gate, and we swore an oath on the foremother's crown that we would not leave this place until she herself gave us leave." His flat voice didn't change, but his hands had tightened on his knees. "Then she slept. And no one could give us leave. And the oath held us here as surely as any wall."

One of the elders spoke, her voice cracking with age. "Our grandparents' grandparents were born in this cavern, Great Hero. And they died in it. Not one of us has ever seen the sky."

"You carry the foremother's crown now," Luvian said. "In the eyes of the oath, your word is hers. We ask your permission to leave the deep. We ask you to lead us back to the surface."

Grid stared at them.

Then his brain caught up with what he had just been offered, and his eyes went very, very wide.

All of them, he thought. They want to come. All of them.

How many Dark Elves were in this city? Thousands. Thousands of people who had spent their whole lives fighting monsters a hundred levels above most players, mining stone that rivaled adamantium, and working in forges and workshops.

Reidan was growing faster than he could keep up with. The fields kept spreading. The walls needed building. Every week, Lauel brought him another list of things the territory needed, and at the top of every list was the same word. Workers. Reidan never had enough hands.

And these people weren't just hands.

Grid thought about the [Mental Clarity Potion] that had cleared his head in seconds. About the glass glinting in every workshop window. About the alchemy tower he had only just opened back home, still half empty, still waiting for alchemists good enough to fill it.

And about the Yellow Mithril Mine. The one Overgeared had taken in the Mysterious Forest, after they defeated the Doppelganger Randy. The mine that produced Fairy Dust, which raised the success rate of every alchemy attempt made with it.

A whole city of skilled alchemists. In his alchemy tower. With Fairy Dust.

And once his alchemy was strong enough, he could fold it into his blacksmithing. Alchemy that strengthened metal. Alchemy formulas that changed how ore behaved in the fire. Things Pagma had never done, layered on top of runes Pagma had never known.

Grid's hands had started to shake.

"Yes," he said. "Yes! Of course! Come! All of you! Bring everyone!"

Luvian looked up, startled by the speed of it.

"Bring your alchemists," Grid went on, his voice getting louder. "Bring your smiths! Bring your rune people! Bring the kids! Bring the grandparents! Reidan has room! Reidan will make room!"

The elders let out a sound that was half a sob and half a cry. Tuvar covered his face with both hands. Behind them, a murmur ran down the street, through the crowd that had gathered to watch, until it became a roar that echoed off the cavern walls.

Luvian stayed kneeling, very still, head bowed. But Grid saw his shoulders shake, just once.

"Thank you, Great Hero," he said quietly. "On behalf of every one of us."

Grid had no idea how the surface world felt about Dark Elves. He had never once wondered. He was thinking about workers and alchemists and Fairy Dust, and about Lauel's face when he showed up with all of them.

Then Luvian stood and gestured to the street, and Grid saw the carts.

Dozens of them. Every one piled high with black ingots of Demonic Spirit Ore, stretching all the way down the street and around the corner.

"The foremother's successor should not come to us empty-handed," Luvian said. "This is our people's offering. There is more, if you wish it. The veins beneath this city have never run dry."

Grid made a noise that was not entirely human.

"So," he said, once he could talk again. "How do we get out? Do we climb up the hole I fell down?"

"No," Luvian said, and led him to the center of the city.

In the middle of a wide circular plaza, carved into the black stone floor, was a single enormous rune, wider across than Grid's whole smithy back home. Its lines were dark and dead. Dust had settled in its grooves.

"This city does not lie beneath the surface world, Great Hero. Not truly. When the foremother brought us here, she cut this place away from the world. It is a fragment, folded away from everything else. The Hollow, the beasts, the gate, all of it lies inside the fold. That is why no one has ever found us." Luvian laid his palm beside the dead lines. "This is the foremother's Rune of Passage. It can bind this fragment beneath any place on the surface, so long as the one who wakes it holds her authority. The city itself will not be left behind. It will come with us. It will lie beneath whatever place you choose, and a door will open between the two. Our people will be able to come and go as they wish."

Grid nodded slowly, as though he had understood every word.

Then, out of habit, he looked down at the great rune and activated his appraisal.

[Legendary Rune Interpretation has been activated.]

[The rune's structure is beyond your current understanding. Interpretation has failed.]

He waited.

He tried again. And again. He focused harder each time, tracing the nearest lines with his eyes, trying to follow where they went. Every attempt ended the same way. The spiraling shape folded in on itself in ways his head simply refused to hold, and every time he thought he had found the thread of it, it slipped away.

"...It's not working," Grid muttered.

"The foremother made it," Luvian said simply. "No one since has understood it."

Grid gave up and straightened. "So it's a portal."

"It is not a portal. It is the binding of a severed fragment of the world to—"

"A portal," Grid said firmly. "Got it."

Luvian looked at him for a long moment, then inclined his head. "As you say, Great Hero."

There was very little to pack. The city was coming with them, every house and forge and workshop, exactly as it stood. So the preparations took only a single day, and they were less about packing than about saying goodbye to something. Old people sat in their doorways and looked at the dark cavern ceiling for a long time. Families walked through streets they had walked all their lives. Luvian went down alone to the foremother's shrine and came back carrying Arisha's Sword, wrapped in dark cloth, across his back.

The next morning, the whole city gathered in the plaza. Thousands of Dark Elves stood shoulder to shoulder in a vast ring around the dead rune. Nobody spoke.

Grid walked out into the middle of it with Noe on his shoulder. Randy was back in the pet inventory for now.

Luvian knelt at the rune's edge. "When you are ready, Great Hero, place your hand upon it and speak the name of the place you wish to bind us to." He looked up. "Where would you have us go?"