Chapter 17: Four Hundred Thousand in Hand—Rank II Comes First

Chapter 17: He Sees It. The Prey Is Mine.

"Something underneath your road is eating it."

Marek’s voice carried back from the first relay.

Cassian’s head snapped up.

No cargo was moving. There was no test underway. Yet a short stretch of black-gold light dimmed before his eyes, as though a mouth hidden beneath the plate had bitten away a piece.

Only then did he make out Marek lying prone at the edge of the distant stone shoulder.

"It was connected a moment ago," Marek said. "Three sections are gone now. Something flat is clinging underneath. Its front looks like a ring-shaped mouth."

Cassian fixed his eyes on the gap.

His stomach tightened first.

Then, strangely, a surge of pleasure rose through him.

Yesterday, he would have needed to stand at the first relay himself to know what was happening beneath the plate. Today, he had seen nothing, yet danger had already been delivered to him through another pair of eyes.

On Marek’s first real watch, the observation fee had already paid for itself.

The satisfaction had barely risen when a thoroughly unreasonable irritation stabbed into it.

That was his road.

Why had Marek seen the danger first?

"Come back," Cassian said.

Marek checked the ground beneath his feet, then crossed the black-gold plate alone. Cassian did not approach the edge until Marek had landed on the near side.

"Did it see you?"

"I hope not."

Marek dusted the grit from his palms.

"I’m paid to watch the first relay. Whatever is under the plate isn’t included in my fee."

"You’ve finished your part."

Cassian did not ask him to stay.

Eyes that brought facts back were already valuable. Marek did not need to know how much Divine Essence those facts might be worth.

And he absolutely could not be allowed to see Divine Devourer.

Cassian escorted Marek out through the Chain Gate and pressed the residual chains back into place himself. Only when the Gate was completely closed did he tell Veyra about the circular mouth and the missing sections of black-gold line.

"Underdawn Carrion-Leech."

Her expression cooled.

"A scavenger from old battlefields. Exposed wounds in divinity draw them."

"Ashbone’s?"

"It proves only that this road is still bleeding," Veyra said. "It does not prove who released it, or that it obeys anyone."

Heat immediately mixed into the irritation in Cassian’s chest.

If an intact hostile divinity was hiding beneath the plate, driving it away would only stop the loss.

Keeping it whole would turn it into profit.

Cassian’s gaze shifted to the empty banner position behind her.

Veyra glanced at him as well.

"We’re not testing it."

Cassian’s jaw tightened.

The Eclipse War Banner only needed to rise for five heartbeats. Whether the leech pursued it or not, that would be cheaper than offering his blood at the stone edge.

He truly hated giving up such a convenient method.

Veyra clearly knew he was pricing those five heartbeats.

"That banner rises only by my hand," she said.

Cassian let his gaze rest on the empty position for one breath longer.

That was not an account he could balance this way.

"Then we won’t use it."

Cassian turned toward the Chain Gate.

If the banner could not be tested, his wound could.

As for whether the leech recognized living blood, it could answer that question itself.

Cassian stepped onto the black-gold plate alone.

Another bite was missing from the central direction line. The surface beneath his feet remained steady.

He gave himself only one rule.

He wanted the prey whole, but he was not greedy enough to jump into underground dawnlight for Divine Essence of unknown value. If the creature refused to come out from beneath the plate, he would cut off whatever he could, preserve the road, and return alive.

By the time he reached the first relay, his right shoulder had tightened again.

Cassian looked back at the black-gold plate.

His retreat remained open.

Only then did he crouch at the edge of the stone shoulder.

Underground dawnlight rose from the depths.

A pale, flattened shadow clung to the underside of the plate, its body so thin it was almost transparent. Each time it wriggled, the ring of gray-white teeth along its belly scraped a little more light from the black-gold direction line.

The entire leech was still above the dawnlight.

Whole—and still beyond his reach.

Cassian drew the bent broken-chain blade from his shoulder.

The strain of crossing the plate had already made his old wound bleed. He pressed the back of the blade against the soaked bandage. A drop of blood ran down the metal and gathered at the tip.

The scraping beneath the plate stopped.

The circular mouth slowly lifted. Layer upon layer of fine teeth turned precisely toward the blade’s tip.

Cassian smiled.

Good.

It recognized more expensive food.

He tightened his grip and took half a step back.

The pale front end crawled onto the stone shoulder.

War Instinct I stabbed into his mind.

In a shattered half-beat, the ring of teeth swallowed his left arm. The leech recoiled, dragging him over the stone edge with it.

Fear numbed his left arm before anything had even touched it.

Cassian did not pretend the fear was absent. He merely steadied the blade across his body and braced his heel against the stone.

The circular mouth snapped down on the blade.

The impact sent pain through the bones of his hand.

If he cut now, the front end would be severed and the road would be safe. The rest of the body would fall back into underground dawnlight.

Safe.

Cheap.

And incomplete.

Cassian glanced at the plate behind him, then at the stone edge.

His right knee was still bearing weight. His retreat had not changed. The pale length was being drawn out from beneath the plate bit by bit by the scent of blood, but the final section of its tail remained submerged in the dawnlight.

The risk was still within a price he could afford.

So he waited one more beat.

The tail slid another foot outward.

One more beat.

The Carrion-Leech sensed the blood moving away and its entire body violently contracted.

The last pale section finally cleared the underside of the plate and landed whole upon the stone of the first relay.

Cassian pulled back at once.

The strength of Godblood Physique I drove from his shoulders and back into both arms. The bent blade jammed across the circular mouth, and he used it as a bar to drag the whole leech away from the edge.

Its pale body whipped around his right shoulder.

The old wound tore open beneath a wet, freezing coil.

Agony burst through his chest, blackening his vision for an instant. The fear was real. So was the pain.

But when his sight returned, the first thing Cassian looked at was not his shoulder.

The leech’s tail was lashing toward the edge.

The complete prey he had just secured was a breath away from becoming incomplete again.

"Don’t go back."

Cassian stamped down on the tail.

A sharp pain stabbed through his knee. He did not stubbornly force himself upright. Instead, he lowered his center of gravity and pressed both his own weight and the prey’s back onto safe stone.

The circular mouth clamped tighter.

Cassian seized the short length of chain left on the back of the blade. He turned and smashed the long body coiled around his shoulder against the ground.

On the first impact, the circular mouth split.

On the second, the gray-white light inside the translucent body dissolved into chaos.

It still tried to crawl toward the edge.

With one foot pinning its tail, Cassian smashed the entire body back beneath him again and again.

He did not search for a core. He did not care about elegance.

As long as the mouth could still contract and the tail still tried to escape, he continued.

Until the gray-white light went out from head to tail.

Only Cassian’s ragged breathing remained on the stone shoulder.

He did not release his grip at once.

Nothing else moved beneath the plate. No severed length writhed beyond the stone edge.

Complete target.

Only after confirming that did Cassian unleash Divine Devourer.

Black-gold patterns pierced the entire pale corpse.

The Carrion-Leech rapidly collapsed. It left no fragment, no message, and no stray section escaped into underground dawnlight.

Scalding Divine Essence slammed through his arm and into his chest.

[Complete hostile divinity devoured.]

[Divine Essence: +3]

[Cassian: 4 available / 22 cumulative]

Cassian closed his eyes and let the long-missed, satisfying heat linger in his chest.

Four points.

Every one of them was his to spend as he chose.

The fee he had paid brought him the prey. His own hands turned the complete prey into three points of capital.

He had come out ahead.

Bracing one hand against the stone, Cassian let out a low laugh and made no move to allocate them.

A one-point balance made him uncomfortable.

Four points of capital pleased him.

Only after that satisfaction had truly settled did he tend to his right shoulder.

Cassian cut a strip from the inside of his coat, pressed it against the old wound, and bound it tight. The cloth was not clean and the wound had not healed, but at least he would not drip blood all the way back to the Chain Gate.

The eaten sections of the direction line did not return, but the remaining light had stopped going out. The black-gold plate still answered his palm mark and had gained no new function.

The road still lived.

When he returned to the Shrine, Veyra first saw the fresh strip of cloth around his shoulder. Her gaze rested there for one breath before moving to the banner position behind her, still empty.

"The banner did not rise," Cassian said.

"I saw."

"The road?"

"Still there."

Veyra did not ask what had happened to the leech. The lingering black-gold heat in Cassian’s palm had already answered her.

The Newcomer Divine Essence Ranking unfolded.

[Rank 1: Cassian Vale]

[Territory Tier: F]

[Cumulative Divine Essence: 22]

No message followed.

The outside world could see only twenty-two.

Only Cassian knew those three points had come from a Carrion-Leech whose beginning Marek had seen, but whose ending he had not.

When Cassian had held nineteen points, Rowan had already been willing to spend an entire crew’s fee to reserve a place beside valuable goods Cassian had not yet transported.

Now the number outsiders could appraise had risen again, while the real assets remained hidden behind the Gate.

Cassian looked toward the closed Chain Gate.

The seven-day term was not over. The stone shoulder beside the first relay had already proved that it could put danger from beneath the plate inside his decision window before it reached his road.

His next step was to truly take that stone shoulder—to establish it as the first fixed forward node outside the Gate.

Who could enter, who was responsible for watching, and who handled a discovered target first would no longer be decided anew each time.

Anything coming from the direction of the second gap would enter his sight—and his price—before it ever touched his road.