Chapter 348: Ferryman’s Toll

I get to Veric before anyone in that hall can decide his arrival doesn’t count as living proof.

I throw an arm across his shoulders and pull him in, like we’ve been inseparable since childhood.

"Veric! Good thing you made it. You okay? Have you eaten?"

He goes still for a second.

Rhayne’s eyes widen slightly. Zhang Xi notices too. Both of them have spent enough time around us to know Veric and I are friends, but not that kind of friends.

Veric lets out a long, tired sigh.

"How many times would you have died already if I hadn’t shown up in time?"

"A few."

He pushes me off with a hand on my shoulder and turns his attention back to the room.

His posture changes in the same instant.

The irritated man who ran here from the station is gone. Garen Azurea’s son takes his place. He grew up knowing an entire room would notice the moment he decided to be serious, and it shows.

Veric looks at the big man first.

"Is there a problem with granting the request of—"

I tilt my head slightly toward Peanut.

Veric follows the gesture.

His eyes move over the chubby kid, come back to me for a beat, then return to Peanut.

Relief hits me. He gets it without me having to explain.

"Is there a problem with granting Sands’s request, Peanut Carter?"

The reaction is small, but it moves through the entire hall.

Peanut stiffens, because Veric knows his full name. That surprises me too.

From the quick look Veric gives me afterward, it’s clear he had no idea the kid was the leader of the Death Evaders.

’How does he know Peanut’s full name if he didn’t even know he was in charge?’

Peanut takes a few seconds before answering.

"It’ll be arranged."

He signals to someone behind him.

One of the guild members leaves through a side door without asking any questions. The silence that stays behind feels heavier now that nobody has any reason to doubt the Crest.

Veric steps closer to me.

"What exactly did I just order arranged?"

"Five Soul Tickets."

He turns his face slowly.

"Of course."

"We need them."

"Every dungeon needs them."

A minute later, the man comes back carrying a small cylindrical container of dark metal. Peanut takes it, unlocks the lid, and tips five pills into his palm.

They’re small, almost black, with faint blue lines running under the surface like thin veins.

I remember that smell.

Monster alchemy at the cellular level. The formula came out of a blueprint found during the first great expansion. Humans would never have worked out something like that on their own.

Peanut studies the five pills before he speaks.

"These were made recently, but the clock’s already running. Soul Tickets start degrading the moment production ends. You’ve got less than six hours before they lose stability."

Veric looks at me.

I don’t need to explain why that matters.

In the other life, Edgar, Fabian and I went in ahead of the reinforcements for exactly this reason. Our tickets were already dying while we waited. Every minute wasted outside a dungeon cuts into the time you get inside it, and the price sits in the Plate range. Five pills today are probably worth somewhere between two and five Plates.

Peanut walks over to Veric.

He ignores my existence on purpose.

He holds the pills out.

When Veric opens his hand, Peanut draws his own hand back before Veric can take them.

The whole hall is paying attention again.

"First."

Veric raises an eyebrow.

Peanut keeps looking at him.

"You can keep my name out of this."

Veric doesn’t answer right away.

"Which part?"

"My position here. I don’t want House Azurea spreading it around that Peanut Carter runs the Death Evaders. Not yet."

That makes sense.

The anonymity is part of his strength. A Rank B kid who doesn’t look like a leader can move around, negotiate and watch without carrying the political weight of the guild’s name.

Veric glances at me.

I shrug.

He goes back to Peanut.

"If we clear this dungeon and all of us return to Azure Prime safely, your position stays out of the official reports."

Peanut weighs the answer.

"Does that include him?"

He points at me.

"I’m not House Azurea," I say.

Veric sighs.

"He also won’t use my name to spread the information."

I smile.

Peanut clearly doesn’t trust the smile, but he decides to accept it.

This time he hands over the five pills.

Veric puts the container away.

"Done."

We leave shortly after.

The Death Evaders watch us all the way to the door. Some of them still look bothered, others simply curious, but nobody tries to stop us from walking out.

When we cross the main gate, I feel the tension in my shoulders drop a little.

Only a little.

We still have a dungeon.

And less than six hours.

I wait until the Death Evaders base is behind us before I look at Veric.

"How did you know about Carter?"

He lets out a small sigh.

"I pay attention, Sands. I ran a quick check before I left Azure Prime, because you usually get involved with big fish, and the Death Evaders are the biggest fish in this region. The Carter name came up attached to the guild’s internal structure, but nothing said who was actually running it."

Veric glances back toward the base.

"When you tipped your chin at that kid and made it obvious who mattered in that room, it was just a matter of putting the pieces together."

So he really didn’t know Peanut was the leader until he walked in there. He just had enough to recognize the piece once I set it in front of him.

"You pay attention," I mutter.

"Somebody has to make up for you."

We head for the abandoned canals.

The commercial part of Low-Beach falls behind fast. The buildings thin out until they disappear into the vegetation, replaced by old stone passages half swallowed by roots. Shallow water crosses stretches of the path, and in a few places we have to use ancient drainage structures as a walkway to avoid the deep mud.

The place is quiet.

At first I don’t think anything of it.

Fifteen minutes in, I start paying attention.

No attacks.

No roars nearby.

No territorial Beast showing up between the trees.

This is a region where the monsters start at Rank C. Even if we were lucky enough not to run into one directly, we should be finding signs.

Marks on trunks.

Tracks.

Kill remains.

Some distant release of OXI.

There’s nothing.

Veric notices I’m looking around too much.

"Still waiting for a maiden to come declare her love?"

"I’m waiting for something to try to eat us."

He scans the treeline.

"Don’t worry about it. The Death Evaders might be clearing the route. After that conversation about all of us coming back to Azure Prime alive, Peanut may have decided to make sure it happens."

It’s possible.

I look at the trees.

"Maybe."

Veric catches the tone.

"But you don’t think so. Do you?"

"If there were Rank C Divers hunting near here, I’d feel something. OXI residue, recently used abilities, animals running away from the direction of the fight. Even the smell of blood would be something."

I run my hand across a broad leaf as I walk.

It’s intact.

"There’s no sign of anything."

Veric pays closer attention after that.

We keep going.

A few minutes later, Rhayne slows down. She’s walking behind Veric and without calling out to him, she reaches out and takes hold of a small piece of the armor near his arm.

Veric stops and looks down.

Rhayne doesn’t lift her face.

He watches her for a few seconds, then puts a hand on top of her head.

"We’ll talk later."

Rhayne nods as she lets go of the armor.

Veric starts walking again.

I follow the two of them with my eyes.

’So there really is something going on there...’

’...I just hope it doesn’t start affecting how well they work inside the dungeon.’

The path begins to descend after that as I recognize the first structures before I see the entrance.

A broken drainage wall, two leaning stones forming a narrow opening, and a thick tree growing almost horizontally over the canal.

’I know this place.’

But I only know it three years older.

When we finally reach the drainage well where the Ferryman’s Toll should appear at low tide, I stop.

The entrance is there, but it looks wrong.

’Too clean.’

The circular opening in the stone has sharp, well-defined edges, nearly free of roots and moss. Water runs down the sides in thin threads, leaving the center completely accessible. The passage inside is dark, but even. Almost inviting.

The Ferryman’s Toll I remember looked old. Overtaken by vegetation, cracked in places, but this looks like a restored version.

’Or a younger one?’

I move a few steps closer.

Maybe that’s all it is.

I won’t know this dungeon for another three years. Long enough for roots to grow, for stone to crack, for the forest to start swallowing the entrance.

Veric stops next to me.

"Is this it?"

"It is."

Rhayne and Freya look at the opening.

Zhang Xi examines the water running down the stones.

Something still bothers me.

"Tickets."

Veric opens the container.

We each take a pill.

"Swallow them now. The clock’s running either way."

I put mine in my mouth.

The taste is bitter and metallic.

The pill dissolves fast, releasing a cold sensation that goes down my throat and spreads through my OXI channels. For a few seconds, I feel a thin layer of energy wrap around my body from the inside.

The others do the same.

I stow the empty container and crouch near the entrance, running my fingers across the stone.

There are no recent combat marks, no signs of forced passage—nothing to explain why this entire region is silent.

’Maybe I forgot some detail. Maybe the entrance really is like this right now.’

Then the scream comes in an extremely high pitch. So thin it hurts my teeth.

The sound crosses the forest and seems to cut the air in two directions at once. The water in the canals vibrates. An instant later, dozens of birds explode out of the canopy, all fleeing the same way.

The OXI pressure arrives right behind it as my body recognizes it before my head finishes the thought.

’Rank B.’

I look at the treeline.

Now I understand why we didn’t find a single Rank C Beast on the way here. They aren’t dead; they just ran.

Something heavy breaks wood in the distance.

There’s no time left to study the entrance.

"Move! Into the dungeon, now!"

Nobody asks anything.

Freya goes in first. Zhang Xi pulls Rhayne right behind her, and Veric crosses with me while another scream cuts through the forest, closer than the last one.

Behind us, something started tearing down the trees. I was the last to cross the threshold, just as a colossal shadow completely blocked the dungeon entrance.