Weapons of Mass Destruction

Lyraen is a member of The Silent Veil. Just that guild’s name alone reeks of some kind of phantom invisibility assassins, cloak swirling, voice dropping to a whisper, eyes glowing in the dark for no practical reason, bullshit class. Their guild isn’t in the top 5, though it often shows up in the top 10.

It’s well known for an elite guild with relatively few members, the lowest of them holding an A rank. People tend to think of it as an elite mercenary guild. Hela apparently used to run with them before she bailed for some reason.

As for Lyraen, he’s placed among the top 3, maybe even the strongest. Nyssa, Lyraen, and Solae M’Karn, the guild master of Bloodline. I’ve asked about those three before. Out of those names, Nyssa has the most time left, Lyraen comes second, and Solae has the least. Not much different from Hela.

What’s interesting are the rankings.

Individual Rankings

1. Adrian (Ivory Tower)

2. Lyraen (The Silent Veil)

3. Nyssa Volare (Primordial Knights)

4. Solae M’Karn (Bloodline)

5. Zarith K’Traal (The Darkmoon Collective)

They reset once every thousand years, and the next reset isn’t far off either. It’ll probably happen sometime in the next 10 years. Yet the top 5 already have 3 currently active people. That fact hasn’t escaped me, and it sure as hell hasn’t escaped anyone else in Beyond either.

Some say it’s luck or coincidence, others say it’s always like this, with maniacs from the last rounds of the tutorials pushing hard before the thousand year reset. This generation has the highest number of risk takers and the most casualties, and the most clawing their way higher. Others claim it is yet another sign that big changes are coming to the outer world, with ancient monsters stirring into wakefulness and new talents rising to carve their mark into the system.

These individual rankings come from your performance in the tutorial, while exploration rankings are tied to Beyond performance. Mostly floor exploration, with some weight from quests and events.

Exploration Leaders

1. Adrian (6th Floor)

2. Voss (5th Floor)

3. Nyssa Volare (5th Floor)

4. Orion (5th Floor)

5. Zenith (5th Floor)

In this iteration of the top five, only Nyssa remains active. Rumors say she might soon overtake Voss, a beyonder from almost three hundred years ago, and might eventually come to match Adrian.

Sometimes I wonder what drives her to push like that. And sometimes I wonder how she turned a bastard like Morwag into the kind of person people call her hunting dog. I wonder about a lot of things. For example, why is Biscuit so cute, and why is his nose so pleasant to boop? Important things like that.

It’s already night again. Monsters are roaming outside the safe zones, and Weslin and I are serving as Morwag’s entertainment. After what he pulled today, there’s a mark on his forehead for everyone to see, a black tower, branded into his flesh by the tower´s master. A local Champion, or something close to it.

It works like one of those ankle bracelets for house arrest. And damn, how the most demonic demon to ever demon hates it. It’s probably costing him ten years of his life not to storm the black tower and tear it down. Every ten minutes. Or five. He only held back because someone reminded him of Nyssa’s words, or something along the lines of what she would think if he went against her. She sent him up here without much oversight, but this time, he figured she wouldn’t approve. So he gets to remain alive instead of being exiled into the night.

Now the only places he can walk are our branch, then straight out of the city through the streets. No other buildings. And I might have mentioned it already, but damn, how he fucking hates it.

While everyone else avoids him, I’m sitting in a chair right across from him. I’m already sure he’ll leave this outpost tomorrow, either to hunt Hela or to cause trouble in another one. I might have worried more before, but now I think I’m better prepared to face Hela.

“Can you tell me about Binding Primordial Energy?” I ask him.

“No.”

“What about the item Nyssa sent to the Doc?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me about Nyssa?”

“No.”

“Say no if you’re dumb.”

“No.” He answers with an aggressive smile crawling across his lips.

“Interesting.”

“Human with two hearts.”

“No.”

“Say no one more time, and I’ll tear off your arm.” He threatens.

Something about the way he says it irritates me suddenly and intensely, the kind of irritation that crawls under the skin. It is the way he tosses it out dismissively, not even bothering to look at me.

“You’ll have to come up with something more threatening than that,” I answer.

“Do you want me to? Unlike the lumoran triplets back then, you’re a member of the same guild as me. That earns you a certain level of goodwill.”

Once again, that tone.

“I know, it’s one of the pros of being kidnapped and forced to join the guild everyone’s been calling the Primordial Lunatics,” I say.

“They call us that?” Morwag asks in surprise, “I hadn’t heard that one.”

“What would you do if someone called it that in front of you?”

Morwag smiles widely. “That might be one of the reasons. But, human, who taught you how to use kinetic energy for movement?”

“Someone must have taught me, otherwise, there is no way such a lame human like me could use it that way?”

“Something like that.”

“Since you are an ass who never answers questions when I ask them, I’ll only tell you a little. It was a lurker, the others call him Whitey.”

“Ahhhh,” he says with an expression that clearly means he knows who I am talking about. He observes me for a while, then laughs shortly and shakes his head. “I see, I see.”

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“So damn mysterious. Not very demon-like.”

His expression hardens. “Who are you to decide what a true demon looks like, human? You may have a pair of strong hearts, you may have learned from a great one, you may even share some of our tendencies. But your judgment means nothing, because you’re still just a human.”

“And you’re wrong.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because if I prove myself stronger, then my opinion is right and yours is wrong. Even if I claim that proper demons wear pink dresses at all times.”

He starts cackling, clapping a few times. “Exactly. Until then, you are wrong and still just a human. Now, tell me, how did you learn anything from that demon?”

I look back at him as the mood shifts.

The quiet of the room grows louder, the kind of silence that screams in your ears, and I know what is going to follow. Yet still, I have already picked my answer.

For some reason, I do not feel like sharing this at all.

As a smile climbs across my face, I look at him and answer.

“No.”

Of course, I put up a fight. I try to hold him in place. I strengthen my body with kinetic energy and mana. I am even quick enough to create a barrier around my skull and launch a burst of kinetic force at him.

Yet he still moves like a tank, grabbing my arm and pulling it off exactly like he said he would.

Then, instead of destroying it, he drops it on the floor in front of me. It is something halfway between a polite gesture toward me as a guild member and a laugh at my expense. A gesture that says he did not destroy my arm, so I would have an easier time reconnecting it without having to regrow it or beg the healers for help.

But to me, it seems like he spat in my face, a clear provocation and challenge.

For a while, I stare at my arm in that mess of the room, nearly all of it evaporated in our short clash. Dozens of alarms are ringing out loudly somewhere in the background.

I reach down, pick up my arm, and stare at it for a short moment. It is a weirdly unnerving feeling, the weight of it, the way it balances in my hand. And, of course, it’s my left arm again.

Then I throw it at him.

Morwag catches it with a short cackle. He opens his mouth to say something, but the arm in his hand explodes, holding nearly all of my mana, which I had channeled there in that short moment I held it, forcing it to destabilize. Nothing too fancy or powerful, just the kind of simple, inefficient explosion I used to make on the early floors. A single droplet of blood falls from my nose from the strain.

The arm swells up, fingers twitch, and all that mana detonates.

Morwag’s binding energy goes into overdrive. He not only hardens his body but twists the explosion into pale blue mist that bursts through the room like a crashing wave.

For a heartbeat, the room settles into that pale glow, quiet as falling snow. The mist like particles curl between the shattered furniture, soft and almost beautiful.

Morwag stands in the center of it, shoulders loose, expression unreadable. He brushes a flake of ash off his chest like it was nothing at all.

Then another arm lands at his feet before he can say anything. My right one.

This time it contains, as some might say, a shitload of thermal energy from my Ignition Heart. I lifted the second seal entirely to fill it.

As the golden light starts seeping from it, ready to explode, I look at Morwag.

And I say, “I said NO, you bitch.”

Another explosion fills the room. This one becomes a golden mist that crashes outward like a wave, but like a shockwave, bouncing off the walls.

Bursts of kinetic energy rocket through my body, carrying me in front of the demon while two arms made of mana grow from my stumps. The air around us drains of color. Running on what I would call fumes, but still holding enough to be equal to the mana pool of an average attendee, I reach him.

He keeps his eyes locked on my mana arm as it reaches for his face. Just like before, his primordial energy rises to unbind my mana.

But not this time.

My mind, my skills, my passives, my domain, my focus, everything flares up to stop him, and even despite his attempts, my fist reaches him and crashes into his chin.

His face does not show pain or recoil, but his surprise is obvious.

This is my mana, and it will not be unbound so easily.

In the next moment, multiple people rush in, Weslin included. Some of them literally throw themselves at Morwag, in a rush to hold him down, though he just stands still, looking only at me. His deep red eyes glow, and his heart tells the truth. It thumps through the wreckage louder than the alarms and louder than the shouts of the people. He looks as if he hasn’t even noticed them swarming around him.

Then, as if nothing had happened, his heartbeat stops. In the next second, it returns to normal, and the mood around him shifts just as quickly.

Without saying another word, he leaves the room.

A few days pass, and looking back at that clash, I start to think Morwag left so the blame would fall on me. But as amusing as that would be, I believe he left before he had to fight me with everything he had.

Some would call it very undemon-like to walk away from a fight like that, but to me, it fits demons perfectly. Maybe not the younger ones who throw themselves into every brawl, desperate to show aggression at every chance. But from Morwag, it felt right. Demonic.

Even while he carries the same violent energy as the others, he can still bring it all under control if he chooses. After all, from his perspective, wouldn’t it be pathetic to let anything control you, even your own emotions?

Since that day, I have not seen him, only heard rumors from Weslin about his clashes with the Ethereal Clown Band. More mercenaries keep appearing, too, but even with their numbers, it’s not enough to stop him.

The same goes for the attacks on our outpost. Without a powerful demon heart in the area, they don’t amount to much.

The days roll into next week, and Hela disappears from the third floor. Rumors say she went to the fourth.

Morwag follows just a few hours later.

Multiple powerful A-ranks, especially from the top guilds, head down there as well, all of them acting on information I don’t have.

But it’s obvious. Something big is going to happen there, on the fourth floor, deeper inside the First Dungeon.

I am growing impatient to head there, and thankfully, the rest of the outpost construction goes well, up until only the last step remains.

This time, more people from the guild are with us to “claim” the outpost. It is not like we’ll actually own the safe zone after we ignite it, but as the ones who built it, we’ll get a cut of the taxes and a good bit of influence in how things are run. At least that’s how Talon explains it to me, simplifying things since he knows I’m not really all that interested. I’m sure it’s far more complicated than that, dealing with locals, finding someone strong enough to defend the place and enforce order like the master of the Black Tower, all that shit.

The ignition itself is… well, something. After all our work, the mining, the gathering, there’s a big circular platform, wide enough to hold a large building. This will be the core of the base, the same way the Black Tower is the core of, well, the Black Tower safe zone. The attendees really don’t seem to give a fuck about creative names.

In the center is a single hole in the ground shaped like a cube, and above it floats another cube, about the size of a package, large enough to hold a few thousand slabs of deer jerky all crammed in together. It’s extremely delicate, and made of a number of rare materials, and represents hundreds of hours of labor following some blueprint the Primordial Knights bought. It drifts down and slides into place, locking in perfectly, leaving no visible seams or gaps.

And that is it.

There’s no insane waves of mana, no thunderous eruption of noise, no control panels to light up one after another while someone in the background screams about the power levels being too high.

There are no sudden accidents turning out to be sabotage, or summonings of monsters for us to fight in a panic as half our members end up dying, no need for Weslin to bite off the monster’s fingers, and nothing forcing me to lose my left arm just to finish it off at the last second, as I break through my limits and level up, unwillingly, to 350, unlocking a body upgrade only to die in the very next moment.

None of that.

All in all, it’s a good day. At least I get a notification this time.

Congratulations on completing your Beyond floor quest!

You have received:

14-day Stay Token

100,000 shards

Activation stone for the portal leading to the 4th floor

So cheap. After I finish reading the notification, I glance over at Weslin, who already seems to know what I am thinking.

“Let’s head down to the fourth floor,” he says.