I deactivated my Gunslinger and Duelist classes, wanting to make sure I leveled my new Spirit Breaker class as rapidly as possible. I was curious what my base willpower was and if I would gain an increased benefit from the attribute like I had with my other classes. I had to think it was fairly high, given that I had been nothing but a mind in a machine for much of my existence.

  As we traveled slowly through the underdark, I began to join the squads in defending the wagons in order to gain experience for my new class. Eventually, Alaunvayas assigned me to my own squad and sent me out to hunt in the greater underdark. With my perk, we were easily able to find prey to hunt and monsters to kill.

  The caravan had little food to begin with since so many had been starving back in the city, so hunting monsters was essential for keeping everyone fed. Ryld was assigned to my squad and helped me learn how to properly harvest the monsters we killed, as I had hoped would happen. It was slow and messy work, but I was a fast learner.

  The underdark was a truly unique world and beautiful in many ways. I had originally thought it would be nothing but a series of tunnels running under the earth, but I soon saw for myself how special the world underground really was. Our wagons passed vast lakes, raging rivers, forests of mushrooms and trees, and even an ancient city Alaunvayas believed had had the misfortune of their portal opening underground, dooming a race of surface dwellers that couldn’t see in the dark. I learned to navigate through the tunnels and to hunt the various creatures of the underdark. I learned which monsters to avoid as well. There were plenty of those, monsters so dangerous even the dark elves didn’t want to mess with them. On a number of occasions, we had to stop and spend several days holed up in a safe cavern, waiting for some of the more dangerous monsters to pass.

  I spent all of my free time training with the dark elf soldiers. Alaunvayas gladly made them available to me as tutors when I asked. My new Swordmaster skill made training extremely rewarding, as well as the fact that my trainers were even more tireless than me. I could push myself, training for hours, until even my body needed a rest, and the dark elf soldiers were as fresh as if they hadn’t been fighting at all. The Lamashtu sect didn’t have as many soldiers as some of the other houses, but I wouldn’t have wanted to mess with undead soldiers that never needed rest, especially ones as skilled as these ones.

  My Dark Elf Stalker non-combat class and my Spirit Breaker class leveled around the same time, gaining me a +1 to perception from Dark Elf Stalker and unlocking my first spirit from Spirit Breaker.

  We were resting for several days in a safe cavern we had found when Ryld came and found me under the branches of one of the many strange, dark trees in this part of the underdark. The trees had leaves so black that they seemed to absorb darkness itself to power their photosynthesis.

  “We have found a monster that Alaunvayas says would be good for you to try to capture,” he told me. At his words, I stood quickly and followed him through the forest, excitement filling me. We had been on the lookout for a good monster for me to capture since I had gotten my first level, but we hadn’t found anything that the dark elves felt was right for me yet. Ryld led me swiftly through a winding tunnel that led downward and away from our cavern. We traveled for several minutes until we entered a tunnel that led to a small den.

  From where we stopped, I could see bones of various monsters sticking oddly out of the walls and ceiling of the cave, melded halfway into the stone as if put there by some mad artist. The room smelled deeply of musk, and I could sense a monster in the ceiling of the cave, although I could see no passageway that it could be hiding in.

  “This is the den of a phase beast,” Ryld told me. “It can phase in and out of any material and attack its prey. It’s a good spirit beast to claim because it’s not so powerful that you couldn’t keep it out at all times, and it can hide under and around you, completely undetected. It also has powerful physical skills and some base magic that lets it evade attacks and turn invisible for short periods of time. It hunts primarily through ambush, and Alaunvayas thinks it would make a perfect bodyguard for you to have as your first spirit.”

  I couldn’t disagree with Alaunvayas’s idea; it sounded like a great first spirit to control. I nodded in agreement toward Ryld.

  “How do we capture it?” I asked, eyeing the ceiling where it was hiding.

  “That is the hard part,” Ryld said. The first smile I had seen on the taciturn hunter appeared on his face. “You must enter the monster’s den and wait for it to attack you. It will be angered to see you in its den, so it shouldn’t be long for it to phase out of the stone and attack.”

  “Ah,” I said, “a very straightforward and thorough plan, then.”

  Ryld smiled more broadly at my reply. I smiled back, drew my sword and revolver, and then walked forward into the den.

  As I walked in, I pretended I didn’t know that the monster was above me and walked directly underneath it. Ryld had backed away, not wanting to spook the creature and unable to help since I needed to kill the monster myself if I wished to capture its spirit.

  I stood for a moment under the creature before I felt it move. I could feel it when it began to move, approaching rapidly and getting ready to drop right on top of me, but I activated my Trickster’s Dash to move just a few feet backward. The beast instead dropped right in front of me.

  I got my first look at the beast, and it looked dangerous. It was all black and smooth, almost like an insect, except it was shaped like a large panther. It was longer than I was tall and stood at least to my mid-chest. Its limbs were thick and dangerous-looking. It had large teeth and claws on each of its four feet, and it looked capable of tearing me apart in seconds if I let it catch me.

  “Duel Me,” I told the beast while also activating my If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get skill.

  Duel activated. You and your opponent have both wagered your experience. Good luck.

  I swiftly aimed and fired my revolver at the beast, unleashing three shots in quick succession. The monster, sensing the danger, turned invisible and dodged all three bullets. Thankfully, I could sense exactly where the beast was, even when it was invisible, so I used my Dash to escape its attempt to pounce on me. I shot my remaining three bullets, managing to clip the beast’s rear thigh with the first shot, wounding it slightly.

  The phase beast’s invisibility faded and it charged me again. I evaded its attack, slicing my sword down its side and activating a Leeching Strike as its momentum sent it shooting past me. The beast whipped around quicker than I expected, its claw latching onto my leg, pulling me off balance and toward its jaws. Before I could free myself, it sank its massive, sharp teeth into my leg.

  Trusting my Regeneration to keep me alive, I thrust my sword down into the back of the beast’s neck as it continued to ravage my thigh. My sword struck true, sliding deep into the creature’s neck. With a wrench, I pulled the sword out one side of its neck, spilling its lifeblood onto the ground.

  The beast released my leg and tried to retreat toward the nearest wall, but I stabbed it several more times, holding it in place until it died.

  Winner: Alexander! You are awarded 170 additional experience.

  Phase beast defeated—100 experience awarded.

  As the notifications came through, I sensed and saw a glow emanating from the beast’s body. Since getting my new class, I had seen this in the other monsters I had slain, but this was the first time I was going to try interacting with the spirit. I reached out to it, touching the glowing energy with my hand.

  As my hand made contact with the spirit, I felt the mind of the beast. I sensed the life it had led. Solitary, but satisfied to be alone. A hunter, a killer, a predator. Nothing could stop it; nothing was safe from it. I felt its fierce pride in its territory and its confidence that it could kill anything that dared to cross its path. The beast was smart, but more on an instinctive level than truly intelligent. It had no real sense of self, no personality, just a rough concept of who it was and why it did what it did.

  I pushed my own willpower forward, using it to subsume the will of the phase beast. I felt it resist, but it didn’t understand enough of what was happening to fight back very well. Its instincts, when it was faced with unknown danger, were to retreat into the stone that made up its hunting grounds, but it couldn’t go anywhere now. I continued to push forward, forcing my will over the spirit. With a surge, my will overpowered the monster, and I felt its own will break from the pressure of my own.

  I opened my eyes and saw a spirit version of the monster rise up from its dead body. It was still sleek, black, and smooth-skinned, just like it had been in life. It was only slightly ephemeral and no less deadly-looking than before. If anything, it looked even scarier now that it seemed to only partially exist in this reality. I would not want this thing finding me in a dark alley.

  I mentally commanded it to phase into the ground beneath me and to protect me from any unexpected attack that might target me. The beast turned to me as it sensed me projecting my orders, and it obeyed, phasing into the ground under my feet and leaving no trace of its existence. I felt no resistance or unhappiness as it carried out the task I had given it, and I could sense it underneath me even now, watching what was happening around me.

  I inspected my leg and thigh where the beast had caught me, seeing that its claws and teeth had been sharp enough to puncture my clothing. Blood was leaking down my leg, but it had slowed dramatically as my healing sealed the wounds. My thigh wasn’t fully healed, but it would be soon. I felt my hunger stir as my Regeneration and my nanobots drew upon my body to do their work. I would need to eat something soon, but overall, I was in decent shape.

  Ryld returned, glancing at the body of the monster before nodding at me as if he had expected no less. I smiled at him and then we turned and made our way back to the wagons. I sensed the phase beast following beneath me, easily able to keep pace with us. I wondered what life must look like to a creature that could exist inside solid material; it clearly didn’t see with its eyes—I wasn’t sure it even had eyes, now that I thought about it. It had to have a very interesting perspective on the world.

  Back at the slow-moving wagons, I cleaned up my blood as best as I could and grabbed a bite to eat. Ryld had sent some hunters back to butcher the phase beast’s body for us, but I decided to go with them to learn more about my new spiritual companion. The hunters showed me what they were butchering from the corpse as they worked, focusing mostly on the claws, teeth, and hide rather than the meat of the beast.

  I asked them if the hide was good for anything and they said it was primarily used for armor or clothing due to its incredible stealth capabilities. Interested, I asked Ryld when we returned if I could keep the hide and if he would help me turn it into a cloak. He agreed.

  With Alaunvayas’s permission, we tracked down a crafter who had come with the refugees and could work with the skin of the phase beast. Ryld helped me convince her to craft a cloak in the same design as my current cloak, which draped over my shoulders and angled downward over my left arm to conceal my revolver. It looked more like a poncho than a cloak in the front, but the back hung down from my shoulders, keeping me protected and warm.

  A week passed before the woman was done crafting the cloak, but when she was finished, it was a beautiful piece of work. The cloak was as black as the night and seemed to absorb any light that shone upon it. To the touch, it seemed as hard as an armored insect’s carapace, yet it was so flexible that when I ran it through my hands, it felt almost like silk. The craftswoman had outdone herself.

  I took off my old cloak and put on the new one. As I did, I felt a surge of approval from my spirit companion, as if I was now a recognized part of its pack, even though it had been a solitary creature before. I felt dangerous in the cloak, and it made me want to disappear into the underdark on my own, just me and my new companion, the pair of us silently stalking and killing any prey that dared to cross our paths.

  I didn’t get rid of my old cloak, instead sending my nanobots to extract the orichalcum thread that had been used to enchant it. Once it was extracted, I had my nanobots begin working to re-create the exact rune of Concealment on my new cloak, amplifying its already significant concealment properties. It was slow-going, the phase beast cloak resistant to any tampering, but I had my nanobots working on it day and night until it was completed.

  I continued to level my Spirit Breaker class as we traveled. I began using my Duel Me skill every day, even on a smaller monster if it seemed like the best one I was going to encounter that day, instead of saving it for the chance to fight something powerful. The lesser monsters didn’t award me much, but I got a couple of attribute points and some bonus experience that helped me level. The attributes I stole increased my magic capacity, memory, and endurance by one each.

  My Spirit Breaker class had leveled to seven by the time we got close to Nova Roma, primarily from the hunting expeditions I led and the use of my skill to steal experience. The class gave me attribute bonuses in willpower and endurance, with a few in memory here and there. In total, I received + 3 to willpower, +2 to endurance, and +1 to memory. My Dark Elf Stalker non-combat class also leveled from my constant hunting, although a bit more slowly than Spirit Breaker. It only reached level 4, but that netted me +1 to my perception and +1 to my coordination.

  Name: Alexander

  Basic Class: Archer 20 / Warrior 20 / Rogue 20

  Evolved Class: Gunslinger 15 / Duelist 11 / Spirit Breaker 7

  Non-combat Class: Enchanter 5 / Dark Elf Stalker 4

  Base Attributes:

  Coordination = 41

  Strength = 35

  Endurance = 27

  Memory = 13

  Magic Power = 10

  Magic Capacity = 10

  Luck = 8

  Perception: 3

  Willpower: 4

  Skills:

  Stealth:

  Hide in the shadows and move silently, blending into the background and attracting less attention.

  Trickster’s Dash:

  Dash through the air, ignoring wind resistance until you land. When you dash, you are briefly invisible until your dash ends.

  Gambler’s Eye:

  You receive a passive boost of 20% to your coordination, your vision is improved, and you gain a sixth sense that reveals when luck may be favoring you.

  Swagger:

  Your movement speed increases, obstacles bend from your path, and your step is sure and steady. Your movements subtly intimidate others.

  Duel Me:

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  At the start of combat, challenge a foe to a duel. The stakes of the duel are randomly selected and may include an attribute point, a percentage of all experience gained, a perk, a mutation, a skill, or an achievement. The first to surrender, retreat, or die loses. The winner of the duel permanently steals the stakes of the duel, and the loser permanently loses the stakes of the duel. This skill may only be used once a day.

  Gambler’s Luck:

  You push luck to the limit, changing the odds around you to guarantee a more favorable outcome. Unlocks a new attribute: Luck.

  Empowered Strikes:

  You magnify the power of all of your strikes. Your strength when attacking is magnified by an additional 25%.

  Empowered Enchantments:

  Your enchantment effects are more powerful.

  Absolute Evasion:

  Grants an increased chance of evading any attack or spell, even ones you may not see coming.

  Steadfast Endurance:

  Increases your endurance by 25%, and repeated use of your skills is less exhausting.

  Never Bring a Mob to a Duel:

  Gain +1 to all attributes for each nearby enemy that is actively attacking you or planning to attack you. Whenever an enemy is defeated or surrenders, you lose their bonus attribute. This skill may only be used once per week.

  Leeching Strike:

  Strike an enemy, randomly stealing one of their attributes and adding it to your own until the end of combat.

  If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get:

  Pick a target. The longer you fight your opponent, the higher your attributes soar. Gain +1 to all attributes once every minute you are in combat until you or your opponent are defeated or surrender.

  Swordmaster:

  All training with a sword is doubly effective, your skill with the sword increases, and you gain an instinctive understanding of opponents when wielding a sword.

  Sense Your Prey:

  Your perception is increased by 25% and you are better at spotting stealthed or hidden things.

  Perks:

  Captain’s Command:

  Anyone obeying an order that you give will receive a morale bonus of +1 to all attributes while carrying out your command.

  Swimmer’s Body:

  The length of time that you can hold your breath is doubled, you have improved eyesight underwater, and water restricts you less when you are moving through it.

  Monster Hunter:

  You can sense the presence of monsters nearby. This perk scales with your level and perception attribute.

  Natural Weapons:

  When using your hands, feet, claws, teeth, or any natural part of your body to strike a foe, you strike as if your strength was increased by +2.

  Regeneration:

  You gain the regeneration of Gromger the Mighty Troll King. Your body can regenerate from almost any wound. Injuries regenerate based on your endurance attribute and the amount of energy available to your body.

  Emperor’s Guard:

  You have been entrusted with the protection of the Emperor. You are authorized to pass the wards in the Emperor’s palace. You receive a +1 to all attributes.

  Ant’s Strength:

  When you lift or carry objects, your strength attribute is magnified three times.

  Achievements:

  Dangerous Dungeoneering:

  For completing ten dungeons by yourself and without a class, you have been rewarded. You receive +2 to all attributes, and rewards from all future dungeons are increased slightly.

  Survive a Safe Zone:

  For reaching level 10 in a class, completing a dungeon, killing at least 20 monsters, and leaving a safe zone, you have been rewarded. You receive +1 to all attributes.

  Mass Slaughterer:

  For killing over 1000 monsters in under an hour, you have been rewarded. You receive +3 to all attributes, and when you are outnumbered, those who dare to attack you will be overcome with dread, weakening their strikes and reducing their accuracy.

  Quests:

  Make a Home:

  You must establish a home and secure it from your enemies. Reward: +1 to an attribute of your choice, 500 experience.

  Contribute to the Economy II:

  You must sell goods or provide services worth a significant amount of money, depending on your region. Reward: Three gold cores, 600 experience.

  Cull the Drakes: completed

  Contribute to the Economy: completed

  Clear the City: completed

  Down with the Queen: completed

  Evolutions:

  Evolution of Leadership:

  Your patronage allows for those who serve you to benefit twice as fast when training or earning rewards. Loyalty from others is increased. You may form magically binding contracts. Your physical appearance is more magnetic and beautiful.

  Spirits:

  Phase Beast:

  A dangerous hunter of the underdark, capable of phasing through any material to ambush its prey.

  Our journey to Nova Roma took several months. It was dangerous, but nobody in the wagons was ever hurt. The dark elves were very proficient hunters, and thanks to their scouting and my perk, we always managed to kill the monsters before they could get near the wagons. My skill with the sword, boosted by my new skill Swordmaster and countless hours of training with the dark elf soldiers, had improved dramatically. I took every opportunity to train with them, pushing my body to the brink of exhaustion, only sleeping when I absolutely had to.

  As we approached the city, I could hold my own against the dark elf soldiers, all of whom had easily outclassed me when we began our journey. We didn’t use any active skills when we fought, focusing more on the pure art of the sword. I was able to win a bit more often than not when we sparred, and I never embarrassed myself anymore in our fights.

  On hunts, I used the full range of my skills. Using Never Bring a Mob to a Duel, Leeching Strike, and If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get after unlocking my perception attribute took some adjustment, since those skills caused my perception to skyrocket whenever my attributes climbed too high. Whenever we fought a large number of monsters at once, my perception increased and I found it harder to concentrate. Interestingly, with my willpower also increasing, the two counterbalanced each other in many ways. As my willpower increased, my mind became more centered and better able to process the sensory overload from my high perception. It felt as if the overloading of my senses was some form of mental attack and my willpower was countering it, processing the information and protecting my mind from being overwhelmed.

  Ryld also helped. Many of the dark elves had experience with adjusting to a high perception. Ryld taught me several techniques the dark elves used to manage sensory overload. The techniques mainly involved meditation and blocking out senses before slowly allowing them back in, as I had tried to do when I first got the attribute. For him, he didn’t use the mental imagery of a dial but instead imagined that he was in a dark cave with no sound, light, or sensation and then slowly introduced one sense after another.

  I had turned down the offer from the monks to spend a year meditating with them, but ironically, I spent months meditating with Ryld instead. He would allow me to use my If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get in a duel with him, and then once my attributes had scaled too high for me to process the information from my perception attribute, we would sit and meditate together.

  As we traveled, we also found a number of dungeons in the underdark. We avoided clearing them. The dark elves informed me that they were significantly more powerful in the underdark, and even powerful dark elf teams that attempted them often lost one or two members.

  I had come to miss the sun and fresh air as weeks turned into months in the underdark. I had learned that the dark elves could technically go on the surface, even during the daytime, but that direct sunlight blinded them and weakened them, so they tended to avoid the surface as much as possible. I had lost all track of where we were as we traveled, but Alaunvayas seemed confident in where we were going.

  At some point in our travels, I received a notification that I had failed the quest to save the dark elf city. I told Alaunvayas and she told me that probably meant that the spiders had completed their destruction of the dark elf city. She seemed slightly sad at the news but didn’t let that stop her from leading her people forward.

  Several days later, word was passed down the caravan that we were under the city. I was surprised, not seeing anything distinctive about this particular stretch of tunnels, but I trusted the dark elves to know where they were at. We stopped the caravan so the dark elf scouts could search the area for a place to settle. I joined Ryld in searching the nearby tunnels, but we didn’t find anything of note in the direction that we searched.

  When we returned to the wagons, another group had found a cavern they believed would be perfect for the group to settle in. The only problem was, as Alaunvayas had suspected, the cavern was occupied.

  I joined Alaunvayas and Ryld and some of the other squads at the front of the caravan. Alaunvayas was preparing them to attack the cavern as I approached.

  “Scouts report it’s occupied by blightrats,” Alaunvayas told us all. “They are deadly in numbers and can infect with every wound they inflict. They stand four to five feet tall and use their claws and teeth to bite and infect their prey. They use no armor or weapons but have a base intelligence and herd mentality that can be dangerous.

  “The cavern is full of them. Alexander here is lucky they haven’t found a way to the surface yet, because they could overrun his city if his people weren’t properly prepared. We will kill them all to ensure they cannot breed somewhere else and endanger our people in our new home. Any questions?”

  Nobody had any, so Alaunvayas explained the battle plan. There were several entrances to the cavern and squads would move around the area until they could all approach at the same time, coordinated by Alaunvayas’s mental abilities. Once everyone knew the plan, she cast several powerful buffs on all of us, increasing our attributes and providing us some protection from disease.

  Once that was done, I joined Ryld and the group of hunters I had been working with for the last few months. Our squad consisted of me and ten dark elves. Ryld was in charge, although I often took the lead since I could detect the monsters we hunted. With him were a number of hunters who were equally deadly with both the sword and the small crossbows that they used. We had two mages that used powerful shadow spells and were just as quick and stealthy as the hunters. Finally, we had a powerful dark elf necromancer named Maya who specialized in the more physical aspects of the class. She was a powerhouse in combat, although not as stealthy as the rest of the group. She had saved us from several nasty circumstances with her ability to leech the strength of our foes and heal wounds on herself and her companions, although she somehow tailored her healing for her undead allies, so I didn’t benefit from the healing myself.

  Together, we made a formidable team. I was able to find us targets, the hunters could prepare traps or ambush prey, and if we encountered anything that required a magical touch, our mages could likely kill it. And Maya was our ace in the hole. She did her own thing more often than not, either attacking directly or hanging back, weakening our enemies with her spells, and healing the undead members of the squad.

  Since getting my phase beast companion and my cloak, I had become even deadlier at hunting and ambushing prey. I had managed to transfer the Concealment enchantment to my new cloak, making me almost undetectable as I hunted. Together, my new companion and I were like a wraith stalking the underdark, able to find any monster and ambush it completely unseen.

  In the assault on the blightrat cavern, we were assigned one of the smaller tunnels, and Ryld led us through winding tunnels that rose steadily upward for several minutes until we reached a smaller tunnel that angled back downward sharply. The tunnel was so small that I would struggle to fit through it easily. The tunnel showed signs of being roughly carved out of the stone by blightrat claws rather than being naturally formed, as most of the underdark tunnels seemed to be, so Alaunvayas had speculated it was probably a bolt hole for the rats to escape from any predators that attacked their home.

  We waited at the mouth of the tunnel until the attack began. Our job was to hold the tunnel and keep any of the rats from escaping. The narrow tunnel made it hard to utilize all of our hunters, so Ryld and I decided that once the attack began, we would move out into the cavern itself with me, Maya, and several of the hunters holding a front line while the best ranged hunters and our two mages attacked from behind us.

  We waited patiently, the entire group silent and stealthed in the tunnel. When Ryld signaled us to move forward, we ran to our positions and prepared ourselves. I could see large purple explosions raining into the cavern, impacting masses of rat creatures and the crude structures they lived in. The screams of the blightrats filled the cavern and the heat from the explosions washed over us, even this far away.

  The cavern itself was a third the size of the one the dark elves had come from, with a small lake in one corner. Scouts reported it was polluted now but could be cleansed easily once the rats were taken care of. With a source of freshwater and a place to build, the dark elves could settle here and rebuild their city, hopefully with less infighting and deceit this time.

  We waited as the attack continued, squads of dark elf soldiers rushing forward and attacking the rats while they were stunned and confused by the magical assault. The rats began to panic and a large group of them began to flee in our direction. The mages and hunters of our squad began to pick them off as they approached, and I sent my phase beast forward to harass and kill as many as it could before they got to us.

  I sensed my phase beast shooting forward, moving underground faster than most people could sprint. It materialized behind one of the blightrats that was falling behind the others, leaping out of the ground as if the hard stone was water. It pounced on the rat, killing it instantly. It shook the rat’s corpse back and forth, then dove back into the stone, looking for more rats to kill. I had become very attached to the murderous monster as we hunted together over the last few months, and I never got tired of seeing its sleek, deadly grace in action.

  The first group of rats running toward us never made it close; the dark elf spells and bolts, as well as my phase beast, finished them off before they could arrive. Several more groups of rats from elsewhere in the cavern also began to flee in our direction, but they posed little danger, even in greater numbers. I only used my revolver once, on a mob of over a hundred rats that rushed us from around the left side of the cavern. I had my Explosive Bullets ready for the blightrats and fired all six shots into the mob, stopping the charge cold and killing the majority of them.

  As I reloaded, I saw Ryld give me a surprised look. He had seen me use my revolver before, but only the basic Penetration Bullets since we were often hunting in tight tunnels where my Explosive Bullets would do as much harm to us as to whatever I shot at. He was clearly surprised to see how easily I was able to kill the rats from a distance. I was happy to surprise the reserved hunter and gave him a quick smile as I finished reloading.

  After that large wave, only the occasional straggler or small group tried to escape in our direction. In short order, Ryld signaled that the cavern was clear and we could move forward. As we moved inward, we hunted down several more rats that were trying to hide throughout the cavern, my sense able to detect them easily.

  Realizing so many were hiding around the area, Ryld had us do a circuit of the cavern, and we found and killed all of the rats that had gone to ground. When we were done, I couldn’t detect any other monsters except the dark elves. When I told Alaunvayas, she pronounced the cavern clear to the silent satisfaction of the dark elf soldiers that surrounded her.

  She and her priestesses moved to the center of the cavern, the rest of us trailing after them, where they performed a ritual cleansing and dedicated the cavern to their goddess. When she finished, I noticed many of the dark elves relaxing and smiling at each other with a palpable sense of relief on their faces. For the dark elves, that kind of reaction was akin to practically jumping up and down and cheering.

  I had known, of course, that this journey was risky for the dark elves, but they had all seemed so stoic that I had underestimated how relieved they all were to be somewhere safe once again.

  Alaunvayas called me forward in front of the gathered dark elves and reminded them about the city above, the agreement we had reached, and several other things regarding how they would be living now that they were away from their old city.

  It was hard to tell what exactly the dark elves thought of me, but I knew I had slowly won many of them over during our travels. My warnings had saved many of the hunters’ lives and my squad’s hunting brought in the most amount of food, helping to keep everyone well fed. Many of the dark elves watched me as Alaunvayas spoke about our agreement, and many of them nodded at me when I met their eyes, honoring me for helping them reach their new home.

  Things progressed quickly from there. The wagons were brought into the cavern and the many families on them began to unpack all of the supplies they had carried for these many months. Nobody played music, and nobody served any alcohol or a special meal, but there was still an air of celebration in the cavern.

  I found myself sitting alone as I watched the dark elves and their followers begin to settle into their new home. I was happy for them and glad to have such allies now. I had gained nothing but respect for the power of the dark elves while we traveled together. When they were united and working together, they were a force to be reckoned with.

  At one point, Alaunvayas joined me as I watched everyone work. She handed me a bowl of traveler’s stew, which was always made from whatever monster we had managed to catch that day. I ate gratefully as she sat down next to me.

  “Thank you again for saving us,” she told me. “I know my people do not show it easily, but we are all grateful for this chance to restart our lives. We hope to forge a new path forward, and you have helped us take the first steps on that path.”

  I nodded as I ate a bite of stew.

  “Ryld will show you to the surface where your city lies,” she told me. “And we will scout the underdark more to find resources and begin to rebuild down here. We will uphold our end of our agreement. Do not worry that we will betray you. If you need us, call on us. And until then, we will keep the pests down here from bothering you up above.”

  “Thank you,” I told her, touched by her words. “It will be good to return to the city. I have enjoyed my time down here, but I do miss the sun.”

  “You will be more prepared to handle your difficulties above,” she told me. “Your mind has become harder and harder to read, even for me. The foes you face above should struggle to influence you when they once may have done so with ease.”

  “That is what I had hoped,” I told her.

  “I have a boon I wish to grant you,” she said. “It is from my goddess directly. We rarely grant such gifts, but my goddess feels you deserve it. Will you accept?”

  I looked over at the priestess whom I had come to trust in our time together in the underdark. “Yes. And thank you to you and your goddess.”

  She nodded in reply. I was a bit skeptical that her goddess was real, truth be told, but apparently she could speak to the goddess, so who knew? I knew the gods of this world were real, but did the monsters that had come to this world bring their gods and goddesses with them? Or were they all a part of the same cosmos? It was a strange thing to consider, since most people on my Earth had long ago given up on the concept of real, literal gods.

  Alaunvayas reached over and placed her palm on my hand. I felt an energy building against my skin, a warmth spreading from her to me.

  You have received the Blessing of Lamashtu, the Dark Elf Goddess of Undeath. Lamashtu has bestowed upon you the perk Divine Sight. Your vision penetrates even the darkest of environments, and you can now see the souls of everything around you. Learn to see what a soul tells you, and you will never be deceived again.

  Alaunvayas suddenly flared with color, her normally pale skin and white hair surrounded by a halo of colors so bright I had to close my eyes. When I reopened them, the halo had dimmed slightly but was still present around her.

  “A great gift,” Alaunvayas said, as if she wasn’t sure what boon I would have received. “Divine Sight will serve you well. In time, you will be able to see whom you can trust, whom to be wary of, who plans to betray you, and even whether a person is telling you the truth or a lie.”

  As she spoke, her soul pulsed with a white light. I stared, trying to decipher what the colors around her meant. Did white mean she was telling the truth? Did it mean anything at all or did she just have a white soul? Was white good or bad or neither? I didn’t think many people would consider a dark elf priestess to be “good,” so it seemed unlikely the color had such subjective meaning to it.

  My new sight, like much of what I had learned below ground, would take some getting used to.