Chapter 295: S-Rank Dungeon (1)

I told them thousands of times not to come out

, Ketal thought.

He clicked his tongue at the memory. They were not the sort who listened well just because one told them to.

Back then, he had not worried. He had believed the beings of the White Snowfield could not leave without him. He had treated that as a law. If he alone could cross the threshold, then so long as he chose not to bring anyone else, the matter was settled.

However, the seal had weakened. Whitie had come Outside, and the Ugly Rat had followed. If those two could force the gap, there was no principle left that would keep the other barbarians from doing the same.

He had put in a safety catch all the same, a minimal one. It was the only thing that had calmed their clamor.

They had begged, some of them with wine-bright eyes and some with blood on their faces, to let them follow. They had shouted that they would carry his baggage and break his road and die in his name. They had promised never to lag. When even breaking their noses did not work, Ketal had given them one sentence that cut through the noise.

“Do not follow me. That is an order from your chieftain. If you absolutely must come after me, then pass the trial I set.”

Silence had fallen as if he had drawn a blade. The mood had turned at once. Instead of chasing his heels, they had thrown their fists into the air and roared. They had treated it as a chance, a path that let them stand at his side without shame. If they could clear his trial, they could stand beside him in daylight.

Even if they came, it would only be after passing that trial. He had not made it kind. He had shaped it from work he himself could not perform quickly. Even if every member of the tribe combined their strength and never slept, the task would still ask centuries of them. That, more than any command, should have kept them home for a long time. He had thought he could stop thinking about it for a while.

He had a thin, stale taste of doubt anyway. It sat on the back of his tongue, but he ignored it. He could not fight on every front at once. He needed to prepare for what was in front of him..

He packed to leave the North. He owned little and needed less. He had come with only his body, and he left with only what he had picked up by necessity. His preparations did not take long. On the following morning, when the light cut cleanly across the sea and the celebration smoke had thinned, Darkul and Bayern saw him off.

“You are going,” Darkul said.

“I am,” Ketal answered. “What will you do?”

“I will remain,” Darkul said. “I am finally seeing results.”

Darkul had fought on the front lines with the barbarians. They had seen him cut and hold. They had seen him take wounds and continue. Strength spoke a language they respected, and Darkul had spoken it until they nodded back. They had begun to accept him not only as a blade, but as a man.

“They ask if joining my church will make them as strong as I am,” Darkul said, half-amused. “It is not the kind of missionary I imagined, but it will do. It is more than good enough.”

He would scatter the value of the God of the Sword across the North like grain and let it take root in time. He smiled, satisfied for once instead of grim.

“Thank you, Ketal,” he added, and some of the lightness left his voice. “Without you, I would have kept suffering under these damned barbarians forever.”

𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

“You did the work,” Ketal said. “Be proud of yourself.”

He smiled back, small and genuine. Bayern came forward next. His expression said what his words did not.

“I would like it if you stayed a while longer,” he admitted.

Ketal’s power had pressed itself into the barbarians’ memory. Men who did not bow to anyone looked at him and chose to listen anyway. After Bayern, there were many who would follow Ketal’s word without arguing. The North was wide and hard to govern. If Ketal stayed, everything from law to logistics would become simpler at once.

Even when they were not measuring patrol routes and ration stores, Bayern wanted him near. Ketal was the only barbarian who spoke as he did. It was a rare comfort to converse with someone who could put his thought into clean lines. As a king and as a man, Bayern wanted him in reach.

“I would like it as well,” Ketal said.

It was true. Bayern was a barbarian with sense. He carried his responsibilities without dramatics. They had more in common than most. Ketal would have enjoyed talking longer, and a little more freely, with a king who tried to be precise.

However, there was work to do.

“I need to prepare,” he said. “I cannot remain in the North any longer.”

“Then that is that.”

Bayern let the regret sit for a breath and then let it go. Keeping a man like Ketal tied to the North would injure the continent. Power that strong had to move where it was needed. He narrowed his eyes a fraction.

“The Ugly Rat lives, I assume,” Bayern said.

Ketal had said the creature would never set foot here again. Those were words with a double edge. If it could not come here again, then it was elsewhere and breathing.

Ketal dipped his chin once. Bayern exhaled through his nose.

“Even you could not kill it.”

“You can say that,” Ketal said.

That was not quite true, but it was close enough for the conversation. Ketal did not feel the need to split hairs. Bayern’s next question was the one that mattered.

“A monster on the Ugly Rat’s level,” he said, “the White Bear. It could come here too, could it not?”

“It could,” Ketal said. “It was attached to its territory. The reason for that attachment is gone.”

The reason was the cub. To protect and keep its young, the White Bear had clung to its land with a kind of mania. It had killed and killed to keep the circle tight.

However, the Ugly Rat had corrupted the cub. No one knew how. It had stained and broken what the White Bear had tried to protect. The reason for staying had vanished. No one could say with certainty that it would not leave now.

“I was weak,” Bayern said.

He had lost completely to the rat. If Ketal had not come, he would have died there. The rat would have taken his body and used it as scaffolding for filth. Even if he faced the White Bear as he was, he saw no clear line to victory.

“I will become stronger,” he said, and the words landed like iron. “Strong enough that when I meet the rat again, and when I meet the bear as it was that day, I do not lose. Stronger than that.”

Resolve filled his eyes to the lip.

“I support you,” Ketal said.

“Thank you,” Bayern replied. “We have received much from you. I have as well.”

Bayern bowed, formal and precise. Darkul, watching from the side, drew in a sharp breath despite himself.

Barbarians did not bow to anyone. They might acknowledge someone stronger, clap backs, grip forearms, and call a man brother or chief. But they did not lower themselves, and Bayern, a king among them, would do so least of all.

Despite their tradition, Bayern bowed to Ketal with every courtesy due a guest who had saved a land.

“Even if the world casts you out and calls you enemy,” he said, voice steady, “I, and the North, will be your allies forever. If you lose your way, come here. I will welcome you.”

“Thank you,” Ketal said. He smiled, and the smile reached his eyes. “Then this is farewell.”

“Until next time,” Bayern said.

Ketal left the North behind them.

Meeting the Ugly Rat again had been foul, but other than that, it had been more pleasant than he expected. Everything around that fight had scraped the nerves raw, but the time in the North had surprised him. He had shaken off some of the tightness that the word barbarian still put in his chest. He had sat with a king and talked about real things without wanting to leave the room. It had been better than his first guess.

However, it was time to go.

“Where will you go now?” the Holy Sword asked him.

“Prepare,” Ketal said. “I need to make preparations.”

“By preparations, do you mean going into the White Snowfield?” it asked him, hesitant. “Do you intend to check the monsters inside?”

The Holy Sword had kept still during the fight with the rat so it would not disturb him. It had not been because it felt calm. It had been afraid. The thing they had fought had been terrible and alien, and it had been a peer of gods. Feeling its pressure had made the spirit within the blade tremble. If the Holy Sword had had legs, it would have used them to run.

There were many such monsters within the White Snowfield. Part of it wanted to whine and beg like a child not to go in there.

“I will not enter the White Snowfield,” Ketal said.

“That is a relief,” the sword said, and he could hear the release in its voice.

“Then what are these preparations?” the sword asked him a moment later. “Do they have to do with the rat’s severed forepaw you kept?”

He had taken the forepaw after the fight. It was ugly even at a glance. It was also a thing with uses. It lay now inside Ketal’s subspace pouch, cold and still.

“I will probably find a use for it,” Ketal said.

He had Whitie’s hide as well. The two together would make a tool worth the trouble. Yet, none of that was his first goal.

“My strength is not complete,” he said.

He still could not draw Myst freely. If his Myst reserve reached the Transcendent level, he would be able to handle it to some degree. For now, the Myst within him stood like water within a cup. The surface trembled near the brim, but it did not spill.

He lacked that one drop. He intended to move to retrieve that drop. He already knew where to go.

“The distance is long,” he said. “We will go fast.”

He pushed off the ground as he rose along a clean arc and took the sky.

***

The Mercenary Guild’s headquarters stood on a mountain that had no owner. It crowned a peak at a border where nations argued over lines on maps and patrols circled because they were told to, not because they ever met an enemy. The first Guildmaster had chosen it for the emptiness as much as for the height. The Mercenary Guild had to belong to no one.

It was not an ordinary mountain. They had hollowed and cut and set stone to the work they wanted. They had tucked batteries of weapons into the slopes and run woven spells through the passes. They had drawn wards over the whole like blankets layered in winter. Mercenaries came and went by the hundreds, with contracts in their sleeves and dirt on their boots. With the mountain’s strength and their own, no one had ever taken the place.

However, now it was a battlefield. Demons and their beasts were attacking.

The mountain shook. Men shouted.

“Hold the line!”

“Mages, now!”

They threw up walls and sheets of fire and lances of ice. They drew circles and pushed essence through patterns they had practiced until their fingers bled. However, they were outnumbered. The mountain gave them angles and cover and killing grounds. With those, they held, but only barely. They gave ground slowly.

“Damn it,” the Guildmaster said. He stood in the command room at the summit and ground his teeth. “Damn these demons.”

A week ago, the ground near the mountain had opened like a wound. From that fissure, monsters and demons had poured through and clawed at the Guild’s throat.

The strike had come from nowhere. They had missed the signs and paid for their blindness in blood. For seven days they held, but they were at their limit. The wounded piled up, and their supplies dwindled to nothing. They tried to send calls for help along every road they knew, but someone had cut those roads.

The enemy had set in to eat them bite by bite. The mountain shuddered and groaned. Earth fell away from places that had stood since snow first fell on them. The base of the peak thinned as if a giant had taken a knife to it and whittled.

“Why do they keep shaving the base?” the Guildmaster snapped. “It is ugly!”

At some point, the mountain had become a narrow pillar instead of a pyramid. A fairy with a white face darted into the room and hovered at his eye level.

“Guildmaster, we cannot hold!” she said. “We have to get out. If we do not, we will die here!”

“No,” he said. “We do not abandon this! We defend it even if it kills us!”

Every piece of the Mercenary Guild’s intelligence was kept in vaults beneath the mountain—names, routes, caches, contacts, everything. If those vaults were lost, the Guild would collapse in a single day, and the East, which relied on it for a thousand small needs, would fall with it.

“Damn the former Guildmaster,” he snarled. “I told him to distribute the records. I told him this place would be a target one day. He laughed. He said it was needless worry. Look at us now!”

The Guildmaster frowned as the vibration outside faded.

“Did we stop them?”

A door slammed open. A mercenary stumbled in, face drained of color.

“G... Guildmaster,” he said.

“Damn it,” the Guildmaster muttered, because he already knew this would not be good. He ran out into the open and looked down the switchback to the lower slopes.

He saw it coming—a shape the size of a small hill, moving like a living battering ram. Spells sparked uselessly against its hide. Where the plates met, gears and ribs of dark metal showed through, and the plates themselves gleamed with a lifeless sheen. It roared down the mountainside as though driven by a storm, heading straight for the base.

“They are going to bring the mountain down!” he said. “That is why they kept gnawing at the foot!”

It was the same trick children used to crush sandcastles: take away the lower portion a handful at a time, then strike hard where it would hurt most. The structure would shudder once, give a final sigh, and then collapse.

“Stop that thing!” he shouted. “Pour everything into it!”

The mages did not waste time. They emptied their hands. Bolts and blades and globes of force hammered the machine. However, it did not slow.

However, the war machine did not so much as tremble. It was the demons’ hidden trump card, a weapon once used to carve and remake the surface of the world. It boasted absolute defense, so strong that even the highest level of Transcendents could not break it. With the strength gathered here now, stopping it was impossible.

Demons stood well back and watched the attempt with sharp smiles. Their lines had already closed the ring. When the mountain fell, they intended to catch what lived and finish it. Faces paled across the slope as the line understood that they were not going to stop it.

They could not win. They were going to die here. Despair seeped into their limbs, loosening muscles and turning their spines to rope.

“Get a hold of yourselves!” the Guildmaster shouted.

He waded into the line and grabbed a man by the collar and shook him.

“Do you plan to sit and die? Get ready, damn you. If you cannot break it, then change its path. You, mages. If you cannot destroy it, can you bend the trajectory?”

“A... at our level,” one of them stammered, “we do not have the strength.”

“That is not no!” the Guildmaster said. “Move while you talk! If you have time to tell me why it will not work, you have time to try! You lot! You too!”

He planted his boot on the next man’s backside and shoved.

“If you want to lie down and die, do it in a corner and do not spoil the rest of us! Tie a rope around your own neck if you must. I will not stop you.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said, eyes wide, and scrambled to help.

The line rallied. Men who had sunk into despair jerked back to their feet, hastily raising walls and digging pits along the path below—anything that might push the ram even a finger’s width off its course. They braced themselves for the impact they knew was still coming. The Guildmaster set his jaw and stared down the slope.

Then, he saw a small figure coming from far away. At first, it was a dot. It grew like a thrown stone in a child’s sight, impossibly quickly, until he realized he had seconds, not minutes, to understand it. He leaned forward, and for an instant, his mind put a name to the shape.

“Is that...”

The sound came after. Ketal struck the ram before the boom even reached the mountain, and the machine crumpled like a cup beneath a crushing heel.