Chapter 308: The Dwarven Cave of Mantamia (10)

Two days after the demon vanished, Ignisia prepared to depart. Before she left, she came to see Ketal and delivered the news in person, which made him blink in surprise.

“You are leaving already? I think it would be better if you rested a little longer,” he said.

“I would like that as well,” she answered with a rueful smile, “but I do not have that kind of luxury.”

The continent was still trembling in the aftermath of recent catastrophes. No one in a position of power could afford leisure, least of all an Elder Dragon whose very presence could sway the balance of nations. The world remained under assault by evil, and those capable of altering outcomes needed to move quickly.

Even so, Ignisia’s expression did not look grim.

“The situation is not bad,” she said, weighing the losses in a calm, calculating tone. “At this level, the cost is acceptable.”

In truth,

acceptable

understated it. By any practical measure, they had taken down their target with startling ease. Raphael, a named demon who bore the noble rank of count, was so powerful that even an Elder Dragon might not have been able to defeat him in a fair, open field. Raphael was the sort of overwhelming fiend that even an Elder Dragon might fail to overcome.

That fact carried an unpleasant implication: there were very few beings in the Mortal Realm who could have faced Raphael and won. If Ketal had not intervened, the mines would still belong to the demon. Ignisia would have been forced to summon the absolute elite, perhaps the Tower Master, the Sun God’s Saintess, or one of the High Dragons, and the cost in lives and resources would have been staggering. It would not have been surprising if the veins in the mine had been expended entirely in the attempt to reclaim them.

Thanks to Ketal, they captured Raphael without outside aid, and the mines suffered minimal damage. Whatever the demons had been aiming for, this outcome plainly had not been part of their calculations.

“This was your doing. Thank you for the help,” Ignisia said.

“I did it because of the agreement with the god, so it is fine,” Ketal replied, smiling lightly. “More importantly, it was for the sake of the world.”

Ignisia hesitated for a heartbeat at the mention of

the word

. After all, Ketal originated from the Demon Realm. Yet she did not second-guess him. Everything he had done so far had aided them, and she was not the kind of person who would throw suspicion in the face of a proven ally simply because of his origins.

“If the situation is not bad, then we should move even faster,” she said, clenching her fist with renewed resolve. “We need to ride this momentum and press the advantage.”

Ketal studied her for a moment and asked in a steady voice, “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“You want to help me?” she echoed.

“Before, you told me there would be a favor you wanted me to grant in the future. I agreed at the time,” he said.

Ignisia’s eyes softened as the memory returned. In the days when Ketal sought Myst, she had proposed two conditions. One, that he would hold goodwill toward the world. Two, that he would grant her a future request when the time came. Ketal remembered both.

“We made a deal,” he said. “If you need something, tell me. I will help.”

“You did remember,” she murmured. “Thank you. But it is all right. The favor I planned to ask is exactly what you have just done.”

Ketal understood at once. “It was related to evil.”

“That is right,” she said. “There is no need to worry about it now. You are going to keep fighting evil anyway.”

“That is true,” Ketal said with an easy nod. “Where will you go next?”

“I am thinking of visiting the elven sacred ground first,” she said. “I can assess the state of the continent from there, and it has been a while since I saw Karin. I think I would like to meet her.”

“You did say you were friends,” Ketal recalled.

“Yes. You will remain here for a while, will you not? Then I suppose this is farewell for now,” Ignisia said.

“It is,” Ketal replied. “Farewell, Ignisia. Let’s meet again.”

“We will, Ketal,” she said with a brief, bright smile, and then she departed.

Ketal saw her off and stood for a moment after she vanished from sight. He would have liked to follow, but that was impossible, because he had not yet received his payment. The dwarves had reclaimed their holy land, and in gratitude, they had taken Ketal’s materials and begun to forge what he wanted.

The components were extraordinary, and nothing about the process was simple. Every master artisan in Mantamia had thrown themselves into the work with total dedication, yet even at full tilt, it would still take several days.

I can take my time and play tourist

, Ketal thought, deciding to wait without impatience.

He spent the days exploring the dwarven holy land. Mantamia lay within a colossal cavern yet felt wide and bright. It felt like walking through a living city from some prior age, and the sightseeing never grew old.

His time was not all leisure. When he had placed the mine back into its cradle, the force of the maneuver had created hairline fractures in places where the subterranean structures had already been stressed by demonic influence. Ketal lent his strength to the repairs and settled joints and pillars that had begun to slip.

He braced his hands against a column and pressed. Stone groaned, and thunder rolled through the hall as the enormous temple pillar shifted. The last gap closed, and the line went true from base to capital.

“That should do it,” he said.

“It will,” Grombir replied with a baffled chuckle, unable to stop himself from laughing at the absurdity of the sight.

Dwarves gathered in a loose ring to watch in mute amazement. Without a single tool, Ketal was correcting structural imbalance with raw, precise strength. Even as people who were proud of their own physical prowess could not help but feel awed.

The dwarves continued to restore their holy land, seating fallen stones and knitting broken arches. They were not spending all of their hours on labor, however, because they had won. Every evening brought a festival. They roasted meat and raised their tankards high, and songs echoed from hall to hall.

One burly dwarf approached Ketal with obvious nervousness. “W-will you drink with us?”

“I will,” Ketal said, accepting the tankard without reservation. He took a long pull, and his eyes rounded with frank surprise. “This is very good.”

It was better than any beer he had ever had on Earth. The dwarf preened at the praise and swung a new cask onto the table.

“It is our proudest brew,” the dwarf declared. “You shall have more.”

Ketal accepted a tankard that was nearly as large as his torso and drank steadily, lifting the vessel higher as the level fell. Dwarves around him watched with rising astonishment.

“It is delicious,” Ketal said with wholehearted conviction as he set the tankard down with a heavy thump, and a ring of delighted gasps broke out around him.

“You are a proper man!” a red-bearded dwarf crowed, thrusting an even larger tankard into Ketal’s hands while lifting an identical one for himself. “A dwarf’s pride rests on two pillars: the beauty of our beards and the strength of our drinking. Your power is fearsome, and we concede nothing to it, but we will not lose in this contest. Let us compete!”

A roar went up from the surrounding dwarves, and Ketal’s eyes gleamed. A drinking match with dwarves felt like a staple of the tales he had grown up reading. Fighting was exhilarating, but this was its own kind of joy.

Grinning, he raised the tankard. “Let us do it properly!”

By the end of the night, every dwarf lay sprawled on the stone floor, groaning or snoring into their beards. Ketal alone walked back to his quarters with a spring in his step, his gait perfectly steady and not the least bit unbalanced. The next morning, the dwarves regarded him with a new layer of respect that glinted at the edges of their eyes.

***

Ketal wandered Mantamia with an easy smile, finding the days strangely refreshing. The dwarves were openhearted and bold. They did not flinch from him, did not hold him at arm’s length, and treated him like a friend.

They shared their food, offered him stories, teased him as if they had worked at the same forge for years, and made no attempt to veil their admiration. He had stayed in the elven sacred ground quite a while, but back then, he had not settled his

presence

cleanly, and the distance had remained. Here, among a non-human people, he rubbed shoulders and lived side by side as if that were the most natural thing in the world.

The only blemish on the tranquility was the Holy Sword, which seemed to grumble and fret in the background whenever it sensed Ketal relaxing. Barring that anxious whisper of steel, these were the easiest days he had enjoyed in some time.

A week passed. At last, Grombir sent for him.

“It is finished,” the Dwarf King said.

“Finally,” he breathed, holding his excitement in check by sheer force of will. “Which piece is complete?”

“Both,” Grombir said. “Take this first.”

He laid out a set of clothing cut in the trim, practical pattern favored by adventurers. At first glance, it looked simple and neat, not ostentatious, and remarkably well-tailored. Only the materials betrayed its uniqueness. The garment had been assembled from the hide of Whitie and from the hide of the Ugly Rat, and Grombir explained the rest of the work with a craftsman’s candor.

“We used the materials you gave us,” he said. “They nearly broke us in the attempt.”

Whitie’s hide had yielded to Grombir’s strength and skill. He had cut and tanned it after arduous work, but it had yielded. The forepaw of the Ugly Rat had refused to yield at all. No tool in the holy land could even mar the surface, and without Ketal’s direct intervention, the forge hall would still be echoing with curses.

“These things are beyond my understanding,” Grombir admitted at last. “Who were the owners of such hides?”

“Beings from before this universe,” Ketal said.

“That is quite something,” Grombir answered with an airy laugh that suggested he took it for a joke. Ketal, however, did not smile. The dwarf’s expression slowly hardened. “Wait... Are you being serious?”

“I am,” Ketal said without embellishment.

“Then we have handled strange things indeed. I see why the work resisted comprehension,” Grombir murmured. He cleared his throat and tapped the garment. “As for function, we built it less to store brute force and more to temper and harmonize what is stored within.”

He mounted the clothing on a frame and braced a lever. “Strike it.”

“Understood,” Ketal said.

He took up his axe, let all playfulness fall from his face, and swung in earnest.

Impact hammered through the hall, and Grombir grunted as he suppressed the shockwave to keep it from tearing through the temple vaults. He might call himself a humble seat at the table, but he was still a Hero dwarf, and even he found it burdensome to smother the aftermath of Ketal’s blow. There were only a handful in all the world who could have stood before that strike.

Despite the sincerity of Ketal’s attack, the garment did not carry so much as a mark.

“It is sturdy,” Ketal said, eyes widening.

“It looks like plain leather, but in truth, it is closer to armor,” Grombir said. “By itself, it is excessive in durability. In addition, I used Mithril and Orikalos to inscribe stabilizing runes. The piece will resonate with the Myst you carry and reinforce itself naturally. I cannot think of anything short of a god or one of the Four Pillars of Hell that could scar it, and even then, there is a counterbalance.”

The Ugly Rat had possessed the ability to restore itself. That lingering power clung stubbornly to the severed forepaw. Even if the garment were torn and mangled, time would knit it back together.

“Try it on,” Grombir said.

Ketal changed and tested his range of motion. The fit was perfect. His limbs moved without the slightest hitch or drag, as if the garment anticipated his intent and made way for it.

𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

“It’s very good,” he said, a satisfied smile softening his face.

He need no longer worry about shredded clothing, and in a serious fight, he would not have to spend Myst shielding his body merely to protect his skin. The passive defense alone was worth it.

“The claws were impossible to use,” Grombir said with an irritated shake of his head. “No matter what we tried, we could not smelt or work them. I will return those.”

“I understand,” Ketal said.

“And now the other thing,” Grombir added, reaching into a warded chest.

He produced a stone as white as fresh bone. It glowed faintly from within, like a coal without heat.

“The Dragon Bone you requested,” Grombir said. “I refined it and forged it into a catalyst.”

Ketal’s expression changed in an instant. The dwarf actually recoiled, taking a step backward without realizing it. The aura that rolled off Ketal—hunger sharpened into focus, desire elevated to a kind of predatory attention—would have driven a lesser man to his knees. Even a Hero warrior’s instincts told him to make way.

Nor was Ketal the only one who reacted. The beast of Myst inside him rose up with a serrated thrill, and a low, eager sound reverberated through him. It demanded the catalyst as if it had a mouth and could devour the stone on its own.

Wait a moment,

Ketal told it inwardly, amused despite himself.

You will have what you want shortly.

He closed his hand around the white gem and nodded to Grombir. “Because of you, I can finally complete what I set out to do. Thank you.”

“Y-yes,” Grombir said, voice unsteady.

For just a second, a ridiculous thought flitted across the dwarf’s mind. Perhaps he had misjudged the lesser evil. Perhaps it would have been better to let the demon ruin the mine than to place this catalyst in Ketal’s palm.

***

Ketal left the holy land with a spring in his step, not because he was careless, but because he refused to risk harming Mantamia. There was a chance that the process of absorbing the catalyst’s Myst could damage the holy land. Caution cost nothing. He walked until the city and its supports were far behind him, and trees pressed close enough to swallow the wind.

“All right,” he said softly, and his eyes shone as he studied the white stone. “Let’s begin.”

He had learned enough, through trial and through direct conversation with the beast of Myst, to implement a method. He could now externalize Myst to a limited degree, shaping it for brief moments into something tangible. The method worked, but it was unstable. The forms wavered like candle flames in a draft, and the slightest change in mood could cause the beast to pull back and deny him. If he wanted dependable strength, he needed more Myst. There was no way around it.

“You told me I only needed to break it,” he said.

A low growl rumbled through him, equal parts impatience and hunger. The beast no longer wished to wait. Ketal did not either. He tightened his grip.

The gem shattered with a clean, cutting crack. The Myst housed within did not scatter or dissipate; it surged instantly toward the closest, most compatible vessel. It poured into Ketal like a river finding its natural bed, rushed through his body, and vanished into depths that normal senses could not name.

The beast of Myst reared, bristling in mad delight. It devoured the incoming power greedily, swallowing every drop with rapacious focus. The Myst Ketal possessed increased in a way that felt less like addition and more like amplification.

“Oh,” he breathed, and then the sound stretched on, roughened by awe. “Oh.”

The quantity of Myst he commanded ballooned. Barriers he had sensed but not crossed gave way. Levels that had been out of reach a day earlier were now simply the next rung in a ladder he could climb.

“I see,” he whispered, and the recognition settled through him like a bell tone that rolled and finally came to rest.

His Myst reserve had reached the Transcendent realm.

“Excellent,” he said, and his smile this time was clean and bright.

The change did not stop with him. The beast of Myst surged again. Having swallowed the Dragon Bone’s distilled essence, it grew in a way that was both swift and wrong, expanding with a ferocity that seemed to ignore ordinary constraints.

It became difficult to describe as a mere

beast

. The sense of its presence thickened until it pressed outward, and the world seemed to take notice. The Holy Sword shivered in its scabbard as if it had been exposed to winter air.

A dry chatter like cracking ice ran through the forest as the thing within Ketal continued to grow. Its intent brushed the fabric of the world, and even the Holy Sword, an artifact that had borne witness to a multitude of gods, recognized the shape of something it did not want to look at directly.

It opened its mouth, or made the gesture that corresponded to one, and a voice rolled through Ketal’s bones in a steady, unmistakable cadence.

“You. You bastard,” it said.