“Experiment—Velik—you should know the hierarchy among the divine beasts,” Eslaka said. “Despite our great age, we are not equals. There are centuries of time between the oldest and the youngest of us, and some have invested their essence wisely. Others have frittered it away.

“The weakest of our numbers was Halifex. I say ‘was’ because it is my belief that you already encountered him, and that he is dead.”

Velik said nothing, just stared at her. If she didn’t know for sure, he didn’t see any reason to confirm or deny her suspicions. Velik was starting to think there was a fundamental difference in the way he handled essence and how the divine beasts did, and it wasn’t just his limited personal system codifying skills into essence configurations for him.

“The strongest is Reisha. Tesir is perhaps the second strongest in terms of raw might, but that is because he settled his foundation long, long ago, and devoted all his effort into reinforcing it. His breadth of skills was weak, leaving him inflexible. In some ways, his strategies were similar to how I understand the Garden’s essence sharing magic to build up the humans living there: powerful, quick, and inflexible.”

“And where does that leave you?” Velik asked. As the only other divine beast he’d fought, he could use the reference point.

“A tricky question. I could not kill Reisha, but as you can see, Tesir was not able to defeat me despite being technically stronger. Tesir could have killed Shurga, but I could not. Probably.”

“Who’s Shurga?”

“Another of the divine beasts. I do not suspect you’ll cross paths with her, not unless you enjoy sailing on the open ocean.”

Tesir, Reisha, Halifex, Shurga, and Eslaka herself. That just leaves the one who created the dungeon seeds. Their… researcher.

“And the last one? The one you want me to meet?”

“Clever. Dangerous. You won’t outwit that one. I have no doubt you’d crush him in a contest of physical might, but pinning him down long enough to get your hands around his throat is no easy task.”

That was all useful information, but its source was highly suspect. He’d keep it in mind, but Velik didn’t plan to rely on her. If nothing else, there was a gleam in her eyes that he didn’t like. It felt like her mouth should be frozen in a rictus grin, like she was a mad woman whose mask had slipped without her realizing it.

“I’ll keep that in mind. As far as I’m aware, I have the perfect bait to draw him out of hiding, though, so I don’t think it’ll be too hard to find him,” Velik said.

Eslaka threw her head back and laughed. It was a wild, unhinged sound that had Velik instinctively shifting away from her. He thought back to her raining fire from the sky and Tesir’s blackened body, too weak to regenerate anymore, and he seriously wondered if he could have done any better charging up at her distant form.

Best get away from this one while I can. I don’t need to kill her, and if it does come down to a fight, better for it to be after I’ve had time to gather more essence.

It was truly unreal how fast he was growing. It was hard to translate on a one-to-one scale to the system he was familiar with, but in raw stats alone, he was up at least sixty levels from where he’d started, and he’d been punching up toward level eighty back when he was still connected to the full system.

He’d probably advanced his skills a year or more in just a few days, as well, making him wonder once again just how much essence the system kept from his kills back home. He was starting to suspect the answer was ‘almost all of it.’ It wouldn’t surprise him to learn that he was supporting the systems of a few thousand low-level people all by himself, never mind what the system kept to maintain itself and what the gods syphoned off for whatever they did with it.

“You could very well be correct,” she said. “Hopefully I will have caught up in time to see it. But for now, other business. You shall return east to the sky bridge, then from there follow the trails southeast to a pass that cuts between two mountains. The land inside that ring of mountains is known as God’s Crown to some. Others call it Demon’s Cradle. I suppose both names are technically accurate.”

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“Why’s that?” Velik asked. If he could expect to find demons there, that seemed like something he wanted to know beforehand.

“It was the birthplace of demons, though they were all driven out long ago when we took it over,” she said absently. “It’s old history. You won’t find many signs of them ever existing, and if you do find anything, feel free to destroy it.

“Anyway, once you reach God’s Crown, the Council of the Divine meets in the Gold Spire. Trust me, you won’t have any trouble finding it.”

“Because it’s a giant spire made out of gold?” Velik asked dryly.

“Precisely.”

Divine beasts are kind of arrogant assholes.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Just that you will be watched. I’m sure you’ll have no issue maintaining your privacy when you reach that point. I would not volunteer information about your… accomplishments out in the world to Reisha. He discourages infighting among the council.”

Got it. Level up some more on the way. Maybe a lot more. Two divine beasts’ worth of essence might not be enough to defeat this guy,

Velik thought to himself.

“Then thanks for the help,” he said. “Don’t know if I can trust you, but I guess I don’t need to as long as we both want the same thing, do I?”

“Divine beasts do not trust one another as a rule. You’ll fit in just fine with us, if you survive.”

Then Eslaka was gone. In her place, a massive bird with feathers made of living flames loomed over him. Heat radiated off its body, but with a single downward sweep of its wings, it rocketed hundreds of feet into the air.

Velik weathered the roiling flames rolling out from its launch point, more annoyed than truly injured. It was a good thing he was still naked, because no clothes would have survived that encounter. That having been said, he very much did want a pair of pants. A shirt and shoes were optional, but he wouldn’t say no.

I wonder if I could steal something that would fit me from some of those lizard people.

As a general rule, Velik didn’t take from people who’d done him no wrong, but on the other hand, they were monsters, however civilized they might be. If he could barter with them in some way, he was alright with that, as well. And if they ended up being typical monsters after all, he wouldn’t feel bad about putting a spear through their chests and taking what he needed after.

One problem, though. Are there any left alive in this place? We kind of fucked it up.

Shrugging to himself, he leaped into the air and started running over the tree tops. It didn’t take him long to find a few encampments still intact, and he even got lucky at the third one. Some kind of leatherworker lived there, an old lizard person with dull, faded green scales and trembling hands. The soft skin under his chin was more gray than white, and hung slack with age and lost muscle.

Despite that, he worked tirelessly, tending to a dozen drying racks as he worked his way through a pile of skins. Even more were visible behind his hut, those skins in a different stage of the process. Best of all, the lizard was fully clothed. That was a bit of a rarity in Velik’s admittedly limited experience, but it told him they at least knew what shirts and pants were.

Given the amount of mana imbued into the clothes, Velik suspected wearing them was more a form of enhancement and augmentation than protection against the elements and a desire for modesty. He didn’t need magic pants, though. Regular pants would do just fine.

Surprisingly, revealing himself to the lizard man went smoothly. There was a bit of initial tension when he stepped out of the brush, but after Velik made no threatening moves, the monster calmed down. That was a surreal moment, standing in front of a monster that was making no attempts to kill him, but Velik put it out of his mind.

It took a bit of pantomiming, but the lizard man eventually understood that Velik wanted a pair of pants. It agreed to a trade, rubbing its stomach to indicate a desire for food, then mimicking tusks coming out from its mouth with its fingers while tossing its head and snorting. Velik interpreted that as a desire for some pork, though he wasn’t sure he would have understood if he hadn’t seen a few massive wild boars while he was exploring the caldera.

Nodding his acceptance, he jumped up past the trees again and sprinted off toward a nearby stream that he’d noted some massive hoof prints at. It didn’t take long to find the monsters, the smallest of which stood ten feet tall at the back and probably weighed four thousand pounds.

They were relatively weak, at least compared to the kind of monsters Velik kept finding everywhere else, and he quickly slew the monster with a single spear strike through its skull. Hauling the body back was a bit of a challenge, not because of the weight but due to the sheer size. He managed to get under it and lift it, but [Inevitable] couldn’t get him back in the air.

That reminded Velik to finally spend the essence he’d harvested from Tesir now that Eslaka was nowhere nearby, and a few minutes later, he’d significantly boosted the power of the skill. It still took him layering it half a dozen times with every step to account for the boar, and he was running blind the whole way, but he got the body back to the lizard man.

The look of surprise on its face was almost comical. It sputtered and hissed for a moment, but then its shoulders slumped and, with a single shake of its head, it got to work.