The sun disappeared behind the mountains, casting the world into the shadows of twilight. Velik could feel [Sun Eater] empowering him, though differently than [Duskbound] had. Instead of a massive rush of strength all at once, he started feeling the effects about half an hour before sun down. They were faint at first, but by the time it was fully dark, he was sure the new skill was even stronger than the old one.

It wasn’t a huge difference relative to his already insane power, but it did stretch his window to function at increased power by a few hours. He could only assume he’d also steal some time as the sun was rising, too, which could very well save him one day. There’d been a few encounters where he’d raced against the dawn to finish a battle before he lost a huge amount of power, or where he’d been forced to hang on for dear life until the sun went down.

When he was as strong as he felt he could get, Velik set his sights on the golden tower looming over the basin. He could almost feel a dreadful aura hanging over the place from miles away, something that at first, he’d thought he was just imagining. But as the hours rolled by and the feeling didn’t vanish, he decided it was a real, tangible expression of a divine beast’s power.

Whether he was right or not, he still ghosted through the trees in that direction. He didn’t want whoever was there to know he was coming, not if he could help it, which was why he’d kept his hunting as far away as possible, going so far as to circle half the outer edge of the basin looking for new prey.

That had resulted in about five thousand more essence, not enough to make significant changes at the level he was now working at, but it would keep his LPS functioning for a week or so. Velik figured that would be more than enough time to recover from the next fight, assuming it didn’t kill him. He’d figure things out after the experimenter beast was dead.

It took him less than ten minutes to reach the spire, and Velik had to admit it was even more impressive up close. Velik normally didn’t think much of gold—it was heavy and bulky, making it annoying to carry in any useful quantity—but without the system-granted decarmas here, he expected a miles tall tower made of solid gold was a declaration of obscene amounts of wealth.

Or more likely it’s not solid and it’s not real gold. Or if it is both those things, it’s the result of some sort of magic making it.

That was less important than figuring out how to get in. At the moment, he was about half a mile away, crouched in the branches of a tree near the edge of the forest. There was no cover between himself and that tower, and no doorway that he could see from his current vantage. He quietly circled half the tower before he ran out of forest to skulk through, but the view was the same from every angle.

He wasn’t discouraged. While it would have been convenient to have a nice, clearly marked entrance to walk through, he wouldn’t have necessarily used it anyway. Stealth was an essential part of how an ambush predator functioned, and he hadn’t grown so over-powered that he’d forgotten how to get the drop on his prey.

Undeterred by the lack of cover, Velik slipped into the shadow world and finished his circuit. The skill, much like [Air Walk], was much more useful now that he was powering it directly from his own reserves instead of the relatively tiny enchantments he’d previously used. Getting folded into [Sun Eater] had probably helped, too, though he wasn’t prepared to say exactly how.

Either way, examining the golden tower from the shadow world allowed him to—probably—walk in the open without being noticed. That bat divine beast would almost certainly have spotted him, but he was dead now, and so far, Velik hadn’t seen a ton of overlap between abilities from the divine beasts he’d met. It cost him basically nothing to take some basic precautions against being spotted, but the truth was that Velik doubted he was actually going to sneak up on anyone, so he didn’t worry about it overmuch. Speed would serve him better than stealth once he figured out how to get inside the tower.

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There were no doors or windows in the bottom thousand feet of the tower, and precious few above that height, but there was something else hidden in the mana woven into the gold. He wasn’t sure what exactly it was other than a burr in the pattern. A weak point to break through? he thought to himself. Or a door hidden so that only those with the power to find it can get inside?

It didn’t make a difference, since it was the only way he could see to get inside. Maybe he could brute force his way directly through the walls and the magic imbued into them, but he doubted it would be easy, quick, or quiet. Either way, the second he burst through that wall, someone was going to know he was there.

Velik was as ready as he could be. He squared up with the tower and started running. Each step took him higher into the air until he was level with the burr in the magic. Then he hit it, a spear made of solid darkness leading. The web was torn, and Velik slipped through.

* * *

Reisha rested on the top floor of his lair, his body sprawled out in its true form. Ages ago, he’d enjoyed shifting into the shapes the various civilizations scattered across the world were bound to. After watching so many shatter, he’d stopped bothering. The only one to survive for any real length of time was the humans’, and they had a rather distinct and unfair advantage.

Somehow, ‘human’ had become the default form for a meeting of the Council of the Divine. It probably had something to do with them sticking around for so long that everyone had figured out a human form they liked. They could speak clearly and had prehensile digits. Sure, they were squishy and weak, but that only applied to true humans, not divine beasts pretending to be human.

The sensory web surrounding his lair pulled at his mind as something burst through it. A true divine beast would have known how to politely enter, and just about anything else would have been too weak to force its way in. That must be Zelamir’s experiment, he mused. Strange that it’s here alone, though. Halifex and Eslaka should be escorting it.

That likely meant trouble, which almost certainly meant the binding he’d haphazardly slapped on Eslaka had come loose again. He needed to set aside a few months to do it properly, but they’d all been caught flat-footed by Zelamir’s project resulting in the creation of an artificial divine beast. That was too important to delay on, so he’d done what he could to contain the Queen of Carnage.

I should have just gone out and taken possession of the specimen myself, he silently lamented. But what is the point of being in charge if you can’t delegate your work?

It wasn’t like he spent all his time just lazing around. Legra spoke to him regularly, assigning him various tasks, and even when his goddess was silent, it wasn’t hard to find work needing to be done. Beyond all that, absorbing essence and increasing his own strength took up an enormous amount of his time. The secret to that process was one he had no plans of ever sharing, not even a thousand years later when the gap between his power and the others was insurmountable.

With a grumpy sigh, he pulled himself inward, folding and compacting until his true form was tucked away. He resembled a tall human with thick black hair tumbling down his back in an unruly mane and scintillating diamond-bright eyes. At close to seven feet tall, he towered over the typical human, but Reisha refused to change himself to a normal height. He was large and he liked it that way.

Tesir certainly understood the desire for size, even if none of the rest of them did. His human form was equally tall, though also a considerable bit bulkier. Reisha idly wondered if the experiment specimen had taken a swing at the tiger, or if Eslaka and Halifex had caught up to him first.

As he had that thought, though, an uneasy feeling descended on him. The experiment had burst into Reisha’s lair, alone, with no sign of the three divine beasts who associated with him. Tesir was one of the best hunters in the world, second only to Halifex when it came to tracking down prey. There was no way they’d failed to find the experiment.

A low rumble filled the air as Reisha let out an unconscious growl. Metal shifted and fell just from the vibrations as the whole spire shook in response. It seemed that, as usual, he’d be forced to step in and get things back on track.

The center of the spire was a giant hollow pillar specifically designed for Reisha—and only Reisha—to descend quickly from his lair at the top. He stepped into open air, then let himself fall, dropping to the spire’s entrance in mere seconds.

To his great surprise, there was no one in the entry hall. Flaring his nostrils, Reisha breathed in deeply. No scent. No sign of an intruder. But someone broke in, so where are they?