POV Duncan

It’s been months since I last saw Noname, and just like every other time I’ve met him, he looks even stronger now.

I watch him walking alone between the groups gathered for the raid. Unlike many of them, he has no visibly active skills, and I can’t sense any mana radiating from his body. There's even less of it now than before.

He’s wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and some weird pants that I guess must be from his world, rather than the tutorial. He has no weapon, no armor, or any items I can see. Just a small bag slung over his back.

Like a wild animal, he almost seems to sense my gaze, and he turns, and when our eyes meet, I can’t help but shudder.

What a terrifying expression.

But maybe it was just a play of the shadows, because in the next moment it’s gone. His face takes on that usual blank expression. He even waves and takes a step in my direction. And then his figure disappears, and the next second, he’s standing next to me, finishing the step.

“Hey, Duncan. The more time passes, the deeper into the first floor I find you.”

“It’s partially thanks to you, you know. I made plenty of shards from our fishing expedition last time, and went got some additional certifications that allowed me to take better paying jobs.”

Noname shrugs. “You worked for it, so you only have yourself to thank. Are you helping the attendees with the raid?”

“Yes. A few of the smaller groups joined forces and hired me as well. In exchange, I offer information, contacts, and coordinate with other Locals in the expedition.”

He looks around for a bit, taking it all in. He doesn’t rush, and for a moment, a flash of gold flickers in his eyes. Then he nods slowly, like whatever he’s seen has confirmed something in his mind. I follow his gaze, trying to guess what he could be seeing, but it’s impossible to tell.

Then he turns back to me. “Looks more organized than I expected.”

“It’s getting better,” I say. “Still a mess in some ways, but people are trying.”

“How many attendees?” he asks.

I take a moment to think. “Probably just over 100? Out of them, probably about 5 Locals. Mostly people from the first floor, but we’ve gotten a few helpers from the second. With these numbers, it should be doable. Based on what the other Local Guides are saying, I expect around 10-30% will die. The rest should pass to the second floor.”

“That´s a lot. Are they not going to kill the guardian monster?”

“It is always like that with the ones we don’t have information on. Some might try to kill it, but without someone to counter its skillset and a fair bit of cooperation, it usually ends badly. This one's new, too. No records, no known abilities. If they’re unlucky, everyone here could die.”

As always, I try to catch the small gestures he doesn’t realize he’s making. When I mention everyone might die, he lifts an eyebrow slightly.

His next question doesn’t surprise me. Have the other attendees been asking similar questions?

“You’re not going to fight?”

I shake my head. “I’m not a fighter, and I have a family to care for. It’s similar for the other guides. We’ll lead you to the place, but when we get too close, we split and leave with our guards.”

“Sounds reasonable. By the way, have you heard of a pair of attendees named Luan and Faora?” Noname asks.

These names sound familiar, and I try to recall anything I might have seen in the rankings or heard from other Locals. Nothing comes to mind.

“I don’t know them, sorry. Are they friends of yours?” I ask him.

And for the first time since I’ve known Noname, he smiles. It’s the most beautiful and friendly expression I’ve ever seen on his face. Not the usual cold or blank expression, but a real smile.

It’s warm, honest, and somehow makes him look completely different. All the coldness in his face disappears, and for a second, he looks genuinely kind. I’m not the only one who notices. A couple of nearby female attendees glance over and do a double take, clearly unable to take their eyes off him.

It slowly disappears from his face, but I can still see the remains of that smile in his eyes. It even lingers on his lips before slowly fading.

“I owe them quite a lot. In some ways, the bond we have feels even stronger than friendship. But don’t worry about it, Duncan. Anyway, can you tell me a bit about the leaders of this raid?”

I nod quickly but put on my best trade smile before answering. “Information like that…”

“How many shards?” he interrupts without missing a beat.

“For you, just one thousand! Always a pleasure doing business with you!”

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POV Nathaniel

I watch Duncan leave. He’s a good man. Even though he might seem a little too shard-hungry, he’s always fair, even when he could easily ask for more. The value he offers is fair, too. It’s like anything else, why should he share information for free, information he must have paid for, risked his life for, or invested his time to acquire?

So I reach out with my mana and remove a tracking mark someone placed on his body, and another hidden on the huge bag on his back. The bag contains a number of items of decent value.

Both marks also have an effect attached to them that would’ve triggered paralysis and caused a lot of pain. They’re a really nasty piece of work. It’s obvious they weren’t placed out of concern for Duncan’s safety, and both were pretty well hidden. I don't think more than a few people in this group of 100 would have been able to notice it.

I activate [Eclipse] and overpower the connection linking one of the marks to a certain person, invade it, and then follow the trail to its source.

Passing between dozens of smaller attendee groups, I reach a group of three at the edge of the camp. Three men sit around a floating blue fireball, just like so many of the others, waiting for the raid to begin.

They're all human, and I wonder what their plan is. Maybe they’re all part of the guard detail that will escort the guides to the safe zone once we’re close? Or is it just one of them?

“Hey,” I greet as I enter their small camp.

Aside from a few blank looks, they give no response. The man whose marks I erased hasn’t even noticed the connection’s been cut. I made sure to be subtle when I did it, but it’s still disappointing.

I try to estimate which floor of the tutorial they might be on without aggressively using probes. The best clue is a dagger that reminds me of the kind the lumorans liked to use on the seventh floor.

“We’re not looking for members,” one of them says.

Even as he speaks, I notice all three of them raise their defenses. It’s clear in the movement of their mana and the vibration in their bodies as they tense up their muscles.

“What was that mark you placed on Duncan for?” I ask, "Attacking a Local is still off-limits. That much, I know."

The man who spoke flicks a glance at his companions. It’s a practiced, wordless exchange. The air tightens with tension. The kind that usually ends with blood.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. His voice is steady, but his mana curls defensively across his chest, forming a subtle barrier. One of the others begins to slowly shift his position, widening his stance just enough to give him room to draw his weapon.

“That's a really shitty lie,” I say, stepping closer.

They attack immediately after, even surprising me with such a decisive reaction.

I step aside, and the blue fireball they had been sitting around roars into a stream of flames that explodes in my direction. The heat I sense from it is intense. The stream is focused, with white flames shifting inside it.

But it's almost too easy to take control of it with [Redistribution]. The blue flame swerves to the side, twists around me in a circle, and gradually takes on a golden hue.

It all happens in barely a second. Before the man who cast it can launch another attack, I compress the flames surrounding me. Then a single burst of golden fire shoots forward in a laser thin beam, no thicker than my finger.

Even though one of them manages to create a barrier just in time, it activates for only a moment before the flame burns through with ease. I move in a slashing motion, and the beam pierces another barrier surrounding the man who tried to use his flames against me. It cleanly severs his arm and slices through the huge boulder behind him. For a moment, the stone remains still, then half of it slides away in a smooth, silent motion before thudding to the ground.

Before I can focus on the next attacker, I notice the fire mage´s wound closing. Steam rises around it as blue flames coat the area, forming themselves into the shape of a new arm in an instant.

Another man charges in. Mana surrounds his body, forming a glowing suit of armor. His movements are wild, like an animal’s, and impressively fast. He comes at me from the side. Even then, I don't move and simply track the trajectory of his punch with my eyes.

Just before it lands, I activate [Eclipse] in a short, powerful burst that drains the color from the world. For this level of mana armor, I don't even need to activate my eyes.

His armor vanishes instantly, and his fist lands on my cheek with zero force. The kinetic energy of the attack is gone, absorbed entirely by me.

Our eyes meet.

I swing my hand in a backhand slap, redirecting the stored energy and adding a touch of my own. I watch the swirling energy inside me with interest as my hand moves toward his face. It's likely more than enough to kill him on the spot. A part of me really wants to do it. What these three were likely planning reminds me too much of what happened to us not long ago. But that part of me is buried deep. What I feel now isn’t even proper anger. That’s reserved for someone else.

Even though the consequences of killing him and the trouble it might cause are minimal, I decide not to risk it.

I pull back a bit of the kinetic energy, and instead of his head bursting open, his body is flung through the air like a broken doll. As he collapses to the ground, I use Pulser Stance and move in a disjointed rhythm, dodging explosions of blue flame from the fire mage.

I reach the collapsed man, who is already getting up, and deliver a kick to his chest. It breaks a few of his ribs and sends him flying again.

Even then, my leg is nearly torn apart by the kick. At the last second, he set up a nasty barrier that did a fair amount of damage.

Blue flames from the fire mage halt in the air around me, but I ignore them while I glance toward the man I just kicked, and who is finally unconscious. Then I look down at my leg, now nearly stripped of flesh.

I shrug. The thermal energy I had been circulating combusts under my skin and fuels my passive. The wound heals in a couple of heartbeats, and I turn to the fire mage. Even now, I continue to ignore the third man, who from the start has been trying to disrupt my control over my mana. He also seems to be preparing some large-scale mana-based attack.

Wraith Dance takes me to the fire mage. I grab his remaining arm to pull him off balance, but to my surprise, it tears away. His physical stats and body reinforcement are weaker than I’d expected.

When I look at him, confused by the state of his body, he opens his mouth, and from it, erupts a blue flame, exploding toward my head. This one is much hotter than anything he's done before. Before I can properly adjust my [Redistribution], the flame strips the skin and flesh clean off my face, leaving only the skull and the barrier around my brain that I maintain constantly.

Even my eyes are gone, but I switch to tracking his heartbeat and the vibrations his body causes. I absorb the flames completely and turn to face him. I sense his heartbeat speed up as he takes a step back. Flames combust within my body, and my skin begins to regrow from the neck up, covering my face again before flames ignite beneath the surface to finish the healing.

I realize I've been careless. Still, I find it hard to really worry about it. Instead of cursing myself, I begin preparing measures to prevent this from happening again.

My eyes regenerate, and I look at the fire mage still frozen in my grasp, held as I absorb the kinetic energy from his movements. Once more, I release a laser-like stream of flames and cut off both his legs before turning to the third man.

Above his head spins a pale blue halo, with an orb at its center shifting between pale blue, dark blue, and purple.

He shouts something about how I should stop if I don’t want everyone here to die. Before he finishes his sentence, I appear in front of him and kick him away while using my mana to hold the halo and orb in place.

The frequency of the orb´s vibrations increases, and it pulses wildly in a steady rhythm. A high-pitched noise surrounds the area. Dust and debris lift themselves into the air as the air itself begins to shake.

I lean in closer to observe the orb. The halo fractures, causing the orb to spin faster and glow brighter.

Some nearby people from the expedition build a quick array around me and add barriers to contain the explosion.

My Mana Wavelength Iris activates, and I stare deep into the orb.

Just before it explodes, I reach toward it with [Eclipse] and take control. I overpower and suffocate it. The orb halts, then dissolves like a ball of sand. All the mana trapped inside falls to the ground, cascading in waterfalls of pale blue particles.

I glance at the surrounding barriers and array. I take a few steps forward and fluctuate the mana around me, passing through them as if they didn’t exist. After a few more steps, I make my way over to the man who created the orb. He’s already surrounded by others drawn here by the clash. He stares up at me from the ground, clutching the wound he got when I kicked him away.

A high-pitched sound rises around me. Two short bursts of kinetic energy pierce his defenses and explode both of his legs.

While he screams, I notice a Local Guide nearby and call out, “They placed some pretty nasty marks on Duncan. There are two on you as well, and at least one more Local Guide.”

Without saying anything more, I walk away.