Tempted as I was to train more and play around with my new Affix, I couldn’t just put off the rest of the day. Considering I had survived that dungeon in no small part thanks to Escinca’s Blessing, I owed that old geezer some of my time.

More importantly, there were things to discuss that I hadn’t done before I had gone to bed.

“That is your own, hard-earned money, Ross,” Escinca said at breakfast. His smile was genial but genuine. I had just finished telling him I ought to be getting a hefty earning after my dungeon adventure, and that the Adventurer’s Guild would surely reward me further for taking down the Greater Brillwyrm. “You don’t need to use it on the cult.”

The others had already eaten, so it was just the two of us then. Aurier had already rushed off to his smithing duties.

“I’m not giving charity, Elder,” I said. “Frankly speaking, I owe you. You know, for welcoming me and teaching me Sacrifice and giving me that Blessed knife. I don’t like being in anyone’s debt and just saying thank you over and over again will make my throat sore.”

“You aren’t in anyone’s debt. Certainly not mine. I don’t do anything for you—or almost anyone, for that matter—out of some misplaced belief that I should be rewarded for it somehow.”

I grinned. “Almost anyone, huh?”

Escinca offered me the smallest of crooked smiles possible. “Keep your money, Ross.”

“Like I said, Elder, it’s not charity.” I looked at him squarely. It was probably a bit rude since he was eating and I, as usual, had just Sacrificed my meal instead of forcing myself to swallow down today’s cocktail of bugs and other things I was probably better off not knowing about. “You know, you’ve been doing a lot to make me feel like I belong here.”

He swallowed his spoonful, then nodded. “I want you to be a part of the cult, of course.”

“Then stop fussing about me spending money on a place I’m supposed to call my own.”

Escinca opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t argue further. That opened up the conversation to other matters. Or specifics, rather.

“The meat from the Brillwyrm should be very helpful,” I said.

The Elder hummed. “It will be expensive to acquire. Not very practical—well, no, actually. If I remember right, Brillwyrm meat is actually one of the most storable kinds.”

“Yeah, exactly, with their self-preservative properties and all that. Don’t worry about the expense, though. I think I know how to get some without spending a single coin.”

Escinca raised a grey eyebrow at me but didn’t poke further, trusting me with it. We chatted some more. It was nice to spend time with him. The old guy never really demanded anything of anyone, just showed them what had to be done and trusted them to do it. And, damn me, it worked. Nobody wanted to disappoint Escinca.

I helped him with the chores as we talked. No one else had gone missing in Ring Four as far as he was aware, which was a relief. Though that relief crashed when he learned about just how many of the Thralls I had encountered in the dungeon.

When his face fell after I told him about the decaying head I had taken from one of the Scarthralls, I questioned why he looked more sad than worried.

“Do not mistake me, Ross,” he said. “I do not blame you at all for going as far as you believe you need to when faced with the peril that these Scarthralls clearly present. I do not regret the necessary violence. Nevertheless, you understand that the Scarthralls do not lose their sense of will and freedom even after the transformation, yes?”

“What are you getting at Elder?” I asked. “Can’t vampires… can’t Scarseekers mess with your mind, especially if you’re a Thrall?”

“They can. Scarseekers can control Thralls entirely, rewriting their mind and will for a time, depending on the difference in strength between Scarthrall and Scarseeker. But even powerful ones have limits, and controlling all Thralls all the time is impossible.”

“So you’re saying…”

He sighed. “At first, I could understand. There would always be those who harboured ill will, those who hated their lives in Ring Four and even blamed the very residents who were suffering no different from them for not doing anything about it, hypocritical and misplaced though their rage was. But now…”

My mouth grew drier. Before the dungeon, we had encountered only a small handful of the Scarthralls. We were secure in our belief that they were dangerous, but low in number.

But it wasn’t just the fact that they were far more numerous, and therefore more dangerous too, that bothered Escinca. It was the sheer number of them who had willingly decided to go along with being a Scarthrall. Because if Thralls could retain some of their will, it meant every single one of the several dozen I had met in the dungeon wanted to be a Scarthrall.

They were happy to attack innocents, to kidnap anyone they saw as meals, to further destabilize Ring Four and ruin everyone’s lives there.

“I’m sorry, Elder,” I said. I was being genuine. It wasn’t an apology, just a condolence. An expression of sympathy. Then my face hardened. “When we find the bastard Scarseeker who started all this…”

Elder Escinca squeezed my shoulder. “You’ve done well, Ross. We should let the others know about it as well.”

By others, he meant the other cults. It was both sad and interesting that the foremost authorities on Ring Four were the cults. While there were other significant “agencies”, for lack of a better term—such as the orphanage where Sreketh had grown up, the makeshift hospital near the Sea Cult temple, and the small series of shops that formed something akin to a barebones market—none of them held the same sway as the cults did.

I supposed it made sense, in a historical way, that people often tended to look towards faith when things were rough. Then again, it was commonly established that the gods in this world were banished. They were literally called Banished Gods. So what in hell did they even pray to? It would have been a rude question to ask Escinca though, so I left it unsaid.

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Plus, I knew some of the alternatives to prayer that people sought through the cult. There was the whole Woven Way thing. I also remembered the way some of them had looked at me that night the Scarthralls had attacked at the temple…

We were discussing the idea of talking to the other cults as we walked, and Sreketh overhead us.

“You’re going to tell the Earth Cult too?” she asked with a small pout.

“Well, yes, I was planning to.” Escinca patted the Scalekin girl on the head. “Why, child? Were they rude to you?”

“They were rude to all of us! I guess you might not have heard yet, Elder, but at the orphanage, the other children were talking about how they’re going to hold a small celebration for something, and the Sun Cult was going to be banned!”

“Well… that is rather rude.”

“Are you sure the other kids weren’t trying to trick you or something?” I asked.

“I’m sure!” Sreketh said. “They wouldn’t joke about the cults like that.”

“Well, screw us, I guess.”

I couldn’t really be bothered with petty stuff like that. This was exactly in line with what I had seen of the Earth Cult so far, so I wasn’t exactly surprised. Disappointed, sure, but wasn’t life supposed to be a series of disappointments in between the rare niceties or something like that? Put it on the list.

After helping clean the temple for a while—with Gravity weighing me down to keep training, of course—I focused on what I actually wanted to get done.

Namely, figuring out the limits of Field Manipulation.

I went back to the rear section of the temple that was more destroyed than the rest of it, then channelled my new Affix. The lines of mana felt almost ticklish with how fine they were. They even emerged from me like strands of hair flowing in slow motion, as though I was filming a fancy conditioner advert.

The actual limits were interesting. Turned out that at Silver II, I could manifest a field of Gravity about as big as my palm approximately twelve feet away. That… wasn’t very far. Pushing more mana into the Aspect didn’t seem to affect that limit.

I sighed. Just another impetus to keep training and ranking up.

Further testing revealed that the distance and the size of the field were also inversely proportional. If I created the field closer, I could make it far larger, and vice versa.

There was a bypass to that, at least. I could make the field close to myself to ensure it was at least decently sized, and when I moved away, it didn’t affect the field at all. It would act at the exact potency it had been created at for the exact duration it was supposed to last.

That led me to tinkering with the other properties of the fields. Time and potency. Like their size, the fields’ maximum power was also inversely proportional to distance at creation. I could control their potency, but only up to a certain peak, and I couldn’t force it beyond that. Unlike Infusion, where the amount I could weigh things down scaled entirely with how much mana I pushed into my target, I couldn’t bypass the cap for Field Manipulation.

Conversely, time wasn’t something I could control at all, and they all lasted the same duration no matter where I made the fields or how much mana I tried to push into them.

The most interesting thing I discovered was that the field I created didn’t necessarily need to be an attractive field. As in, I could either make it like Infusion and add weight, or I could make it like Siphon and reduce weight instead. That opened up a lot of possibilities.

“That’s enough for one day, I think,” I murmured.

There was a lot more I could try, such as testing how they seemed to work on any surface regardless of angle, but not on thin air. But that could come later. I was satisfied with what I had discovered.

What I was really interested in was figuring out how best to use Field Manipulation in conjunction with everything else I was capable of.

To which end, I ended up back at Gutran’s place. He was happy to see I had survived the dungeon trip without a real scratch.

“Well, not without any scratches,” I said. I showed him my leg. The unfortunately pale skin there was dotted with pockmarks of even paler skin and scarred tissue. It wasn’t something I had noticed at first, but during my shower, I had stared at it for longer than I probably should have. “That Brillwyrm gut fluid was really corrosive, let me tell you.”

Gutran laughed shortly. “Right. Tell me all about it.”

He was amazed to hear about my adventures, though my feelings sour a bit when we got to the bit about all the Scarthralls down there.

I tried to lighten the mood. “Bet you never got eaten by a giant monster, though, for all your mysterious war efforts.”

Gutran’s smile bared his fangs. “I was actually. Got eaten alive by a War Slug from Tenast. Unfortunately, I had to be freed by a more accomplished warrior, so you’ve got one over me there.”

“More like two,” Aurier said with a laugh. “Eaten alive is pretty different from jumped straight down its gullet.”

True enough. Gutran and I laughed too.

But ultimately, I wasn’t there to exchange war stories, which Gutran was kind enough to point out on his own. So, I shifted my story to how I had gained a bunch of ranks and had acquired a new Affix for my Gravity Aspect as well.

The most important part, though, was the fact that I could learn an Augmentation for Power now that it was in Silver. Checking my status had revealed a slot under Power, just like the ones I tended to get whenever I had an Affix available for an Aspect. While Gutran and I had already talked a bit about Augmentations, I thought I could get some more guidance as I trained.

Because yes, I had come here to keep training. To keep growing. And Gutran was happy to assist.

I jogged with heavy armour and weapons on, I practiced dodging and reacting quickly, and also learned better ways to use my shield while countering with my mace immediately after stopping an attack.

Gutran laughed shortly again, during my training. “It’s funny,” he said when I asked what was so amusing. “A guild-registered mage training more often at the smithy than at the Mage Guild. Wonder what your fellow mages would think about that.”

I had a feeling he knew exactly what they’d think, which was what he really found amusing.

“For your Power Augmentation,” Gutran said when I asked about that. “There are two ways to go about it. Think of them in terms of either enhancing or complementing what you are already capable of. “

I wiped off some sweat, too tired to respond verbally but nodding to show I understood. It made sense. I would either get an Augmentation that helped boost what I could already do, or I could get an Augmentation that would cover some of my weaknesses. Classic build-related thoughts. Not that I was much of an expert in that direction.

The problem, as Gutran pointed out, was the fact that I could only get one Augmentation per rank tier. That meant so long as I was in Silver, I’d have to stick with whatever Augmentation I learned. Replacing them was apparently quite difficult.

Gutran would still prefer if I went through what the Mage Guild had to say about Power Augmentations before I decided. Which, yeah, I would be stupid not to, so I confirmed that I would.

The best part of the day’s training came when I tried to use Field Manipulation in conjunction with combat manoeuvres I had learned. I was able to create a little field of Gravity on my shield, which naturally drew anything close to the shield towards itself. Gutran’s eyes widened when we were sparring and he was pulled towards the kite-shaped metal.

Leaving him wide open to a counter swing with my mace.

“That’s an annoying ability,” Gutran grumbled, rubbing his armoured waist.

I grinned. “Not annoying at all for me.”