Chapter 89: Changed Fate

Chapter 89: Changed Fate

Lluc stepped onto solid ground for the first time in hours.

His mana reserves flopped unpleasantly in his chest; even with the numerous gems he'd collected rattling in his pockets, mana flowing through his channels as it was replenished, more taken from artefacts and corpses and one interesting sword he'd tucked into his pack, he'd simply used so much that everything felt wrong. Stretched and rubbed raw, almost—he hadn't felt that way since the gaze-weed run in Leóro, when half the Dread Crew had died or wished they had. A simple dive into a dungeon shouldn't have provoked a similar response.

But this wasn't like High Lord Thiago's dungeon, nor the one on Silvertine Island, nor the Last King's dungeon. It wasn't born from some three-moon eclipse or the fractals of a wild ley line; the gods hadn't decided that there needed to be a dungeon here. It had come into existence all on its own, and despite how the world had been against it, most sentientborn dungeons rarely surviving past half of their first floor, it had dug its bloody fucking teeth in and not only survived, but grown strong. Grown powerful.

Lluc was Gold. He had abilities that far outranked all the dithering little fools that so filled Calarata, power well above all the idiots he had spurred into the dungeon. If he truly wanted to, if he had been given free leeway and enough time to prepare, he could have taken over this dungeon; not in the brute force that so many prepared, wielding their meager selection of abilities that had chosen to specialize in. He was a wizard, and there was not a situation he did not have a spell for, and he had long since trained to be more than proficient in all of them. Lluc, if he had wanted to, could hold a dungeon core in his grasp right now.

But he hadn't.

And the most irritating part?

He'd technically been successful.

This had been Varcís' plan, after all. Use Lluc and all those bushy-tailed idiots of Calarata to soften up the dungeon, kickstart a mad rush that would either wipe out all their creatures or at least the majority, wait a short while until the most powerful were slumbering under the weight of their evolutions, and then Varcís could merrily meander his way through and either claim the core or destroy it. He expected no problems with it, because why would there ever be? His Dread Crew was too frightened of him to ever think of disobeying, and a dungeon was far too weak to threaten him.

His ribs still ached warningly. He remembered the previous First Mate's head, toppling away from her body as a pitch-shark swam through sea and sky to obey Varcís' command. He remembered becoming her replacement, the promise to serve sworn over a borwood desk littered in ancient carvings from the Dead War. He remembered watching through eyes hazed by a lack of mana as Varcís shot a spear of pure midnight and took out a sea-drake in a singular blow.

He remembered the undeniable, uncomfortable fact that no one knew how powerful Varcís was.

But Lluc Cardena Ferré showed no weakness, and he had not failed so instead he had succeeded, and this was exactly as he had planned for things to go. So he held his head up and marched through the mountain, following worn paths and the footprints of the fodder he had sent inside to die, and emerged to the waiting attendants of those he had stationed behind.

Because only most of them had been fodder, it seemed. A handful had either been strong or cowardly enough to make it back out, though not enough to resist his siren's call of attacking in the first place, and they'd clearly assumed that was it.

Half a dozen Dread Crew members made it abundantly clear that was not going to be the case.

They'd set up in the entrance cave of the Alómbra Mountains, sunlight dappling through the twisted entrance and sand spilling over the stone, surrounded by stalagmites on every side. Not necessarily the strongest of his underlings, but those cunning enough to capture any escapees and not question why they were doing so—perfect for the situation, really. One Crew member stood over each of the five escapees they'd captured, leaving one free; Isenda, a tall, bull-nosed woman with an inclination for stabbing those that irritated her. Probably the reason she hadn't been stationed over a prisoner.

She marched up to him, spare motes of mana flickering over her fingers. Lluc strode to meet her, shoving down any lingering discomfort over his own lack of mana and the ache of injured ribs; he was the First Mate, and he showed no weakness.

"Just five of 'em," Isenda said, brutish voice a rather perfect match for her attitude. She jerked her head towards a pile they'd set up in the corner, stacked high with stolen prizes from their captives. Jewels, nuggets of silver and gold, corpses that hadn't yet been skinned or harvested; and, most interestingly, a few creatures that were still alive. They slumbered in magical unconsciousness, curled up, wrapped in thin, bronze-coloured chains that flickered in a manner rather unlike metal; but the runes carved over them were very familiar. The capturing chains of the Silent Market.

Which meant one of these captives was connected to that underground collection of nightmarketers. Interesting.

Lluc swept his gaze over them. Five in number, and his Crew had the decency to at least bandage their wounds so they wouldn't keel over and die before he had the chance to kill them himself. A tall, imposing man with golden eyes and some latent ancestry sprawling scales over his cheeks; a shaking, richly-clothed man with haunted eyes and barely a spark of mana; a stout woman with bared teeth and acidic green eyes; a boy with black crawling up his arms like he'd dipped them in ink; a scrawny young man with a busted-open cage splattered with blood hugged tight in his arms.

Altogether, not necessarily the ones he'd have thought to survive a dungeon. Or even a backstreet fight. The man with the expensive clothing looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over if his apparent family wealth didn't weigh his pockets down so much.

But against all odds, they'd made it out. More than likely, they'd merely made it to the first floor and broken past the thrall he'd infected their minds with, turning right around and sprinting out—had probably been the helpful ones that had cut down the vine he had noticed crawling over the entrance in an effort to hide it—and thus they wouldn't have any information he didn't already have, and so they'd just be killed. Business as normal.

Varcís had given him a task. Lluc was to interrogate those that had made it out for any details he might have missed himself, scratch together a functioning map of all the floors he'd visited, and then present it back to him where Varcís could then stroll merrily through and claim the core. Lluc was supposed to give it to him and then sit back and rot as his superior grew even more so. Something roiled in his gut.

But still, he padded over the lowly little fools who had dared try escape.

"Introduce yourselves," he said, because interrogations tended to go smoother if he opened with a veneer of politeness; and also because he needed connections to kill if it turned out that any of them had any telepathic abilities and had shared secrets of the dungeon with the outside world.

All of them averted their eyes as his mana coiled to the surface, cowed by the presence of a Gold as they damn well should be. The man with the ancestry narrowed his golden eyes, jaw working through whatever he wanted to say.

But he didn't get the chance to speak, because someone else decided to leap for the position of first.

"You will release me," the man with the ink-black hands snapped, full of all the willful ignorance of youth. "I am Alami, priest of Akohr, and she will not take kindly to you keeping one of her chosen few captive."

Ah. Fantastic. Lluc loved priests. There was nothing quite like having a deity grant you both powers and a stick to shove up your ass.

"She sent me here on a mission more important than whatever you think I was here for," Alami continued, moving well past willful ignorance and straight into idiocy for speaking as he was to who he was. "So if you value your life, you will release me so I can report back to her."

Lluc smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. He leaned down to be on level with Alami, dragging whatever scraps of mana he had left to spark around the corners of his eyes; flashy, though ultimately just for show. A mere glimpse of who held the real power in this interaction.

Because for all that the dungeon had somehow—somehow—made pacts with multiple deities to allow them to spread their influence through its floors, Lluc hadn't felt the Goddess of Night amongst those present, and that vastly reduced anything she could actually do to him. Aiqith was very far from the gods, and even the mightiest of their wraths would lose much of its force by the time it actually got down to him, and, well.

Judging by Alami's... everything, Lluc was willing to bet that Akohr didn't care about him all that much.

"Surely a little priest like you should be able to contact your patron even while captive," Lluc said, damn near purring.

Alami bristled. "Of course I'm able! You could lock me in– in the depths of the Endless Trench and I'd still be able to commune with her!"

"Awfully convenient for you to say that, isn't it?" Lluc said, tilting his head to the side. "One claim of priesthood and I suppose I'm just to... let you go? Based on nothing but your word?" He didn't need any slithering mana to make his words sink in like a viper's fangs. "Why don't you prove yourself?"

Alami did hesitate at that, inferiority complex warring with the real threat issued; while his ink-black hands were certainly a sign of his priesthood, that was easy enough to be faked, and Lluc was more than willing to claim disbelief. But would the promised death be worth potentially revealing his mission?

There was a moment of silence as he chewed that over, ink crawling a few inches higher up his arms, curling around his elbows. Lluc let himself settle back, smile curling wider over his face. "As I assumed. So who are you really, boy?"

The insult decided it. Alami didn't so much bristle as shoot upright, the Dread Crew member behind him—a sturdy woman with dwarven ancestry and approximately no shits to give—raising her greataxe threateningly but he hardly seemed to notice, glaring at Lluc with a fury only mostly hidden by the baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. "You will not make a liar of me," he snapped, fists clenching. "And I will laugh as she strikes you down for your insult."

Lluc couldn't wait to see it.

Alami closed his eyes and the cave's shadows deepened around him, night slithering up his shoulders like a shawl; his hands disappearing entirely into the murk as he brought them before his chest to clasp in a circle, opening up to the sky despite the mountain in the way. Things like that rarely bothered the gods.

Then, on the back of Lluc's tongue, he tasted it—the faint star-burn, humming with potential, mana far beyond his access but still lingering in his throat. The distant awareness of a goddess.

"My lady," Alami murmured, voice echoing oddly beyond the cavern they were in. "I have completed my mission, and returned successful."

A pause, the boy's brow furrowing. He seemed a touch hesitant. "I should give my report now. I would not want to wait to inform you," he said, slowly, painfully. No desire to admit that he was worried about Lluc ripping him sternum to spine if he didn't prove himself, apparently. Pride like that got you killed.

"Your suspicions were correct," he said. "The dungeon has been granted a boon by another deity, one of shadows; shadows that reacted... poorly to my presence. I think her name was Nuv–"

The star-burn sharpened to a vicious edge.

Whatever he was about to say broke off as Alami choked, words spluttering up alongside a fountain of black; his eyes flew wide and his hands leapt to his throat, clawing furiously, desperate.

Ah. It appeared Akohr had been paying attention.

Hm. That was rather interesting—Lluc had heard of him, the youngest nightmarketer to ever join that underground cabal, and that did explain the capturing chains used on several creatures over to the side.

"Thank you for sparing me," he said ever so politely, though it was clear he wasn't particularly fond of the words. "But I would like to ask if the dungeon is off limits—otherwise, if you allow me to keep what I have taken, I feel I could make much gold for Calarata."

There. Packaged all up in pretty words. The real statement hidden underneath was give me back what I rightfully won.

Lluc raised a very apathetic eyebrow. There was no thing like karma in lawless Calarata, where the rich plundered and the poor died. If Gonçal wanted to complain about fairness, this was certainly the wrong place to do it.

Certainly a bold choice after he'd watched Lluc kill the woman sitting directly next to him for trying a similar thing.

Lluc padded over to the pile of treasures, nudging things aside with his boot; a luminous constrictor curled around itself, lumped piles of moss and mushrooms, a slumbering ironback toad.

And, tucked at the bottom, a jagged piece of quartz. Lluc summoned it to his hand with a flick of air-attuned mana and peered closer at it, feeling something pouring off in whispering little ripples.

A canine-esque form raged within, bouncing off the fractals and spitting with fury, barely able to move. A wisp.

Judging by Gonçal's stiffening reaction, this was the particular prize he was so desperate to reclaim.

Lluc turned back to him, flipping the quartz over in his hands. A makeshift capturing charm—the wisp would need to be transferred to a much higher quality prison soon less it escape, even being removed from the dungeon that fed it a constant supply of mana. This kind of thing would fetch quite the high price, especially with the power of the Silent Market to find the highest bidder.

"I don't know," Lluc mused, because he was in a particular mood to be infuriating and there was no reason not to put on a show when he was surrounded by Dread Crew members. "For all the gold you promise you could make Calarata, I certainly feel that if I took this and simply sold it myself, I could take a much larger cut."

Gonçal smiled to hide how his jaw tightened enough it was pulling at his cheekbones. "What all due respect," he said, careful enough he seemed to be crawling his way over each word. "This isn't how you would convince people to continue invading your dungeon."

Lluc did tilt his head to the side at that. Nightmarketers were a rather famous bunch for being eclectic, capturing monsters alive that would rip them head to asshole just because they sold a little better than if they were dead, but it was still rather impossible to hide that fifty adventurers had walked into that dungeon and a mere five had walked out. Those weren't the type of odds that even a mid-ranked Silver as Gonçal was would seemingly be up to keep taking, and certainly not other adventurers. "You would want to continue risking your life in it?" He asked, almost curious.

Gonçal blinked at him like he didn't understand the question. "It's a dungeon," he offered.

Lluc kept his eyebrow raised.

"Invading one either means I die, or I collect enough treasures to live very comfortably. And this is a dungeon in Calarata; while there could be a tax on everything like with the ones in Leóro—a tax I'm more than willing to pay," he added, a touch hastily, "–it would hopefully have less restrictions than those in Leóro. Something that would allow me to better profit. Me, and the Dread Crew, of course."

Lluc paused.

He'd spurred the crowd under the borwood tree into action by claiming the dungeon was threatening their home, threatening their lives, and promised gold as a reward—but he hadn't really considered that the dungeon itself would be the reward. Who would consider that? Dungeons offered treasures for a few and death for the vast majority; why would anyone take that risk as something they accepted?

Gonçal expected that this dungeon would soon gain an Adventuring Guild and be open for invasions like every other dungeon in the world.

Gonçal wanted that, and so had fifty other adventurers who had all plunged into the depths.

Fifty other adventurers who had looked to Lluc as the one who had told them of this potential tucked beneath their very city.

Unabidden, the plan raced through his mind. Varcís expected him to come back and report that the dungeon was properly weakened for an attack. Expected him to come back after risking his life, trot over to his side like a loyal dog, heedless of danger in the face of commands. Like he was just another woe-begotten scavenger desperate for any scrap of attention.

Lluc Cardena Ferré was the First Mate of Varcís Bilaro, but that wasn't it. He wasn't some mongrel pup waiting at the Dread Pirate's heels, using his name and clawing for the prestige that came with it. He had reached Gold under his own abilities. Had become powerful.

But power didn't come from mana alone, and as he looked in Gonçal's stubborn, idiotic face, he saw there could be something more.

Varcís expected him back. Expected him to report that the dungeon was now free for the taking and that it was ready to be killed. Expected him to just hand over the only other source of true, untouched potential left in Calarata.

Instead, Lluc sat before Gonçal, raising the piece of quartz with the wisp trapped within. He rolled it over his knuckles, watching Gonçal's eyes track it with burning ferocity only tempered by the sullen knowledge that he couldn't challenge Lluc for it, both on a mana standpoint and the understanding that Lluc held all the cards in this interaction.

That Lluc was powerful.

Claiming the core would be the same as suicide. It would be a direct challenge to Varcís, and for all the power he knew it would bring him, there was still the truth that he did not know how powerful Varcís was, and Lluc hadn't scrounged and scrapped and fought his way through Calarata for as long as he had to survive on hope.

But if he let Varcís collect the core, he would be threatening himself.

The thought hit him rather strangely. He had known, of course, that Varcís had wanted the core for the power it brought, whether he merely claimed the dungeon or removed the core itself. But if he got it, then he would either be able to create loyal monsters or wield mana beyond this mortal world, and in both those scenarios, he would need Lluc less.

And things that were not needed in the Dread Pirate's entourage tended to disappear.

Lluc Cardena Ferré would not disappear.

And the only way to prevent that was to make himself invaluable.

His gaze flicked over those in the cavern. A nightmarketer, a researcher, a hunter. All currently held with their lives in a fragile, fleeting position—a single motion from him and they would all find themselves dead on the ground, no questions asked by the Dread Crew. And who would try to take revenge for it? He was the First Mate.

The Dread Crew in the room didn't know what was going on. He hadn't told them anything, and while they likely would have picked up that this was a dungeon he was investigating from the questions he'd been asking, that was it. They looked to him and saw him as in charge, and thus wouldn't question him changing the script—because they didn't know the script. Because only Lluc and Varcís did.

An Adventuring Guild.

One wisp in a crystal was worth little. But dozens of them, piled high and continuously collected, alongside monsters and beasts in capturing chains—sensed by someone who could find their location hidden in the walls—properly identified and described by a researcher who knew them.

Well.

That was worth much more.

And there would come a tax, another tax not unlike the one that Varcís forced Calarata to pay him for his protection, but this time a tax that would be paid willingly. Lluc would not have to drag a sea-drake here and kill it in front of the crowds just to remind them why they were paying him; all he would have to do was show them the treasure that they could win within the dungeon, and they would line up outside his door.

The money wouldn't go to him, he knew. That would be another challenge.

But Varcís was a terribly busy man, and if an Adventuring Guild were to open, he would not be the face leading it. That would fall to his First Mate, who would only be ever so interested in the role.

Lluc Cardena Ferré would not disappear.

"Tell me," Lluc said, slowly, enticingly, dangerously. "What would you offer if I not only allowed you to take the wisp, but collect more?"

The deep thrum of his mana in his chest, echoing like a fate changed.

And in Gonçal's eyes, he saw only interest.