Chapter 9 Part 4 of 5 (Patreon)

Her thoughts and emotions were a jumbled mess.

“That is why we need to disrupt Louis’ plans as much as possible and we have to make sure that the Alvans know we’re in charge.”

She saw it then, how he shifted and tilted the scales of relationships.

“It’s all an equation to you, gain and loss.”

“That is how the Ten Realms work.”

Kameela turned away from him, her eyes shaking as she left the room. She wished he called out to her, that he ran up to grab her arm. He let her leave, it hurt just how much he felt his words were right.

She closed her eyes outside the door, thinking of the time they had shared, after a job, laughing in bars, walking to the next job. When relationships weren’t weighed against one another, when emotions ruled and logic was a distant second or third.

“You okay,” Esther asked. She must’ve been waiting for her to finish talking to Edmond.

“Yeah, just uh, tired,” Kameela smiled, realizing where she was.

“Okay,” Esther said.

“He’s in there.” Kameela gestured to the room.

Harrod followed after her.

She found Robert sitting in a room, watching the streets.

“Alvans aren’t too happy with the state of things,” He said into the room, not turning around.

“I doubt they would be.” Kameela moved closer to him, they sat on chairs.

“You think there is something odd about their lords?” Robert pitched his voice low.

“You noticed as well.” Harrod said.

“What do you mean?” Kameela asked.

“Well when we were in that last place, Erik needed to jump on a wall to get enough power to get into the second floor. He’s supposed to be strong as hell physically right?”

“Yes."

"And then they have both been in the rear with all of their guards around them."

"Well they are lords of Alva," Kameela said.

"Yes, who took down airships if the information from the lower realms is to be believed and now they're meekly in the back?"

"Does nothing for us to think on their condition. All we need to care about is getting out of this place and back to the realms."

"What about when we do?" Robert turned his head over.

"Then we can figure out our next steps from there." She stood.

"Where are you going?" Harrod asked.

"To try and build bridges."

"I'll come with you." Kameela halted Harrod with a hand on his shoulder.

"No, you get some rest, you have been awake longer than all of us and I don't think that we will have much rest in our future." She headed for the door. "Robert, make sure he doesn't waste it by messing around in his notebooks."

Harrod clicked his tongue.

"You heard her." Robert said.

Kameela went down the stairs, passing Alvans watching out of different windows, some were leaning against walls, checking their weapons or getting some food and drink into them.

"Where is Roska?" She asked one of them.

"Second floor in a meeting."

"Thank you."

She headed downwards again, there were several floors that were empty of all living creatures. Maybe bringing Harrod would have been nice. She kept a hand on her pistols as she kept down the stairs.

She was greeted by Alvans on the stairs and passed below, a guard was standing outside of the room, he knocked as she approached.

She looked at the skeleton Egbert who was reading a book, chortling to himself, the fire wolf was on one side, sleeping, the Fire Imp snored and hiccuped with his open mouth, splayed out on the other side, his belly rising, falling and jolting with his throaty-breaths.

The doors opened, Erik, Rugrat, another female Alvan and Roska were inside, their helmets on the table they had found.

"Kameela?" Roska bit out the word.

"I wanted to apologize for how Edmond reacted, he's," No longer the person I knew. "Got a lot to deal with right now."

"We're all dealing with a situation we weren't expecting," Roska said, but her words softened.

Kameela walked into the room.

"I wanted to offer what information I know. Those transforming creatures that screech and howl, they are called Chimora. They usually work in roaming groups, they eat the leftovers from fights and they use the Earth Element to transform. The demi-humans are called Rin, their beast form are called Benir, they specialize in one element. The creature that captured your person in a pod and was killed by the piercers, they're called Jorken." She waited as the second woman in the room copied down the names into a notebook.

"You might have noticed that tombstones don't appear over the dead creatures and you don't get experience here? The tombstones only happen to people and creatures that are from the ten realms. When we return to the ten realms then you will get experience for all of the creatures that you kill."

"What about quests?" Rugrat asked.

"If you have a quest to complete, it should still register. Say if you were to increase your elemental cultivation. Yeah that should be fine, you would just drag in a lot of the surrounding elements to complete the changes ignited by the completion of the quest."

Rugrat nodded.

Kameela, thought of extending her senses to them, but held herself back, it was seen as highly rude and could break her hope in forming closer ties.

She didn't miss the shadow that passed over their faces at the mention of elemental cultivation.

Should I tell them about the Treasure Hall?

"Anything else we should know?" Roska asked.

"That is all I know right now." Kameela smiled.

"Thank you for letting us know, either Rugrat or myself will attend meetings with Edmond in the future, but I think it would be good if you two kept a clear line of communication. We can only rely on ourselves here," Erik said.

"Understood, also I would suggest that if your people have time that they focus on tempering their bodies, the Violet Sky Realm is dense in elemental energy and it will increase how quickly they recover from fatigue, cultivating one's body here will be dozens of times faster than in the seventh realm."

"Thank you for your advice," Erik said.

Kameela bowed her head and left.

Atleast they seem reasonable, compared to Edmond. A spark of anger burned in her eyes as she turned towards the stairs and began her climb back up. Already she was keeping his secret about their destination.

***

Erik leaned against a pile of rubble after the meeting and Kameela's information they had split up and everyone had gone to ground.

George had padded into the room and slept against Rugrat on a sleep pad, his gear and boots next to his head as he held Big Momma from his chest down between his legs.

Davin walked into the room, smacking his lips and rubbing his face.

He looked at Erik with his big eyes.

Erik reached into his dump pouch finding the amulet and ring he had picked up outside the building. He activated the storage formation in the bag, but the ring and the amulet didn't go inside.

Storage items.He pulled out a small meat pie and tossed it to Davin. He unhinged his jaw catching the morsel and closed his eyes, chewing.

"Shpank You!" Davin said, heading over to curl up next to George.

"Don't eat with your mouth full," Erik shook his head and pulled out the two storage devices.

The ring was simple, inset with Emeralds, the Amulet was as big as a pocket watch, It had formations carved into it.

Would need to check, but looks like increases the power of attack spells?

He turned the amulet around, looking closer he could see that a simple storage ring had been placed into the center, looking just like part of the formation.

He looked inside the Emerald ring first.

There were only a few mana stones remaining, a collection of weapons, there were some bloodied sets of armor that showed signs of how their wearers had died.

Chimora corpses in their original form were in various stages of meals.

There were dozens of high grade variant monster cores of various elemental energies. Plants had been tossed in as well.

Doesn't look like they were an alchemist The ingredients were tossed about hap-hazardly and weren't stored properly, being in a storage device had saved them, but the harvesting was poor.

Several worn and half-repaired formations were close at hand.

A collection of bodies and items from the sub-realm were the only other things of note.

The monster cores will help the Special teams in tempering their bodies. They would need to be purified more than a monster core from the ten realms, but variant cores were a rare treasure in the ten realms and were always of use to body cultivators.

Erik turned to the amulet and the hidden storage ring.

Inside things were a bit more ordered, powerful weapons and a few spell scrolls lay ready for use. It had few remaining alchemical concoctions and empty pill containers and potion bottles.

Is that? Erik looked at the rune card, it looked like a large bookmark, but was carved with dense formations and runic lines.

Erik continued searching, finding a few sets of armor and clothes all the same size that must have been for the previous owner. There were also dozens of bookshelves filled with books, and tools used to turn Piercer skin into pages.

Writing tools and a book made with Piercer skin had been shoved into the amulet hurriedly with bedding, a lamp and remains of a meal.

Erik noticed a map, pulling it out and the book.

The map showed a large section of the underground city. Erik combined it with his own map, expanding his understanding of the area.

I'll make sure the others get a copy when they wake up. He slipped the maps into different storage rings, his personal one and the hidden one in his boot.

He checked the hand-made book and opened it. It was more a collection of pages that had been roughly sewn together. Erik had to take care to not let the pages fall out.

"The journal of Lezaar Pipallis."

"I'm trapped, that much is clear to me, the rune card stopped glowing several weeks ago now. Long enough for me to make these pages. I really should have invested in a few books to write in instead of only spending my time reading up on magical tomes at least I know enough to pull these pages together so I might have something to write on. I guess this all started when we found the rune card on a one star mission. We didn't know what it was for a long time, Emi was able to figure it out. We figured that we would sneak into the Violet Sky Realm, get some loot return to the ten realms and sell the rune card to the highest bidder as a retirement gift."

Erik kept reading, the one star party of heroes had travelled to the transition point in the ten realms by foot and gained access to the realm. They had arrived in the undercity, nearly immediately they were under attack, as they fought, more creatures were attracted by their mana based attacks.