Chương 69: Book 2: Chapter 3 - Old Friends

V conducted the quarterly review today. He noted that my observational reports have become, in his words, "unnecessarily detailed regarding local cultural practices." He is not wrong. I have spent three weeks documenting a harvest festival in the southern provinces that has no strategic relevance whatsoever. The music was performed on instruments I could build a superior version of in an afternoon, and yet I sat in a field for hours and listened and did not once think about how or why they were made.

V says this is the early stage of cultural contamination. I think he may be right about that too. The troubling part is that I cannot bring myself to care. - S. Solara, Personal Record, Date of Entry: Redacted MASON The hidden gate looked nothing like it had the first time I'd passed through it, half-dead and bleeding with a sun elf pulling me by the collar.

The fissure that served as The Drift's back door entrance had been widened to accommodate six abreast, reinforced with stone and fitted with a blast door of riveted iron that could seal the passage in seconds. Defensive wards hummed in the rock on either side, layered three deep in a configuration I recognized as my own design, though the implementation bore Fin's characteristically meticulous hand.

Above the door, carved into the lintel, was The Drift's unofficial motto: All Are Welcome Who Are Wanted Nowhere Else. The sentries were new too, a proper militia unit, four guards in matching leather armor bearing The Drift's recently adopted sigil: a white mask split down the center. The place was becoming a city in more than just name. The guards carried enchanted polearms and wore potions on their belts in my distinctive cobalt-blue hexagonal vials.

I'd designed the holsters too - a variation of an Earth pack I'd once used to carry gel pouches on long runs - though nobody here knew that. The squad leader was a dwarf, Level 22 based on my aura reading, former Kaz-Varr military, her hand resting on the haft of her polearm.

I'd tried to break the habit of scanning everyone with [Architect's Vision], it felt like a violation in some way, running a magical TSA security check on every person I met, but the impulse had become second nature and I found it was getting harder to stop. I produced the token Vex had given me, a small disc of obsidian; a joke he had enjoyed almost a bit too much. It was inscribed with the changeling's personal sigil, identifying me as someone to be admitted without delay. The guard examined it and nodded.

"I assume you know the way."

"I do. Thank you, Sergeant," I said formally, playing the persona of the travelling merchant. A hiss of compressed air blew my now dark black hair back. A Silver-Rank evolution of [Bio-Feedback] - a skill called [Physiological Adaptation] - allowed me to control its length and color at will among other minor physical characteristics; not much use in combat, but very convenient for disguises. I stepped through the door and the atmosphere changed, the dry cold of the mountain tunnels giving way to The Drift's warmth.

Using my factory's perpetual output of high-quality metal and some salvaged dwarven schematics, Fin had channeled geothermal vents through the walls to create a regulated climate system that kept the entire cavern at a pleasant temperature year round. The Drift had always been vertical, a settlement built into the walls of a volcanic vent, but the scale of it had transformed. New construction extended far below the original settlement's lowest level.

The refugees, and the commerce they brought, were pushing the city deeper into the ground with the relentless momentum of a population that had nowhere else to go. Thirty thousand crammed into a space that had been built for ten. I sidestepped a goblin hauling a cart of subterranean mushrooms as I wove through the market district, ducking behind a tavern to avoid the bottleneck ahead. [Phantom Presence] kept me out of anyone's notice, just another nomad in a city now bursting at the seams with them.

I climbed the stairs toward Vex's pavilion, avoiding the crush of the central lift. A human couple laughed nearby, their smiling faces drawing my attention. The familiar yearning tugged at me, but I knew it was impossible, a weakness I could never allow myself to need... Eating alone, training alone, building alone... one day likely dying alone. Fin had been a good friend to me these past 18 months, but he was even more obsessed with the work than I was, barely stopping to eat.

Liarra was the last person I'd shared a meal with, the last person to pull me outside of myself and my relentless mission. That had all changed that night she'd walked into the tunnel and out of my life. I'd thought about her more than I cared to admit in the months since, the almost-kiss in the Clockwork Tomb often surfacing unbidden in quiet moments. Life was like that though, a series of seemingly small choices that formed the path we walked, only visible in hindsight.

I'd made the choice that day with eyes open and a clarity of purpose I still felt, the tinge of regret an acceptable cost I knew I would pay many more times before it was done. I'd built a faceless empire of steel and blue vials, killed a dragon, become one of the most powerful people from here to the capital - even if nobody knew it - but the highlight of my social calendar was unscheduled meetings with a changeling who I hesitated to call a friend.

Fenris would have had strong opinions about that, scolding me for losing sight of life as I rushed headlong toward a death that would find me one way or another. He'd have delivered philosophical musings about men who bury themselves in work to avoid the vulnerability of need, all the while ignoring the fact that such a critique had applied as much to him as it did to me... but then hypocrisy didn't cancel out truth.

I missed him still, his gentle manner and clear-eyed honesty the antidote to my darker tendencies, tendencies that felt more and more like permanent changes. I couldn't remember the last time I'd sincerely laughed. I took the stairs three at a time, my Strength attribute now in the respectable Tier-3 zone. As my stats improved, I felt the connection to the System growing ever stronger, my sense of self increasingly distant as if my body were hardware running a foreign program.

I hated that feeling, but denying it wouldn't make it go away. An attractive woman at a tea stall tracked me with her eyes as I passed, her gaze lingering. I would have been flattered if I had any idea what to do with such a feeling. Socializing for me now felt like a performance: calculating incentives, calibrating gains and losses, measuring risk and reward. I was different person to everyone I met, cold or warm depending on a careful analysis of optimal result...

whatever authentic part of me remained had been buried under layers of artifice so thick I'd be surprised to ever find them again. A passing healer pulled a blue-tinted potion from her pouch as she entered a nearby refugee tent. The Blue Phoenix brand was everywhere in The Drift now: cobalt vials on belts, ampules lining the shelves of alchemy stalls, phoenix-stamped armor on guards, heavy pallets of fresh metal riding the lifts, precision tools in workshops scattered all throughout the artisan quarter.

I sold my goods here at a loss, a fact that sometimes needled at my efficiency-obsessed mind, but these people had little enough as it was, the Stone-Sworn blockade making it all but impossible to get even the bare essentials without my distribution network. The result had been something unexpected, the phoenix sigil becoming as much a symbol of rebellion and survival as it was a commercial brand.

Fenris would have been proud to see my work holding such an important place in the hearts of so many, I could almost see the sparkle in his eyes as I told him about it. Vex was less sentimental, telling me I should simply charge more... but then the changeling wasn't nearly as cynical as he pretended to be and had been more than generous with his time and knowledge. Cresting the final set of stairs, I presented Vex's token to the usual pair of hobgoblin guards who barely glanced at it before stepping aside.

The corridor beyond was cut from the same dark basalt as the rest of The Drift but finished to a higher standard, the walls smoothed and inlaid with copper filigree. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Even this back entrance was opulent, Vex insisting that the appearance of power was almost as important as power itself.

"Make people believe they live in a palace," he had said to me one night after a few drinks of his favorite Laurician wine, "and they will behave like citizens rather than refugees. Buy-in, Cass, that's the key. You have to make them believe they're a piece of it, it's the only way any of this works." Through the corridor was the newly renovated audience chamber.

He had replaced the silk drapes from my last visit with carved stone panels, huge and imposing, depicting scenes from The Drift's brief but dramatic history. The stone on the far left showed the first founding - Vex himself large in the frame, an emerald shining in his eye as he surveyed an untouched cavern that stretched into the distance, the glowing mana stone like god rays splashing through the ceiling to the floor below.

I scanned several others - the first Council of the Damned, the Eight-Day War with the Spider Clan goblins, the arrival of the refugees... the work was beautiful and complex, hints of movement and shifting lights suggesting high-level artisan skills at work. The final panel drew my attention, a geometric abstraction that I recognized with some discomfort as a representation of my Chests of Transference logistical network.

The nodes and connections were stylized into something decorative enough to be unrecognizable to anyone who didn't know what to look for, but had Vex ever asked my opinion on his decisions I would have adamantly opposed the idea - secrets were hardly useful when they weren't secret. Still, some part of me couldn't help but be flattered. The changeling sat on his throne at the far end of the chamber receiving a petition from a delegation of merchants, mostly human but a couple surface dwarves as well.

They were imploring him for expanded access to the lower market, an area that was already overcrowded. Vex listened with seeming interest, though I knew his moods well enough to see he was about out of patience. His eyes flicked to me, blue today, a hint of excitement playing behind them. I leaned against a nearby pillar and waited. Vex concluded a ruling that unsurprisingly curt but delivered with enough theatrical gravitas that the petitioners seemed somehow gratified to have received an outright refusal.

His diamond teeth flashed in a diplomatic smile as he shook their hands before they filed passed me without a second glance. He gestured for me to follow and I did, winding my way through another corridor toward his private quarters. The door closed itself behind me - some sort of automation tronic that I might have examined more closely on a different day.

Vex fell into a plush leather recliner that I'd built for him some months ago, I'd fashioned the thing as a replica of an old La-Z-Boy we'd had in the boys home back in New York. Vex had been so taken with it he had commissioned a half dozen more which now dotted various hovels in the city, to the delight of the citizens. He kicked up the articulating foot rest with a heavy sigh, grabbing a bottle from a nearby end table.

"Too many gods damned people, Cassius, governing has lost its flavor. I've become an administrator." His tone suggested it was the worst word in his vocabulary. I took the high-backed leather chair opposite him, accepting the glass he poured. I took a sip of the wine he offered, noting the expensive Laurician vintage.

I'd taken to learning everything there was about Calderan high society in preparation for my entrance into it; tasting expensive wines until my mouth ached had been a task I'd willingly suffered through. Vex certainly had the best wines.

"You're keeping a lot of desperate people from tearing each other apart," I said.

"There are worse things to be than that." He scowled.

"You might not say that if you'd ever tried to mediate a property dispute between a wood elf, a surface dwarf, and a hobgoblin." He took a long sip from his glass, the legs of the wine sliding slowly down the sides.

"Lots of history that even desperation cannot mask for long. I wait everyday for news that civil war has broken out in the lower quarters." I smiled without thinking, the expression unfamiliar enough that it felt strange.

"What was your ruling?" He waved his hand, dismissing the question.

"Surely you didn't come here to discuss municipal arbitration. If you did, there's a knife in that drawer I'd kindly ask you to provide so I can slit my wrists."

"No," I said truthfully, eyes studying the dark liquid. The emerald in his right eye caught the light as he turned his head, mouth tilted up in a thoughtful grin.

"You've changed."

"Given all that's happened, it would be strange if I hadn't."

"You know that's not what I mean." He swirled his wine slowly.

"Most powerful people leak - their fears, their desires, their needs... their weaknesses. But you've always been contained, a cipher, hard and opaque like the obsidian that made you. It's one of the things I found most interesting about you. Discipline I'd always assumed, a product of immense self-restraint." Trusting Vex with my real identity had been a hard choice, but ultimately I'd seen no alternative.

I'd needed to create a cover identity that would hold up to scrutiny - backstory, witnesses, land holdings, family trees, crumbs with history and reputation that would lead back to a web of lies too complicated to untangle. He was the only broker with the reach to make it happen. He could betray me, of course, and perhaps one day he would, but that was a problem for tomorrow.

"And now?" I asked, unsure I wanted the answer.

"Now? Well, it seems less like something you do and more like something you are." He set the empty glass down on the table.

"The difference matters." I didn't look away, Vex had earned the right to speak to me that way.

"I came to use the Class Stone," I said after a moment, leaving his observation unanswered.

"I'm due for an evolution and I can't have it known." His gaze lingered for an extra beat before folding his arms open in a gesture of welcome.

"What's mine is yours, of course, but then do you mean to suggest that you've ascended? Impossible." I set down the wine and let the disguise of [Aetheric Chameleon] dissolve, the unfamiliar skill still feeling like a costume rather than the second skin it would need to become. I let my suppressed mana signature bloom, the weight of it echoing down the corridor that led out into The Drift where I knew a thousand heads had just turned in unison, unsure of why.

The ley lines in the walls brightened as they drank in my ambient mana, the temperature in the room ticking up noticeably under the pressure of so much uncontained magical energy. Even the imperturbable Vex showed a crack of lost composure, the corner of his mouth twitching as he tried to suppress his reaction.

"Well," he said quietly, picking a piece of lint off his linen pants.

"Let's not do that again." The ley lines dimmed as I drew the power back in. Vex didn't say anything for several seconds, pouring himself another glass of wine, his expression unreadable.

"Three months," he said finally.

"Three fucking months to complete a gold-rank hunt. It took me nearly a decade and you're not even half the man I was." The materials for tier-ascensions, unlike levels, were soul-bonded by the System, which meant they could not be purchased or sold, only earned.

"Took a bit of planning, but tracked a crystalline wyrm to the eastern cave over a month ago." Vex knew a lot about me now - my time in Peristonia, my identity as Cassius Petracca, even my connection to Zachias - but the construct and my exaltian heritage were secrets that were too dangerous for even him to know.

"It was close, but it fell in the end."

"You are aware that a crystalline wyrm has a raid-tier designation? A full B-Rank party would have a 30% casualty rate against a monster that powerful." Vex clicked his tongue against his diamond teeth in a show of irritation. He'd come to rely on me for more than just potions in the last year, my increasingly risky hunts were a source of much consternation - not that he'd ever try to stop me.

"I was lucky to come across it at all... there are only so many options when prioritizing secrecy." There were certainly more approachable targets I could have chosen, but few that would have gone unnoticed.

"Anyway, the Adventurer's Guild budgets 30% casualties for a goblin hunt, it's their entire business model." Vex rolled his eyes.

"You'll do what you want regardless of what I say. Not as if my centuries of life experience have any value to the all-knowing Cassius Petracca."

"I'm alive." He huffed, unhappy but unable to dispute the obvious.

"I notice," he said, taking a bite of a sponge cake, "that you haven't asked about our favorite Title Hunter."

"How is she?" I asked, welcoming the chance to change the subject, though unsure if I wanted it to be this subject instead.

"Famous." He grinned, rainbows lighting up in the prisms of his mouth.

"Insufferably famous, in fact. She's a fast riser now that the aetheric ossification isn't strangling her progress. Working contracts out of the capital now, on retainer with House Baudecamp last I heard." He looked at me as if that name would mean something, but I gave away nothing.

"She's all right, then."

"She's working, and she's wealthy... annoyed most of the time, but then that is her natural state." He paused.

"She asked about you." I didn't take the bait.

"Once, about four months ago."

"Oh?"

"Asked if I'd heard from you recently. I said I hadn't... true depending on how you understood the word 'recently' - you are an enigmatic fellow after all." He waited for my reaction but I offered him none.

"She nodded as if expecting that answer and then changed the subject." I said nothing else so he drank down the rest of his wine.

"My breaks are getting shorter and shorter, the petitions never end." He stood, the conversation apparently at an end.

"The Class Stone, you know where it is, I'll let Grix know you're coming." I moved to leave and he grabbed me by the arm, pulling me closer.

"I have lived a long time, Cass, long enough to watch many people pursue what you now attempt to achieve." His eyes were burning with mana, orbs floating in a deep well.

"A few succeeded, most did not. None returned improved by the experience."

"And yet," I said, meeting his burning eyes with fire of my own, "I'd wager all of them would do it again." He nodded and let go of my arm. I left without another word.