Sakura opened her eyes with a groan, surrounded by impenetrable darkness.

  She reached out and flipped a switch on the wall beside her bed, activating the series of magelights embedded into the ceiling of her underground lair. She was hungry, thirsty, and desperately needed to use the restroom, but her reservoir was full, and her injuries were far less painful than when she had fallen asleep.

  It all became clear when she checked the clock on her way to the toilet, because Sakura had been asleep for almost 36 hours straight. Those pills Doc gave me must have included a powerful sedative. I was too fatigued to remember to ask what was in them.

  Her next stop was the kitchen. She downed an entire pitcher of water and then pulled a sandwich out of her preservation unit, making the gradual climb back to full alertness as she chewed.

  After her duel with Wraith and participating in the battle for Puppet Town, she had desperately needed some rest, but now it was time to be up and about. Sakura wanted to visit her friends and check in with Dialla and Earl, but before she got to any of that, she needed to investigate the phenomena One-Eye had reported and evaluate the threat it posed to the settlement.

  She was hoping the horde wouldn’t cross into the Ivory Plains, but she suspected it would. Her luck had never been that good.

  What the veteran hunter had witnessed while leaving the Gilded Heights was deeply concerning. While stampedes happened from time to time, this was something different. Sakura had never heard of beasts behaving in such a manner, and neither had anyone else in the settlement. Lore-Weaver might know what was going on, but the spider was in hibernation after using so many ultimate abilities in a short span of time.

  No one was in shape to scout the threat in person after battling the Claws, which left her to investigate the phenomenon via magical means. She sent a message to Dialla, letting the mayor know she was going to be busy for a few hours, then took a walk to gather her thoughts and stretch her legs before beginning a lengthy scrying session.

  She climbed the stairs and stepped into the crude building above. She probably didn’t need a secret lair anymore, given the changes taking place in the settlement, but the facility would still be useful. Besides, after being targeted by Wraith, the extra security would help her sleep at night.

  After making sure no one was watching, Sakura opened the door, greeted the predawn sky, and started walking through the poorest section of the residential quarter. Although, at the rate Puppet Town is developing, it won’t be ramshackle for long.

  The dilapidated corner of the district was already far more populated than when she’d moved into the building a few months before the anomaly, and most of the structures had lights shining in the windows.

  Some were filled with people who had been camping on the public green in the aftermath of the disaster. More were occupied by refugees who had escaped the Gilded Heights, since there wasn’t a reason to quarantine them any longer with the Claws out of the picture.

  The rest were in the process of being renovated by One-Eye’s people. After mulling the matter over, Dialla had invited them to join the settlement on a provisional basis, with a promise that they could stay for good once they demonstrated they could fit in with the rest of the residents.

  The properties bordering her lair were still vacant lots, which meant Sakura didn’t have to worry about curious people peeking through the windows. Not that there was anything to see other than some threadbare furniture. Everything important was locked inside her workshop below the city’s streets.

  By now, the chill autumn air had cleared her head, so she made her way back to her lair, smiling as the sounds of celebration reached her ears from all corners of the settlement. This was just a prelude for the party Dialla planned to throw once everyone had a few days to recover from the prolonged ordeal. But after weathering the Claws’ siege, the chatter of happy voices was music to her ears.

  Sakura stepped through her front door, activated a sentry device that would warn her if anyone approached, then flipped up the table to reveal a staircase below. She stepped into the stairwell and then sealed the entrance behind her. When she reached the bottom, she activated a high-grade privacy device that would keep anyone from noticing the mana powering her spells. She took a quick look around while gathering her thoughts and got ready to begin an intensive scrying session.

  Her lair had four rooms—a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and a large general-purpose area running between them. Filling most of the last was an expensive collection of magitech machines and handmade furniture.

  In addition to the privacy device and preservation unit, there was a stasis chamber with a small stash of mana seeds, which she would be using shortly. In the middle of the room sat a comfortable couch and a large table with extra chairs for those rare occasions when she invited guests down here. There was a storage locker containing the resources and gear she’d collected over the last few months, which she was planning to give to her friends once they had obtained cores of their own.

  The final item was a gigantic map of the Ivory Plains and everything she’d been able to learn about the surrounding biomes, although most of them were unexplored frontier regions and shrouded by the Fog of War. Stacks of reports were piled high on the tabletop, and more were taped to the wall—filled with handwritten notes regarding the status of Ord and its various factions vying for dominance.

  Like every time she came down here, Sakura stopped to stare at the paper containing everything she knew about the twenty-one Unique cores. Only two of their names and bearers had been filled out—her own Lore-Weaver and Edge’s Skill-Eater. She had compiled legends and secondhand accounts she thought might refer to the other nineteen, but so far, their names, powers, locations, and wielders were a total mystery.

  She had a feeling that she would learn more about them sooner rather than later. While some of the twenty-one were likely still sealed away, the other Unique core and their bearers were destined to be movers and shakers in this new era of Ord—champions of the various factions who could alter the fate of the planet.

  She hoped to bring more of them to her side during the days ahead—or at least be on friendly terms—and desperately wanted to avoid the attention of the rest until Edge had grown into his true power.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  But that was a worry for another day. Right now, she needed to figure out what was going on with the beast stampede that had chased One-Eye during his journey to the Ivory Plains. Once she had determined the nature of the threat, Sakura would confer with the leaders of Puppet Town and come up with a plan to deal with the problem before it arrived on their doorstep.

  Now that she had collected her thoughts, she grabbed a mana seed from the stasis chamber and put it in her pocket. Then she sat down in a plush armchair where she had a good view of the map. After making sure Lore-Weaver was still asleep, all that was left was to get to work.

  Sakura made herself as comfortable as she could, focused on the area she wanted to view, and ignited her core. At rank five, Remote Viewing had enough range to reach halfway into the adjoining biomes—if the Fog of War had been dispelled at any rate. The skill burned through mana at a rapid rate, but with a full tank and a seed to refill it, she should have enough magicytes to get the job done.

  Her reactor flared to life as her reservoir fueled the expensive skill. There was an intense moment of disorientation followed by the sensation of her mind separating from her body, then her consciousness was cast to the southeastern border of the Ivory Plains like she’d been fired out of a cannon. The world streaked past at a mind-boggling rate as she completed a multiday journey in a handful of heartbeats.

  When everything stopped moving, Sakura found herself looking down on the biome from a bird’s-eye view. She could adjust her altitude at will but found 5,000 feet to be an ideal compromise between peering into the distance and being able to make out details.

  Since she didn’t know where the stampede was, she began her investigation at the border of the plains and the jungle Edge had named the Sweltering Green. The biome that held the Guided Heights was on the far side of the jungle and beyond the range of Remote Viewing.

  Most of the region was unexplored and covered by the Fog of War—the magic-blocking mist the System had created to prevent people from scouting the planet by remote means, including magic, satellite imagery, and aerial reconnaissance.

  That part of the biome was covered in a silvery haze. However, a wide swath of the jungle had been revealed by the expedition’s journey to the Savage Garden and subsequent flight to the caverns beneath the mountain, and more had been pushed back by the Claws themselves.

  Sakura didn’t see anything out of the ordinary on the Ivory Plains, although the flows of magicytes were thicker than ever. She breathed out a soft sigh of relief when she finished looking around.

  Whatever is going on, we still have some time before it reaches the settlement. She spent a few seconds watching a herd of buffalo grazing in the misty morning light, marveling at the jaw-dropping splendor of Ord.

  Then Sakura gathered her will and flew toward the dungeon—land blurring as her projection moved at a speed no vehicle could match. Soon, she was floating over the impenetrable thicket of bamboo covering the dormant dungeon. From there, she followed the lane of visible terrain the jailbirds had created during their trek from the Gilded Heights to the Savage Garden.

  She came to a stop when she reached the maximum range of Remote Viewing then peered into the distance. The next biome over didn’t have any fog left at all, which meant it had been extensively explored by the Claws. It was a vast desert of black sand with few sources of food and shelter, and even less water. It had fewer sub-biomes than most regions and was home to a wide variety of lethal creatures and environmental hazards.

  It would have taken hours to find the abandoned settlement without One-Eye’s instructions, which would have been prohibitively expensive when scrying from this distance. But with the list of landmarks he’d provided, she caught sight of the Heights a few minutes later, which had been built around one of the desert’s few oases.

  Sakura’s eyes widened as they beheld a scene of utter devastation. The entire settlement had been razed to rubble. If anyone had been living there after One-Eye left with his people, they had met a grisly fate.

  Unfortunately, that was all she could make out from this far away, which meant she would have to scour the jungle until she found the stampede instead of simply following their tracks. The Sweltering Green was a massive biome, but since she could only see a fraction of it, she lowered herself to a hundred feet above the canopy and continued her investigation.

  The magicytes were thick enough to support late stage-three monsters and beasts, and powerful predators warred for supremacy both above and below the sea of green. She nearly screamed when a bird the size of a warehouse flew past her position, looking her way when it sensed the mana from her projection before moving on.

  The canopy was too thick to peer through in most places, and conducting a search from ground level wasn’t a viable option. Instead, she started looking for somewhere with better visibility—a place where the signs of a stampede passing through would be easy to spot. She eventually noticed morning sunlight reflecting off a body of water. When she flew to take a closer look, she saw it was a river winding its way across the jungle.

  Sakura estimated where the stampede would have crossed it based on One-Eye’s route, then soared over the area in question. The muddy riverbank was thick with beast tracks. When she lowered herself to take a closer look, she ran her gaze across ursine prints longer than her forearm, including a few that were even bigger than that. Given that they were all headed in the same direction, she was confident she was drawing near the horde.

  She followed them across the Sweltering Green—trepidation growing with every beat of her heart as she observed a sub-biome that had been stripped of life. The plants were mostly intact, but the region’s beasts had been devastated.

  There were signs of struggle everywhere—blood, fur, and battle scars gouging the fertile soil. But she couldn’t find a single corpse among them, or any sign of the creatures responsible for the carnage. She lost the trail for a while when it crossed into the Fog of War, then found it again when it wound through an area the jailbirds had passed through.

  That was when Sakura caught sight of the bear. It was a shaggy gray beast the size of a wagon, digging through the dirt to get at something hiding in a burrow below. When she floated over to take a closer look, her eyes went wide with horror.

  The peak stage-two creature was a fearsome predator, but that wasn’t what caused the hair on her neck to rise and stand on end. By now, she was running low on mana, so she split her attention, returning part of her awareness to her body long enough to pop a mana seed into her mouth and chew. She let the delicious flavor calm her down, then focused on her projection—ready to face the nightmare she’d witnessed head-on.

  The reason for her rising dread was simple. Although it moved like a living creature, the massive bear had been dead for days.

  Its body was ravaged by grievous wounds, and she could see the white of its ribs through a cavity that had been torn out of its torso by a pair of colossal jaws. Half of its organs were shredded or missing, and its flesh was riddled with maggots. But somehow, the bear was still ambulatory—furiously digging out a terrified weasel the size of an Earth pig.

  Sakura had witnessed some incredible things since arriving on Ord and binding Lore-Weaver, but she had never seen anything like this. That must be the result of a powerful reanimation skill. But what could possibly have used it on enough creatures to create all the tracks I saw?

  While one undead bear was an unsettling sight, what happened next filled her with an adrenaline-saturated blend of revulsion and dread. After the beast slaughtered the weasel, she followed it across the jungle and into a massive clearing. The clamor of combat rang out across the early-morning air as the stampede was revealed at last. “By the gods,” she whispered.

  She had expected to see a few dozen undead bears at most, but there were hundreds of the gruesome creatures. Towering head and shoulders above the rest was a massive stage-three bear—one of the most powerful beasts she’d ever seen. While the creatures stopped to slaughter anything they came across, the horde was crossing the jungle as inexorably as the rising tide. When she floated up a few thousand feet to track their trajectory, it all became clear as day.

  Sakura didn’t know how the stampede had come into being or what was guiding its behavior. However, one thing was abundantly clear—the horde of reanimated bears was headed straight for Puppet Town.