Step by step, the navy blue of twilight faded away, leaving Edge awash in ten thousand shades of gray.

  Everything within Darkvision’s radius grew more distinct when tiny particles of mana rebounded from them as the ocular skill sharpened his senses to astonishing new heights.

  While some details were difficult to discern in his monochrome world, he could make out most aspects of his environment better than ever—all the way down to the intricate texture formed by grains of soil covering the tips of his boots.

  Edge didn’t need that level of precision to navigate the steep stretch of dirt leading to the bottom of the ravine. But if anything was waiting in ambush down here, there was a good chance he would see it before he drew near, especially with the thermal-vision upgrade Gaze had gained from Penetrate Foliage.

  Just to be safe, he activated Enhance Hearing too, which was sitting in his newly upgraded Auxiliary Skill Slot, amplifying a second sense to supplement his magical vision. He could hear the wind whistling through the sea of grass above and the piercing cries of predator and prey. The only sound nearby was the pounding of his heart.

  As he strode into the depths of Ord, Edge was overcome with the memories of his first desperate trip along this route. He had been coreless and starving to death—lost in a hostile wilderness filled with ferocious creatures.

  He’d just received the shock of his life—learned that his original body had been destroyed and he was trapped on the most dangerous planet in inhabited space for the foreseeable future. With his gruesome demise a foregone conclusion without a dramatic change in circumstance, he had bet everything on exploring some ancient runes lurking in the bottom of a mysterious gorge.

  It was a wager that had not only saved his life but changed it in ways he never could have imagined. Finding a Unique core that granted him the power to steal the skills of monsters, men, and beasts had let Edge defend himself, protect his friends, and save his new home.

  But power never comes without a price.

  Before long, binding Skill-Eater might cost him something just as important—his ability to determine his own destiny. As matters stood, he was terrified he would wake up one day and find himself a prisoner within his own skin. The ravenous lord’s insatiable ambitions terrified him on a primal level, and he prayed that he could find a way out of this mess without losing his life or his soul in the bargain.

  Thoughts filled with dark ruminations, Edge soon arrived at the bottom of the descent. Now he needed to walk to the far side of the ravine, pass through a series of tunnels beyond, and enter the enclosure that held the crumbling ruins—a temple he was now certain had been built by the native people of Ord, long before the System arrived on this world.

  The last time he was down here, he had encountered a pair of bloodthirsty jailbirds, along with a monster that was even more terrifying. He wouldn’t be caught off-guard again, and this time, he wasn’t alone. Before he delved into these lightless depths, he called on a friend to watch his back.

  After gathering his concentration, he ignited his core and conjured Foebinder. The skin of his left wrist parted—a flash of pain he barely noticed anymore. Through it, Edge could see not sinew and bone, but a hole in the fabric of reality itself. Through the gap emerged an abyssal black chain—a set of living links that possessed their own will, yet at the same time, felt like an extension of his own arm.

  The left chain of oblivion turned to regard him, bobbing a greeting before rising into the air above his shoulder. Through their bond, he could sense Foebinder’s eagerness to explore and its willingness to lend a hand.

  Over time, all his skills had grown more intelligent and expressive, but three of them were almost as smart as people in their own way—Intimidating Roar, Fear the Seasons, and Manifest Chain.

  “Hey there, partner. It’s good to see you too. Let me know if you sense anything dangerous or notice anything unusual. I’m hoping to learn more about the big guy down here, since this place seems connected to him in some way.” The chain rattled its agreement and then motioned for Edge to get on with it.

  Next, he visualized the vault that was connected to his central chamber—the Spatial Storage Rune he’d engraved onto his core. When he focused, he could see the contents in his mind’s eye, even without stepping into his inner world. He visualized the items he wanted to retrieve and spent a sliver of mana to pay for their transport.

  In his left hand, a metal spear wavered into existence, which he’d claimed from one of the Claws he’d defeated. In his right, the sword Yussuf the Red had wielded appeared, whose armor he was wearing at the moment. Edge’s usual gear was being upgraded at the Forge, but these would do for today. Foebinder was strong enough to use a weapon now, so he handed the blade over and carried the spear himself.

  He preferred to fight with his iceblade, but manifesting the active skill before he needed it was a waste of magicytes, and it wasn’t smart to walk around unarmed. The chain took a few practice swings at the air, testing the weight and balance of the weapon before bobbing its approval.

  The sword-wielding chain was intimidating as hell, and he grinned at the sight as he resumed his journey.

  The last time he passed through here, Edge had been guided by the light of his lantern and much of the region had been shrouded from his sight. It was amazing how much he’d missed without eyes that could pierce the darkness and senses far sharper than the ones he was born with.

  He hadn’t realized how full of life the ravine was, or how much magic was coursing through the air. This is definitely a sub-biome from a high-threat region, he mused as he continued walking.

  It’s a miracle I survived long enough to reach the temple, although the jailbirds stalking me and the monster stalking them probably had something to do with it. The other creatures living here were smart enough to make themselves scarce with an apex predator on the prowl.

  As he walked, Edge spotted lots of lizards, rats, and several species of insects. They were all beasts, and the weakest were at the peak of stage one—a deadly threat to an uncored puppet.

  Like the Deep-Gill Grottos, the vertical surfaces were covered in fungi, although nothing that looked ambulatory, much to his relief. Thanks to the sunlight that threaded its way through the star-studded slit above, there was also a wide variety of moss, algae, and lichen to be found.

  A few of the shrooms were valuable enough to trigger Sense Treasure, so he picked them, put them inside his preservation unit, and stored them in his vault to sell later. The flora changed when he arrived at the end of the ravine and stepped into the tunnels beyond, since he was entering an area where the light never reached.

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  He passed through a series of winding passageways that were studded by an occasional cavern. Before, he hadn’t been able to see more than twenty feet above him, but now Edge spotted colonies of unsettlingly large spiders and bats watching him pass below.

  Several seemed to be sizing him up for a meal but eventually decided against it. They either sensed the energy emanating from his core, didn’t care to try their luck against a blade-wielding chain, or had realized he’d seen them and knew an ambush was doomed to fail.

  He had a hunch he would run into something worth fighting before long, but for now, he was glad that he didn’t have to fend off a swarm of hungry beasts and announce his presence to every predator in the region.

  Before long, Edge began passing by ruined hovels on the outskirts of the temple complex ahead. There was nothing of interest, and the contents had long since been reduced to rust and rot, but it made him wonder about the lives of the people who had called this place home—the poorest members of an alien society that predated humanity’s arrival on Ord.

  Fifteen minutes later, he heard echoes coming from ahead, and after rounding a final corner, the massive enclosure housing the temple came into view.

  He had known the cavern was big, but it blew him away when he took in the sheer scale of this place. There must have been hundreds of people living here—maybe thousands. There were buildings covering the floor of the cave and a road that ran straight toward a tiered area in back, where the temple and the homes of the priests were located.

  On his prior visit, he’d learned that only the structures on the raised sections had been built well enough to withstand time and the elements, and even then, most of them had crumbled with the passing of centuries. It made him realize he had no idea how old this place was, but it might well be thousands of years or more, which meant these remnants had historical value beyond the resources they contained.

  Right now, some insight into the past was exactly what he was looking for, along with clues as to Skill-Eater’s true nature and anything else the wardens and the System had censored from the Prison World feeds.

  After exploring several frontier regions, Edge understood just how dangerous this place truly was. He admired the courage he’d displayed coming down here in his desperate gamble to live another day but was glad he had been so ignorant.

  If he had known what lurked in the shadows, he would have lost his nerve, returned to the surface, and been dead within days.

  He spent some time poking through the structures on the second-highest level, which had been the homes of the most powerful people here. While he found several that were still intact, he didn’t discover anything of value inside, although the artifacts from their daily lives were interesting in their own way.

  Before he moved on to his main objective, Edge used some rubble to make a cairn for the skeleton he had found on his first trip through. The body had worn a silver pendant around its neck, which he still carried today.

  “Rest well, friend.” He bowed his head after placing the last stone. He said a prayer and then ascended to the top tier, which held the temple and twenty-one marble statues that had been snapped off at the base.

  Given the number and the fact that his core had been hidden here, Edge would bet his last Credit the sculptures had once depicted images of the twenty-one—the mysterious, godlike beings that had somehow become Unique cores.

  He spent a few minutes looking for fragments in the hope of learning more about their appearance, but not even a pebble remained. Whatever destroyed them was incredibly thorough.

  He was planning to make a thorough sweep of this level, including the interior of the temple, but he had come here to examine the engravings on the walls, which depicted images of people and events whose names he would never know.

  Edge hadn’t had any context before, but he was hoping he could use the snippets of lore he’d gleaned from Skill-Eater, the Gardener, and the System to piece together more of the planet’s lost history. He had also brought supplies to make charcoal rubbings so he could study them later and get Sakura’s take.

  He took a quick look around to make sure nothing nasty was lurking in the area. After finding nothing more dangerous than some stage-one rats who wanted nothing to do with him, he asked Foebinder to watch his back and approached the temple to study the carvings arranged along its exterior.

  The building was elegant in its simplicity, although something about the patterning of the marble and the arrangement of the lines told him everything had been chosen with care and fashioned by expert artisans.

  Now that Edge could see it clearly, the temple gave him the sense that it had been designed to serve as a canvas—to be regal but not draw eyes away from the images on the walls or whatever had been displayed upon the altar stone inside.

  His next goal was to figure out the order of the engravings. It was clear that they displayed historically significant events. If he could determine the proper sequence, it would make piecing together the secret history of the planet that much easier.

  It wound up being far less trouble than Edge had expected. The last image was only partially completed, which let him deduce the order in which they’d been carved. Bottom to top. Left to right. With that out of the way, he leaned in to take a closer look. There were seven engravings in all. Or maybe six and a half would be more precise.

  It took him the better part of an hour to make sense of the depictions, which were rendered in an intricately detailed style that made them seem alive. The text was gibberish to him and looked like a language conceived of by spiders rather than men. It was interesting on some level to examine symbols written in an alien dialect, but ultimately a matter for another day.

  He spent the bulk of his time staring and the pictures and combining them with the bits of lore he’d gathered from other sources. He was sure that he was getting some of the details wrong, but in the end, this was his best guess as to what they meant.

  In the beginning, Ord had been populated by a race of primitive bipedal aliens. It was a harsh existence. They were beset by brutal beasts, lambasted by lethal weather, and waged a fruitless war upon the spirits of the land—tall entities with elongated features.

  The natives were barely hanging on when twenty-one gigantic, immensely powerful beings appeared, whom Skill-Eater had called the lords of Ord. Like the statues, someone had defaced their likenesses, and the figures’ faces were scratched off. One of them hadn’t been destroyed as thoroughly as the rest, and Edge could make out the outline of a skeletal face. He thought it was the lord he’d seen in his vision, which his core had named Death-Walking.

  The natives were terrified at first, but it turned out these newcomers were friendly. Over time, the twenty-one taught them to wield the planet’s magic, letting them erect stout buildings, cultivate the land, and create a legacy for the next generation.

  The lords helped the natives negotiate a lasting peace with the spirits of the land, which looked a great deal like the Gardener Edge had met in the dungeon. After several generations of prosperity, the natives came to worship the twenty-one as gods and flourished under their protection and enlightened rule.

  But like all good things, Ord’s golden age wasn’t fated to last.

  First, one of the twenty-one vanished without a trace, leading to days of uncertainty and doubt. In the next panel, another lord slew its sibling and stole its powers, shattering the harmony that had reigned until this point. That must be Skill-Eater, based on what I saw when I entered its memories.

  The next carving detailed events Edge had witnessed himself. While battling a kaiju called World-Breaker, the big guy was confronted by the other lords. They sealed Skill-Eater to protect the planet from assimilation by Extraction, after which things pretty much went to shit.

  In the next image, the lords were nowhere to be found, and a series of natural disasters wracked the planet. The followers blamed each other for the calamity and battled to the brink of extinction. Thus, Ord’s golden age came to an end, and an age of darkness began.

  He didn’t get to find out what happened next, because the final engraving was only half-finished. The image was missing, but the words had been carved into the stone. Growling in frustration at being denied the end of the story, Edge took a charcoal rubbing of the text in the hope of getting it translated later and then transcribed the other engravings too.

  All the while, the gears in his head spun like mad as he sought to square the planet’s distant past with more recent events.