"So, what are we talking about here?" asked Axl. "Since you're shaking me down for more than you agreed on."

  "Consider it a G-Grade premium. You'll just get yourself killed easily, and so waste all my effort. Plus, it looks like I'll have to use lighter material to support your lesser Attributes. Less benefit for me to handicap my art."

  "Would I be alive in front of you if I couldn't hold my own in an F-Grade sanctuary? I guess you didn't hear the gossip about me well enough. I cleared a rift on my own, you know."

  The skeleton paused at that, Axl getting a sense of genuine surprise from the bleached skeleton. "Fine then, I'll use my usual for the standard orcish gear—none of the mid-range stuff, since the trainer asked for some rather complex specifications, so I'll be skimming on materials instead."

  Axl grumbled at this, not quite eager for bad gear, and decided to go for his hidden ace.

  "This is a potion of empowerment," he took out one of those in his stash and placed it at the edge of the nearby table, just out of the skeleton's reach. "Only G-Grade, but it gives a permanent boost of four to Strength, Endurance, Wisdom, and Vitality. I know you have an item appraisal Skill or something, so go ahead and take a good look."

  The skeleton stared at the vial for a moment, his mouth slightly parting. Even without using Charisma, Axl could feel the sheer want from his posture.

  "Damn, boy, where did you get that? Was it a rift reward?"

  Axl shrugged, glad Gildear didn't even think he could've made it, making the potion seem even more valuable. "Who knows. But what I do know is that I'm willing to give it to you if I see you go above and beyond with my order."

  The skeleton chuckled, still eyeing the potion hungrily. "You have yourself a deal. I'll put it on the top of the pile and get right on it, should be done by tomorrow. I'll use some of my best metal for this—the same one that was used for that sword of yours, in fact."

  "Glad to do business with you." Axl grabbed his potion and made to leave, then paused. "Another thing, I want access to your metal garden."

  The blank skeletal face looked at him in suspicion. "And why would you want that? You don't have to pay for my service with mining. Want to accrue credit in advance for your next order?"

  "Later, yes," Axl admitted, honestly looking forward to something like mining again. "But for now, I want to meditate there, something about the Mana of the metal is calling out to me, and I want to see if it will help me form my cultivator's core."

  "Fine," the skeleton waved the request away. "But only because I see that armor set and sword is upgradable, and I damn well expect you to come my way again with future business. I don't want just anybody idling around in my garden if it won't benefit me."

  "Fair enough," said Axl.

  "Follow me then," the skeleton put on a loose cloak and left by a second door on the other side of the smithy. Axl had to carefully maneuver around small piles of metal covered in loose tarp and racked equipment to reach the far end of the room. Past the door, he beheld perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.

  It was an area barely thirty meters by ten, entirely enclosed by the stone wall surrounding the smith's compound, but it was just packed with metal structures growing out of the ground like trees. Ores of various colors and textures crowded against each other as they rose into the air, some extending in even slabs pressed against each other, some gourd-like clusters piled high, others thin, needle-like tendrils curling like ivy. Barely any were of a kind he could identify, and all behaved strangely, seeing their growth even with his bare eyes, as if the metal pushed out of the ground like crops, or grew from its tips like trees, or burst from their midsections in fractal explosions.

  Hungrily, Axl activated [Mana Shroud] and was overwhelmed by all the competing flavors of metal, some brittle yet strong, others of remarkable flexibility, many utterly mysterious and enthralling.

  "Oy," Gildear snapped his fingers in front of Axl's face. "Do that Daoist nonsense later, I need to tell you my rules."

  Axl begrudgingly turned away and let the skeleton lead him through the rows of metal. "First is you clear with me what you should harvest and for what—can't make plate armor out of sapham fold or arrowheads out of ulmric tungsten. Second is that the credits I give you for mining are based on metal grade, quality, and finesse of extraction—I'm the only game in town, so don't bother trying to haggle with my call. Nearest other blacksmith I know of is a month-long trip North with that strange elf cult, and good luck with that. Third is that you can take metal with you, if you need it for some ritual magic or glyphistry, but if you start doing that too much, I'll start charging for entry. I have an array that keeps track of comings and goings and what gets taken out, and it’s a system-granted thing that came with the garden, so don't bother trying to fool it. Also, don’t bother the other miners with your prancing about, I need them to focus on harvesting my ore."

  "That seems unusually reasonable," Axl said, surprised that the terms were in fact rather decent, especially the one about being able to take metal out.

  "Well, the orcs bickered endlessly about every little thing and eventually wore me down out of sheer exhaustion. You're just benefiting from their bellyaching."

  "Look forward to doing business with you."

  "Yeah, yeah," the skeleton waved him off, then paused. "Tell me, is the Undead Legion nearby? You look like the local elves that occasionally wander into the sanctuary."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Axl paused, not wanting to reveal more than he hoped, straining at his Charisma. "Why do you ask? I've heard that you're not affiliated with them."

  "I'd rather eat my anvil. Only the foolish undead gather at all, much less into a legion."

  "Why is that?" Axl's curiosity burning after hearing the blacksmith was undead, but not able to easily dig in further details about the situation, the orcs apparently not finding it very noteworthy.

  "Tell me what you know about the legion and I'll tell you, boy, I'm not in the business of free service."

  Axl grunted. "Fine, as of about a tenday ago, the undead took Piril. Or destroyed it."

  The skeletal face looked off for a moment, worry thick on his empty gaze. "Arg, their damn campaign is still going strong, it seems. They might turn their attention here after they're done fighting that subsystem."

  "They're fighting Oocile itself?" Axl asked, surprised.

  "You think a bunch of undead would band together for anything less than that? The slavering greed of so many maniacs wouldn't be satisfied by just razing a city or ten. Would take a much bigger endeavor to put together a force like that. Hopefully, this being a sanctuary will keep the worst of them away when they scatter. I'm still far from done with this place."

  "And why don't you want to join them, exactly?"

  "What do you know about the undead?" Gildear asked, then immediately continued. "Never mind, I figure you know jack all. Whenever any sentient creature dies, there's a chance they'll be reborn by the great unkindling, much of who you were shrived into something else. Each death brings forth a greater change. For the first one, most lose all their fear, for their second death, most of their emotions, and memories culled for the third. Past that, well, let's just say nothing good keeps happening down there. So now you get it?"

  Axl thought for a moment, but couldn't quite figure it out. "I'd think it would be great for an army to be like that, fearless and rational?"

  Gildear chuckled. "Fool. What do you think keeps most people in line? Following the petty little rules of society, doing much of what they should? It's fear. Take that away, and you get what most really are at their core—cutthroat and vicious. To get a bunch of these kinds of people together requires a lot of possible gain, and always holds the substantial risk that they will turn on each other at a moment's notice. And as they die more and more, they become even more volatile and unmanageable. Most legions kill any third undead or higher on sight, to avoid the trouble, and no legion has lasted more than the short, brutal campaign they were brought together to finish. But even a small number of undead lingering around is just asking for disaster. It's why basically my one request for letting the orcs make their camp around my smith is that they kill any other undead on sight."

  "That…" Axl was about to say he'd find that hard to believe, but thinking about it for a moment, he wasn't quite sure anymore. Ost had a very well-armed Security department, after all, and probably the only reason the overseer and his family hadn't been killed in their sleep many times over. "Is that what actually happens with the undead? I mean, you are standing here, very much not trying to kill me, trading with the orcs quite peacefully."

  The blacksmith seemed to smile, even as his skull held the same unchanging skeletal grin. "Maybe you'll be lucky enough to rise again one day. It sure made my life much better, especially my second death. It's quite great to be able to shed off the parts of yourself you don't care for, what's holding you back from embracing what you truly are. Just don't come back here if you do. Killed on sight, remember?"

  Axl looked at the retreating figure, unsure of what to think about all that. He ultimately shrugged, figuring it could at least be last-ditch insurance if he died and could perhaps still finish Terrania's quest as a walking corpse. But frankly, Axl was barely half listening to the blacksmith, distracted by the metal around him and the Mana that shimmered in the air and soothed his skin in a gentle touch.

  So he started with a slow circuit across the yard, gingerly touching each of the metallic growths, savoring each with [Mana Shroud], every flavor and texture rich and varied. This was the first time he turned back to the meditation practice that Olkan instructed him on, bringing the metallic Mana into the pit of his stomach, getting a sense of how each one offered his body a sense of varying fullness and satisfaction.

  He had experienced much since being reborn, water so pure it felt like indescribable magic, and food so flavorful and textured that it made his eyes water with satisfaction. This was all nothing to the varied, enthralling Mana about him, as if his breath and touch, even the regular sound of pickaxe on metal, all turned his body into a single sensory organ of unmatched rapture.

  What was supposed to be a quick few minutes to scan all the metals before choosing a good cultivation spot turned into hours as he lingered in one or the other, unable to stop himself from appreciating each variant. Some ores were better fits for him than others, the more brittle metals feeling too insubstantial, if a cloying flavor that, in small doses, was a pleasing variation, one attuned to stone, almost more earthen rock instead of metal, but it had a tanginess to it that was also interesting to savor. He spent a long time in front of a variant of tungsten, a dark grey ore that exuded profound heft and stability, settling on the pit of his stomach with a finality that felt all-encompassing. It reminded him of the bunker in his Dao vision, a construction of sheer durability and presence.

  Axl barely noticed that he had seamlessly incorporated [Mana Shroud] with his cultivation, the Skill separating the Mana he was targeting at each vein and condensing it, purifying it from the various other metallic variants and ambient mess. Occasionally, he would focus in on the very details of the Mana's structure, noticing if it was a regular lattice or chaotic explosion, but soon stopped, the detailed view not being quite as resonant as simply feeling its holistic heft as it interacted with his body and soul.

  The soul was a key component here, he quickly found, and sending each condensed Mana into the marble in his chest gave him further insight into the attunement, a key part of the full-bodied experience of cultivating Mana. The gain in Karmic Energy was still pitifully small, however, even with the tungsten, dashing his hopes that cultivating something better aligned with him would fix the slow levelling speed of cultivation.

  He started to clear the Mana he accumulated between each metal, wanting to savor each individually before settling on which one he should try to use as the basis for his core. Because by now it was painfully obvious that he should have a metal core, the fit so true and effortless he could barely even remember not having the certainty. The desire to cultivate now felt more tangible, too, not just an abstract recognition that it was safer, but a fundamental alignment with something that resonated so closely to the center of himself. It was straight-up too good to be true.

  Axl was about to reach the end of the mining courtyard, fairly certain the grey tungsten would be the specific Mana he would be cultivating, when he saw a final cluster of metal set apart from the rest, encircled by an isolating array formation and even a knee-high wall.

  At first glance, he took it for a tree with dense, fine branches, its dull, dark red color giving it a somber feel, its jutting branches stabbing into the air in violent indignation. Then he recognized it, at first turned around since he'd never seen it so fully out of the ground before, his heart racing and breath caught in his chest.

  This was lunar fulger.