The ribcage enclosure was barely half a dozen meters from the wall, inside a spacious room very different than what Axl had pictured. The ground was fully covered by soft carpets, and there were several pieces of ornate furniture tastefully arranged around the enclosure, from cabinets to desks to a full dining set. A large bed was pushed to one of the sharper edges, with a multitude of pillows on it. He wondered what kept the rain off, but figured a simple array could take care of that.

  An elf stood up from one of the chairs and approached, having noticed the door opening. Aria looked exactly like she did in his dreams, almost eerily so, wearing a long, frilly nightgown, her straight purple hair almost down to her waist. Axl slowly approached the enclosure, crouching near a gap in the ribs, at an angle where he wouldn't be visible to the patrols up the inner walls. He then undid the camouflage talisman.

  Aria stopped, head tilting to the side. "Wait, who are you?"

  "I'm Roken," Axl said, annoyed. Did she actually forget about him already? "You sent me here, remember? We just talked a day ago in my dream."

  She stepped forward, slowly, then crouched just beyond the ribcage bars to her prison, staring intently at him with her large purple eyes. "I see it now, indeed. You look… Very different than in your dreams."

  Axl's eyes widened, only now realizing that when he dreamed, he had his human body again. This slitting elf saw my human body!

  Mustering every shred of Charisma to downplay that, he shrugged. "Well, what you told me was very useful, but I would've preferred a warning that one of my party was a traitor, not just how to survive that betrayal."

  She chuckled, a pale hand over her small mouth. "Next time I delve into the very fabric of Karma itself, I will keep your preferences in mind."

  Axl double-shrugged, indicating for Moxlin to come out. "This is Moxlin, an artisan focused on talismans and arrays."

  "Hello!" Moxlin waved a forepaw.

  "A pleasure, honored artisan." Aria curtsied politely.

  "Scan for traps?" Axl asked Moxlin, pointing to the talismans conspicuously on every other rib. "These may be decoys, they're too obvious."

  Moxlin nodded and went to work, taking out a detection talisman. The golden paper drifted into the air and dissolved into a fine grey mist, then she dropped to the ground to get a closer look at the enclosure.

  "Is there any way I can get that void treasure, since I'm here?" Axl asked.

  Aria shook her head. "I told you all I could divine of our first meeting. There is a big divergence right after, it seems, where much of the future becomes uncertain. I'm only in the F-Grade, after all. But since the alarm is not triggered, it seems you haven't killed many to get here, so our escape should be straightforward."

  Axl nodded, still disappointed at his goal being so close, yet so out of reach. "And what is that dryad doing with all these people? She seemed so powerful, I have a hard time believing she needs to resort to this. Even when I talked to her, she clearly had nothing but disdain for the entire city, and that what she was doing wasn't really to her liking either."

  Aria's back straightened, eyes wide in shock. "You actually managed to talk to her, and are still alive? Oh my, you tread quite the narrow path."

  "How the slit don't you know? That stuff at the gate made it inevitable that I would've met her!"

  "Really? How curious. I wonder if the higher heavens are manipulating my Karma as well."

  Axl simply stared at her, now entirely unsure if any of this was a good idea. When they had more time to hash things out, he'd have to have a long talk about what her "Karma" actually entailed.

  "To answer your question," Aria continued, "Venva Livir is attempting quite the ambitious cultivation path, wanting to merge a metallic constitution into her arboreal Lineage, not to mention the complications that come up from being a dryad and needing to progress your tree's cultivation in parallel to hers. This is in addition to her pursuit of beast taming, which she had not managed to synergize with her other techniques. She is now quite the formidable peak F-Grade cultivator, but even with the myriad resources of this sanctuary, she has not been able to find a way to ascend. Using other cultivators in this way is a desperate scramble, the fell Karma adding even further burdens to her already heavy path. I'm not even sure where she obtained the designs for such an attempt. I could never pierce that particular shroud."

  Axl grumbled, dissatisfied by this. It seemed like a lot of misery just because she got overly greedy. Was it really that difficult to ascend? Would he also have this kind of difficulty, maybe even in just getting to the F-Grade?

  "And where do you come in with all this?" he asked.

  "I've been helping her identify where key natural treasures and specific trials would be to assist her Path, but I have been only half-heartedly doing so, and have avoided telling her about the best opportunities. After all, if she manages to ascend, my escape would be even more unlikely. But I can detect that she is receiving other assistance. If it were only me, she would have fully stalled a good while ago."

  Axl nodded, increasingly disliking how Aria was treated. How long was she confined to that room by the dryad? Years, she said? The more he heard of what that creature did to cultivate, the less bad he felt about needing to steal her treasures.

  "We'll get you out soon enough," he said, Aria's face calm and composed, as if patiently waiting for something important. "Anyhow, what about that void natural treasure? Is the tree consuming it or something? I don’t want to delay getting it, only to find it fully eaten up."

  Aria shook her head. "It's absorbing much of the corruption of the ore, a key part in the tree's refinement, but not in a consumptive fashion. If anything, the void treasure seems to be getting slightly more powerful over time.

  Moxlin turned to Axl, shrugging. "Seems like an even sloppier version of the detector array on the inner wall. I looked all the ways I can, but there really seems to be nothing else."

  Aria smiled. "Over the years, I made some very obvious, half-hearted escape attempts, making sure to get easily caught. All to make it seem like no real safety measures would be required."

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "Then why not just actually escape?" Axl asked.

  "And what? Die out in the wilderness to some creature? Get caught by an even more foul captor? I'm very specialized in my cultivation, not a savage barbarian like almost everyone else in this firmament."

  "Fine." Axl rolled his eyes and pointed to the luxuries all around her. "Want me to take any of your stuff? I have dimensional storage, so I can take a lot of it."

  Aria shook her head and squeezed past the ribcage bars of her prison. "I want none of these empty gifts."

  Axl turned to the door, and Moxlin returned to his shoulder.

  "Wait," Aria said, Axl turning to see she hadn't moved from outside the enclosure, her arms outstretched. "Carry me, please."

  Axl's brain froze. "What?"

  "I'm too slow, you'll have to carry me." She punctuated the request with an absurd little hop.

  "You heard the lady," Moxlin snickered. "I'm getting a fellow passenger."

  "Don't look so constipated," the elf chuckled. "I fully bathed just this morning. No, not from the front, let me hang from your back."

  Axl turned around and kneeled, letting the girl's arms wrap around his shoulders, her legs dangling past his waist. He grunted slightly and rose. At least she wasn't heavy.

  Moxlin crawled up the girl's arm and then waved across to her face on the other side of Axl's body. "Heya neighbor!"

  "Hello, little corruption." She lifted a finger and poked Moxlin's outstretched foreleg.

  "Don't call her that," Axl said, increasingly annoyed at the situation.

  "Oh, it's not an insult. Corruption is a gift from beyond the heavens, even if underappreciated by the shallow difficulties they bring at first."

  "Still, just don't."

  "As you wish." The elf put her head down on his shoulder, somehow managing to fall asleep while still holding on.

  "I like this one," said Moxlin. "Can I keep her after you're done with this?"

  "If you want to carry her around, sure."

  Axl was about to rouse his newly acquired backpack for directions when she idly pointed at the distance, mumbling something about a friendly neighborhood before settling back into a deep sleep. She pointed straight at where the closest crossroads rift was located, so it seemed like the hideout she had in mind needed to make use of the transit rift. He felt mildly annoyed by this, since when she promised she had something in mind, he didn't have access to it yet, so what if he didn’t unlock all the rifts? Would this change the plan? Still, in a way this was much better, since it would put greater distance between him and the dryad. He wanted as much of that as he could when she came back and noticed that her oracle had escaped.

  The way out was quite obvious. Axl could just use the trapdoor the corpses came in through, that way likely less well defended than the inner wall, but as he looked into the gloomy, narrow hallway, he paused. A streak of blood on the wall had been half-cleaned, and the gurney set alongside it was filthy. At the edge of the thin sheet was a dagger made of wood, obviously a training weapon. Even Roken had one of these, a play weapon for children to get used to fighting.

  Axl let out a frustrated breath and looked back up to the warehouse, to a place that shouldn't exist.

  He took out one of the ore chunks and examined it with [Mana Shroud] for a few minutes. Moxlin noticed the delay and crawled to his shoulder again, past Aria crowding against the backpack opening.

  "Alright," she said. "What are you thinking?"

  "The dryad already knows about me, so if the very same day I come into town, her prisoner leaves, she'll eventually figure out it was me, no matter how smoothly we escape. Especially when she realizes I'd gone missing with her."

  "Sure, makes sense. So we probably should run away faster, right? Get more of a head start?"

  Axl smiled, holding up the orange ore. "I think we might as well mess up this operation before leaving. These things are flammable, after all."

  -x-

  Axl snuck behind the pair of guards at one of the sides of the drawbridge, and killed them quickly, both with a dagger to the neck, and took their bodies into his chest's ring. He now had at least ten minutes until another pair reached the other side, and only the pair of guards on the ground remained, near the mechanism that lowered the drawbridge. It was the only way in or out of the inner wall, other than the underground corpse paths, but Axl wanted to use it for something else.

  He dropped down on the two guards, neither looking up as he cut the head off one with [Webcutter], the second scrambling to draw her sword, but a thrust to the heart stopped the motion. He paused for a moment to see if anything had noticed his disruption, but nothing.

  The next step would be the hardest, the point of no return, causing a ruckus that would certainly raise the alarm. Still, without hesitation, he lowered the drawbridge, the mechanism fast, but loud, especially in the early morning stillness. Before the long wooden platform was fully down, Axl took out one of the patrolling corpses from his storage and threw it into the moat, letting it splash down messily.

  He then placed another body right at the edge of the drawbridge, much of it dangling over, its blood dripping into the water. Running to the nearest warehouse entrance, he was about to put another guard's body down when a trio of guards ran to the drawbridge from the base of the walls, one of the few patrols within the compound. They were all rather weak, a single early F-Grade kobold and two upper G-Grade elves.

  They looked around warily, Axl certain he'd have been detected if it were not for the camouflage array, and he ducked behind a cart. Then the trio saw the dead body, and the kobold broke a token of some sort with a shaking hand, a loud, wailing alarm filling the humid air.

  The three slowly approached the dead body, on high alert, letting Axl dump two more corpses quietly next to him. However, that proved to be unnecessary as a crocodile's maw leaped from the water and snatched one of the three guards as it tried to pull the dead body away from the edge. From the other side of the drawbridge, another of the creatures climbed up and attacked the other two, only the kobold ducking past the closing teeth, the other elf being torn in half.

  Axl waited a while longer as a third of the creatures joined the drawbridge, and soon started lumbering to his position, clearly smelling blood and not wanting to fight with its friends over the food they were already tearing into.

  A pair of F-Grade patrolling elves dropped from the ramparts above, one striking at the reptile with throwing daggers, the other charging to the mechanism for raising the drawbridge. Axl frowned as he saw them be a tad too competent for his taste. the one wanting to raise the drawbridge immediately noticed the mechanism was damaged, and seamlessly joined his comrade in the fight.

  Spreading [Mana Shroud] fully, Axl couldn't notice any more reinforcements nearby, so he took a risk and threw a stone at one of the guards, hitting him in the back of the neck, interrupting his attack and letting the massive alligator bite off an entire leg. The other guard turned to escape, but Axl threw another stone at his knee, causing him to stumble, one of the other alligators catching up and finishing him off.

  However, now Axl could hear the coordinated charge of six pairs of feet, and soon a bunch of the dryad's forces were surrounding the entrance, all with long polearms that were likely designed to fight off the moat beasts. Even as another two alligators crawled out of the moat, their massive bulks all charging into the inner walls, it would be a more even battle, especially as further reinforcements came by or they managed to raise the drawbridge.

  So Axl triggered the first set of arrays, and the furthest warehouse exploded in a tempest of fire. He turned to the roiling flames with surprise, the explosion far bigger than he expected.

  Quickly, he ducked into the warehouse and made his way to the other side, where the trapdoor for that building was tucked next to its own pile of corpses, only a handful for this one. The second warehouse exploded, which Axl was worried about, not having made the array to go off so quickly after the first. But it was a rush job, and he struggled to use the fire-based glyphs in any sort of restrained way—they wanted to lash out and burn, even when paired with more well-behaved fire-related glyphs for alchemy.

  He closed the trapdoor behind him and charged down the stairs, then continued the long hallway for several frantic minutes before the earth shook, nearly knocking him off his feet.

  "I smell so much fire," Aria mumbled, half-opening her eyes. "No wonder I had a hard time seeing. You've made a rather strange choice here."

  "Yeah, this one never does anything the easy way," Moxlin mumbled from inside her pack. "You get used to it."

  Aria laughed, her entire body shaking in mirth before she fell back asleep.