So, Champion candidate Myrra. That explains a lot, as well as gives me new questions to wonder about. How do you become a Champion candidate? Matriarch is stronger than Myrra; is she also a Champion candidate?

I will have to ask Myrra when I meet her.

When I get back home, it's already night and most of the people seem to be sleeping, with the exception of Tess, who is sitting in the living room, looking much better now. The tall blonde is sipping on a drink with steam coming out of it and nibbling on some sweets.

“I miss the internet, hell, I would even be happy to watch some ads,” she says, and I can hear that she is smiling.

“Given enough time, I believe we could create something like radio or TV here. Then we would show the natives the power of ads and become disgustingly rich,” I joke while sitting next to her and stealing some cookies.

“That's beyond evil,” she shakes her head.

In silence, we nom on the cookies, and she turns to me, some crumbs already on her shirt, “Nat, how do you feel about everyone on the 4th floor most likely disappearing after we leave it?” Tess asks.

“I try not to think about it.”

“I see.”

It’s not something I could change even if I wanted to. No matter how real they look, everyone here is fake, and we have no idea what happened to the original.

Did their world die like the one on the second floor? Is the king and his warriors from the third floor still alive somewhere, defending the Saint that spreads Decay? Is Myrra still alive and already a Champion, or did her world fall to the Calamities?

“I don’t like it,” Tess says quietly.

I nod and then I stand up, “Good night,” I say.

“Night, Nat.”

Tess stays in the living room, looking at the wall and thinking.

When I wake up after two hours, I sense a presence behind the door. I quickly identify it and then, with a sigh, I create mana arms and open the door with them without getting out of bed.

The moment I do so, a small, white snake slithers inside, and I close the door. It's still dawn, and after checking, I find out that everyone is sleeping.

Noodle slithers onto the bed, the entire time sticking out his small tongue and tasting my mana.

So, I create a bit more, reduce the density, and send it to him. That seems to make him happy, and his movement speeds up, and his tongue flickers more.

The green-eyed snake seems… tired, beat up.

“Izzy won't leave you alone, right?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, but the pain in his eyes is evident.

“You poor creature.” I lay back on the bed and create an orb over me that I continue to use to practice mana shaping. I also keep running Mana Cycling. At this point, it's almost constantly on, the entire time I'm up.

Seeing that I'm just relaxing there, Noodle moves closer. He does it carefully to not touch me, finds a cozy place next to me and lays there. I can sense him slowly absorbing my mana. It’s either food, a delicacy, or something to make him stronger.

Well, the little creature is cute and he isn't annoying, so I just let him.

We spend a few hours like that when he starts moving again. He gets to the door and looks towards me.

Creating a mana arm, I open the door again, and for a moment, he just stares at it. Then he does something I can only identify as a long sigh and moves out of my room, much slower than before.

I close the door and with [Perception], I watch as he gets back inside Isabella’s room.

After going through the information on the expedition Obelia offered us to join, Angry Kittens decided to accept, with all of us going.

Only now do I find out what the expedition is about, to Tess's surprise.

So what? I was busy.

The expedition is in the ancient mines not far off Virelia. They were closed hundreds of years ago after they got everything they could out of them, mainly iron-like endurium and small amounts of ethercrystal. Obelia then got to some ancient maps that hint that something else remains down there. The remains of a vault, a treasury of a forgotten Champion candidate who died long ago.

A person, capable enough to become a Champion candidate will surely have some nice stuff.

Tess and Haddy decided for us to go on the expedition. But this setup reminds me of something, and it smells like a lot of trouble.

I'm in.

The vault could contain some mined endurium and ethercrystal, as well as some personal belongings of the Champion candidate. What Obelia hopes for are old records of the world before the Calamity, old maps of teleporting arrays, and maybe an epic item or two.

She also seems to be hiding something, and Tess confirms it too. The guild master of the Storm Brigade knows more about the vault than she says, and that only makes me more curious.

What I hope for is to stretch my stiff body after all this experimenting I did and to test my new skills, [Regalia] and [Infusion], against something strong. A bit of fun before the auction and the hunt for the Living Tree. Knowing the system, the moment I kill the Tree, everything will go to shit, the Colony menacingly moving closer, confirming it.

“What do you think the Colony wants?”

“I have no idea, but I did talk with one lynthari who got to watch them, and he said it’s as if they are looking for something.”

I overhear the conversation between two members of Obelia's guild and promptly decide to ignore it. It’s not nice to listen in on other people's conversations.

Obelia reaches me, Jenna, her vice guild master by her side, both of them wearing similar attire, akin to a uniform.

“We are ready to go,” she says simply.

I glance behind me, looking at Angry Kittens, who are there as well, each one of them wearing high-quality items we bought lately for the money we got from “selling” all the epic items we have. Yet, there was nearly no dent in the amount of money we have.

“All ready,” Tess answers instead of me.

Then we leave the city, following closely behind Obelia and her guild.

Obelia even sends a few of her guild members to scout the area and constantly keeps checking on someone who might follow us. I also notice a few of her members doing something to hide our tracks.

It’s all well organized and I look at group 4. Unlike the Storm Brigade, they just walk around, members talking between each other, some of them even snacking and laughing out loud. In comparison to Obelia´s guild, we look like we are going on a picnic.

However, neither Obelia nor anyone from her guild seem to mind, and I notice a few of her members greeting or having short conversations with Tess, whom they recognize as the third disciple of their guild master.

Unlike everyone else, I just follow slightly behind, happy to be left alone. To not get bored, I continue to try to compress my mana with [Focus] like I did back at the end of the third floor.

I go at it extremely carefully, still remembering the toll it took on me. It doesn’t matter that my Mana Cycling improved a lot or that I have an epic passive called Arcane Resilience; it’s still dangerous. So, I just use tiny amounts of mana that I [Focus] into orbs as small as a grain of sand.

A tiny pitch-black grain of sand that, even though it is so small, feels extremely domineering, and it keeps trying to pull on my mana.

Unlike Lissandra’s [Singularity], this thing seems to affect mana mostly. It’s not like it has some physical pull. The feeling is more akin to domination as if the sheer quality of mana is so high it tries to take over any mana it comes into contact with.

The black mana still feels scary. Ever since the start, when I picked Amplification mana upgrade instead of Potency, I planned to improve the quality of my mana on my own, but this might take a while to get under my control.

Thankfully, the small orbs I create crumble on their own after a while, and I estimate I should soon be able to create one the size of my fingernail and be able to control it somewhat.

“You are scaring our scouts,” Obelia slows down to walk by my side, her silver eyes staring at the speck of black mana over the palm of my hand, “They said they never felt such scary mana in their life.”

I stop feeding it and it slowly dissipates, “Just a little bit of practicing,” I say to Obelia.

She nods and rejoins her guild after one more curious look.

It takes a few hours, but we get to the mountain and walk around it to find the small entrance that is covered by greenery. When one of Obelia's guild members uses a skill to move that greenery away, I realize that it was made by them to hide the entrance.

“We already tried to go through there a few times, but as I said,” Obelia turns to me, “We need someone really good with inscriptions and barriers to open the door for us.”

I nod. I see an old cliché of digging too deep and our greed awakening some ancient evil.

Classic.

“Nat, if a Balrog pops out, you don’t have to try to stop him and fall into the hole with him. We will fight him together,” Min-Jae joins my side, as often, followed by twins.

“Why would I do that? I will throw you at him and run away,” I retort.

(Food?)

“No Biscuit, Balrogs aren’t food,” I answer and once again send some mana towards the white snake wrapped around Isabella's arm. Noodle gobbles it up.

Isabella's mana sensitivity isn't that good, so she doesn't notice it, but Sophie does. She is currently keeping up a web of mana over the entire expedition, even over the Storm Brigade. Some of the members know about it, but after checking on it, they don't seem to mind.

The web is used for detection, counterattack, and as defense as well, and it's so much better than it used to be. Improved by me and Sophie with a few pieces of advice from Obelia and even Myrra.

Slowly, we enter the mines, and I notice a few members of the group twitching and hesitating, unsurprisingly, even some members of the Storm Brigade do that. Memories of our time under the old capital surfacing.

The mood immediately changes, and the conversations stop. There is no joking, and everyone feels more tense. Like they are ready to jump and attack anything that moves. One after another, skills activate, multiple of them, lighting the tunnels we enter. They are surprisingly wide and tall, more like a cave than tunnels, the walls almost smooth, something people wouldn't spend time on back on Earth, but here with all the skills people possess, it's a question of a few hours.

Obelia touches one of the walls and sends her mana through it, lines appearing on them with her mana activating extremely simple inscriptions created by grounded mana stones turned into mana-conductive paint.

The stripes on the walls fill the tunnels with dim white light, and I reach the wall by my left and do the same, lighting the opposite side.

“The objective is simple. We get to the door. We will unlock it, get to the vault, and unlock it as well. Then we take everything we can before leaving,” Obelia looks around, giving a confident look to a few members who seem to be affected by the tunnels the most.

In the same confident tone, she continues, “We examined the area before. We left the markings on the walls, we have the maps, and we cleared the monsters.” Obelia taps on the ground with the beautiful spear she holds, an epic weapon she got from the Champions' manor and that she plans to sell at the auction, “But do not let your guard down and be ready for anything.”

She then turns around and takes a step towards the darkness of the tunnels, the darkness that is pierced only by the glowing lines on the sidewalls.

And slowly, we all follow her, the sound of our steps echoing inside the tunnels of the ancient mine.