Brie’s POV

  Watching her best friend drift away with her brother, Brie smiled fondly for a moment, a little flutter in her chest. Having known Thalia for a couple of years and change by now, she couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen her so animated outside of spars or fights. Which was a little alarming, considering she had just celebrated her 19th birthday. Between her history, her goals, and taking care of her mother, it was as if the girl often walked with a dark cloud above her head and right now… well, that cloud was gone.

  Brie was genuinely happy for her. But as she snuck another look to the side, she noticed the Shadow watching. He was paying attention, which made her click her tongue. It rubbed her the wrong way. There was that recognizable calculating glint in his eyes that she’d grown up seeing all around her. So with her friend out of earshot, she turned to Lott, a smile on her lips.

  “Did no one ever tell you it’s rude to stare?”

  The Shadow blinked once, and with his chest still facing the direction the other two had left toward, he slowly turned his head toward her. He stared down at her, and she held his gaze, her smile widening slightly as she added. “What? Did you not hear me? Or are you looking for another building to put me through?”

  A little snort escaped his nose as he slowly turned to face her. “I apologized for that. And if you recall, I was doing my job. I had asked you a simple question, and you decided it’d be a good idea to try and run after blasting me with a [Force Bolt].”

  That annoyingly made sense. Still smiling, she nodded. “Oh. Alright then. Water under the bridge in that case. So why are you trying to burn a hole in their back with your staring?”

  Brie knew she was pushing a little. But she knew people like Miles. Too strong to care about the machinations of those weaker than him. But while Miles himself didn’t need to worry, any fallout might splash Thalia or herself. So she couldn’t just spectate and hope for the best.

  Lott gave her a measured look, then sighed. “Why would I tell you, exactly?”

  Brie shrugged as she begun pacing left and right. “Oh I don’t know. Maybe it’d go a long way toward building some trust? You’re trying to impress him, aren’t you? Yeah. Right there,” she said, stopping and pointing at him as she noted the slight tense in his body before she resumed her pacing. “I’ve been around people like you, and hey, you do what you gotta do. No shame in ambition. But I’m his sister’s friend, and she’s too busy being happy that her sibling’s alive to be paying attention to suspicious Shadows. Which. You. Are,” she punctuated with squinted eyes.

  Lott rubbed the back of his neck, tilted his head left and right as he stretched. His eyes flicked to the hill behind which Miles and Thalia would be before they focused back on her. “Building trust, huh? Alright. I’ll bite,” he said, and Brie stopped pacing. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot as the Shadow continued to play games with her, making her wait for the answer. Eventually, he spoke up.

  “I found no file on him,” Lott began, and Brie kept her face still, no matter how much it made her sweat that he’d looked into them. She hoped her contacts had kept her off the Watchers’ records. Gods knew how much she paid for that.

  Lott continued, his eyes boring into hers. “Not that it was easy to find much on miss Thalia and her family, considering they hadn’t been living within the wall of Rivergate until recently. But there’s no mention of a second sibling. Which is… odd,” he said.

  Brie knew the answer to that. But she wasn’t telling. Instead, she frowned, arms still crossed. “Don’t think that looking into his past would piss him off? That might be enough for him to shove you off of his coattails,” she added.

  A chuckle escaped from the Shadow, which took her a little by surprise with how stoic the man had been so far. “Come on. You of all people should know that he wouldn’t even care. And I didn’t look into him. I just noticed the lack of mention of him along with his supposed family. I’m not trying to become his right-hand man, here. I just want to make myself useful. Like we’re all doing.”

  Her smile almost slipped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lott tilted his head, a smirk lifting the corner of his lips, letting her stew for a few seconds. “Aren’t you also trying to ride on his coattail?”

  While she didn’t really feel relieved, Brie still scoffed. “I’m not here for a shortcut, Shadow. I’m here because my friend found her brother. Unlike you, I’m not looking for an easy ride. And while she might not be holding grudges because she’s too busy being happy, don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing.”

  “And what is that I’m doing?”

  “Hiding behind the shadow of someone larger than you. Probably larger than everyone in Rivergate. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  He just smiled, and Brie nodded.

  “Yeah, you know. The aura’s a telltale. I sensed it, even though I was too out of it back then, when you threw me through a damn building.”

  Lott let out a fake sigh. “Holding grudges is bad for you, you know. It ages the heart. Or something like that.”

  Brie gasped, a hand on her chest. “Aw… thank you for giving a shit,” she beamed at him for a second before her frown and crossed arms returned. “No. This is me keeping an eye on an opportunists. Thalia’s busy. And her brother is so far removed from petty squabble he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t worry about backstabbing because backstabbing doesn’t matter when you’re that powerful.”

  Lott nodded. “I agree. He wouldn’t care much about all of this,” he said, waving a hand between them. “But speaking of trust and friends, since when did scions of Great Houses make friends with lowborns?” he simply asked.

  Brie stilled, stomach twisting, but while she recovered fast, the smirk on Lott’s face was unmistakable. He knew. Which meant he could hold that above her head.

  Lott waited for her to react, but when she didn’t he began pacing in turn. “You didn’t think you lost them, did you? And with trust being so important to you, did you tell your friend where you came from and who you are? And tell me, when they’ll come to get you back, were you going to forget she exists or were you going to let her ride on your coattails as well? I wonder how the Ironvaults would take to you befriending the daughter of a disgraced dead Warden and a Torchbearer. Last I’ve heard, they didn’t take slights to their reputations very well.”

  “Nothing will happen. And I have my reasons,” she said between gritted teeth.

  Lott smiled. “Don’t we all? Believe or not, I don’t actually want to start any issues. He’s… beyond us. But by just being around and on good terms with him, we’ve got plenty of opportunities we don’t even have to ask for. If you haven’t noticed, he’s not sequestering himself to meditate. He’s not chasing us away. He’s different. He just… talks. And shares. So yeah, why wouldn’t I want to make myself useful to someone like him?”

  There was a quiet beat where they stared at each other before Brie broke the silence. “Alright. Looks like we’re at dead-end then.”

  Lott shook his head. “There’s no dead-end for me,” he said, then shrugged. “We talked, and we got to know each other a little. We can drop this.”

  Brie scrunched her nose at that. “Maybe you should have done that before knocking me half-unconscious.”

  Lott rolled his eyes, sighing. “Tell you what. I swung on you when we first met, and you just swung back on me. How about we call that a draw and move on?”

  He was giving her an out. And while she made a bit of a fool out of herself, she did get her suspicions off of her chest. “Fine,” she grumbled after a few seconds.

  Lott eyed her back, eyes narrowed. “You’re going to keep glaring at me when I’m not looking at you, aren’t you?”

  Brie just beamed at him, and the man sighed. “Fine. I can live with that. But free advice, you should get a lid on your… family problem. You are being tracked and watched. Reports are being sent. That’s gonna come out sooner or later.”

  Shit.

  “Can you tell me who’s requesting them and who’s writing them?”

  Lott beamed back at her, and Brie sighed. “Of course you won’t. You guys suck,” she grumbled.

  The clang of wood smacking against a shield rang in the private dimension—which was a whole other thing she couldn’t wait to learn more about—while the two kept silent for a few moments. Brie bit her lip, and the words tasted like ash as they came out of her mouth. “We better actually start with training. It’ll look weird if we’re just standing around and talking.”

  Lott stared back at her, eyes calculating, then he gave her a light nod. “Fair. Let’s start then. Use your spells, and let’s see how well you can cast them when being harassed.”

  He went right for the throat, Brie thought with a grimace as she tapped [Trickster’s Spellbook]. The bright purple and pink, rune-engraved book appeared in front of her, shining with unearthly dancing lights that would be matching the glow of her eyes. She readied to cast her first spell while simultaneously reaching for the enchanted dagger hidden behind her back.

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  A moment later, her feet quietly left the ground while her body turned invisible.

  Let’s see how well he does when he can’t see me coming, she chuckled to herself.

  ***

  When Miles and Thalia crested the hill after having finished their own training session, they arrived just in time to see Lott’s leg sweeping a few inches above an empty patch of grass, impacting something that turned out to be Brie. Her invisibility dropped as she hit the ground with a groan and a curse. She rolled, holding her leg in pain and in her hand, there was a glass-like dagger that seemed to leave after-images in its wake.

  With a brow raised, Miles hummed. Invisibility was a rare spell to get this early.

  “This is going well, it seems,” Miles said as Brie noticed their presence. Immediately, she stopped cradling her knee and pointed at the Shadow.

  “He’s cheating! Somehow! I’m not generally against cheating but this bullcrap” Brie accused the nonplussed Lott who just held his hands behind his back.

  Lott shrugged. “The fact that your spells are collapsing as soon as anything touches you is the problem. Not me finding you.”

  She whirled toward him. “Telling me how you’re finding me would help me fix it,” she hissed, getting back up. She gingerly put some weight on her leg, expecting pain, but clearly, Lott hadn’t been aiming to do any damage. She was fine.

  Still, she wasn’t too off the mark. But Lott was right, too.

  “I mean, I agree with what both of you are saying,” Miles said, scratching his chin, and when Brie gave him a betrayed look, he winced. “Sorry. But you can’t expect to stay hidden from someone that far from you in tiers. Especially when you’re discharging so much mana with every cast. You’re like… lighting up a torch in the middle of the night and expecting no one to notice the flames.”

  A twinkle of interest shone in her eyes, and for a moment, all her anger was whisked away as she asked. “You’re talking about Veils, right? Are you gonna tell us how we can make one?”

  At that, Lott’s smile slipped. “Sir?”

  The Shadow went tense for a second, and his gaze, while not warning, was telling him to be careful.

  Oh right. They kinda guard that knowledge a little. Especially this high up… but that’s just dumb, Miles thought. Brie seemed to be itching to retort, but she held her tongue. Thalia, on the other hand, seemed to have completely missed the little tension that fell on the conversation. “Aren’t Veils part of the Skills of Shadows? You know. Like Spellbooks and Seekers?”

  Miles shook his head. “Nah. That’s a misconception,” he said. Glancing toward Lott, he shrugged. “I’m not gonna tell them about the Shadows’ way of training their Veils, so I’m not breaking any rules. But there are other methods. And while Veils are kind of an open secret this high up, they’re really not past the 20th. Hell, even near the 15th everyone has a functional Veil. Can you imagine trying to navigate the wilderness without them? You wouldn’t be able to take two steps without stumbling in an ambush. And if you can’t handle Veils, then you’re sitting ducks against those who do. You’d never be able to sense them coming. Bandits and cutthroats would have a field day. Frankly, it should be a requirement for the Delver’s Exam in my opinion. Though I guess it’s fair they’re not, with how much of a pain in the ass they are to train,” Miles explained, half-ranting. And after a second, he nodded. “Yeah, this is worth addressing. But we’re leaving right after.

  Brie excitedly clapped her hands while Lott just sighed. As for Thalia, she just eyed the two suspiciously before giving Miles her attention back.

  “I’ll cover some quick theory. But practicing will be on you two. Can’t help you much there. I’ll give you some tips, but the rest’s in your hands” Miles said, rubbing the back of his neck for a second before he sat down on the grass and gestured to the others to do the same. Mainly the girls, as Lott already knew most of what he was about to say. When they were seated, he began.

  “So. You girls know how cores function, right? They generate mana. They feed your Skills. They upgrade with elixirs and when exposed to better quality mana, etcetera etcetera. What you might not know is that cores are noisy. Even when they’re at rest. They churn. Activating a Skill creates a mini-shockwave of disturbed mana that’s impossible to miss to anyone with a decent Veil. If a core’s powerful enough, and the person’s agitated enough, it starts affecting the mana around them. That’s where the halos that form behind high tiered delvers come from. With me so far?”

  Thalia and Brie briskly nodded. Brie wasn’t even blinking. She must really want to learn this, he mused before continuing. “The solution to that are Veils. Of course, the better you get with them, the more thorough the noise dampening will get. Even a barely functional one is often better than nothing. Also, a Veil isn’t there only to block all that noise from leaking out. This part’s a little advanced, but once you get good enough, the Veil you construct around your core can be made to detect outside fluctuations. It becomes a sort of mana-sensing organ, one that’s much easier to improve than one’s natural detection capabilities. But all of this takes work, and the key to it all is simply mana manipulation. Pure and simple. Here’s why.”

  Miles looked around for a way to display his point, but he saw nothing but grass, hills, and three quiet, focused individuals. He considered getting a notebook out, but he realized he’d have to activate his ID anyway. A little grimace twisted his features for half a second, and he sighed as he eyed the three. “Keep this secret, alright? I’ll be using something to demonstrate my point, but I need to infuse my ID card anyway,” he explained, and he could almost see the light bulb light up atop of all of their heads.

  With a flex of his will, he tugged on the cauldron circling his core, and it appeared at his feet.

  The Blooming Cauldron looked less like a crafting tool and more like something that had grown out of the earth itself. Its handles were knotted branches that twisted along the cauldron’s rim and met into a knotted mess of leaves surrounding a closed, green, fist-sized bud. Its legs were crooked roots that were slowly sinking into the ground, stabilizing the whole, and resting atop of them was a wide and round basin of smooth wood.

  By now, Thalia, Brie, and Lott were on their feet. They were all drawn to the cauldron, but also not daring to approach, so Miles just gestured for them to get closer. All of them were completely silent as Miles pulled his ID from the pouch and chucked into the bowl. He would have used his own body enhancement Skill, but with him having upgraded and fused the Skill only yesterday, he didn’t wanna risk frying the enchantment of the card.

  The silver card never hit the bottom. It floated a few inches above it, and without needing to touch the cauldron, Miles channeled the barest trickle of mana into it, and a barely visible blue filament came up from the bottom, twirling around the card once before sinking into the green gem.

  The enchantment glowed once, and then it was over. Leaning forward to grab the card, he looked up at the trio. “You guys good? Ready for the next part?”

  “That’s a Soulbound cauldron,” breathed out Lott, an almost childish smile on his face as he stared with wonder at the item. Brie and Thalia were impressed as well, though the latter was a little less enthused, and Miles secretly smiled.

  I bet she would have been more impressed if this had been a spear, he thought. With a clap that made them all jump, Miles continued. “Let’s get back to business. Get closer. Look,” Miles said, and with saying so, he pushed some more mana that leaked out of the cauldron’s wall before it all flew up toward the cauldron’s center, where a little blue bead was now visible. It was rotating, sending little sparks every couple of seconds. “That’s your core, okay? It’s noisy. It's flashy. But here’s what a Veil does.” With another push, more mana flew out of the cauldron’s wooden walls, and delicately, a thin, blue shell formed around the core—which he made translucent so the interior could be seen—and now, when he summoned the sparks out of the fake core, they hit the wall that represented the veil.

  “See? It prevents the excess from leaking out. And the more you practice,” he said, summoning a second layer, which after having it fully formed, made it into a mesh-like surface, then into solid, then shaped the whole thing into a square, “you’ll learn that you can do a lot of little things with it.”

  Thalia looked impressed, but both Lott and Brie were nearly unresponsive. A few seconds after he was done, both slowly looked up at him, with a mix of astonishment and fear. And when Thalia noticed, she asked. “What’s wrong with you two?”

  Lott opened his mouth and closed it, unsure what to say, while Brie’s eyes flicked down to the still gently orbiting fake-core and fake Veils around it. Miles followed their gaze for a second, then it clicked.

  Crap… maybe I should have made them a little less stable. Shit, he cursed, but he didn’t let it show on his face.

  “Thalia? I… I don’t know how to say this exactly. But from everything we’ve seen so far—including the Soulbound cauldron…” she trailed off. “Mi—Sir Miles? Is the cauldron helping you with the mana manipulation?”

  Miles cringed. “Just Miles is fine. And no, the cauldron doesn’t help, and don’t do… all of that,” he said, waving a hand toward the shaken Lott and Brie. “I just had time to work on my manipulation for a bit.” And to justify it a little more, lest everyone figured he had decades of practice in six years, he added. “I’m apparently pretty talented with it. Which is ironic, considering the whole Corebound thing” he smiled.

  Brie nodded, her trembling hands closed in a white-knuckled fist as she turned back to Thalia. “Yeah. Mana manipulation of this level is… a big deal,” she mumbled, eyes wide as an excited smile stretched on her lips. “Mana doesn’t like taking shapes. It wants to be used or to dissolve away. This… this is like telling air to grow solid. And the air obeys.”

  Miles really should have toned down his demonstration a little. But it was a little late. Tapping the edge of the cauldron, he continued, ignoring the stares. “This is actually my advice to you guys. One of my teachers in the past had advised me to find a hobby that made use of mana manipulation. After some trial and error, I ended up taking a few courses on refining and I ended up in love with it. It improved my manipulation by leaps and bounds, and it had the nice benefit of making me some decent amount of gold whenever I needed some funds. Just explore a few hobbies or even some special techniques that feel fun. And keep practicing.”

  Thalia nodded, impressed, but not as shaken as the other two had been. Miles knew he had the advantage with all the time he’d spent in the Dungeon, but it really wasn’t that hard to develop such a proficiency with mana manipulation. It’d take time, of course, but he’d bet someone like Brie could reach his levels a lot faster than he did, considering the affinity of Seekers to mana.

  “Sir… is your Veil double-layered?” Lott asked after having recovered his voice, eyes still occasionally flicking to the cauldron.

  Miles blinked. He had three, actually, but he just nodded and smiled. “Yup! Two layers,” he said, averting his gaze and turning to Brie who’d also recovered a little. She had raised a hand, and Miles sighed. “You really don’t need to be that… polite and weird about it. We’re just hanging out. But go ahead.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. Then clearing her throat, she asked. “If the core’s fully surrounded by solid mana, wouldn’t that cut it off from the Skills that need it? And how about the regeneration process? Wouldn’t that cut off the outside mana?”

  Miles let the orbs of mana fizzle out, then with a touch, the cauldron dissolved away into motes as he answered. “Good question. For the second part, you’re right. You need to decide when to poke some holes in the Veil and when you’d need it to be completely closed off. A perfect Veil will cut off mana from the outside. But don’t underestimate how hard that is to accomplish. As for Skills, it doesn’t affect them at all. I have no way of explaining it really, but the connection between the Core and Skill isn’t just a tube that’s gonna get cut off because of a barrier. It’s… much more complicated than that. You don’t need to worry about it.”

  Stretching his hands above his head, Miles stifled a yawn. “I think that covers most of it. We can keep chatting on the road if you guys have questions. For now, how about we head to the city?”

  everything, but feel free to point out stuff that's not well understood just yet. I try to keep things balanced, but if the lack of knowledge is too distracting, I'll cover it faster.

  It really does helps with the algos. As I said earlier, there will be another chapter on Friday, it might be later in the afternoon.