Does it matter?

In the silent room, Kren adjusted his glasses and watched the door intently. He had stopped smiling, and his face was now a rigid mask, but his eyes burned with a light.

Without saying anything either, Arvas lifted his hand, and a small potion appeared—a green-colored liquid that he poured above the table. But instead of falling, the liquid gathered in the air and then expanded, covering the whole room.

"There. No one can listen to us now, but they'll know we're doing or discussing something important."

Kren waved his hand carelessly. "Does it matter? We should have wiped clean all the spies anyway."

Arvas shook his head, and the black hair covering his eyes moved away for an instant to reveal bright yellow eyes. "You know we can't do that. We can't alert them like that."

Kren scoffed. "What does it matter? They know something's going on already. Why should we pretend?"

"You know the reason," Arvas said calmly.

Kren didn't reply to that. The Nyxori Alchemist Association was a powerful group indeed, but not here in the Hinterlands, where the Knight Assembly held the strongest sway. Their branch in the Hinterlands was still competing with others of its kind, and that's why they sent representatives to the Soryu Borderland to gain more foothold.

But unfortunately, Arvas and Kren wanted nothing more to do with them. They had complete control of the Nyxori branch here and wanted to remain totally independent. But to do that, they needed something equally powerful to back them. Already, they had the backing of one of the Flagbearers.

They needed to buy the remaining Flagbearers and then cut off the Nyxori branch, renaming the organization as their own. The ruin would provide the resources to buy the Flagbearers to support them when the main branch in the Hinterlands finally wanted to retaliate.

Kren sighed. "Finally, we won't have to work as slaves anymore."

Arvas chuckled. "We were slaves, Kren, but this time, we'll pull one over them. Indeed, we might be forever restricted to the Borderland here, but we can still pull strings. We'll be free, finally."

Being kidnapped as kids and forced to work for the organization since then, they had been planning something like this for years.

Kren said, "This new kid will lessen the number of people we'll need to bring to the ruin. I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that core. Is that even possible?"

Arvas shrugged. "This is the Eternal Skies," he said, as if that explained everything.

Kren hesitated before saying anything else. "But why's he here? With a core like that, he shouldn't be in this place at all. Some Flagbearer should have directly snatched him up. What if he's directly under Steelclaw?"

Arvas snickered. "And what? He allows him to work in the mine? Think about it—if he's someone like that, then he'll be part of the hunting and patrol team, not wasting away with dust. Why do you think he's trying to learn? He's a nobody who got lucky... a criminal."

Kren's eyes lit up at that. "Learn. I should be able to learn something from him during our teaching sessions. I've not seen anyone as interested as he is. A pity."

The subtle green glow trembled and then broke away, letting the noise around them rush in once again. If anyone was still listening, they'd have found the two captains lamenting about their finances.

---

Atrox continued with the daily work of breaking stones to get to the Starsalt, but in a very different manner. What usually took him the whole day now took only hours, and he didn't have to cart it away himself—he had Tiber and Syla do that in exchange for breaking their own Starsalt for them.

The reason he was still working in the mine was to build back his lost strength and stamina. And with the food he was getting from the Nyxori, it wouldn't take much longer.

Then he would use the rest of the day to hunt monsters deeper in his tunnel and fill his core. There are two main ways to fill cores: one is to hunt monsters and gain a portion of their essence as they die, or to meditate and draw it from the air.

The fastest way is to hunt monsters, but most people don't do that due to the dangers involved—not that Atrox could blame them. Even though he was fighting only imps, he'd bled more than he'd ever bled in his life.

The issue with taking essence from the air while meditating was that it slowed down advancement. Hunting monsters wore out the core like a muscle, building it up quicker for advancement. That's why most people would start hunting when it was closer to their advancement.

"Meditating is just for filling the core with essence, but hunting is for building the core for advancement. But why not just hunt monsters for both if it's available?" Atrox muttered to himself. His green, gleaming eyes surveyed the darkness in front of him for any movement.

Brown blood splattered his clothes and the ground around him. The imp bodies had disappeared once again as they died. It must have something to do with their ability to pass through the walls. This was the fourth day of hunting monsters here, and he was getting used to the way they hunted.

Atrox smiled. "Right about now!" He flung himself downward in a roll and came up with a glowing ball of essence in his right hand, which he threw into the bellowing darkness that flowed from the ground where he'd been standing.

The attack slammed into the middle of the now-solid imp wave and exploded, blasting out sharp, needle-like condensed essence that tore into the monsters and reduced them to flesh rags.

At the same moment, he turned his back to the now-translucent wave as another surged toward him, fangs gleaming white in the near dark.

He lifted his hand, and a beam of energy blasted out, sizzling in the air and burning over half of the wave away.

Atrox smiled. "Imps are good for the core once you know how to handle them."