Dives Locufle

"If you join the Vane's we can get you information on all the dungeons on the continent but as for the ones close to us, there are about three. Which is quite numerous which makes this place a popular area for hunters. Listen, I should get back, I take it you still won't join?"

"No, I don't think I will."

"Alright but if you ever change your mind, which I expect you will once you learn of our fame, here is our main building. Ask to meet me, Dives Locufle."

"Thanks." Zeeth took the card and stuffed it in his shirt.

Dives walked back into the arena while Zeeth sat down on a bench in the entrance room. He took the book out, a slab of ink on each page of the book. The first words said, 'add a little water to the ink sheets to turn them into liquid ink and write with that. He did as he was told, creating a ball of water on his fingertip where the slab of ink dissolved into and began writing as fast as he could, recording how he appeared in a city, about the fights and each of the opponent's skills, abilities, and weaknesses. He found himself being strangely specific while describing all this, even adding little sketches of their faces or battle stances. He described the recruiters, the conversation, and everything he learned so far.

He bent over the sword and shield he was still working on, the shield was meant to expand twice its radius, but now he wanted to add more to it now that he lost everything else. The sword meant to have every tenth attack followed by a powerful second wind blast that he could divert by storing up energy cast by the other nine slashes. The tenth attack was the culmination of previously wasted energy using a very peculiar type of magic circle that didn't require him to use any mana, it simply worked itself through swinging the sword.

While carving the sword, he tried to come up with ideas for the shield. Perhaps a shield that grew spikes when it was attacked. Or a shield that grew to cover his arm or chest. Maybe a combination of the two. As he put the final touches of the circle onto the sword using a sharp shard of metal and transmogrify magic to make the material he was carving softer, something he became used to while in the unequipped smithy, a similar voice asked him, "what are you doing? Practicing for magic circles?"

"Oh, hi Luka. Yeah, what are you doing here?"

"You cut Puq's 'Era of Domination' short so he was getting angry, given a penalty for 25 Styrs, and was asked to leave. You know, that actually looks kinda real."

"The circle? Yeah, it is."

"Um, I'm not that gullible, you know," she said, chuckling.

"What? I didn't say you were gullible. Is this really that unbelievable?"

"You want to tell me that you can carve a real magic circle using a tiny shard on a sword? C'mon, we all know magic circles require automated drills. Good ones need an entire Precision Drill thing. And you have such poor lighting, what can you even see?"

"Uhm. I don't know what those are, but why don't you give it ten swings?" In all of Zeeth's teachings from the dwarves, they all used magic to make the material more susceptible to molding or carving and then made circles using premade stamps that he also learned to make, or carving them by hand using tools. Even in his knowledge, they used better tools, but he didn't have the means to do any of that so he settled for a simpler version. There were no automated drills or impressive technology.

Luka took the sword and reluctantly swung it around, embarrassed at the looks people were giving her. She swung it half-heartedly four times and gave it back. "Zenith, that's embarrassing."

"Oh, it's probably not a good idea to show it here. I'll show you later. Oh, Puq's out."

Puq burst from the doors infuriated. When he saw Zeeth, he stopped, growled, and sped away, Luka walking away. He saw through the glass doors Puq turning on Luka and saying something, Luka yelled back, they both talked really fast and turned away, going in opposite directions. Zeeth wrote it down in his book, everything he wrote only filled one and a half pages, he needed to write in much more detail to get to his daily quota. He was about to carve his shield's circle as well but realized he still didn't have a solid idea. 'Maybe there are easier ways to make circles, I should save this for later then.'

Back in the City of Swords, Page, Elton and his grandpa watched the remains of his teleportation magic dissipate.

"Grandpa- no, Meres Peccatum, please teach me your sword style as well."

"Page, we've been through this. Go practice your magic. Does your skeleton friend want to take part as well?"

"Eh? Can I?"

"Do you want to? Just letting you know, no matter where you are, this will be difficult."

"I would be honored to learn from you." Elton clacked, punching his fist into his palm as a sign of respect.

"No need for manners, I hate that sorta crap. Do you know Animo?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

Meres sighed, "kids these days don't know anything. You will be sent out as well, take a sword."

While they spoke, the table Zeeth kept with him all this time was wiggling around, confused as to where Zeeth had gone. Meres sent Elton away in the teleporter to some other area while Meres looked at the table. "Looks like some crap Afir and Faber made. What did the stupid lizard make this time? Page, come here and help your grandpa!"

The table carefully set down all of Zeeth's objects and began digging at the floor. "What does this do?"

"I'm not sure how it works, it just always follows Zeeth and does what he wants."

Elton appeared in the middle of a dark grave. The sky was almost pitch black even though it was almost afternoon back in the city of swords, the only light came from the strangely glowing gravestones. It looked like a ghost floated out of a tombstone from the side of his vision but when he looked at it, the ghost was gone. He thought he had imagined it and whispered to himself to keep the fright away, "This is so creepy… I hate ghosts"

"But aren't you a self-moving skeleton?"

"Yeah but- AAAH!!" he shrieked, "WHO SAID THAT!?"

"Me!" a transparent white blob floated in the air.

"GAAAH! A GHOST!"

The white blob crossed its hands and pouted, "why are you so freaked out? You're a skeleton."

"Yeah, I thought we would finally meet someone not scared of us." someone else said. It was another transparent white blob floating at head height staring at his black eye socket with their own empty eyes. Elton ran away from the ghosts as fast as he could but more kept springing from the tombstones.

Zeeth walked out of the Hunters Association building as well and noticed something peculiar, a robed woman that he recognized talking to Luka. Puq was already gone from his view but Luka was still standing there. He thought about approaching the robed woman but he didn't want to ruin their talk so he simply watched, ensuring she didn't do anything like create a slingshot for Sinistra again. The robed woman began walking and Luka followed her, as did Zeeth from further behind.

They made it to a tiny opening in between buildings. The robed woman slid in first walking sideways. Luka hesitated but followed shortly after. Zeeth looked into the dark alley, confused but intrigued. He knew better than to casually walk in, who knew what dangers there were.

He sent out a scan but only detected two other signals, two weak things guarding the entrance to something. He created two balls of water and carefully moved them in. He had to get it to wrap around their heads before they noticed the balls of water and escaped. He couldn't just form the balls of water on their heads and suffocate them that way, magic needs to be created from a human. Anyone able to instantly form water on the heads of people not directly in their hands were masters of mana domains.

Both the balls glided over to their heads and began suffocating them. One of them fell over, unconscious and the floor popped the water ball but the other was able to penetrate the water ball with something sharp and escaped, gasping for air. Zeeth ran in, scaled the walls, and slammed his fist onto the person. He wanted to bind them together with rocks but with Gul gone he didn't have strong rock magic and couldn't create a good lock with stone so he just bound them with ice and chased after Luka.

'I seriously miss my slimes.'

They slipped under a metal gate leading underground were revealing a hallway filled with light bobbing around. Luka was handed a small knife and he could see her bickering with the robed woman. Two more mysterious people appeared from the shadows, surprising Luka. he scanned them both with his level one God's Eye and with a mana wave, and he found three more hidden in the shadows but they were all rather weak. Luka pushed the knife back to the woman who grabbed her wrist and tried to force it across her palm. She tried to fight them off but the two were already overpowering her. Zeeth threw his shield at their heads, bouncing it off two of them, and ran in to take it back.

The two fell to the floor with a grunt and everyone looked at him.

"Zenith!" Luka exclaimed, "help!"

He tossed her the shield and sword and charged in barehanded. He punched one hard in the face, swinging two of them straight to the ground while turning them like a windmill in midair. Luka was swinging the sword, trying to keep the woman who tricked her in from holding her hostage. She swung her tenth slash and the second wave of sharp wind cut through the air. It cut the shoulder of the girl fighting her but she was already able to say, "Earth Hands!"

Blood poured from the robed woman's shoulders while a pair of hands made from the floor grabbed Luka's shins. He grabbed the bleeding girl, froze her to the wall, and clamped the wound together to stop the bleeding. He crushed the rock hands off the shin while Luka was admiring the sword.

"It… it's a magic artifact? Where- how-?"

"I told you, it works. I'm gonna need it for about a week but you can keep it after that."

"that's not the issue, you don't just make these things!"

He stood up and finally noticed a massive face staring down at them. It was a face drawn onto the wall, three pitch-black eyes like what Black looked like on his forehead stared at its viewers. An altar shaped into a bowl rested in front of it, signs of blood in the bowl.

Above them, he heard someone shouting, "Zenith! This is the metropolis soldiers! Come out with your hands up and the girl safely out of there!"

Luka looked at him, confused and concerned. "I'll head up first and let them know what really happened here."

"Sure thing."

He stayed down to look at the underground passage while Luka was speaking with the soldiers. After the talking had slowed down he climbed out the passage as well. Five knights in glowing metal armor and longswords listened to Luka explain while Puq stood behind, angrily staring at them yet with an air of worry the more Luka explained.

One of the knights turned to Puq and yelled, "why did you tell us he forced her in?! You lie to us one more time, we will cut off your tongue! Now, where are those robed people?"

"Inside, unconscious and possibly injured."

"Is there any other way in there?" the soldier asked, his armor preventing him from getting in.

"I don't think so."

"We'll have to wait for a search team then. Rina, go alert cap'n."

"On it." a soldier responded and she charged away.

"How many were there?" They spoke for a few minutes, answering as many questions for them as they could. Puq was given a stern talk from one of the armored soldiers.

That night, he was back in a bar, writing in his book, and heard someone say, "One of the biggest cults to have ever been seen, rising at a rate never seen before. There is a chance they are already bigger than a nation."

"Dude, that's totally overblown, it was just one underground room."

"And the secret room also had halls connecting to other halls, it's a massive organization that's rooted itself thoroughly all over the world! My cousin from Jarlon said they even had the cult appearing."

"Those are rumors!" his buddy replied, "you're so drunk, you need a break! How could such a large cult have gone unnoticed for so long? You are crazy."

"They are just really good at hiding! Dude, trust me, they probably have someone with serious connections or a teleportation ability."

"Bro, teleportation ability? Are you really insane? No one has a personal teleportation ability, you need platforms or that like anyone could have such an overpowered skill."

"You never know! They hide really well, it explains it all! It could be a talent."

In Zeeths book, he was writing anything he thought was important. There were in fact secret tunnels that the room led to and the search team had grown from three people to three hundred in just two hours. The rumors likely spread from one of those three hundred working on what they called, "the biggest case since the Black Market."

The first time he faced Sinistra and Iustus, he had no clue they were the leaders of such a large organization, it was honestly impressive. Other than that, however, the day felt like it had been wasted. He spent most of his time wandering the city, the fights in the arena were far too simple, he needed to go somewhere difficult to train.

"Those dungeons I heard about sounded interesting, maybe I will try that tomorrow." he wrote in his book, "I also explored a magic circles store and learned a lot more about circles. While Dwarven circles are carved by hand and magic to cut them faster by themselves, humans use magic tools and unique ideas to cut easier. Their circles tend to be more focused on simpler things, like making tools sturdier or stronger but Dwarven circles are used for a myriad of things. I think a mixture of ideas could make the best circles."