If a settlement was captured, the crystal disappeared.

  That was the only explanation that made sense.

  David stood before the empty pedestal and rubbed his chin. The socket in the center was too precise to be decorative. Something had rested there. Something important. And now it was gone.

  "So when someone takes over," he muttered, "the crystal just… vanishes? Transfers? Teleports?"

  The idea lingered as he looked around the ruined clearing again.

  And then another question surfaced.

  How did they build this?

  He had assumed these creatures—kobolds, goblins, whatever had lived here—were primitive. Small huts. Basic tools. Fire and mud.

  But the pedestal was stone. Properly shaped stone.

  David turned slowly, scanning the settlement with new attention.

  There were walls—collapsed now, but unmistakably structured from fitted blocks. Several huts had stone foundations. One or two had half-stone frames. And at the far edge of the clearing stood a structure made almost entirely of stone.

  Not large.

  But it stood out.

  "Yeah," David said quietly. "That’s where the boss lived."

  He approached it carefully.

  The doorway was low, forcing him to crouch slightly as he entered. Inside, the air felt stale, heavy with the scent of old ash and dust. Light filtered through cracks in the stonework, illuminating chaos.

  The place had been searched.

  Thoroughly.

  Fragments of broken containers littered the floor. Splintered wood. Torn fabric. Piles of debris that might once have been furniture—or offerings—or simple storage. Bones were mixed in with everything else, making it difficult to tell what had been tools and what had been remains.

  "They really cleaned this out," David murmured.

  But he had an advantage.

  He activated [Mana Perception].

  The world shifted.

  Stone became translucent to his senses. Faint currents of ambient mana threaded through cracks and surfaces like veins. He scanned the interior slowly, expecting to see the telltale glow of enchanted objects.

  Nothing.

  Someone else had done the same.

  Anything magical had already been taken.

  David frowned.

  "So I’m not the only one with tricks," he said under his breath.

  Could the kobolds have done this?

  He narrowed his focus.

  Fine.

  If subtle didn’t work—

  He pushed more mana into his perception.

  Turned it up.

  The pressure behind his eyes increased. The faint background currents sharpened into brighter outlines. Edges glowed. Residual traces became visible where before there had been nothing.

  And then—

  There.

  A glow.

  Weak. Buried.

  David tilted his head slightly, adjusting the angle of his perception.

  The light was coming from beneath him.

  Under the floor.

  There was only one problem.

  The entire floor was a single slab of stone.

  David stared at the stone floor for a long moment, then flexed his fingers.

  "Alright. Let’s do this properly."

  He reached for the [Major Law of Clay] and pushed his will downward, trying to command the material beneath the slab to loosen, to shift, to give way.

  Nothing.

  There wasn’t a trace of clay in it. Pure stone.

  "Fine."

  [Major Law of Water]?

  Again, nothing. The slab remained still and did not move, as if mocking him.

  And with the air thick with wild mana currents, it was nearly impossible to isolate individual elements long enough to experiment. Everything bled into everything else. Trying to learn a new Law here would be like trying to study physics inside a hurricane.

  He exhaled sharply.

  "Why am I even doing this the hard way?"

  David focused instead on the edges of the slab. With Mana Perception still active, he traced its boundaries. The stone extended exactly to the hut’s walls—one massive foundation piece.

  He stepped back outside.

  Then crouched.

  Slipping his fingers under the slight lip where stone met soil, he braced himself.

  "Alright, [Physical Enchantment]… don’t fail me now."

  He pulled.

  For a second, nothing happened. His boots dug into the earth. His legs began to sink under the pressure, soil giving way beneath him.

  Then—

  The slab shifted.

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  Just a fraction.

  "That’s it… that’s it…"

  He strained harder. Muscles tightened, reinforced by enchantment. The ground swallowed him to the knees, but the stone began to tilt.

  Please don’t crack.

  If it shattered, whatever was beneath it might be destroyed too.

  But the foundation held.

  With a grinding roar of displaced earth, David heaved the entire slab upward and over. The hut, still attached to it, flipped as one awkward, crumbling unit.

  The structure crashed down behind him, collapsing under its own weight. Wood splintered. Stone fractured. Everything that had been inside was reduced to rubble.

  "…Oops," David muttered.

  What else was he supposed to do? He technically had an excavator. It was just currently disassembled beneath tarps at camp. Rebuilding it would require powering up the server, accessing the database, finding the manual on how to assemble it—assuming there was a manual. Hopefully there was a manual.

  He groaned.

  "Yeah. This was faster."

  Now he had a different problem.

  He was stuck in the ground up to his knees.

  "Great."

  He tried to pull one leg free. The suction of compacted soil resisted stubbornly. His jeans were already ruined. Dirt had poured into his boots.

  It took him longer to extract himself and shake the soil loose than it had to flip the entire foundation. By the time he finished brushing himself off, he was breathing harder than before.

  He turned back to the exposed ground.

  The earth beneath the slab had been compressed, pressed down several centimeters lower than the surrounding soil. In the center was a shallow depression.

  David stepped toward it, a small, anticipatory smile forming on his face.

  Loot.

  That smile faded the moment he looked inside.

  Several small green bodies lay curled together.

  Children.

  One of them still held a glowing sphere in both hands.

  For a second, David didn’t move.

  The sphere shimmered under [Mana Perception], its internal structure bright and intricate. But when he blinked and turned the ability off, he realized something else—

  It was glowing on its own.

  A lamp.

  A soft, steady light.

  The adults must have hidden them here during the attack. Lift the foundation, tuck them underneath, lower it back down. Safe from invaders.

  Then return once the fighting was over.

  Except the fighting hadn’t been won.

  And no child that size could ever have lifted that slab from below.

  David forced himself to look at the underside of the overturned foundation. No scratches. No signs of desperate attempts to dig or claw their way out.

  They probably never understood what had happened.

  The air had thinned slowly.

  They had simply fallen asleep.

  He swallowed.

  Carefully, he stepped down into the depression. The bodies hadn’t begun to rot. The tight seal of the stone had preserved them in a still, terrible quiet.

  He reached for the sphere.

  It was warm.

  Under Mana Perception, he saw it clearly now—two repeating symbols woven endlessly around the object, similar to the pattern inside the ring he had found earlier. Different symbols this time. Small, infinitely repeating like code.

  The system demanded precision and a certain sequence of lines to write a symbol. These were microscopic and impossible to replicate.

  He turned the ability off.

  The sphere continued to glow softly in his palm.

  It was large for a goblin child.

  Small for him.

  He slipped it into his pocket.

  Then, without another word, he climbed out of the depression and invoked the [Major Law of Clay].

  The soil responded instantly this time.

  Earth folded inward, filling the hollow, covering the small bodies. He smoothed the surface flat.

  The ruined hut lay overturned nearby.

  The clearing was silent again.

  David stood there for a while before finally turning away.

  After wandering through the ruined settlement a little longer and finding nothing else of value, David finally admitted to himself that there was nothing more to uncover here.

  No hidden caches. No forgotten artifacts.

  He stepped away from the overturned hut and summoned his improvised hoverboard—the rectangular lattice of radiator grille that obediently rose from where he had left it. The metal hummed faintly as mana coursed through it.

  David stepped on.

  A push of will—and he lifted off.

  Within minutes he had reoriented himself. He hadn’t gotten lost. Obviously. The sun hung at a predictable angle, and he adjusted his heading with mild satisfaction.

  "See? Perfect navigation, no GPS needed," he muttered.

  The forest rolled beneath him again, endless orange broken by occasional clearings. Wind tugged at his jacket. The sphere in his pocket pressed faintly against his hip with each shift of movement.

  Five minutes later, he noticed smoke.

  A thin gray column rising above the treetops in the distance.

  His expression sharpened.

  Smoke meant fire.

  Fire meant activity.

  And activity meant either danger… or someone who might need help.

  He increased speed.

  The hoverboard vibrated slightly as he pushed more power into it. Trees blurred below. The column of smoke thickened as he approached.

  But as he drew closer, the smell reached him—roasting meat.

  Not wildfire.

  Cooking.

  David slowed and descended to a safer altitude, keeping the treeline between himself and the source. Through gaps in the canopy he could see a settlement—larger than the ruined one, more intact. Several fires burned in controlled circles. Figures moved between structures.

  He hovered behind a cluster of tall trees and exhaled.

  "Okay… don’t be stupid."

  He needed a better look.

  He squinted toward the camp and immediately regretted not bringing binoculars. He had some—brand new, still in packaging—taken from the hunting section of the supermarket near the tents. He had ordered everything useful moved through the portal at the time. Of course he had.

  And of course he hadn’t thought to bring them today.

  "Brilliant planning," he muttered.

  Still, his phone was nearly top-of-the-line. The camera zoom had to count for something.

  He pulled it from his pocket and steadied his hand, angling the lens carefully through a break in the leaves. He adjusted the zoom, fingers sliding across the screen.

  The image sharpened.

  Huts. Larger than before. Reinforced. Smoke drifting lazily upward from several cooking pits. Shapes moving—short figures, armed.

  David narrowed his eyes and focused harder, trying to make out details without exposing himself.

  David adjusted the zoom further, focusing on one of the fires.

  At first he couldn’t quite make sense of the shapes turning slowly over the flames. The camera struggled with distance and heat distortion. He steadied his breathing and zoomed in more.

  Then the image sharpened.

  An arm.

  Small. Green.

  His stomach dropped.

  He zoomed out instinctively, as if that could undo what he had seen, then back in again to confirm.

  There was no mistake.

  They were roasting bodies.

  Goblins.

  Probably from the village he had just left.

  A sour wave rose from his gut before he could suppress it. David leaned sideways off the hoverboard and vomited into the undergrowth below. The taste of acid burned his throat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, breathing hard.

  "What did you expect?" he muttered hoarsely.

  This morning he had watched one of them gnaw on the leg of its own kind. Of course it wouldn’t stop at opportunistic scavenging.

  "You’re shocked? Really?"

  He swallowed again and forced himself to look at the screen.

  Small cannibals.

  That was the easiest label.

  But the simplicity of that word didn’t solve the problem.

  What was he supposed to do with them?

  Teach them agriculture?

  Hold seminars on sustainable crop rotation?

  Force them into vegetarianism at gunpoint?

  Or just erase them and be done with it?

  His jaw tightened.

  He zoomed out slightly and scanned the rest of the settlement.

  Near the fires stood a crude wooden cage.

  Inside, pressed against one another, were living goblins.

  Not moving much. Weak. Waiting.

  Another cage stood beside it, and as he watched, two armed Kobolt figures approached and began unlatching it. A hand reached inside.

  David’s vision tunneled.

  "No," he said quietly.

  The word steadied him.

  "No. Not while I’m here."

  He locked the phone screen and slid it back into his pocket.

  The hoverboard rose higher, clearing the treetops.

  And then he started moving straight towards the center of the settlement