“What is it? What does it do? Hey... c’mon, don’t keep me waiting, man! I want to know.” Quinn started pestering me without giving me the time to even explain.

  The armour was going to help me in the future, and not a little.

  I could feel the possibility of storing life force into it. If I used it now, I could even kill myself. You didn’t want to fuck around with that; my own life force was precious. I would risk losing years if I fed the armour myself, but what if I drained some of my enemies? That would be a great boon indeed; I had the possibility to regenerate mid-battle without having to cast any spell, or I could heal an ally, or I could empower my spells with it. Other than the armour being a great defence tool and the utility of switching forms, it complemented the spirit mask abilities well. Now it would complement mine.

  As I explained to Quinn what I discovered, we started talking about how to use the armour better. I heard a faint groan as I turned to look, and I saw Mary finally stirring awake. We moved towards her; she was blinking furiously, covering her face with an arm.

  “Mary, are you ok? Can you tell me how you feel?” I asked her.

  She groaned again, then in an unusually rough voice she said, “Yes, yes, I’m fine; just give me a moment. I feel terrible.”

  In the corner of my eye I saw Quinn shift slightly; he was ready to move, and one of his hands was resting casually on one of the long knives he always had strapped to his waist. “No problem; take your time.” I replied to her, then I looked at Quinn and shook my head slightly; he shrugged in response but didn’t change his ready stance.

  After a minute of silence, Mary moved her arm a little, enough just to see while still shielding herself from the light. “What happened? Did we get attacked? And why are you cosplaying as a magic knight?”

  I didn’t know if she was totally fine; the mask spirit should have died, but you never knew with magic. “You don’t remember the battle? It’s better if you tell me first what the last thing you remember is; as for the armour, it is magical. I just found it.”

  I could see she was scrunching her brow even under the arm, “I… I remember we were following the path to the shrine, then… something called to me, like… it guided me to the door; it was showing me the way; it was so peaceful, so kind. I remember touching the door and pouring my mana into it, then… nothing.”

  She shifted a little, her frown deepening. “Why don’t I remember anything else past that? Just an uncomfortable sensation somehow.”

  How should I go about this: hard truth or soft approach? I was thinking about it when Quinn opened his mouth again. “Are you sure you don’t remember anything? You got possessed by a weird-ass mask of an eldir priest or something…”

  I gave an exasperated look at the boy, who noticed and just looked at me in confusion. “What?” he mouthed to me, but I just shook my head and knelt down to the woman.

  “Mary, first of all, check if you are still injured. I’m sure you have better diagnostic skills than I, and then I’ll explain everything. But know that now we’ve dealt with any problem, we’re safe, ok?”

  She looked particularly rattled by the news, something natural given what happened. But she nodded and then closed her eyes for a few seconds. “There are still traces of some kind of biological material in my body… in my veins in particular, but it is getting degraded and absorbed. There are some magic shenanigans happening that I’m not fully understanding, but…” She used one of her healing skills, her whole body glowing with a white-gold light for a moment. “I’m fine, at least physically; I will recover totally in a couple of hours… what the hell happened?”

  I started explaining what transpired since she opened the door; probably that was the trigger for the possession. Mary had to empty basically her whole mana pool to open them. It wasn’t that she needed to do it; it was that the creature didn’t open them until she was defenceless and easier to possess. A trick we totally didn’t see coming. We were under the false impression that this place was a gold mine, but nothing in this tutorial was going to give out freebies; we nearly died just to get what we got. Well, overall we gained a great haul from this, but the danger was proportionate to the loot.

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  As I finished recounting everything, bar my use of Marionette of Regrets, nobody needed to know I had that skill. Mary was left in a stupor; she said that she didn’t remember anything. When I showed the mask, she recoiled from it, but more from the foul aura emanating from the thing than anything.

  “That thing is evil beyond compare… please keep it away from me. Actually, Rhea and Alya are upstairs, right? I think I’ll go to them, have a girl talk and all that…”

  “Of course, take your time.” I gave my arm to her; she took my hand and got up. She looked like herself, but I wanted to keep an eye on her. As she made for the stairs, I turned to Quinn; without saying anything, he looked back. “I’m on it,” he said, then his presence thinned as he silently followed our healer upstairs.

  Haa… What a day! I went to retrieve my mace. I looked at it, lying on the floor; it looked different, darker than before. The curse was doing something to it… It was making itself at home. I kept my aura ready without deploying it and took up the mace. The effect hit me immediately; a weakness suffused into every part of me. The armour was so heavy, threatening to bring me down. My muscles started to hurt, my joints especially, then my thoughts grew muddled and a headache started to pulse in my temples.

  I made the armour retreat, leaving me again with only the vambraces and sabatons as protection, and then I hooked my mace to its place in my belt. As soon as I stopped holding it in my hand, the curse stopped acting up. The feeling of regaining my power and the general wellness was nearly intoxicating. I was going to use the mace; I wanted to see if I could train my trait to resist the curse even more. If I could evolve it another time by myself, I could maybe use the token for another trait. Until now, I hadn’t managed to evolve any other. I had no idea how to train the others, except by trying and using more arcane energies; maybe I could evolve my aura trait, given that it was connected with curses. In any case, I will keep the token for now; I just hoped I could get some information soon. I don’t care how much I had to spend; I needed to know how to progress in the best way. I was tired of going at it blind.

  There was nothing else to do here except think, and I did enough of that already, so I went up the stairs too. I hoped that Rhea found a way of opening the door, but otherwise, I would just blast it open myself. I was tired of this place; despite its magical appearance, it was starting to grate on me.

  As I got up, I noticed Quinn hiding just before the top; he nodded at me and then came back down to stand on my side. “Everything is fine, just tears and emotional stuff; she seems ok.” He whispered to me.

  I nodded, then I asked in a loud voice before coming into view, “Rhea, how is it going?”

  I heard a shuffle of feet; then she answered. “I think I’ll need some more time; this ritual is very complicated. I could open the lock if I had the right materials, but with nothing useful at hand and after it went into safe mode after I tampered with it already… it will take me some more time, an hour at max, I swear.”

  “It’s fine; it’s already a miracle that you could do what you did before. I will opt for a more direct approach now, if you don’t mind.”

  “What do you mean? Ohhh… I get it, well, if you really want to go for it, then aim there, or near the bottom, where there is that little wiggly horizontal line.” After pointing at a couple of spots, she turned around and took the other girls by the arms. “Let’s go down; I don’t want to get more dusty than necessary. I already feel filthy enough. Cool outfit by the way.” She said while winking at me, and then she dragged them down the stairs.

  “I think I’ll follow her example; don’t collapse the cavern on us, please.” And with that, even Quinn left.

  Alone in the antechamber, I looked at the point in the door that Rhea told me. I tried to hex the door, but of course, as I had already tried before, hexes didn’t work on inanimate objects. So I went forward; I put my hand on the door, exactly at the centre. I started layering barrier after barrier in front of me, then I infused my will into a tonne of mana, and then I channelled that mana into Arcane Blast. The structure of the spell was straining to contain that much, but my traits and my will were keeping them in place. After I reached the height of what I could do with it, I deployed Arcane Infusion.

  The influx of extra mana was too much; the spell buckled, but before it blew up in my face, I released it in front of me, and only in the front. With a thunderous boom, the spell slammed into the door, breaking it apart and flinging the pieces into the forest at high speed. The cavern shuddered all around me, but nothing except that happened, except that I was feeling the magic around us weakening more and more. I probably broke the ritual or formation or whatever Rhea called these things.

  A gust of fresh air entered the chamber, blowing away the dust that I created. I breathed deeply, and then I slightly turned around.

  “The way is open!” I told the others.

  Then lower, only to myself, “Let’s move on…”

  20 chapters ahead!