Despite knowing it wouldn’t work, Vin tried casting his spell a second time, and then a third. Sure enough, every time he attempted to activate False Life and bring a copy of the guardian’s memories to life in order to answer their questions, the spell fizzled out and failed. After the third attempt, Alka leaned down toward him.

  “Are you doing it right?”

  “Yes I’m doing it right!” he snapped, gritting his teeth as he finally gave in and stood back up. “Somehow, his reflexive ability is still activating even beyond death.”

  “Then why was I able to stab him?” she asked, holding up her sword.

  “I don’t know!” Letting out a huff, Vin began pacing as he threw his hands up into the air. “This pit stop just gave up more questions than answers, and rather than asking the man himself, we can’t do that either. So to answer your question and just about all the other ones that came up in the last ten minutes, I. Don’t. Know.”

  “Calm down, Vin, it’s alright,” Shia said. “We already decided we’re going to head back to the library after wave five hits and see if we can’t get things figured out.”

  “You know I’m pretty certain telling people to calm down when they’re angry just makes things worse,” Scule pointed out helpfully from Vin’s pocket as Reginald nodded beside him. “That said, I think Shia is right. No sense worrying about things outside of our control. We got the artifact we came for, let’s leave the bastard and go.”

  Taking a few deep breaths, Vin nodded as he realized his friends were right. He loved venturing into the unknown and coming across things he couldn’t explain, but something about discovering that the System had subtly been influencing their decision making to prevent them from discussing details of their prestige classes with people he trusted had unnerved him. Top that off with feeling the barrier the Goddess had placed within his mind to protect him being strained by looking at the greater artifact they’d collected, and he was a bit on edge at the moment.

  “Sorry,” he said to Alka, getting a shrug of indifference in return. “Yeah, let’s get out of here. Should we bring the body with us?”

  “Do you feel like lugging a naked corpse all the way back to Terra?” Scule asked, looking more than a little uncomfortable with the thought.

  “Can you use Dimensional Sheath on him?” Shia asked. “I know you already have your shimmerwing mattress and the petrified elderwood door. Can you fit a third thing?”

  “Yeah, my limit’s actually gone up to four objects since getting the Magical Adept passive. Though if False Life didn’t work on him, there’s a chance Dimensional Sheath won’t either.” Yet sure enough, a quick cast of Dimensional Sheath proved that some magic worked on the man’s corpse just fine as it vanished without a trace, and Vin shook his head as yet another question was added to the pile.

  With the Relic Guardian’s corpse collected and artifact in hand, they made their way back out of the colosseum, where they received one final surprise for their efforts.

  The gentle, golden bubble of the divine sanctum was nowhere to be found, and only then did Vin realize he had notifications he could have accessed ever since the divine warrior had died. He’d merely been a bit preoccupied with his own thoughts up until then.

  Arcane Discovery! 10,000 exp gained.

  New greater artifact discovered!

  He waited a beat for the additional notification that he’d received a large chunk of experience, before realizing one wasn’t coming.

  It would seem he’d lost yet another method of leveling with his recent class change.

  “Well the resurrection gem is a greater artifact,” he said, holding the diamond up to the light and peering at it most closely. As much as he wanted to, he had to actively try not to use Beyond the Veil with this artifact, as the Goddess’ warning rang in his ears. Already he had a nasty headache from unintentionally peering at the gem earlier, and he knew anything further might have drastic consequences. “So that’s kinda cool.”

  “‘Kinda cool,’” Scule snorted as he stared at the diamond right beside him. “The gall to call a greater artifact ‘kinda cool.’ I’m pretty certain smaller kingdoms would fight entire wars over a greater artifact, for the record.”

  “And especially one like this,” Shia pointed out. “Think about it. The ability to bring a king or queen who had been assassinated back to life, or any loved one who died before their time, so long as you got to them fast enough. Honestly, artifacts like these probably caused more problems than they were worth. Too bad it’s not nature magic. If that were the case, it would be powerful enough to solve the Dryads’ magic problem once and for all.”

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  “Shame it only works for recently deceased,” Alka said, staring longingly at the diamond. “The golem body is cool and all, but honestly, sure wouldn’t mind my old meat sack back if it were an option.”

  “Here’s the question,” Scule said, looking between them all nervously as they made their way back through the holy district. “Should we tell anyone that we have this? I mean, at the moment, with the Relic Guardian dead, only the five of us know this artifact even exists. Should we save it in case one of us has an untimely demise? Edregon’s a dangerous place after all. Like Shia said, revealing it might only cause us problems.”

  “You want to keep it a secret from the other Earthers?” Vin asked, the thought never having actually occurred to him. “I mean, I guess we can. But what if someone dies and we’re given the option to use the gem? Would you want us to hold back on it because it would be better suited for saving one of us down the line?”

  “I mean… yeah, kind of,” Scule said sheepishly. “Look, if someone close to us dies, like Alice or Theodore, that’s different. And obviously we’ll tell Lumel about it in just a few minutes. But would you really be willing to waste a free resurrection on some random Earther you’ve never met? I don’t care if that sounds selfish, that just doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “I think Scule has a point,” Alka said as they finally exited the holy district, pausing to ensure the robes she’d borrowed from Lumel fully covered her darthsteel form. With the sun already set and the streets largely dead they weren't likely to run into that many people, but it was still better to be safe than sorry. “I know you Earthers don’t tend to think this way, Vin, but different people are inherently worth more than others when the System is involved. Using the gem to bring back someone in their second or third prestige is a far more worthwhile use of the artifact than someone who hasn’t even hit level 20 yet. It’s not being selfish so much as it is pragmatic.”

  “You sound like Golrim,” Vin said, frowning at the fact that her logic made complete sense to him. “Alright, fine. Other than Lumel, we don’t tell anyone else about the gem. I only hope that doing so doesn’t come back to haunt us in the future.”

  Even if he wasn’t the biggest fan of it, with their decision made, Vin carefully tucked the resurrection gem within his pack as they headed back to Tiny Town. They couldn’t have been gone for more than an hour or two, but that must have been more than enough time for Lumel to have her heart-to-heart with Scule’s siblings, as the dimensional mage was sitting on a rather comfy-looking chair just outside of Tiny Town. Spotting them, she hopped up and made the chair vanish in a flash of purple.

  “How did it go?” she asked, her smile faltering as she took in their solemn looks. “Did something happen?”

  “A whole hell of a lot of somethings happened,” Scule nodded. “Who wants to start?”

  Now that it was the dead of night, getting back over the citadel wall was just as easy as it had been to break in, and the team took turns explaining what they’d learned as they walked. Vin pulled the greater artifact back out of his pack and showed it to her, and they quickly went over both the artifact and how the Relic Guardian had just died after handing it over. Understandably, Lumel looked rather shaken from their findings. She agreed they needed to head back to the library as soon as possible to figure out what exactly had happened, but refused to take the artifact from Vin when offered.

  “We won’t lose it if you keep it in your Dimensional Pocket,” he pointed out. “It’s the safest place for it.”

  “I’m too fragile. With your divine boon, it makes the most sense for you to hold on it,” she argued. “Here, let me carry the Relic Guardian’s corpse, you can use Dimensional Sheath for the artifact.”

  Vin couldn’t really refute the fact that he was the most likely member of their team to survive a surprise attack, so he shrugged and handed over the guardian’s corpse before storing the gem of resurrection in its place. It was a lot of weight to put on his shoulders, but he’d gotten used to that during the many monster battles he’d fought in order to save the thousands of lives within Terra.

  By the time their team made it back to Terra, the moon was high in the sky, and they were more than ready for bed. The night guards gave them respectful nods as they entered town, and while Alka split off to go check on her trainees and do some late-night training, the rest of them eagerly returned to their apartment.

  “I have to say, Scule, all in all, meeting your folks wasn’t terrible,” Shia yawned as they went inside. “Nute was rather cute, and Copi looked like a younger version of you. You know, before you made so many bad decisions.”

  “Oh? You think bonding with Reginald was a bad decision?” Scule shot back, covering Reginald’s ears with his hands as he loudly whispered to the rat. “Don’t listen to her, Reginald, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about!”

  Joining in on the teasing, Reginald let out a saddened squeak that broke Shia’s heart, as the Druid immediately apologized and tried to convince him that wasn’t what she meant. While those three messed around, Vin shook his head and turned to Lumel.

  “How was the conversion with Scule’s siblings?”

  “It was good,” she said, giving him a smile that was only marginally pained. “I understand not everyone has the same relationship with their parents as I did with mine, and some people honestly should probably walk away from theirs without ever looking back... But I could tell the two of them did have an actual connection with their mom and dad. I just talked about what happened to me. I wanted them to understand that some bridges can’t be rebuilt after they're burned, you know?”

  “I think you did a good thing,” Vin said, pulling her into a hug and giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Hell, it sounds like we sort of all did a good thing somehow. Frankly, I’m shocked we didn’t make Scule’s situation worse. That sounds more up our alley.”

  “You guys need to have a little more faith in yourselves,” she said, taking her turn to yawn. “I think I’m ready for bed. Spending an entire day talking to Nute after being alone for so long wore me out.”

  “That’s nothing the stronghold of slumber can’t solve!” Vin said, earning a soft giggle from the pulmon. Lumel only spared a quick glance at their roommates still messing around on the other side of the common room before following Vin back into his room and all but collapsing onto the shimmerwing mattress he pulled out of nowhere. Flopping right down beside her, Vin barely managed to conjure up his cloud pillow before Lumel curled up against him, and his mattress all but drained him of what little strength he had left.

  The stronghold is a dangerous thing, he thought as his tired mind went blank and he left his worries and questions behind until tomorrow.

  Discord