Some time later, after they had descended by Rhea's telekinetic manipulation from the trees and put distance between themselves and the ogre's territory, David and Rhea sat among the roots of a massive redwood, in the northeast, avoiding the Ogre’s cavern entirely.

  David broke the silence first. "The humans you didn't recognize."

  Rhea nodded slowly. "There were several. The woman who refused. The old man. A few others bound deeper in, near the cave mouth."

  "Not from our group."

  "No."

  David considered that. "From the moment we landed, it's just been us. The survivors from the plane. The people we crashed with, fought with, lost along the way."

  Rhea's eyes met his. "My eyes have been good from the start. If I didn't recognize them, they weren't from the flight."

  "They were from Earth," Rhea said. It wasn't a question.

  "Yeah."

  More people. More survivors. More humans who'd been dumped into this nightmare, just from a different door.

  He had an army of broken, twisted and remade people to either ‘save,’ enthral, consume, or use, depending on how things shook out. David didn't say anything else. Neither did Rhea.

  Enough time had passed that the immediate adrenaline had faded into something duller and more useful.

  Rhea broke the silence first. "What was it doing back there? The ogre, I mean. With the killing, the forcing them to do it. What's the point?"

  David considered the question. "It's building its forces. Not in quality, it seems, but in quantity. And not just in levels. Psychological conditioning."

  He paused.

  "Killing a monster, that's one thing. Adrenaline, fight or flight, something's trying to eat you. That's rough, but a simple choice. Survival’s always simple."

  He thought about it. Unless you were wired that way, killing a monster without adrenaline or fight or flight for the first time was difficult. It was a piece of cake for him, sure, but he'd faced a hell of a lot of darkness back on Earth. He had gained and lost everything, even his mind. He'd already been conditioned by fate.

  But for these people? These regular people from Earth? It wasn't easy to kill a defenseless old man. Just doing it once would harden even the nicest person, or plant a seed of darkness in them. Forcing them to choose themselves over the life of an innocent. The first time would be traumatic, but with each kill they would twist. How many times was the ogre making them do it? Five? Ten?

  "The ogre's building an army of psychopaths," he said.

  Despite himself, he thought it was kind of genius. If he did that, everyone from Chloe to the pensioner would be prime assets. Not dead weight. Not liabilities.

  He thought about his own thralls. He should condition them too, somehow. Fenrir's pride could be turned into a piercing weapon. That wolf was proud, insulted by seeing its kind treated like cattle. That pride could be honed, shaped, aimed at the right targets. The warlock's ambition could be warped into something lethal. That old wolf wanted power, wanted knowledge. He could give it that. On a leash.

  Cinder didn't need any conditioning though. That demon needed to chill out. Cinder was naturally psychopathic and cruel and brutal, always offering fanatical brutality in his honor, always building shrines from the fallen, always eager for the next slaughter. Cinder was the one that came ready to go. Despite the excess, he needed the others geared like his demon was.

  He'd figure it out later.

  Rhea spoke first. "We need to find those crystals. Those magic dungeon crystal things. We need that power."

  David looked at her.

  "Are we running?" she asked. "Or knowing you, you'll want to kill it. I won't do it without a plan, David. We'll have to rob the ogre when we kill it." She paused. "We're killing it, right?"

  David was surprised. Impressed, even. He hadn't expected that from her.

  "I didn't expect you to want to kill it," he said.

  "I don't." Her voice was flat. "We have two options. Run or kill it. Those are the only ones that exist."

  David thought about that. Running meant leaving a tiger in his backyard. A tiger that was building an army, farming dungeon fragments, crafting weapons that warped reality. Running meant coming back later to something worse.

  "I'm not running," he said. "Not leaving that thing behind us."

  Rhea nodded. Then she asked the question. "Where's it getting the crystals from? The ones that created a magic weapon out of thin air and twisted the land around it."

  David stayed quiet. He thought about what those crystals were. Where they came from. What you had to do to get them. He didn't say anything.

  "Let's go," he said.

  They moved quietly, heading northeast this time, giving the ogre's cavern a wide berth. The terrain shifted around them, the floating rocks and torn earth a distant trace of what that weapon could do.

  David thought about the rituals. About what dungeon fragments could do. He was aware of the two in his pocket, the ones he'd collected, the ones he'd kept. Now more than ever he was motivated to practice. Now he knew what they were capable of.

  David sat with his eyes closed. Meditating. Or trying to.

  It was hard. He felt dumb just sitting there, eyes shut, breathing like some guy in a yoga video. His mind kept wandering. Strategies. Magic. Techniques. The logic behind the warlock's rituals.

  That was the problem, really. He kept trying to understand it. Break it down. Find the moving parts. But the rituals weren't about understanding. They were about belief. You had to believe in what you were doing, believe in the power, believe in whatever you were calling on. You couldn't take the clock apart while also worshipping it.

  He wasn't a fanatic. Never had been. He'd seen too much, been through too much, lost too much to believe in anything that way. Belief required a kind of surrender he wasn't capable of.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  His eyes were still closed. His breathing was still even. His mind was still a hurricane of strategies and techniques and ritual logic.

  This was stupid. This was so stupid. Sitting here like a monk while an ogre built an army a few miles away.

  But Rhea had suggested it. And Rhea wasn't stupid. She'd survived this long by being practical, by seeing things clearly. If she thought this was useful, maybe it was.

  He tried again. Pushed the thoughts away. Emptied his mind.

  Strategies. Magic. Techniques. Ritual logic. The crystals in his pocket. What they could do. What he could make them do.

  He opened his eyes.

  "Meditation's stupid," he muttered to himself.

  Rhea laughed at him. Actually laughed. David opened one eye and stared at her.

  “What?”

  She was trying to hide it, pressing her lips together, but her shoulders were shaking. “Nothing. Just. You look like you’re trying to solve a math problem with your eyes closed.”

  David closed his eye again. “Meditation’s hard.”

  “I can see that.”

  Rhea shook her head, smirking. “You’re really bad at this. Like a toddler trying to tie their shoes.”

  “I don’t see you meditating.”

  David kept his eyes closed. His jaw tightened slightly.

  “Oh god, seriously! I’m sorry, it’s just—!”

  She laughed again, louder this time, holding her stomach.

  David opened his eyes. Looked at her for a long moment.

  Then he closed them again.

  “Hey, cut it out. It’s annoying. I’m still annoyed,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “This isn’t easy.”

  “I know that too.”

  He tried to find nothing again. It didn’t work.

  “Don’t take that wrong,” she said. “I mean, it makes you look human. Most of the time you’re just… calculating. Thinking ten steps ahead. Reading everyone. It’s like being around a chess computer that also sets things on fire.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Right now you’re just some guy sitting on the ground, bad at meditating, getting annoyed at someone laughing at him. That’s normal. That’s…” She trailed off. “I don’t know. Nice. To see.”

  David opened his eyes. Looked at her for another long moment.

  Then he closed them again.

  He was still annoyed.

  David had finally told Rhea about his energy affinity. Well, sort of. He'd explained he could drain enemies to boost his mana pool. She'd nodded, unimpressed. Like most others, she'd already figured it out. People watched. They learned.

  He'd also made adjustments long ago. Ordered Fenrir to make its illusions invisible to Rhea's perspective at all times. Translucent. Limited to enemy eye displacement, covert interference. She was a prime asset. Sharp, capable, steady in a crisis. She'd earned something close to his regard, genuinely. But with her distant gaze, her ability to see what others couldn't, he couldn't take any chances. Some capabilities stayed his alone.

  Now, a few paces after his failed meditation attempt and they got moving, he had her fly and scout the area in the sky.

  She looked at him. "You want me to go up there? With the flying imps?"

  "It's a little dangerous," David said. "Nothing you can't handle."

  She rose into the air, her telekinetic tug pulling her upward, javelin in hand. The annoyance on her face was visible even from here.

  David watched her go. A small part of him enjoyed it. The schadenfreude, the mild revenge for her earlier laughter at his expense. He was totally not doing it for that reason. Completely professional decision. Scout the area. Gain intel. Had nothing to do with her laughing at him while he sat there looking like an idiot with his eyes closed.

  Nothing at all.

  He smiled a little to himself and kept walking, keeping her in sight as she climbed toward the canopy.

  He was absolutely not doing it for revenge.

  David and Rhea had spearheaded and masterminded a system for the five of them. Rhea, Cinder, and Fenrir were on capture duty now. Unless absolutely unavoidable, their priority was no longer killing. It was capture.

  That meant cutting off limbs. Blinding enemies with precise strikes. Binding them with whatever worked—rope, chains, the warlock's tentacles, javelins pinned through flesh.

  David and the warlock handled environment control and ensnaring. David's flame created fire walls and flaming spears to shape the terrain, funnel enemies, cut off escape routes. The warlock's curses and tentacle sigils paired with them to weaken anything caught inside. Weaken, not kill. Soften them up for capture.

  In worst case scenarios, when something was too strong or too fast, David wrapped the heretic shackle around it. The binding drained its energy, held it in place. Rhea would put a javelin through its stomach and its shoulder. Most creatures had the endurance to survive more than a few hours with those injuries. Long enough.

  If Cinder hacked off legs, Rhea pinned the creature to the ground with javelins. The warlock's tentacles helped restrain, but using that sigil too much seemed to tire it. Fenrir's illusions confused, blinded, and disoriented enemies, making them stumble into traps or stand still long enough for someone to take a shot.

  They often ended battles with a bunch of enemies pinned to the ground or trees with javelins, missing limbs, or with burn marks across their eyes. It was brutal. But it meant David could drain most enemies they faced, take their demonic energy, increase his pool. It meant he could consume their souls after, stacking stat gains. Double, triple, sometimes quadruple what he'd get from just killing them outright. And everyone leveled from the fights, from the captures, from the system acknowledging the victories as they granted their enemies death.

  The forest was becoming a processing plant. Enemies went in, got broken, got drained, got turned into power. David and Rhea were building a machine.

  Rhea spotted it from her position, telekinetic flying in the sky with javelins ready. She signaled down. Another abyssal priest. Hobgoblin variant this time, in dark robes. It had a pack with it. Roided imps, about four of them, levels sixteen to nineteen. Flesh golems, three of them, levels seventeen to twenty-one. The priest itself was level twenty-three.

  David remembered the last one. The chase. The ring that twisted space. The vanishing act.

  Not this time.

  With Fenrir and the warlock, with Rhea and Cinder backing him, the fight was drastically different from the first one.

  They split into three groups. The warlock and Rhea took on the golems and imps. David and Cinder took the abyssal priest. Fenrir hung back, circled, kept Rhea alive and the warlock disoriented with illusions.

  Their goal this time wasn't just to win. It was to level Rhea's telekinetic tug skill. Force her to use it for mobility and range in one go. Stretch the skill. Push it to level.

  They made quick work of the enemies. The formation was extremely effective on multiple fronts. Rhea moved through the air, javelins pinning imps mid-flight, her tug yanking her out of reach of golem fists. The warlock's curses weakened the flesh constructs, made them sluggish. Fenrir's illusions had the imps attacking shadows. Cinder carved through anything that got close to the priest, her greatsword leaving trails of black smoke.

  David wrapped the heretic shackle around the priest before it could reach for its ring. It screamed, thrashed. He drained it while Cinder worked on its legs. The priest dropped from the air, hit the ground hard.

  The fight ended with a bunch of very beaten, dismembered, pinned, and bound enemies scattered across the clearing. The imps were stuck to trees with javelins through their wings. The flesh golems had shriveled into their inert forms, fist-sized balls of flesh lying on the ground where they'd collapsed.

  David turned to Rhea as the last imp hit the ground. "Did you level?"

  "No," she said.

  He checked his own system. Nothing. No notification. No experience. No level up. That was strange. That was wrong. Every kill so far had given something. Even small gains added up. This fight should have pushed someone over.

  He was on high alert. They all were. Fenrir's ears flattened. The warlock's head swiveled, scanning. Cinder's gaze flickered brighter.

  The end of the fight was interrupted.

  The trees at the edge of the clearing splintered. Something massive pushed through. David's first thought was that the ogre had found them. The size was right. The weight behind each step was right. But it wasn't the ogre.

  The thing that emerged had the general shape of a stagfiend, but stretched and wrong. It stood as tall as the ogre, its hide a deep bruised purple with cracks of orange light showing through like magma under cooling rock. Its antlers weren't bone. They were formed from solidified darkness, blacker than the spaces between stars, and smoke poured off them in lazy, endless spirals. The smoke didn't rise. It crawled down the antlers, across the thing's face, and disappeared into its eye sockets.

  From those eyes, more smoke poured out. Thick ropes of it, like the creature was burning from the inside and the fire had nowhere else to go.

  A rider was welded to its back. Human-like face, pale as milk, with the same dark antlers growing from its temples. Its arms were too long, ending in hands with too many fingers, each one wrapped around a spear. The spears were made of chitin, dark and glossy, but magic moved inside them—smoky, shifting, alive. Each spear was twice as long as David was tall. Energy rolled off them in visible waves, thick and hungry, distorting the air around the tips.

  The thing's eyes found David. It didn't move. Just watched.

  Behind it, the trees rustled. More stagfiends emerged. Dozens of them. Smaller than the massive one, normal sized, but with the same purple hides, the same orange cracks.

  They spread out, flanking, surrounding. About fifty of them.

  Maybe more.