For the past few months, Ladbor had been staying at the headquarters of the adventurer team “Silver Dragons.” More precisely, he had been living there. The brutal murder of the entire flock of Gray Ravens had made him fear for his life like never before. And then there was that missing recording bullet…

  And Ladbor drank. After his last meeting with the mayor, where he was told outright that the wedding with Sari would have to be postponed, he started drinking. Not to complete oblivion, but whenever the Silver Dragons had no missions, he was never sober. Any movement outside the headquarters was only within the team’s center. The headquarters was always under heavy guard. And there was alcohol. Such was the new daily life of Ladbor, a B-rank adventurer.

  And all because of one damned alchemist.

  The alchemist himself, who had caused the adventurer’s suffering, had no idea of the latter’s existence. At that moment, Valm was concerned with three things. Or rather, not concerned but fully occupied: training with Grem, teaching Qian, and working on the second volume of the Encyclopedia.

  It was progressing slightly slower than the first volume, not only because his time was also taken up by the other two tasks, but because studying the structure of second-class monsters was harder than first-class ones. Despite this, the alchemist hoped to finish the volume faster since the variety of second-class creatures was somewhat smaller.

  Another task was creating a means to elevate Grem to the level of a Battle Ancestor. As promised, the alchemist had taken a blood sample and studied it thoroughly. It wasn’t an impossible task, but it certainly wasn’t easy. Within a few days, Valm had developed the necessary formulas for the breakthrough, but unfortunately, he didn’t have all the required ingredients in his storage.

  For several more days, he built models, trying to determine whether he could somehow synthesize them from the ingredients he had, but in the end, he gave up. Not everything was within the power of alchemists, even at his level. Otherwise, they would have long since been creating potions and pills out of thin air. Valm wrote down the ingredients he needed, described them, and left the laboratory. It was already late.

  “Grem,” the alchemist began the next morning as they ran around the Citadel, “about raising your level…”

  “Is it impossible?” The Battle Master felt a twinge of disappointment.

  “Did I say that? On the contrary, it’s very possible. But I’m missing two ingredients. One of them is fairly common—I think it can be bought even in this city… But the other one…”

  “What about it, Master Valm?” Grem felt relief wash over him. Just two ingredients!

  “The other one is the fruit of the Gray Olam, a very tricky thing. Not only do they spoil quickly, but this flaw also affects the final product. Even if I obtain a fresh one, I will have very limited time to prepare the pill. And you’ll have to take it immediately. But that’s not all…”

  Damn! Grem was sweating as he listened to the alchemist. And not just because they were running non-stop.

  “Grem, you know that the body structures of a Battle Master and a Battle Ancestor are somewhat different, right? They have different aura centers and channels… So, after taking the pill, you’ll need to shut yourself away for meditation for about six months… You won’t be able to make sudden movements or even walk during that time.”

  “But Master Valm, if we store the fruit in a vault, then its time…”

  The alchemist shook his head.

  “In that lies the problem. Olam is a seventh-class plant, and it has its own internal time, unaffected by external factors.”

  “Seventh?! Then what class of pill can be made from it?!”

  “It varies. But if the fruit is fresh, I hope I’ll have enough strength to create an eighth-class pill. Just the kind you need.”

  Grem forgot to breathe. An eighth-class pill! And for whom? For him, a worthless Battle Master? Even the legendary Gods of War would tear each other’s throats out for a pill of that class.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t what?” the alchemist frowned.

  “The pill… Master Valm, I’m just a nobody, a mere Battle Master. Using such a high-class pill on me is…”

  “Idiot! If I make it, then I alone decide who gets it! Understood?!”

  Valm quickened his pace, unwilling to listen to the insecurities of the Battle Master. If an alchemist forges his weapon, he doesn’t care about the opinions of those around him. Or even the opinion of the weapon he’s forging.

  Grem didn’t try to catch up, having perfectly understood Valm’s mood. What he couldn’t grasp, however, was why someone as extraordinary as Valm was even in this kingdom. Those capable of creating such high-class alchemical products… Grem just shook his head, unable to imagine where and how alchemists of such caliber actually lived.

  Even during sparring, which Qian watched closely, he felt as if he had been struck on the head. Noticing this, Valm increased his pressure and, at one moment, grazed the Battle Master’s elbow with his bright red dagger. Startled, they both immediately broke distance and halted.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to!” Valm quickly retracted the tightly interwoven red-gray flames that enveloped him.

  A few drops of blood fell to the ground.

  “It’s nothing, Master Valm, it was my own carelessness.”

  “That’s enough for today, I think.” The alchemist pulled out a healing pill, but the Battle Master refused.

  “I’d like to keep this scar as a reminder, if you don’t mind?”

  Valm shrugged and pulled out the paper he had prepared yesterday.

  “Here are the two ingredients I need, Grem. Try to buy the first one and find any leads on the second, alright?”

  “Don’t worry, Master Valm, I’ll handle it!”

  With that, the Battle Master disappeared, leaving the alchemist and his apprentice alone in the Citadel.

  From that day, Valm’s schedule changed again—his sparring sessions with Grem were gone. But he didn’t abandon running or training. He also made Qian’s lessons more difficult by lecturing her while she brewed potions. To ensure she was paying attention, he had a special trick—midway through a topic, he would start spouting nonsense, and Qian had to catch it immediately. Slowly, she adapted to this method of teaching and even wanted more.

  Qian didn’t realize it yet, but her spiritual power had grown several times over, allowing her to brew three or four cauldrons of first-class potions before collapsing. It always happened unexpectedly, leaving no time to prepare. The consequences, however… She cursed the hours spent scrubbing the alchemical cauldron clean.

  Grem returned two weeks later, on the very day Qian attempted to brew a second-class endurance potion for the first time. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him hand her master a wooden box before disappearing again, saying something like, “Master Valm, I have a lead on a lead.”

  The alchemist didn’t expect Grem to vanish for even longer this time. A week passed. Then another. And another…

  The ingredients Qian had gathered for her training ran out. Deep down, Valm didn’t want to, but he still wrote a letter to Manager Pak and handed it to his apprentice.

  “Qian, go to the Trade Guild, find Pak, and give him this letter. He’ll buy all your potions at a fair price,” he said, then pulled out another stack of papers. “And here’s your next ingredient-gathering assignment. Do your best, understood?”

  “Yes, Master! You can count on me!”

  Like any beastkin, Qian was bad at reading human facial expressions. Otherwise, she would have noticed how reluctantly Valm let her go. But… “A student must learn!” the alchemist told himself, closing the gates behind her.

  He walked through the quiet courtyard. Alone. Alone again. Only occasionally, the roaring of monsters in their cages could be heard.

  Without Qian, life in the Citadel became purely mechanical. Valm woke up early, ran, trained on the equipment, and then went to the laboratory, where he remained until late at night. Sometimes he would glance at the bracelet that controlled the Citadel, checking if it had broken. But the device worked flawlessly. No one came—except for Pak’s men, who delivered new monsters. And they weren’t ones to talk—no one was eager to chat with the oddball who bought wild monsters alive. By the hundreds.

  Valm didn’t know which week it was when he started talking to the creatures. Not like before—a sentence here, a sentence there… but constantly. It felt as if his tongue worked separately from his brain because he conducted his research with focus and precision… without ever falling silent. Even when he wrote the final pages of the second volume.

  One day, he put the final period and closed the tome, whose brown cover bore the golden inscription: “Encyclopedia, Volume Two.”

  Unlike the day he completed the first volume, he had no immediate urge to show it to people. No, he had to finish all his work. To create a complete description of monsters from the first to the seventh class, and only then… Only then would he present it to the world!

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  Valm smiled and ran his fingers over the firm leather cover, leaving a few thin scratches on it.

  Surprised, the alchemist looked at his nails and, to his shock, realized how much they had changed. He furrowed his brow. When had this happened? Instead of the usual neatly trimmed, pink nails… there were narrow, elongated, and sharp—claws?!

  Valm jumped to his feet. This wasn’t normal!

  He grabbed a pair of manicure scissors and tried to cut them. The steel bent and creaked softly until the rivet holding the two halves together snapped, leaving the alchemist holding two separate pieces of the tool.

  This was definitely not normal!

  Anxious, Valm grabbed a scalpel from the tray beside him, placed the tip of a claw against the table, and tried to slice it off… But the blade merely slid across the surface of the claw, not even leaving a scratch!

  With a curse, the alchemist flung the scalpel at the wall. It let out a pitiful clink, fell to the floor, and slid back to his feet. What the hell was going on here?!

  Valm rushed to the trash bin and frantically pulled out blood-stained blue suits and thin medical gloves. Those bloodstains—he remembered them from yesterday. And the gloves… full of holes! How had he not noticed?! It had always been right before his eyes!

  He couldn’t check the older suits—they had long since been burned in the waste incinerator.

  So when had this happened?

  Valm sat back in his chair, trying to focus. The day before yesterday? Last week? Nothing… It was as if his memory was blank when it came to his nails.

  A blank spot in the alchemist’s memory?

  Valm burst into laughter. Impossible! An alchemist’s memory couldn’t fail to retain such crucial details! Unless… unless his brain itself had deemed them unworthy of attention.

  First, the bloodthirst, then the eyes, now the nails… That was far too many impossible changes within the past year! He would be a poor scientist if he didn’t at least try to connect this to his research, which had started right before these… disruptions in human physiology, as Valm cautiously termed them.

  He quickly took a blood sample from his vein and began an analysis. Even more thorough than the one he had done for Grem.

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just ordinary human blood. Slightly low blood sugar, but that was only because he had skipped lunch today. Valm bared his teeth. Was it time to start panicking?

  The alchemist glanced around, searching for something else to attempt cutting off even a small piece of the claw. A surgical disk saw? No—if his scalpel hadn’t even scratched it, the saw would just take off a whole finger.

  But… he had an idea.

  Releasing several tongues of bloodthirst, he wrapped them around his right hand. A bright red dagger with a gray cutting edge formed in his grasp.

  Placing the index finger of his left hand on the table, he carefully pressed the blade against the tip of the claw. The weapon that could slice through the aura-forged armor of a Battle Master barely managed the task.

  Sweating from the effort, Valm picked up the fragment of claw and carried it to the shelves of medical instruments for analysis. And once again—nothing! Ordinary keratinized cells. Every instrument confirmed that Valm was examining a human fingernail.

  Over the past year, the alchemist had studied dozens of monster claws, and by their composition, the sample before him definitely didn’t belong to them. But in shape and physical properties…

  Damn it!

  If Valm didn’t know what he was looking at—if he judged only by form and durability—he would call this the claw of a perfect monster!

  Valm was far from thinking he had lost his mind, but he couldn’t solve this puzzle. Utterly exhausted, the alchemist left the laboratory at dawn. He didn’t even have the strength for a shower. Valm simply collapsed onto the bed and instantly fell asleep.

  His first thought in the morning was—had he imagined it all? No, it was real. Valm examined his left hand. Even the piece of the claw he had so painstakingly cut off yesterday had already grown back.

  The alchemist sat up sharply and kicked off the boots and socks he hadn’t removed last night. And on his feet too… Not as long, and more curved downward than on his hands, but claws were present on his toes as well. Valm sighed and fell back onto the bed.

  For now, should he just accept it with philosophical calm? Since there was nothing he could do about it anyway… The alchemist lay there for a long time, thinking. For the first time in months, he skipped his morning run. Taking his time, he stood under the shower, made himself breakfast, and stepped outside.

  Gazing at the training equipment with a thoughtful look, he waved his hand dismissively and headed for the laboratory. There, the first of the third-class monsters was waiting for him. Grem was in a hurry.

  For weeks, he had been rushing from one clue to the next, but they turned out to be either complete nonsense or led him to arrive too late—when the Gray Olam Fruit had already been picked.

  Damn it, the level of a Battle Ancestor was so close, yet so far at the same time!

  These fruits could grow both on the surface and in dungeons, and in some regions of the continent, they weren’t even considered rare… All because of their short shelf life. They couldn’t be transported over long distances—unless some God of War or high-circle mage took on the delivery.

  That was why Grem was dashing from dungeon to dungeon across the kingdom, hoping to find the plant.

  Mr. Valm, out of his kindness, promised to create an eighth-class pill for him, and Grem could not let him down or force him to search for that damned fruit himself! He gritted his teeth. Having agreed to protect the alchemist, he had already been riding across the kingdom and raiding dungeons for several weeks… He was consciously breaking his agreement with Valm!

  Grem had always considered himself a man of his word and demanded the same from others, and now what? Had he compromised his own principles just because he didn’t want to lose the chance to become stronger? And who would need his strength if it couldn’t be relied upon? Such thoughts burned him from the inside.

  The exhausted monster, barely breathing, stopped in front of the stable near the Istu Dungeon. The Battle Master tossed the reins to the stable hand along with a silver coin.

  “One week!”

  The stable hand nodded and silently led the weary monster away to wash it down with water, cool it off, and clean its long fur. At the dungeon entrance, Grem had to pay another silver coin as a toll to the royal treasury for passage.

  The wide metal gates swung open, and the Battle Master stepped into the cave, illuminated by dozens of torches. Far ahead, the light of the exit was visible. Grem quickly passed several small teams of adventurers who had stopped to check their gear and make final preparations.

  The first level greeted him with a bright, sunny day. The Battle Master halted at the exit and carefully surveyed the vast valley surrounded by towering mountains beneath his feet. Dungeons… They were like small shards of worlds with their own ecosystems. No one among humans truly knew how they were structured, yet that didn’t stop daredevils from raiding them for precious resources.

  But every adventurer knew a simple rule—the entrances to the level were in the hundreds, hidden in caves around the valley, but there was only one exit, located in a small cave at the center. And that was precisely why the valley’s center was the most dangerous place. Not because of monsters, as one might assume, but because of people. Some chose the easy path to riches.

  Grem began his rapid descent, carefully scanning the path several hundred meters ahead with his aura. Usually, those descending from the upper levels faced no threats, but the return journey… Some might ask you to share your spoils. In previous dungeons, Grem had already gutted a few “gentlemen” who had tried to do just that with him.

  Thanks to Valm, the Battle Master’s strength was now at its peak for his level, so few in this kingdom could pose a threat to him—except for the Battle Ancestors, of whom, it was said, there were only five in the entire state. But they didn’t venture into dungeons, occupied with more important matters.

  Even so, Grem remained vigilant, easily bypassing several teams along the way. Every conversation was time lost. Moving swiftly along narrow monster-made trails, the Battle Master reached the valley’s center by midday. Near the cave entrance, signs of a recent battle were visible, but Grem saw no bodies nearby, nor did he sense any living auras. So, he boldly proceeded forward.

  On the second level, the sun was just rising over the mountains, casting long shadows. The Battle Master sensed a few goblin auras not far from him. Just his luck with the level entrance… These monsters posed no real physical threat to him, but if he fought them, someone stronger might hear the commotion. There was no strict hierarchy in the dungeon, so high-class monsters could be encountered even at the first level’s entrance. Rarely, but it did happen.

  That was precisely why Grem disliked dungeons. He knew many who had lost their heads due to miscalculated risks, and he had no intention of joining that list.

  The Battle Master concealed his presence as best he could and leaped down from the cliff where tall trees grew. Flying precisely between the dense canopies without so much as brushing a leaf, he landed softly on the leaf-covered ground. Despite the sun in the sky above the mountains, it was still night here. But for people of his level, the presence of light was irrelevant.

  He ran, flawlessly avoiding dangerous spots, heading toward the valley’s center.

  His goal was the third level, its western part. That was where, several years ago, the Gray Olama fruit had been found. Grem knew this because he had personally interrogated the adventurer who had discovered it and brought it out of the dungeon.

  The Battle Master grimaced at the memory. That damned fool hadn’t wanted to trade information for money, so in the end, he exchanged it for pain. Not that Grem enjoyed torturing people, but when necessary, he didn’t shy away from such actions.

  Before entering the passage cave to the third level, Grem sensed several auras of third-class warriors of varying degrees nearby. They sat motionless, as if in ambush.

  For a moment, the Battle Master considered whether he should kill them now to avoid obstacles on the way back. But he let it be—wasting time wasn’t worth it. At the exit to the third level, he immediately heard the sounds of battle. And in the western part of the level, no less. Damn it, that’s where the plant he had come for was located.

  The battle was intense, but from this distance, it was impossible to determine the strength of the combatants. Cursing again, the Battle Master dashed in that direction. Whatever was happening—he had his goal.

  The sounds of battle in the west concerned not only Grem but also the third level’s inhabitants. Many weak creatures were fleeing from that direction, straight toward the Battle Master. He even had to draw his daggers and slit the throats of the blindest and dumbest among them—those who, in their panic, attacked him despite the difference in strength.

  At one point, Grem stopped. Now, he could clearly sense the auras of the fighters. And he gritted his teeth in frustration. Why was he so unlucky?

  How the hell had a Battle Ancestor and a sixth-class monster ended up in a duel here, on just the third level?! What were the odds of such an event?! The Battle Master wiped the blood from his daggers and spat bitterly.

  Should he go forward, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed and try to find that damn Olama? Or wait until one of them emerged victorious? But every moment of the battle increased the risk of the plant being destroyed!

  Grem groaned in frustration. To hell with it! Concealing his presence as carefully as possible, he rushed forward again. He ran, orienting himself by a lone peak resembling a clenched fist. According to that unfortunate adventurer, at the foot of that mountain lay a shallow, elongated ravine, always filled with thin mist, and that was where the plant grew.

  And it seemed the battle between the Battle Ancestor and the monster was happening just slightly to the side. The Battle Master had a good chance of slipping through unnoticed. Suddenly, the battle sounds ceased, and a silence so profound fell that it felt as if the air itself hummed.

  Grem could no longer sense the monster’s aura, only the Battle Ancestor’s, but even that one wavered uncertainly. The Battle Master wasn’t curious. And approaching an unfamiliar, heavily wounded Battle Ancestor wasn’t a good idea. The ravine’s edge appeared abruptly, a deep fissure in the hard ground.

  Grem leaped down and moved slowly along the slope, descending into the mist. Everything was just as the adventurer had described! The Battle Master clearly remembered Valm’s description of the plant, so he carefully scanned every bush and tree along his path with his aura. There! A slender shoot, about a meter tall, with five broad purple leaves at the top!

  The Gray Olama!

  If the plant had five leaves now, it should bear three fruits! Grem felt luck finally smile upon him. He rushed to the plant…

  On the ground beside it lay two crushed, juicy gray fruits, stomped under the heel of a boot. Grem growled with rage. The aura on the footprints was identical to that of the Battle Ancestor now lying wounded a few hundred meters away.

  “You bastard!”

  If you hadn’t done this bullshit, you would’ve had a better chance of surviving. The Battle Master’s fingers tightened around the hilts of his daggers.