Life and light surrounded Langa’s Karma. They filled his body with warmth and wrapped around him like a blanket. Instead of being alive and sensing the breath of life of other living beings, it felt like he was inside life itself, and he had never been safer. The light travelled up his arm, filling him with contentment.

  “…let the infection take him,” a distant voice said, cutting into Langa’s consciousness.

  There was a shuffling, the sound of grunting, and a softer feminine voice spoke. “Of course, he didn’t mean to hurt anyone. He stopped once he realised we were in pain. You saw it yourselves. The Chosen survived a rampant infected wound.”

  “Don’t get their hopes up for nothing; he’s still unconscious,” the man said. “He may never wake up.”

  There was more unintelligible grunting, pulling Langa out of his sleep-induced haze. Gods, this was annoying. Why were people arguing when Langa was trying to sleep? Had they never heard of the basic principle of courtesy? If they wanted to fight, they could leave him alone to rest and do it outside.

  “Shut up,” Langa mumbled, pulling up the coarse blanket over him and shifting on the bed. Hmm? What kind of bed was he lying on?

  It was something fluffy yet hard ?and he could feel an ache in his arm. He felt weird because he was tired, but there was a refreshing light inside him that made him feel content.

  “He awoke in only a few hours? Given how far the infection had spread, I honestly wasn’t sure he’d even make it. Chosen are really created differently from-” the woman started.

  “Did you hear that? He just told me to shut up after I saved his life! How ungrateful can a person be?” the man said.

  “Come now, children; stop gawking at the poor human. I’ll bet he’s probably tired. We don’t know what he had to go through to come through the portal,” the woman said. “He should be fully functional tomorrow. Let’s let him rest, okay?” There were more unsatisfied grunts, shuffling, and then silence.

  More rest sounded nice to Langa, and he yawned as he snuggled more into his blanket. Suddenly, something in his head snapped. Rest? He didn’t have time to rest currently. Fi Kindaro was busy clearing the 2nd Floor right now, and he needed to begin his Infinite Challenge as soon as possible and then kill that bastard. He needed to kill Kindaro while he was still at a higher level than him and before he began his speedrun through the Tower.

  Langa also needed to get that Mental Resistance booster from Liberty to improve his chances against the dark elf. No matter how much he valued his rest, he knew now was not the time for him to be sleeping. Langa sat up abruptly, startling the other two people who remained in the room with him. Unsurprisingly, it was the old lady and the young man he’d met earlier, but the voident wasn’t there.

  “Where am I? What’s going on?” Langa asked. He glanced around, seeing that he’d been sleeping on a bed made of pelts, as was the blanket. The room was dark and appeared to be made of wood on all sides. The only other furniture was a wooden desk, a wooden cupboard, and more pelt beds surrounding him. He surmised that this was an infirmary even before his two companions answered. “Who are you?”

  “Hello, Chosen. It’s good that you’re awake! This is Obiefune, and I am Arthia, the enclave elder,” the old lady said pleasantly. “Everyone will be glad to hear you survived the infection unscathed. They’ve all been waiting to meet you.”

  “Fools,” Obiefune muttered.

  “I see,” Langa said. He didn’t know why they kept calling him Chosen, but he guessed that was their word for Players.

  “Are you hungry, Chosen?” Arthia asked. “Why don’t you speak with Obi while I go make you something nice to eat? He’ll show you around and answer all your questions.”

  Obiefune started to protest, but a look from the old lady silenced him. Instead, he crossed his arms and continued to glare at Langa as Arthia left.

  “Where is this place?” Langa asked, since he had seen no buildings in the area. “And where can I find the Core Orb?”

  Obiefune watched him for a moment. “As Gran Arthia said, I will show you around the enclave. Once you see how dire our situation is, I hope that you have enough humanity to leave us alone. We don’t want or need any trouble.”

  “Okay,” Langa said, massaging his temple and standing up. He needed information as quickly as possible, so he would put up with the hostility for now. “So, are you the leader of the enclave, or is it the old lady?”

  “We have no leader. Everyone does their part. I’m just the most developed among all of us,” he said. “I regularly look after everyone, but the old crone keeps everyone on their toes.”

  So Obiefune was the leader then. He opened the wooden door, and immediately, the wind rushed in, causing Langa to shiver. “Wait, close the door!” he shouted.

  “What? Is something wrong?” Obiefune asked with concern.

  “No, it’s too fucking cold,” Langa said, looking around for his boots and putting them on; then he tightened the strings of his jerkin. “Can I take this?” He gestured to the pelt that had served as his blanket.

  “You’re cold now? It gets much colder than this in winter,” Obiefune said. “Are you truly a Chosen if you’re this weak?”

  “It’s snowing, and you’re not in winter? This is why I never went to Europe if I could help it,” Langa said, wrapping the warm blanket around himself over his armour. He hated the cold, heat was home.

  The submortal gave Langa such an annoyed look that he rolled his eyes and hurried up. Once he was ready, he and Obiefune stepped outside.

  Surprisingly, the snow he stepped into was white, not red. He tightened the pelt around him, shielding himself from the cold air outside, and took in the sight before him. It was then that he realised that he had been inside the massive tree he’d seen when he arrived. It stood in the centre of the white, snow-covered landscape and was the largest and strangest-looking tree Langa had ever seen.

  The tree had silver, metallic branches, a brown trunk, black roots, and white leaves. Surrounding it was a square river of golden water, which separated the snow-white area protected by the tree from the red, corrupted snow. The metallic roots of the tree dipped into the four corners of the golden river and absorbed the magic of the waters flowing through it.

  Langa closed his eyes, searching. He could feel it struggling to take every single breath of life, and the warmth in that breath felt like it was calling out to him.

  “Whoa. What is this tree?” Langa asked, admiring it.

  “This is what remains of Namadi. Our world,” Obiefune said, gesturing all around them with his hands. “And the quartree is our home now since it’s the only inhabitable place for our kind.”

  No, Langa thought as he listened to the tree’s breath. The tree wasn’t just a home; it was their guardian against the reavers of the corrupted land. And it was easy to tell that the tree was dying. Was that why he was sent here? To save their home? That would be too easy as a test for a future deity, right?

  In the distance, Langa could see the silhouettes of the submortals moving about as Obiefune gestured for Langa to follow him, and they moved towards the weak stream of golden water that flowed in a square around the tree.

  “The quartree’s magic is waning,” Langa said. “Is it because of how low the pressure of the golden water is?”

  “The water from the forfend rivers keeps the reavers at bay. That’s why we live within these squares,” Obiefune explained as they walked. “To sustain the lives of every Namid here, the quartree takes sustenance from the light water.”

  “So The Quartenity provides safe zones for you, then?” Langa asked.

  “The what? The forfends are our protection,” Obiefune said, with confusion on his face.

  Langa gestured to the four corners of the forfend square. On each corner, there was a different symbol, and he pointed at them one after the other. “Those are the symbols of Life, Death, Chaos, and Order. The Great Quartenity,” he said. When Obiefune still had a blank look in his eye, Langa said. “The immortal children of The Creator?”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” Obiefune said. “There is a song of The Redeemer that we sing to the fallen, and it speaks about life, death, light, and darkness, but that’s it. Who are these Quartenity, and why would they be here?”

  “Yeah, it’s them. The four of them are the gods in charge of this Chal-” Langa stopped himself before revealing that to him, Obiefune’s entire world was just a test for those who wanted to Ascend to deityhood one day. He supposed the lack of knowledge wasn’t that surprising, considering he hadn’t known about the four gods either before integration.

  Something else occurred to him, though. “The Great Quartenity protects mortal worlds from corruption. If you’ve never heard of them, which deities do you know?”

  He shrugged. “Mother always spoke about the goddess of light, that her water keeps the reavers at bay.”

  So he knew The Unrivalled, just not by her true Name.

  Obiefune led him a long distance away from the quartree, past a few other golden squares, and then through the snow until they reached a place that was pitch black. He couldn’t see anything beyond that, and it felt as if the snow had just randomly cut off. It wasn’t just right in front of them; the darkness went around in a circle all over the place.

  Langa tried to touch the strange darkness, but nothing happened. He looked down at it and frowned. “What is this?”

  “This is the end of the world,” Obiefune said.

  “What do you mean? Is this where the void veil to stop the spread of corruption ends? Was the rest of your world lost to the void?” he asked.

  Obiefune shook his head. “If something is lost to the void, then it is recoverable. This right here,” he pointed to the blackness. “Is nothing. The Behemoth just stepped over the world as it was passing by, and the rampant corruption took everything that existed beyond what’s behind us. Half of our world just ceased to exist.”

  Since a behemoth was rampant corruption given form, Langa figured it was guarding the world’s core orb, keeping it corrupted. “So, I need to defeat the behemoth, right?” Langa asked. “So I can get the core orb?”

  “What? A Behemoth is not something you can defeat, not unless you unite thirteen corrupted worlds into one world and reach the apex,” Obiefune said. “This world is done for already, but there are others above us in this universe. Their corruption leaks to us through the portal. They are worse off than here.”

  Obiefune walked away without giving Langa a chance to respond.

  “Hey," Langa said, Flash Stepping in front of him. “What’s your problem?” he asked, fed up with the hostility.

  “I don’t know what your purpose is in coming here, but I will not allow another Chosen to lead the Namid people astray. All we have is our lives. The water of the light oasis may be dwindling, but we can live in dignity for the rest of our lives instead of being used as pawns, walking around the corrupted land, finding resources for a Chosen,” Obiefune said. “I refuse to do that. I would rather spend my days searching for forfends with the voidling no matter how futile the cause is.”

  “What are you talking about?” Langa asked. “In what world is it more sensible to trust a voident over a neutral person like me?”

  Obiefune stopped. “I can trust the voidlings because I know they’re bound to be here; I know they’re tied to the fate of this world, unlike you Chosen, who come here pretending to care about us when you’re just looking for unique herbs, potions, and artefacts, whatever that is. Once you leech everything you can from our land, you return to the worlds that you came from, dooming us to corruption again.”

  “I’m not after your resources, not that there is much in this world, anyway. Sure, if I find something precious that doesn’t have an owner, I’ll take it, but I don’t appreciate you judging me based on someone else’s sins. First, I’m not just some chosen. My name is Langa,” he said. “I know nothing about this world, only what The Unrivalled told me. From where I’m standing, it looks like you just need to get a bigger source of the light water.”

  “Okay,“ Obiefune said. “What a genius idea! It’s not like the voidling and I search for just that every day! Gods. Just come on then, let’s go meet the others and get this done.”

  “Wait,” Langa said. “At least answer me this. I have a gift that allows me to sense life nearby. Wherever there’s that water of light, there’s life inside it, and I’m not sensing that here,” he said, pointing to the left. On the right, however, “There is a lot over that side.”

  “Oh. You’re probably sensing the oasis garden. It’s unbelievable you can feel it from here considering it’s over 20 km away,” Obiefune said. “There is a den of reavers surrounding it; even the voidling can’t get through them, mainly because they built the den around the oasis garden protected by the dark river. No submortals can pass.”

  “Is that so? I’m going to check it out,” Langa said. “I’ll be back to meet the others after; I need a run to clear my head.”

  “What?” Obiefune asked. “There are reavers everywhere!”

  “Good. I can get more corruption cores,” he said. “Contemplating things without action is useless. I’m going to check out this light oasis since I’m sure that’s where the Core Orb is.”

  “If the reavers see you and follow you back-”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Langa sighed. “Fine, I’ll meet your people first, jeez.”

  Obiefune led Langa closer to the tree and he could see that the tree’s thick trunk was covered with runic patterns engraved into its metallic bark.

  Meeting everyone was the most bizarre thing Langa had ever experienced. Upon entering the inside of the tree, he was taken aback because it appeared to be a small hamlet, with wooden homes lining one side of the tree’s interior. Children played, their laughter ringing through the air. They watched him wide-eyed as he moved around the strange home. Most of the submortals didn’t talk to him; they just gazed with hopeful eyes. There weren’t a lot of them, less than 100 in total.

  There were also gardens with shrivelled brown grass that seemed like the food they ate, as well as fruits produced by the tree. If they wanted meat, they had to hunt, though he supposed that wasn’t a good option since most of the things in this world were corrupted.

  The closest thing Langa could compare the place to was prison because everyone had a one-bedroom wooden cell that they stayed in, with a communal kitchen where they made food.

  Langa didn’t have time to cosy up to the people and learn about their problems, but he knew he had to be patient if he wanted to find the Core Orb within two days.

  *

  This world was more complicated than Langa had anticipated, so he went in search of the only person he could threaten to help him. He found the voident training shirtless in the unbearable cold. He glanced at Langa but didn’t approach.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Langa asked. “Tell me about your sentence.”

  “What do you mean, what’s going on? Huh. It’s been so long since I spoke to an actual mortal,” the voident said. “Which of the newly born 13 Towers are you from?“

  “The Deiwos Tower, you?” Langa asked.

  “The Kwara Orisha Tower,” said the voident.

  “So, what are you doing here?”

  “I told you, my real body is Strapped to The Carciere prison, and my soul is serving my sentence for 50 years here, killing those monsters.”

  “This is a corrupted world. How is it a punishment? You are a voident-”

  “If you’re asking me why I am not killing the submortals, there is a simple reason. I can’t. My magic only works against corrupted creatures. I have to hunt so I can keep the Void Ruby fed. The light water clears it all, though.” He laughed bitterly. “It disappears even faster because I have to stay within the forfends. It’s the most cruel punishment. If the world ceases to exist, my soul will disappear with it. Worse, I can’t even fucking level up! You’re looking for the Core, right? You need me.”

  “And why should I believe a word you say, voident?” Langa asked. “I know you’ve sacrificed innocents for your Void Gem. I’d be pretty stupid to trust you.”

  “Because I have no choice,” the voident replied, eyes angry. “If even one of those submortals dies, it’s a year added to my sentence, and if they all die, so do I. Because I’m a voident, my soul will be damned to ???. Trust me, I have no alternative. I need your recommendation to say I’ve repented.”

  “Are you obligated to protect me? What happens if I die here?” Langa asked.

  “Nothing. You fail The Infinite Challenge before it even starts. It would be over for me.”

  “That sounds rough, but you deserve it,” Langa said honestly. “Voidents are awful people.”

  “You don’t even know me,” he protested. “Or why I turned to voidentism.”

  “I don’t need to. I don’t care if the only way to save your dying mother was to kill hundreds of innocent children and corrupt their poor bodies so you could harness the power of corruption and become addicted to it,” he said. “As far as I am concerned, this punishment is still lacking.”

  “Fine.” The voident sighed and knelt on the ground. “My name is Pamanta. I want to live and return to a Tower. Speak, Chosen One. What will you have me do for your recommendation?”

  Still, Langa could use the voident’s desperation. He couldn’t figure out how to use his Void Star like Adtonifulmin suggested to create a void territory and lock someone inside it so that they respawned in there repeatedly. He’d only ever consciously used it to protect himself from Sasani’s Void Emerald.

  “You said you wanted my recommendation, right? Earn it,” Langa said. He had been thinking. Learning how to wield a Void Gem from scrolls through theory could be helpful, but it would be even better if he learnt from someone with experience. “I need you to help me with something.”

  “If you will give me a recommendation, there’s nothing I won’t do,” Pamanta said, twirling his Void Ruby in his hands. “What do you need?”

  Langa could not very well say he needed help on how to wield a Void Gem, but thankfully, he had a good cover story. “I’m a voident hunter, so there are some things I’m curious about regarding how you use your Void Gems,” he said. “There isn’t enough information on voidents and their power in the Tower.”

  “That is by design. The Unrivalled may not be able to prevent us from using the power of corruption, but she restricts the information so mortals don’t get lured into it,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know. So, how do you use your Void Gems? It will help me when I’m strategising how to fight against voidents,” he said. “Do you like, infuse mana into them, or how does it work?”

  “That’s a hard question to answer,” Pamanta said with a frown. “Not because I have loyalty to other voidents or anything, but because... corruption is a drug. The moment you bind yourself to a Void Pearl, you’re essentially selling your soul to the devil.”

  “So why do you do it?” Langa asked curiously. He’d never had an actual conversation like this with a voident. “Just for power?”

  “Just for power? That’s easy to say for a talented person like you,” Pamanta snapped, looking him up and down. “What kind of monster are you to begin The Infinite Challenge at Level 15? I bet you’re one of those powerful people who completed the tutorial already at Tier 1, aren’t you? Do you know what level I was at after the tutorial? 6, Langa. I began The Infinite Challenge at level 10, and I died immediately. I was weak.”

  His eyes flashed blue. “When I was at my lowest point, I got myself a Void Gem. Once I learnt to destroy myself for power, I could contend with the likes of you,” he said. “To wield a Void Gem, you have to be willing to give yourself over to it. Not just your mana, but every single attribute of yourself. Allow it to become a part of you. That is the power you need to wield corruption that is sealed in a Void Gem.”

  “You want something you can use against voidents... the higher the rank of a Void Gem, the more it’s tied to the owner’s Karma. That’s why from Void Ruby up, we have the power to seal the gems within our bodies,” Pamanta added. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to wield the rampant corruption you see in this world... or the detriments of doing such a thing. The stronger the Void Gem, the more innocence it consumes. It demands more blood to raise its rank. Hell, you need three to five keys to improve a Void Ruby to a Void Opus. I don’t know how many people have to be consumed for just one key to be born. My Tower’s Guardian Knights caught me when I was trying to create my first Key. I can’t live without my Void Ruby anymore.”

  Langa wondered how Pamanta would feel if he knew Langa carried around one of those keys.

  *

  The voident’s daily task was to go around the area remaining in this world searching for undiscovered forfends and bringing the light water back to sustain the quartree. Langa decided he would do something similar today and use the opportunity to find the location of the Core Orb.

  The Core Orb was the life of this world, so to know what he needed to do, Langa left the safety of the forfends by himself to do some scouting. He figured he’d better get used to it since was now his role in the Khwezikazi Rays Guild’s main party.

  Langa moved carefully to ensure that he would not be spotted. He just needed to see the size of the reaver camp first before he decided how to complete his quest. He followed the abundance of life to the right, running in the cold. It was liberating to overwork his muscles against the oppressing cold. Whenever a pack of reavers tried to attack, he used the light water he’d gained from some forfends he had emptied in his run.

  Finally, he reached his destination. Because of his lack of a mana core, Langa was not very sensitive to mana, but once he was in the light oasis’ range, the abundance of life in the magic was hard to miss.

  In front of him, there was a massive hole the size of an entire football stadium. Below it lay a beautiful oasis, flanked by two massive stone walls that glowed with the light of the magical waterfall falling down their middle into the oasis. The area brimmed with so much suffocating life that Langa unequipped his Avatar Title for a second to breathe. Living vegetation surrounded the water, and vibrant flowers bloomed around it in multiple colours that glowed gold with droplets from the waterfall.

  The view was, unfortunately, marred by the reaver camp that was spread across the top of the cliff, preventing anyone from crossing. Its river of corrupted red water, which was the only thing keeping the reavers protected from the light water, protected it. The reaver camp went around the light oasis in a massive circle, ensuring there were no gaps to sneak through. If the light water protected the submortals, he wondered what the red water would do. He couldn’t get too close until he had more information on it.

  There was another issue: he needed to earn the people’s faith to begin the Infinite Challenge. If he just destroyed the reaver camp like it was a miracle, then the submortals would continue to depend on handouts, and he could not have that. He wanted to give them the tools necessary to live independently. He had to do it quickly, though, so he wouldn’t miss Fi Kindaro on the 2nd Floor.

  First, he needed to find out the properties of the quartree and how he could use it to reach the Core Orb.

  When he returned to the quartree, Langa closed his eyes and sat by the symbol of a flower, the symbol of life. The only real connections that he had with The Great Quartenity were The Unrivalled and Chaos. The only time that he’d interacted with Life and Death was when he died that first time in the tutorial; he felt them as if they were fighting over him.

  The one he needed to speak to right now was Life, because it seemed like life’s power was greater in this world. How should he do this? Could he contact life? His Life Affinity was the third highest of all his magic affinities after Lightning and Physical Body. Besides, Adtonifulmin was a god of life, so that meant something, too.

  He went and sat cross-legged on one root of the tree with a flower, and placed one hand inside the warm light water and the other on the tree bark. He concentrated on the spark of the tree’s life. Its beating heart, its shallow breath, it was struggling to breathe as if its lungs had stridor.

  “Can you hear me?” he asked. “Am I being stupid for talking to a tree?”

  “Human... I am dying…” a hoarse voice cracked out, making Langa flinch.

  He hadn’t actually expected a response. A few weeks ago, Langa would’ve been startled and broken out of the meditation, but not anymore. The breath of life of the tree was talking to him.

  “That’s kind of easy to tell from your breath,” he said. “You sound like an asthma patient after a marathon. Tell me, how do I fix you?”

  “The Redeemer made me using a fragment of this World’s Core Orb so I could transport the Namids to the light oasis. You need to take the seed that is my beating heart to the light oasis... to reform the orb... Take my people to the light... keep them safe,” it said. “Destroy me... take the seed and save them...”

  If Langa destroyed the only home he knew, he was sure Obiefune would bring out the pitchforks. Besides, if this tree was a part of the Core Orb, then wouldn’t it be better if he could bring it whole to the light oasis?

  “Can you still move?” he asked.

  “I need light water to move. It’s futile,” the tree said. “I would have to consume everything inside this forfend river, leaving the people without protection.”

  “The Quartenity sent me here to give your world a chance at survival,” Langa said. “I just need to plant you at the light oasis so these people can rebuild and make an actual kingdom. I won’t leave you here because you’re their home, aren’t you? I will just take you to the light oasis.”

  “You cannot. Only the Namid leaders, the ones with the Redeemer’s blood, can control my movements. But even if he did, the light water in my roots will dry up before we reach the end,” the breath said.

  Langa sighed. So he needed Obiefune’s cooperation, after all. Fuck, he had to somehow convince him that giving up the forfend river was for the best. He did not know how to do that.

  *

  Early the next morning, Obiefune told Langa that he and the voident were going searching for light water to replenish the dwindling supply in the forfend river around the quartree, leaving Miss Arthia in charge of the enclave; Langa obviously said he wanted to go with them.

  They trudged through the corrupted snow. In the daylight, there weren’t many reavers, but they met a few along the way. To Langa’s surprise, he found that the world contained more than just corrupted snow. They found snow lilies growing on the corrupted ground, an entire garden of them.

  Obiefune glared at him as if this was just what he expected.

  “What?” Langa asked. “Do the lilies belong to someone? If I leave them here, they’re just going to get corrupted. My friend is an herbalist. He’ll make good use of them, okay?” He picked up as many of the lilies as he could and putting them inside his inventory.

  As they walked on, they found another pool of water, but instead of being the water of light, this one was red, corrupted water like what surrounded the reaver camp.

  “Langa,” the voident said. “You might like this. I can’t use it here, but you can.”

  This time Langa was close enough to scan the water. The discovery stunned him.

  [Corrupted Water of Impurity

  Water containing a mixture of arcane and corrupted mavale particles. Extremely toxic to unlevelled submortals and may disrupt the flow of mana in mortals if utilised efficiently. This water may strengthen the mana of those with corrupted mana in them.]

  “I thought mavale particles are supposed to be rare,” Langa said.

  “Of course, they are extremely rare. The only places where you can freely get Mavale particles are in the worlds outside the Tower. You won’t find Mavale particles in natural, blessed, or lost worlds. You can only find them in corrupted, cursed, and void worlds. That’s why you find most voidents don’t really care about clearing dungeons. It’s all about Gates and rifts for us because we are looking for more mavale particles. Without them, it is very difficult to upgrade your Void Gem.”

  Mavale particles were corrupted magic particles, the absence of lucents, and they caused the corruption of normal lucents and were used in items like the Deiform Artefacts to capture voidents and the Carciere prison. If he could incorporate them into his bombs... He’d have to figure it out later. Langa gathered the water into a flask. Unfortunately, like the light water, he could only collect a small portion of it. Unlike the light water, though, he could put this in his inventory. Maybe he could use it against the voidents or for his bombs. He might use it to make more chains so that he didn’t lose red players by killing them and having them respawn elsewhere.

  Once he stored the water inside his inventory, they continued with the search. They kept going further into the snow until it got dark.

  In the end, they found one forfend square, but the water they gathered wasn’t much. Langa had been hoping they could find a lot of light water so he could convince Obiefune to move the quartree without finishing all the water protecting the people.

  “Absolutely not,” Obiefune said as soon as Langa broached the topic of moving the quartree.

  “Wow,” Langa said. “Not even a woman has ever rejected me that quickly.”

  Before he could convince him, Langa sensed something strange. In places of death, he could usually sense the absence of life, but this felt different. Langa sensed the breath of a life similar to the sub mortals, but it felt distorted.

  He hurriedly went to check it out and found a broken wooden cart on the road with light water inside it, but that wasn’t what caught him by surprise.

  “What the hell?” Langa asked as his eyes saw the scene in front of him.

  In the open ground with no forfends, two reavers wrestled against a young submortal. The submortal was half-naked and was carrying a crude golden spear. While he kept stabbing one of them and trying to kick at its legs, the second reaver sank its teeth into the submortal’s neck.

  “Damn. Let me see if I can sa-” the voident started, but Langa had already infused mana into Tonare, and the glaive was pulsing with lightning.

  He threw it in a semi-circular arc, so that it struck one reaver right inside the core, forcing it to release the submortal. Now free, he was able to stab the other reaver as well., and they both fell into the snow.

  “-ve him,” the voident finished his sentence just as the reaver fell on the ground. “What the fuck! That was... fast!”

  Obiefune moved towards the cart and pulled the small bucket of light water into his hands. Langa Flash Stepped towards the submortal who twitched on the snow. The wound on his neck was already dark red, and the infection was now all over his chest. His eyes were closed, and his body started to freeze over.

  “Give me the light water so we can stop the spread of the infection.”

  “No. We can make better use of this. I have enough to worry about than wasting my time on people who choose to throw away their lives,” Obiefune said.

  “What are you talking about? This is one of your people,” Langa asked.

  “Oh, the half-breed doesn’t like these guys,” Pamanta said. “I’m quite fond of their leader, though... hell of a fighter. They are from the other tribe.”

  What was the voident talking about? Why could neither of them say something that made sense? Langa gritted his teeth and asked again. “The what?”

  Pamanta glanced at Obiefune, who refused to meet either of their eyes. “Oh, he didn’t tell you? There’s another tribe of submortals in this godsforsaken world. I suppose calling them a tribe is overstating it a bit. I don’t think there are even 10 of them left anymore.”

  Langa would deal with this lie of omission later. For now, he forcefully yanked the light water from Obiefune. Different tribe or not, Langa was not letting an innocent person die in front of him when he could save them, absolutely not.

  Lightning Lancer