“Over here—”

“Over here—”

“Lift it—yeah—good!”

Shelika ferried stone bricks with her Light Skiff spell, pushed and pulled like a crane by the shouting workers, their voices rippling like flags in a dusty wind.

Even so, the wall repair surged forward, like a river freed of dams. By sunset, a third stood solid, catching the last gold like scales on a carp.

The workers wiped sweat that shone like dew on rough bark, and they thanked Shelika, voices warm as hearth coals in winter fog.

The foreman pressed a money bag into her hand. “Hard work, I know!” He grinned, loud as a drum at dawn.

She took it, and a quiet unease rose like mist. The weight felt wrong, like a stone that sinks faster than it should.

Lubi was hard currency, polished crystal, each coin heavy as a rain-wet pebble. You could measure quantity by heft, like judging grain by palmfuls.

The bag in her hand was heavier than expected, like a fishing net with one too many catches. Clearly, he’d paid extra.

Shelika frowned, her doubt a thin cloud across moonlight. “What’s this?”

The foreman laughed. “Heard you at noon, I thought you were a green freelance mage dodging the Guild.” His grin flashed like flint. “Didn’t expect such sharp spellwork!”

“You must be an engineering mage,” he added, chuckling, like a rooster proud of its dawn.

Shelika kept it modest, a smile like a folded fan. “No. I’m just another face from the Dark Blood Clan.”

“You’re too humble!” He laughed, big as thunder rolling off hills.

He eyed the wall, still only a third done, the sunset laying a thin fire across the stones. Even at this speed, the gap loomed like a canyon.

“Hope we finish before the next beast tide,” he muttered, worry pooling like shadow under eaves.

“Beast tide?”

“Yeah.” He sighed, long as wind through reeds. “After the Earth Mother bestowed Divine Grace, beasts keep multiplying. City knights went to the front lines.”

“I see…”

He shook off gloom like rain from a cloak and barked a laugh. “Enough talk. I’m off to eat with the boys, hahaha!”

“Mm. See you.” Shelika waved, turned away, her steps light as falling leaves, then slipped the bag open when no eyes watched, counting the “beads.”

Two hundred and eleven lubi.

“Whew.” Relief loosened her chest, like a knotted cord finally slack.

Maybe she’d dealt with too many crooked souls under Fulin’s shadow. Suspicion stuck like burrs, even when she knew it was overthinking.

She tucked the bag away, looked up at the night brightening like silk threaded with stars, and sighed. “When will a quiet life finally come?”

A breath, a worried glance, a short rest, like a teacup cooling on a sill.

Then she started the next job, purpose steady as a lantern’s flame.

She didn’t work just one shift. To save fast for a pilgrimage to the Holy City, nights were for work too, like owls drawn to moonlit roads.

No, nothing shady.

She left the city alone, following a map like a river’s memory, until a cave opened ahead like a dark mouth in the hills.

“This should be it.” Her voice was calm, but it moved like a pebble across still water.

A breath of wind hissed out of the cave, cold and damp like old moss. The chill carried Evil Barrier miasma, clinging like smoke to bone.

No doubt, this cave was like the Demon Realm Forest—a spawning ground, a root where beasts sprout like thorns after rain.

Her job lay inside this wet, perilous throat of stone, where echoes built nests and danger stared with green eyes.

Not a hunt. A harvest.

She was here to gather Evil Barrier Crystals. Tainted power fused with rock, purple as bruised twilight, shining like frost on vine.

They were worth good money. Useful in many trades. Industrial goods, and the stuff used to mint lubi, heavy as truth in a judge’s hand.

Sell them to the Central Exchange, and coin flowed like spring melt. So Shelika went in, alone as a single reed in winter water.

With beasts rising in the wilds, only the Exchange’s pro teams still dared. Most folks stayed home, windows latched like lips bitten shut.

So the cave had gone untouched for a while, and it teemed with beasts, drawn by the fresh sweet scent drifting in like fruit on a breeze.

Shelika saw them surge, a dark tide boiling out of shadow. So—

“Come out, my retainers!”

She didn’t have to shout. It was a habit from playing Lance too long, the call like steel ringing in an empty hall.

Stealth hated noise. Knights loved it. Even if she wasn’t a knight now, a voice could strike first like lightning across a black ridge.

Twenty Vanguards blinked into being.

The beasts froze, eyes snagged by the uncanny craft, then lunged. They met the machines like waves breaking on teeth of iron.

It wasn’t a fight. It was a threshing floor.

Whoosh-whoosh, chirr-chirr. The cave filled with a dense weave of slicing wind, sharp as a loom string under a glassy sky.

Beast roars thinned, their snarls fading like embers under snow. The wild fever cooled, silence rising like fog in a ravine.

Soon, only the rotors hummed, steady as bees in a summer field.

“Good,” Shelika said, soft praise like warm rain, then ordered, “Sweep the remaining beasts in the cave.”

The Vanguards around her tilted and flew deeper, black wings cutting shadow like knives through silk.

She lifted a torch, the flame licking stone like a curious fox, and began to search the walls, looking for crystals that winked like hidden stars.

Before long, she found a large one. Tomato-sized, tucked in an unremarkable niche, a shy gem hiding where no eyes lingered.

Without the torch’s reflection, she might’ve wandered all night, like a ship lost among moonless waves.

She summoned Blood Armament, and a pro-grade pickaxe coalesced, red-black metal like a blade forged at midnight.

She pulled on gloves, careful as a surgeon at dawn, and tapped at the seam where crystal met wall, using patience like a chisel.

Tak-tak-tak, tak-tak-tak—

After about five minutes of gentle carving, the crystal loosened, wobbling like a ripe fruit ready to drop.

It slipped free, but she moved faster than gravity, catching it and sliding it into her pack, the motion sleek as a fish through reeds.

A piece like this sold for sixty lubi. The number felt sweet as ripe plum.

But sixty wasn’t enough. Ambition pressed like snow on a roof.

She thought it through. Since she was here, she had to gather more. Hand-searching was too slow, and she hadn’t learned mineral-sensing spells.

No problem. Obstacles were reeds; she was river.

She called up Blood Armament again and summoned an Archer unit.

A spider-shaped drone crouched on the floor, metal limbs splayed like iron roots. It was big—about as large as a two-week-old foal.

Archer drones excelled at finding targets, their eyes sharp as hawk glass, their minds quiet as winter ponds.

She held the crystal out to the iron spider. “Find me more of this ore.”

Beep-beep. The processor purred, a cat behind paper walls.

A probe rod slid from its belly and washed the crystal in light, scanning in full, like lanterns circling a relic in a shrine.

It worked by vision, after all, a hunter of shapes, a reader of gleam and grain.

After a minute of crunching data, the Archer seemed to grasp the thing’s soul. It retracted the probe and crawled deeper, quick as rain over stone.

Shelika followed, her torch a little sun. Soon, the machine pointed out another crystal in a corner, bright as a hidden fish in a current.

Then another. And another. Almost every ten meters, one to two, like berries along a stream path.

Before they reached the true depths, her pack bulged, near full, heavy as a promise.

She looked toward the inner dark, regret curling like smoke. “No choice. Let’s head back.”

She returned to Oriel City around one in the morning, the hour when earthfolk and demonfolk slept like sealed jars on a shelf.

The Blood Clan stepped out then, like night-blooming flowers opening under cold stars, each scent a secret, each step a silver whisper.

Oriel City at that hour breathed a different life. It glowed and thrived, a forest of lamps as lively as noon.

Blood Clan crowded the streets in a tide of movement, bustle flowing like a river. The city’s pulse matched daylight, only cooler, only stranger.

Shelika lingered, eyes drinking the scene like tea thick with honey, when a Blood Clan man spoke, voice smooth as lacquer.

“Miss, your outfit’s got taste,” he said, smile like moonlight on a fan. “Mind sharing where you bought it?”