Sid POV

  Pallavi pushed herself up. She did not rise to her feet but sat down on the ground, rubbing the side of her temple. “Does it happen every time you absorb a Tier 1 skill?”

  Rohan shook his head. He had a small smile on his face. “No, just the first time. I just absorbed my second skill, not even a peep of pain.” He lifted one hand and tapped his own temple, as if to prove he was fine.

  Sid watched the two of them, then felt the familiar prickle along his spine again. The feeling of being watched, the one he had pushed to the back of his mind earlier, rose stronger, pushing against his focus on the group.

  He let his gaze leave his teammates and travel across the small clearing. It caught on the magic staff lying next to Pallavi’s backpack. The sight nudged his thoughts into place.

  The staff worked like a ranged focus. He reached over, picked it up, and felt the slight hum of mana through the wood. He hoped the extended range of vision would help him find whoever was lurking at the edge of their camp.

  He peered past the circle of their fire, letting his senses stretch outward with the staff. Sure enough, he could spot the two teenagers from the Kurushingal family at the edge of the main camp. They stood half in shadow near one of the larger tents, sharing a cigarette.

  One of them was looking at him and, judging by the surprise on the boy’s face, he had not expected to be found out.

  A mental ping echoed in Sid’s mind, clean and sharp. The familiar system prompt told him that Keen Eyes had leveled up. It had not leveled up during the life and death battle earlier, when he had been fighting for his neck, but now it did when he tracked down a peeping tom in camp. The timing almost made him snort.

  He set the staff down again and turned to face Rohan. “Who’s on watch tonight?”

  “Those teenagers from the Kurushingal family—this side of the camp. They needed something to occupy their minds after their mother’s death. The other side of the camp was to be guarded by George’s team,” said Rohan, his eyes glancing into the distance as he tried to recollect the details. “I think Bunty will switch with them later in the night. He mentioned something like that.”

  There was a hint of guilt in his voice at the mention of the grieving family.

  Putting grieving people on guard duty was never a wise decision. What was Naga thinking? Sid did not voice his thoughts but filed them away for later.

  Rohan walked up to Pallavi’s backpack and pulled out a small bundle of cloth he had brought with him, fingers working at the knots. “I got dinner. Grilled mushrooms. Should’ve had them when they were hot.”

  Sid shifted over and took a seat next to the tree, stretching his legs out and feeling the solid trunk at his back. He looked over to Rohan. “Didn’t they have jerky?”

  “No, it got over. The new group finished it.” Rohan shrugged and passed the mushrooms to Varun.

  “At least they cooked it. Much better than eating them raw.” Varun took a handful without any hesitation, slipped them inside his pocket, and passed the rest to Pallavi. He chewed on a few noisily, savouring the taste. Magical healing took its toll on both the healer and the injured—he was likely starving, thought Sid.

  Pallavi hesitated, the bundle halfway between her and Varun. She looked down at the remaining mushrooms, then lifted her gaze to Sid. It was a quick look, but he could see the question in it: Is this a bad idea?

  “Take some and pass.” Varun turned to Pallavi and pointed at Sid with a piece of mushroom, speaking between chews.

  “I’ll have something later. Just keep a couple for me.” Sid did not want a situation where everyone on the team got high on mushrooms. It took about an hour for the high to kick in. He planned to check if his team was okay before eating them.

  Pallavi broke a single mushroom in two, took half for herself and chewed, then returned the rest to Varun with a small shrug.

  “Why bother eating if you only eat that much?” Varun turned his head toward Sid, apparently satisfied enough with the taste. “How many do you need?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Just a couple will do.”

  Varun took a few mushrooms into his pocket before throwing the bag to Sid. Sid caught it one-handed and placed it behind the tree he was leaning against, away from where someone might mindlessly reach for it in the dark.

  “Alright, now that everyone has their new skills, just try them out a few times before dozing off,” Sid said. His voice carried across the small clearing. “I do not want any of us to be unfamiliar with our skills in case of an ambush in the night.”

  He had told no one, but the primary reason he didn’t take any skills was that he couldn’t. The explanation he had given them about builds and fairness was true, just not complete. He needed to raise one of his skills to Tier 1 and had already decided on which one.

  Keen Eyes and Mist Blend were ordinary common skills, useful but straightforward. It would be best if he could get some complementary skills before he evolved them, something that would let them slot into a larger build.

  That left Veil of the Mind’s Eye, his most mysterious skill and also the highest-leveled. Just thinking about it made a faint chill run down his spine.

  He had put off trying to level it up because everything he could think of to level it required help from another person who would have to know the details about his skill. That meant exposing the way it worked. This was something he was not willing to do, particularly after what happened with Aditi.

  Even there, his prudence had come through for him. She had fought beside him, argued with him, but still she did not know what his skill was or how it worked. That boundary had held. He intended to keep it that way.

  However, the lack of open skill slots was worrying. He couldn’t keep declining skills, citing a lack of synergy with his other skills. He was lucky no one had called him out for declining the movement skills earlier. If he wanted to progress as per his original plan and challenge the secret realm, then he needed to take some risks.

  He decided to try the Veil of the Mind’s Eye on himself. Get a gauge of how his opponent feels under the veil. The idea sat uneasily in his mind. He doubted the skill would work because he needed visual contact to trigger it, and it made him invisible to himself, so it would end immediately.

  But the others were resting, and no one was watching him. If he was going to attempt something reckless, this was as private as it would get.

  He looked down at his legs from where he was sitting, mentally designated himself as the target and triggered the skill.

  His vision blurred at the edges and snapped back without sound or weight. No warning. No system notification. Just the world, suddenly different. There was something off about his vision, but he couldn’t quite make out what. He looked down out of habit and saw nothing. His body was gone. The patch of ground he had been occupying lay empty.

  His heart skipped a beat, or at least he thought it did. He could not feel his own pulse. Even though he had expected something along these lines, experiencing it gave him a dreaded and powerless feeling. He was used to hiding from others, not from himself.

  He looked up to see his team sprawled out in front of him and finally realized what had happened to his vision. It was like he was looking at the world through sunglasses—everything dimmer. People had a faint glow around their bodies, like a thin aura. Rohan and Pallavi had a brighter glow compared to Varun, who was lying on the ground, arms and legs sweeping through the dirt as he made lazy snow angels. Fuck, we’ve been drugged.

  He tried to call out to them on instinct. His mind formed their names, shouted warnings, but no sound came. No throat to push it out, no air to carry it. He tried to move toward them, but couldn’t sense his body at all.

  Sid realized he was not actually looking up or down. His viewpoint turned, sliding from one angle to another with no sensation of muscles or joints. He had three-sixty degree vision, able to look at the camp from every side at once.

  Don’t panic. The words came automatically. He repeated the mantra that had got him through hell and back. It felt thin without a heartbeat behind it, but it was something to hold on to. He thought of the one constant that had always been there with him for the past two decades. The mantra surfaced on its own: When in doubt, check your status.

  Status. Status. System.

  Sid felt like his mind was going to explode. If he could feel his heart, it would have been beating so fast that it would have burst out of his chest and blasted off. There had never been a situation where the status was unavailable after it was unlocked. That simple failure to respond made his thoughts skid.

  Sid tried to cancel the skill, to end the Veil of the Mind’s Eye and snap back into his body, but he couldn’t quite shape that thought into something the system would recognize. Every attempt felt like pushing against fog. He couldn’t find his sense of being or the place inside himself that housed the skills. There was just awareness floating over the clearing, anchored to nothing.

  Footfalls echoed from afar, starting softly and growing more audible with the approach of the person making them. He focused on the sound, his viewpoint tilting toward the approach. Whoever had drugged them was coming to collect.

  He could see his teammates sprawled and unprepared, the faint glow around their bodies pulsing, and he could not even move, let alone save them. The helplessness pressed down harder than any physical weight. Would he have to watch his friends get slaughtered again?

  Second Chapter of the day!

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