With David having earned Leandro's lowest passing mark to be recognized as a proper fighter, and Niala having gained an effective way to at least defend herself, without mentioning her much-improved physical abilities, the pair decided they were ready to travel to the Reign repository from Jordo's memory.

  They spent a few days resting and preparing, with Niala brewing up a small arsenal of potions for her “Throwing Phials,” as she called them.

  David's suggestion of “Dagger Pots” had been rejected for being too aggressive.

  With everything ready, gear and food stowed in David's cargo cloths, they set out one morning, with Jordo in tow, for a weeks-long trip through the Hungerwoods and deep into the Ruinlands, hoping to find a long-term solution for David's mana stagnation problem.

  The greens of the forest had been replaced with the colours of fire, the bushes were partway done undressing, revealing their wooden bones underneath, with a thickening carpet of dead leaves muffling their footsteps through the woods. The sun struggled to warm the day, while the air held a promise of cold nights, and the winds whispered of snow.

  Niala “walked” beside David, her legs undecided between taking normal steps or hopping along, while her tail had fully committed to creating a refreshing breeze, judging by the speed it was flailing around.

  David did his best to suppress his smile. They were walking through the hungerwoods! It was dangerous! He glanced at his vibrating girlfriend.

  “Somehow, I get the impression you're excited.”

  The ear-to-ear smile she gave him as a reply broke his resolve, his own mouth curving upwards. He shook his head, letting out a sigh of mock exasperation.

  She piped up. “It's our first time! Niala and David, the intrepid explorer duo! Fearless! Daring! Out to find lost riches and secrets! Ooooh!” She rubbed her arms against herself, self-fuelling her runaway mirth.

  “Wouldn't that be David and Niala? The sidekick is named second.”

  She grinned. “Exactly, the sidekick is named second!” She confirmed, sticking her tongue out, as she skipped a few steps ahead of him. “Follow along, Morgo! Your adventurous queen has need of your lovely, big muscles!”

  “Yes, pretty lady,” David replied with a lowered tone, painting a whole new smile on Niala's face as she looked back at him.

  It was hard to ignore the appeal of being out here, alone, with her. The thought sent a small shiver racing down his spine.

  Jordo's warbly voice layered on top of the moment like cold water on top of a cake. “I see that sir and madam are quite thrilled by this venture, and rightly so! But I must advise caution; I am detecting several rather large life forms moving about in our general vicinity, and at least two of them are clearly trailing us.”

  With that warning drenching Niala's outbursts, the pair began paying more attention to their surroundings, though her tail never quite stopped wagging with a passion.

  Once the cat is out of the bag...

  After a few bells spent travelling in relative silence, their heads on a swivel, it eventually became apparent that Jordo's ability to detect wildlife meant they could simply avoid most encounters, and were always warned when something decided to encounter them instead.

  The first was a Gorezilla that attempted to ambush the pair by hiding behind a thicket of vegetation, receiving one of Niala's sleep phials for his trouble, needled through a small gap between the tree trunks, and taking a forced time-out nap.

  “Nice throw, madam!” Jordo had commented.

  The second was a Slooger, the officious name of the snake-slug beast David had previously called a Snug, that had slithered up to them. It had been unaffected by Niala's sleep potion, which prompted David to Quick Step up to the thing's tail, and, with an excessive dose of Strong Arm, had grabbed its appendage and hammer-thrown the squealing, slimy beast into the distance.

  “Nice throw, sir!” The golem had quipped.

  The third encounter had been the first to take them by surprise, and was where they learned two important facts. The first was that Jordo was detecting life, as in the biological functions of living things. The second was that the ambush predator known as Razorshells could somehow suppress those functions, making them invisible to Jordo's senses until practically on top of them.

  While it gave them a good fright, that was all the beast did, as David quickly triggered his Iron Body, receiving the Razorshell's foot-long claws across his body, which felt like strong tickles to the man, and stunning the beast, which did not understand what had gone wrong.

  It did not understand why it was time for bed either, but evidently it was, and so it fell asleep.

  David stepped away from the fumes emanating from the sleeping potion coating the thing's face, and looked back at Niala, who had reacted just about as fast as he had, with her arm still extended in a throwing motion.

  She took a victory pose, resting a hand at her waist and giving him a thumbs up along with a grin. With a smile of his own, he walked up to her and patted her head. “Good sidekick,” he said, turning and walking away before she could give him a retort.

  He felt a few small rocks pelt his back, and his smile grew a bit wider.

  As the sun began its descent, the trio located a dip in the land, where they would set up for the night, and where they would be using their newest invention.

  David unfurled his largest cargo cloth, the 10-metre one. Activating it, a small wooden shack began to emerge, and kept emerging, until its base became evident: Karline's metal carriair, upon which the miniature and rudimentary wooden house had been glued using one of Niala's special formulas.

  Jordo observed the process of unpacking, his eye pinning. “I must say, cargo cloths are a very intriguing invention. I can detect spatial imbuements but not the gravitic disturbance they usually produce.”

  David pulled away and rolled up the cargo cloth, storing it back into a smaller one. “And I'm still surprised the Reign didn't have them.”

  The golem had nodded. “Indeed! A marvellous example of why large empires are inevitably destined to stagnate!”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  David had the carriair power down, lowering it to the ground, before opening the door for Niala, and stepping in after her. He turned his head back to Jordo, who had remained motionless. “You're not coming in?”

  The golem shook his head, its eye pulsing once. “No need, sir. I will stand guard while Sir and Madam recuperate. Please, enjoy your evening! And...” He leaned forward, his voice a shouted whisper. “Rest assured, you have my entire discretion. Sir and Madam's nightly activities will not leave this forest.”

  It straightened back, eye twinkling, giving David a small knowing dip of the head.

  The young man blinked and stared for a moment before stepping into the shelter and closing the door, finding Niala, her face red and avoiding his gaze.

  Right, Jordo had pretty much lightly shouted.

  Could they really? In the middle of the Pit-bound Hungerwoods? He shrugged. “Not like we brought contraceptives anyway,” he muttered, kneeling down to unpack food and bedding.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning his head around, he saw that Niala had unrolled and unpacked her own cargo cloth and, in her hand, held a small phial filled with a milky-white liquid.

  He looked up at her, eyes stunned, as she turned a deeper red and squirmed wordlessly. The shiver he had felt earlier returned, amplified by the prospect of doing something that should be forbidden.

  Suddenly, David realized that spending a full day traipsing through monster-infested woods wasn't tiring at all.

  Their trip north-east continued much as the first day did. Between Jordo's senses, Niala's impairing potions and David's ability to introduce terrestrial wildlife to the joys of flight, and aerial beasts to the wonders of high-velocity boulders and tree trunks, trepidation and alertness gave way to enjoyment and frolicking.

  Beyond the omnipresent beasts, they also encountered many ruins and vestiges. The ones within a few days' walk from Riverwall showed clear signs of visit and looting, but the further they went, the more pristine their discoveries were.

  Beyond the novelty, however, neither of them ventured anywhere near, so the castle ruins, the bunker entrances, the foreboding towers, the arcane arches and the half dozen town carcasses went untouched by their hands, with only a point of interest marked down on a map within Jordo's memory as a sign of their visit.

  They had a very specific goal in mind, and, as the Sunspear, the tallest peak of the Brokenjaws, steadily rose in the sky, they arrived at both their destination and their first real obstacle six days after their departure.

  “That's a door.” David pointed out, his fists still ringing with dull ache.

  “A very sturdy door,” Niala confirmed, looking at the bubbling acid covering the door, doing little more than dripping down its surface.

  “Indeed! A Luminous Reign repository is certain to have near-impregnable defences!” Jordo proudly explained.

  David looked to the golem, unamused. “How do we get in, then?”

  “I do not know!”

  “...nothing?”

  “Whatsoever! Terribly sorry, sir, but while I knew of this location, I have only tangential knowledge of its construction. I can surmise it would have had, at one point, a central consciousness to oversee its operation. Perhaps if you were to present yourself as a scion?” Jordo proposed.

  David looked at the door, then back to the Golem. “Just say hello?”

  Jordo nodded, his eye turning a pleased shade of red. “Indeed! But with the confidence befitting a scion, sir!”

  The young man furrowed his brow, looking at Niala, who shrugged and gave him a thumbs-up of encouragement.

  Sighing, he walked up to the door and boomed his voice. “Door, it is I, David the Scion. Let me in!”

  Nothing happened, apart from Niala's half-suppressed giggles.

  “More confidence, sir!” Jordo enthused.

  “This is stupid... Door! Open yourself before me!”

  Niala lost her personal fight, the sound of her laughter reaching his ears, strangely grating.

  “Sir! This is not a theatre! You are an Imperial Scion; you deserve to be here, nay, this place belongs to you! You do not ask!” Jordo coached him.

  He closed his eyes, trying to find the imperious David within him. The Sea Serpent's staring face popped into his mind for an instant. He stared back before a vein popped on his brow, and he rushed back to his physical senses.

  “Bleed this.” He muttered, taking a step forward and pressing a hand on a non-acidic part of the door, and pushed his mana forth. All of it.

  He turned into a three-story-tall blue bonfire, making Niala recoil a few steps back, and flinching even Jordo.

  The door's material resisted his mana as it pooled on its surface, taking on an almost water-like quality. David didn't care. He had asked nicely, twice; now he was telling. Still as a stone, he gathered his power, like a conductor leading the reaching waves of an ocean, swirling it around, balling it right, sharpening it to a point, straight toward the door. A presence coiled around his inner senses, vast, powerful, obedient and eager.

  Together, man and mana construct willed.

  The mana moved. It was here, and then it was there, smashing into the door. The metal didn't have time to protest, only to scream in surprise and die.

  From David's palm, a meter-wide beam of pure mana ripped through the air, evaporating a few centimetres away from him into a haze of distorted light.

  The flow ended, and David's glow receded, like red-hot metal cooling back down to its inert state. He lowered his hand and took a deep breath before looking at Niala with a satisfied smile.

  She blinked. And blinked again. Her blank stare brightened, her mouth crawling ever upward, before squealing and running after David, giggling, and jumping at him, grabbing his shirt, looking up at him like a kid who had just seen her renewal day's gifts under the tree.

  “What was that!? That was awesome! How can you manifest mana like that?! It's supposed to instantly return to the world's source when it leaves a physical body!” She barraged him, her bright amethyst eyes wide open.

  “I, huh... I used a lot of mana.” He said, scratching the back of his head.

  Jordo approached him, his eye glowing as bright as Niala's. “I say, sir! That might be the understatement of a lifetime! Your mana output went over my sensor limit! They are calibrated to measure mana up to the aether membrane's saturation point! This is unprecedented!”

  David and Niala looked at the golem as the catkin asked. “Aether membrane? What's that?”

  “It is the veil between the physical world and the aetheric world, the plane of existence where mana resides in its raw state.”

  “And what's the saturation point?” She asked, ears lopsided.

  “It is the amount of mana that can pass through the membrane at once.” Jordo's eye zoomed in and out, refocusing on David. “What Sir did should be impossible. The amount of mana you released outpaced the world's ability to take it back in!”

  “...oh,” David said.

  Niala opened her mouth, but a clanking sound came through the hole David had just bored in the door.

  Everyone's head turned to peer inside. It was a dark hallway, of which they couldn't see the end, the daylight the only source of illumination. The sound repeated and echoed, slowly approaching, rhythmically, like someone walking.

  Niala's ears and tail went rigid, the fur on them straightening out, as she squeezed David hard. “David...” She whispered, halfway to fear.

  And then he saw it, a humanoid figure, walking down the hallway toward them, but... fleshless. A skeleton, it was a skeleton walking toward them, unhurried, as if it was coming to answer the door.

  “...Intriguing.” Jordo's voice warbled.

  Niala let go of David and shifted behind him, as he took a fighting stance and readied his imbuements.

  But the skeleton stopped at the door and stood motionless for an instant, before the empty sockets of its skull blazed into green fiery orbs, the Skeleton relaxing its stiff posture, as if animated with a new life. Its jaw articulated, speaking, a screeching and disembodied voice sounding out.

  “Visitors! Greetings! I, Geralkko the immortal, ruler over death, king within the shadows, and mightiest mage, welcome you! I have been waiting for so long for guests!”

  The skeleton attempted to smile, looking about as genial as a bare skull with flaming green eyes could.