Each round the Old One threw him into the other world, following after the trail the lost expedition fleet had blazed ahead.

  There, he found their remnants.

  And each night, he would spend the entire time fighting - racing from wrecked ship to ship, breaking in, trying to go faster than the other rats attempting to get to his kills first.

  Even better were the times he caught those rats midway through: The Old One rewarded him an entire gold lootbox for each of those weaklings he killed. Far better than the rewards from the other encounters.

  The other encounters... Every hallway of these ancient ships were another reminder of the deep monumental failure of his ancestors in their singular task as a race.

  The same story in every breached ship he broke into: Half the crew failed to survive the dimensional jump into this new world's Arcane Realm in the first place. Their dead bodies long decayed into skeletal remains, still moving on their old patrol paths as the mana here slowly seeped into their bones and brought them back. Haunting their ancient ships within barely functional armors.

  Skulls leering at him through the domed visors. Souls originally from Azdrial having nowhere to go in this new world that lacked any true realm besides the mortal one.

  So much for the great expedition's invasion plan. Brought to a halt before it had even begun.

  No wonder they'd never reported back all those centuries ago.

  The signpost itself really was just a giant spear that had been launched into the ground.

  With violent force.

  And probably years ago given the terrain around the harpoon. Moss and small foliage grew at the base, while the rest of the dirt and stones that were pulverized all that time ago had settled down.

  Very much looked like the leftovers from some older war. Wade could tell it must have been launched from far above the mithril sea, off the side of a boat. Like they were harpooning a whale or something.

  There was a single 'signpost' on it, or rather a metal inscription written off the side.

  Closest city: Zaka. South-West ten miles.

  DO NOT travel further North-East. Only the Dying Stretch awaits.

  Wind speed your steps.

  "I'm starting to see how demons navigate down here." Wade said, looking over it. "You have these all over the centerline?"

  Bael nodded. "Dalrithi runs patrols above the centerline. One end of the peaks to the other. They drop supplies, signposts, even rescue ladders if they spot you wandering down here. Started as organized rescue efforts. The city built itself around the fleet over time."

  Wade looked up to the roiling silver clouds above. "Any chance it might be floating by above us right now?"

  That would make escape pretty easy.

  "It's not." He looked up, across the entire expanse. "Parts of it are held by ropes and dragged just under the sea so they can see the world down here. You'll know if they pass over you. Hard to miss the spotlights."

  Wade got closer to the signpost, "How many of these are there across the entire region? They all look custom made."

  And of good quality too. Sure, it looked well beaten up and had moss growing over the sides, but the inscription was still perfectly legible.

  Bael snorted. "You know nothing of demon culture or the mithril sea, and yet you can read and speak our language flawlessly. You truly are baffling."

  "Yep. Still not interested in knowing why?"

  "Nope." Bael reached a hand out and grabbed an orb hanging off a chain attached to the spear. It looked outright ancient, and very sturdy.

  The demon held the orb still, watching as something there moved.

  Identify told him what he was already guessing:

  Infernal Compass (High Quality)

  Once more, while Wade ran the identify, he spotted that Bael's level had steadily been increasing upwards. A good sign his not-yet-employed employee was going to offer some good combat insights too, maybe he'd be willing to teach Wade how to use a sword down here.

  Behind them, Medy finally made it over, trailing behind the group. She'd been picking at some of the flowers in the path here, now holding a small bouquet.

  Frankly it seemed like every ten steps she'd find something shiny on the ground, and then spend a few seconds picking it out.

  It had started as a small bouquet, and now looked large enough to fit on a wedding table. "Say, mortal, er, Wade? Think I could put these in your bag? They're rather rare herbs to find and I don't want to lose these."

  Bael snorted. "You pulled weeds and call them rare?"

  She looked a little miffed about that. "Above the mithril sea, sand forces the foliage there to adapt while down here it never had any need of those, means there are entire species that only grow under the sea here. Oh, we're already here?"

  Medy on the other hand hadn't increased in levels. Which meant coordination and learning how to walk again probably wasn't the factor that was making Bael increase in levels like this.

  She looked up at the signpost, squinted as she read, and then got real animated about it.

  "Zaka!" Medy squealed, hopping around in a circle, excited.

  Wade had never seen someone actually have enough energy in them to start jumping like a bunny. Maybe joggers waiting for a green light, but Wade considered those people a different species.

  "Oh! Oh! It's got a tower if I remember right, we could get the mortal to drag us out of here directly!"

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  "You do what you wish to do." Bael said, letting go of the compass so that it swung back down on the metal chain for the next demon to use. Then he turned his nose down to the roadway, to the group's right. "That direction is south-west. Ten miles is a longer distance than I'd wished, but doable. Better than the alternative. If we jog, we may be able to reach it in two hours. We should make haste."

  Bael turned, took one step forward, and stumbled. Not just stumbled. Fell over flat.

  Wade could only describe it as watching a drunk man walk out of the bar he'd been kicked out of, and rapidly lose control over it all. Like he'd been hit with a fast acting venom dart.

  In moments, he was sprawled on the ground.

  Medy moved in a flash, letting go her flowers and herbs as she struck like a viper. She first kicked the blade from the prone demon's grasp, snatched it up, circled around to his head in two swift steps, then drove the steel straight through the skull with a strained grunt.

  Blood went everywhere.

  Medy wrenched the blade free and hacked at Bael's dying body until the third swing finally severed his head. She immediately punted it away, then staggered back two steps from the body.

  "What the fuck?!" Wade was more stunned at how fast and brutal Medy had been.

  The demoness looked up at him, and Wade could swear he saw confusion on her face. As if she didn't understand why he was surprised. That's all the time she had to do anything because a moment later, she was attacked by Eri.

  "Wa- What are you doing mortal?!" She called out, desperately avoiding a sword swipe, jumping out of the way.

  "What am I doing? What are you doing!?" Wade shouted, more stupified by how quick the situation had gone from perfectly fine to outright betrayal.

  Had she been planning this from the start?

  How had she poisoned Bael like this?

  Thankfully, she had completely mistaken who the real threats were here, thinking the giant demon was the danger instead of the scrawny mortal tagging along.

  "Stop, stop! I was helping!" She yelled out, which broke some of the tension.

  "Eri, capture." Wade ordered. The skeleton clicked his jaw, dropped his Nathir greatsword, pulsed out magic, then launched himself at Medy like a rocket.

  The demoness had the wind knocked out of her, Bael's longsword dropping from her hand in the takedown. A moment later, she was flat on the ground with a skeleton crawling all over her.

  In her defense, she was strong enough to lift the entire skeleton. And did exactly that, getting up on her legs, stumbling back down to her knees, then trying to crawl forward for a step or two before being fully dragged down by the skeleton binding her hands.

  Eri didn't weigh much, but he was flat out stronger and she couldn't actually escape his grip.

  Wade kept a hand on his Glock, ready to act if things escalated. Her calling out that she was somehow helping, combined with how suddenly everything had happened, made him decide he should ask questions first, shoot later.

  The demoness tried to struggle against Eri one last time, then gave up, letting her cheek press into the wet mud while the skeleton pinned her.

  "I'm not calling him off until you give some answers. Like, what-the-fuck? to start with. How are you helping us by killing him like that?"

  "Oh. Oh! I see the confusion, right." She coughed, then blew a strand of muddy hair away from her mouth, and spat a little bit to clear her mouth free of the rest. "He was turning. You saw how he stumbled down, right? That's the blackrot taking over his head. I had to move fast before it started attacking us." She looked over at the body. It was already fading away the same way Wade remembered Bael's first death. "It can happen super fast like that. That's generally how it ends up getting us eventually."

  Even the blood from the head stabs were breaking down into motes, winking away. And from there, a few faint tendrils of black mist were rising off, wiggling in panic as reality around seemed to eat away at it.

  "See? He's fine," Medy said. "Plus, we've all made contracts to protect one another, so we'll be waiting for his return anyhow. I did all this to keep him and you safe." She wiggled a bit in the mud, but it was clear Eri wasn't letting go, so she huffed and went limp again.

  "He got bit in the forearm, it wasn't anywhere near his head yet."

  "Maybe spread through his veins on the inside? Normally should be like three to four hours. But you never know with blackrot, sometimes you get unlucky. Bael got unlucky."

  …

  That did make sense. "Eri, what do you think?"

  The skeleton clicked his jaw a few times, then looked down at the demoness. He pointed two bony fingers at his empty eye sockets, then jabbed them in her direction several times.

  I'm keeping my eyes on you.

  She stared back like a fish. "It is rather eerie how well it moves."

  Wade glanced over at the skeleton, who shrugged in answer before stepping back to let the demoness get to her hooves.

  She wiped the mud off her face, pants, and the oversized shirt intended for Leon. Then noticed him staring. Tilting her head as if curious about something, she used both her hands to squeeze her chest together, wiggled in place, and glanced up to check if she'd hit the mark.

  Her grin turned real smug.

  "Oh! So you do like what you see! I knew I hadn't messed that up!"

  Wade blinked. Tried to speak, but only flustered noises escaped. He stopped himself, then shook his head. "Can you not mess with my head please? I really don't think now's the best time for this."

  "Okay, okay," She gave the shirt one last wipe, letting it hang loose. "To be fair, it's my first real attempt at getting the mortal-related parts right."

  "It's your first attempt? What?"

  "Yeah, never needed to before." She brushed bits of mud out of her hair next, although it didn't really fix anything at all. "I sort of stumbled my way up to a cushy job by just doing what I liked and never had any real need of shapeshifting before. It's still fun, don't get me wrong, but never had to actually do it competitively. Like for an actual use, you know?" She stopped. "Uh, please don't ask me more. I have a… very traumatic past and I don't want to talk about it."

  That sounded more like a question. As if she wasn't certain herself about it.

  Or had come up with that on the spot.

  "Can Bael hear me?" Wade asked, looking over to where the demon had completely vanished.

  "No, not until he lands back here." She said. "Why?"

  While he was planning on recruiting them both together, there was one part he couldn't speak out loud to Bael, and was curious about getting answers from.

  If that old demon wasn't around to hear, now was a great time to get some answers.

  Wade gave Eri a nod, and the skeleton understood to prepare for possible danger. As for himself, his hand moved closer to the Glock, ready to draw if needed. "I know you're Xan."

  She stopped trying to get mud out of her hair, then slowly turned to stare at him. "…You do? How?"

  "Not even going to try denying it?"

  "Wait, before you try and kill me, I'm not really Xan!" She paused. "Well, okay, I'm technically Xan. But I didn't ask for that title at all and I've got nothing to do with the old Xan, I swear! It sort of dropped into my lap. And what gave me away?"

  "That's a very long story, and I'll trade that for knowing why you're hiding your name under Medy." Wade bargained.

  "I'm not hiding under my name, that's a little impossible for demons. Medea'Vee is my base name, so there's no lies there. Medea, Medy, see how that nickname works? It's just… I happened to decide omitting the rest of my name would be better." The demoness paused, as if her head was just now going over the rest of what Wade had said. "Wait, hold on, you're open to telling me who you are?"

  He'd been planning to make his sales pitch eventually; Wade was simply trying to extract any additional advantage from revealing what he knew. In this case, exchanging his story for hers would give him a head start.

  "Yep, story for a story seems to be a good trade to me." Wade said.

  Medy considered it for a half second, then extended out her hand. "Okie dokie! So long as you don't tell Bael who I am though. He would stab me a few times over if he heard. This would be the kind of information that would be grounds to nullify our contract, you know? He seems nice to me, maybe he might be the type to stab me quickly. A lot of others take their time killing me when they find out. Demons are immortal, but we still feel pain, you know? It's very uncomfortable."

  "Did you do something?" Wade asked, his own hand reaching out to shake hers.

  "I didn't! I swear, I'm-" She stopped, sighed, then took a step backwards and nervously tried to squeeze more muddy water out of her hair the whole while. "It goes back a long time, from the moment I manifested. I was… well, I was weird compared to the other demons. Really weird."

  Wade walked over to the signpost, then leaned up against it. He had time.

  She looked back at him, then looked down at the ground. Almost ashamed even. "It's a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it? People don't exactly care to hear my side of things, I always mess it up."

  Wade looked at the vanishing motes of Bael's body. Then over to Eri who shrugged and went off to patrol around the signpost looking for any Blackrotten bugs that could ruin everyone's day.

  "Looks to me we got a free hour and nothing better to do. So, why do all the other demons think you're weird, and also want to kill you on sight?"