Two days later—after turning Denkesh over to the Braskir townsguards, getting paid, and promptly collapsing into their rooms like corpses—Dain woke up to the aches across his body first.

  Bruised back from when Denkesh had thrown him into the ground, bandaged skin where he’d been cut by scorpion tails and segmented blades, joints creaky and heavy from when he’d downed the two Cursed Manabrew Potions, and worst of all: lungs that still crackled faintly whenever he drew in a deep breath. He’d really overused his prosthetic back then, and he was still paying for it now.

  Gotta get a healing-type relic one of these days, but damn if I can’t figure out how to get any Rejuvenating Potions from Belara.

  Afternoon light slanted past the curtains as he sat up straight, scratching his eyepatch. It was a three-bed room that they’d rented from the Guild, so Anisa’s soft snoring rasped on his left while Yasmin's breaths were steady on his right.

  At least they’re getting sound sleep.

  Granted, he’d also slept like the dead—they must’ve collapsed for at least twenty-four hours straight after reaching the Guild, and only woke up every once in a while to grab a quick bite—but the sleep was anything but peaceful.

  A one-eyed woman somewhere out there knew his face. How could he sleep peacefully?

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and hissed as various joints and muscles—mostly in his spine and torso—lodged complaints. Still, he padded over to the window slowly and thumbed the curtains open, taking a peek outside.

  It was afternoon. The window overlooked Braskir’s northern gate and the treeline beyond the walls, but even here, he could see dark clouds had gathered on the horizon. They weren’t piled thick or high enough for a storm, no. There was no flicker of distant lightning, and there was no familiar swell of pressure that usually came before thunder… but the sight of dark clouds made something prick on the back of his neck anyways.

  Maybe it was nothing more than nerves.

  Maybe it was just light-headedness and too many cursed relics eating away at him.

  Or maybe the one-eyed wasn’t done with him yet.

  He imagined her somewhere beyond that treeline, lurking behind some rock outcropping, watching Braskir the same way he looked out for her—just waiting for him to make one stupid move.

  He closed the curtains.

  Brooding wouldn’t change a thing. If she wanted him dead, she’d make a move sooner or later. Until then, he had better things to do: things involving brains, profit, and stronger relics.

  His gaze drifted back to the room’s other two occupants. Anisa slept curled on her side, hair fallen in a tawny wave across her face, one hand dangling off the bed as if she’d fallen asleep mid-lecture. Yasmin lay on her back, arms folded on her stomach. She was the picture of composed exhaustion.

  … They’ll be fine without me for a bit.

  Quietly, he slipped his shoes on, shrugged his wingcloak on, and trodded out into the living room with his cane, easing the door shut behind him with care. The living room was bright with afternoon light, so he sat himself down on the dining table and looked over all of the materials they’d gathered from the steelplated scorpion request.

  Six neatly wrapped slabs of scorpion meat, twelve palm-sized plates of steelplated chitin, and—most important of all—four glass jars, each cradling a pulsing, veined lump the size of a clenched fist. Even sealed, the steelplated hivemind brains radiated a faint prickle across his skin. A ghost of the queen’s empathic reach.

  Under normal circumstances, a steelplated scorpion queen is only supposed to have one hivemind brain.

  But thanks to Denkesh’s experiments, the queen he killed had four to harvest. No wonder her scorpions had been in a frenzy, being forced into the queen’s enhanced empathic links and feeling all the pain Denkesh was dealing to her.

  Sucks for the scorpions, but four brains are great for me.

  Hivemind brains were typically used as main offerings for Cognitum-Class relics—relics like Telepathic Anchors, Empathic Amplifiers, or Shared-Pain Shackles. Considering steelplated scorpion queens were best known for their empathic links with their children, the Cognitum-Class relics he could get using their brains would probably have something to do with empathy as well… but he wasn’t sure. Off the top of his head, there wasn’t any offering recipe he could remember that used scorpion hivemind brains.

  Besides, Belara was Belara. It was likely any offering recipe he followed would just be twisted into a weird cursed relic.

  In that case, I might as well get some high quality materials first to maximize the chances of me getting a high grade Cognitum-Class relic.

  Four hivemind brains on their own wouldn’t guarantee quality. At the end of the day, Belara was still a Curator God, which meant higher quality materials generally led to higher grade relics. At the very least, he should get multiple high quality base offerings and see which one Belara liked most.

  And he still had three Tags burning holes in his pockets that needed to be turned into Skill Tags, too, plus that mechanical core he’d been putting off on turning into a relic since forever. A good construct-type relic would make his life easier. It was a shame he couldn't rob Denkesh's relics before turning him over to the townsguard, but since the townsguard would ask difficult questions about how Denkesh managed to kill an entire party of adventurers or tame a swarm of scorpions without any relics, he decided the segmented blade, scorpion tail, mantle, and brooch weren't worth the effort. He'd rather get his own relics he knew would serve him well.

  I guess I’ll swing by the materials store, then.

  As he got up and slung his Void Archivist’s Satchel over his shoulder, though, a soft cough from behind made him flinch.

  He turned slowly.

  Anisa stood in the doorway in her travel shirt and rumpled trousers, hair still mussed from sleep, night spectacles slightly askew on her nose. Yasmin hovered just behind her, staffblade propped loosely against her shoulder. Both looked bleary-eyed, but both were very clearly awake, and both were very clearly annoyed at him sneaking around again.

  So he tried on his most harmless smile.

  “Morning.”

  Anisa did not look impressed. The afternoon crowd was thick as the three of them stepped out onto Braskir’s main streets, and she walked at his side with her arms folded, lips pursed in a manner that said she’d been saving this lecture for a while.

  “I still cannot believe you tried to leave without us again,” she grumbled, every word crisply enunciated. “Again. Must you insist on behaving as if you are a lone wanderer and not part of a registered party of adventurers?”

  Dain adjusted his cane and tried to look modestly ashamed. “I was just gonna shop around. Do I need you to chaperone me?”

  “After what happened with the orehoarder spider, and after the trap the one-eyed laid for you?”

  “... Point taken.”

  The smell of coal smoke, leather, and grilled street skewers drifted through the air as they turned onto Trade Spine, Braskir’s busiest street. Stall awnings in ochre and dark green lined the way, hawkers called out prices over the murmur, and somewhere to their right, a few miners argued about ore weights with a scale-tender. They were about to get into a fight.

  Anisa sighed, but there was a bit of mischief in her eyes now that she’d gotten the worst of the scolding off her chest.

  “At the very least, next time you decide to vanish for a quick shopping run, you will have the decency to wake us first.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Dain nodded as the materials shop loomed into view ahead: a three-storey stone building with high glass panes and a rotating signboard relic that displayed different ingredients every few breaths. Today it showed ground ironbloom moss, then frostglass shards, then a laughing animated fish skeleton that winked at passersby. Creepy, that one was, but the next store over—the relics store, which was even larger, cleaner, and brighter—wasn’t half as creepy.

  “If either of you want to hunt for relics instead of staring at bottles with pickled livers, this is the time,” he said, gesturing at the relics store. “I doubt you’d want to shop for materials with me, so we can meet back at the Guild for dinner in… three hours?”

  Anisa's brow furrowed. “Three hours will scarcely be enough for a proper comparison of prices, quality, and magic stability—”

  “Look at you, already an expert in relics,” he cut in, entering the materials store. “I’ll be in here drowning in bones and brains.”

  Anisa hesitated for a heartbeat longer, then softened. “Try not to overdo it,” she said quietly. “I do not know what is wrong with your lungs, but you only just started breathing without them crackling.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s only shopping. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  She gave him a very particular look—the sort that said ‘you have tempted fate before and fate answered’—then shook her head and tugged Yasmin along towards the relics store.

  Once they disappeared into the crowd, he let himself turn towards the materials shop properly.

  Inside was heaven.

  Shelves climbed up to the ceiling, packed with jars, crates, and vials. Labels in meticulous calligraphy listed everything from powdered basilisk teeth to refined etherglass to shed chimera manes. The shop buzzed with people as well—mostly adventurers in patched leather, robed scholars arguing over star-metal dust, and even a pair of dwarven weapon-smiths muttering about purity grades as they poked at ingots.

  Dain’s palms tingled.

  Alright, Belara.

  Let’s see what I can afford to throw at you this time.

  He wandered. Part of his eye tracked prices; the other part, quality. He appraised vials by the clarity of their contents, flexed a strip of preserved wyvern tendon to test its elasticity, and tapped a jar of ember-lotus seeds to listen for the right crystalline crackle.

  There were plenty of interesting side offerings to augment his relics with. A bottle of mindspore pollen would probably allow his Cognitum-Class relic to work over long distances. A sliver of fireglass would probably be useful in increasing the heat resistance of any one of his relics. A box of gilt nerve-wine threads would probably make his prosthetic even more sensitive, allowing him to feel more with the black metal.

  His fingers itched to overload his satchel again, but he forced himself to move on for now. The last time he window-shopped around here, he’d noticed the store had a particular aisle on the ground floor with a brass plaque hanging above it, engraved with curling letters:

  ‘BUILD YOUR OWN CONSTRUCT – SHAPES & SHELLS’

  … Now this is what I’m here for.

  The aisle opened into a slightly raised space, half showroom, half workshop. Glass-fronted cases lined the shelves on both sides, each containing an arrangement of gears, coils, metal plates, and gemstone eyes roughly arranged to suggest an animal’s form: a stag, a hound, a serpent, a spider, and even more.

  He drifted through the aisle in a slow circle, drinking it all in.

  In order to obtain a construct-type relic, it wasn’t enough just offering a mechanical core as the main offering. If he wanted a stag-type construct, he’d have to assemble the shell of a mechanical stag first, then offer it up as the base offering… which meant this aisle was a godsend to people looking to obtain a construct-type relic like him. Each of the glass cases already contained all the parts needed to complete one shell. He only had to purchase the one he liked, then assemble the shell before offering it up as the base offering.

  There’s tons of shells to choose from, though.

  The humanoid shells are obviously too expensive, so those are out of the window, but if it’s an animal shell…

  Dain was halfway through inspecting a row of avian frames—sleek brass skeletons meant to be wrapped in feathers later—when a familiar racket broke across the aisle. Clattering boxes. Someone swearing in three different dialects. Something else falling over.

  He turned, already frowning, and found Ilvaren, Kargun, Sahlir, and Rena crowding around a display of beast frames, arguing loud enough for the whole materials shop to hear. Unfortunately, Ilvaren spotted him as well, her sharp ears twitching with impatience.

  “Oh, look who finally crawled out of a bed of silk,” she announced, striding over. “Browsing construct shells for fun, human?”

  Kargun stomped behind her, beard trembling with his laugh. “Hah! Ah knew it. Boss’s sniffin’ fer shinies again. Ye can smell the greed on ’im.”

  Sahlir followed last, holding a metal bird frame upside down for some reason. “Human,” he said, nodding solemnly. “Why this bird bend? Is sick? Why bird have no head?”

  “It’s upside down,” Rena murmured, gently flipping the frame right-side up before walking over with a warm smile. “What brings you here, Dain? Do you need help choosing something?”

  He sighed. Might as well tell them. “I’ve got a mechanical core, so I want a construct-type relic. I haven’t quite decided what form I want, though, so—”

  All four faces lit up like lanterns.

  “Leave it to me,” Ilvaren said proudly, already marching toward the shelves with lethal purpose. She slapped her hand onto a massive stag case that took up half the rack. “This one. Stags are the most reliable beast there is. Their vigilance is unmatched. They’re a true wild hunter’s partner—sharp ears, sharper instincts. Grandma always said if you wanna know danger before it breathes, follow the sky-reading stags.”

  “How old’s your grandma?” Dain asked.

  “Around three hundred. Why?”

  “I’m pretty sure sky-reading stags have been extinct for at least two hundred years.”

  Kargun snorted, shoving past her toward a squat case lower on the shelf. “Bah, bah, bah. Stags’re skittish twig-munchers. What ye want is somethin’ with backbone, like… a mole, ye see?” He patted the box like it was a beloved pet. “Hardy lil’ beasts! They’ll crawl through stone, sniff out tremors, and dig their way out o’ any grave. An’ claws! Big ones! Sharp enough ta make a grown troll rethink attackin’ ye!”

  “How big are the moles in your dwarven kingdoms?” Dain asked.

  “‘Bout twice my size. Why?”

  “I see.”

  Sahlir didn’t bother with shelves. He simply grabbed the nearest case—a bird shell—and held it up to Dain with utter confidence. “This hawk best. Fast. Fly. High sky. See everything. No hide from bird.”

  “That’s a vulture shell,” Dain pointed out.

  “Hawk,” Sahlir repeated, not budging.

  Rena, meanwhile, drifted toward the smallest display and lifted a soft-looking cottonlined box holding a rabbit shell. “Well,” she said kindly, “I think he should just choose what makes him happiest. Something gentle. Something comforting. A nice little rabbit, perhaps? They’re so soft and adorable. You can even buy little fur coats for it to customize their softness to your liking.”

  Dain pinched the bridge of his nose as they started arguing about which of their shells he should buy. All of their suggestions were good in their own bizarre ways, and their voices clashed in exactly the headache-inducing way he expected, but as they argued, his gaze drifted downward—past the stag, past the mole, past Sahlir waving a vulture’s wing at him—to a small, overlooked case at the very bottom of the shelf.

  He paused for a second.

  … Huh.

  This one has good danger sense to warn me about oncoming threats, is a relatively protective beast with talons that can cut through flesh easily, can fly and scout for me, and is also cute and fluffy.

  Isn’t this the best shell I could ask for?

  It’d even fit right in with his current theme of relics, and his wingcloak ruffled faintly behind him like it agreed.

  It’s not too expensive, either. It’s only ten thousand curons. That steelplated scorpion request alone paid out twenty thousand, and I pocketed fourteen thousand.

  This construct can easily earn back its cost.

  So he crouched, lifted the case, and held it up for the failure four to see.

  “How about?” he said.

  The four stopped arguing and stared at the case.

  Then they all grinned, wide and sharp.

  “Suits you, feathery human,” Ilvaren said plainly.

  “Got some spine in it, that one,” Kargun said proudly. “I approve.”

  “Hawk,” Sahlir said blankly.

  “It’s adorable,” Rena said sweetly.

  “I see.” Their agreement warmed him more than he expected, so he tucked the case under his arm and drifted back towards the main aisles, ready to keep on browsing materials for his hivemind brains. “Thanks for the help. Couldn't have done it without you guys.”

  “Then, what about we partner up with another request?” Ilvaren said, following him. “Don’t pretend you aren’t already sizing up the hardest job on the board. Let’s go kill something already.”

  Kargun snorted, following him as well. “I’ve me eye on a tunnel clearin’ north o’ here. Good coin in it. Good bashin’, too. Ye want in?”

  Sahlir raised a hand, and so did Rena, but Dain slipped on his polite merchant’s smile. “Maybe. Let’s rest for two or three more days first, and then we can talk. You know where to find me, and I know where to find you.”

  A collective grin rose across their faces.

  “Good human,” Ilvaren said, slapping him on the back.

  “Aye, boss,” Kargun agreed, tipping an imaginary helmet.

  “Boss-boss,” Sahlir echoed for no understandable reason.

  “Take care of yourself, dear,” Rena added, patting his sleeve before shooing the others along. The four of them peeled away in their usual chaotic cluster—and Dain watched their backs until the crowd swallowed them.

  … Sorry.

  Because he wasn’t planning on staying in Braskir much longer.

  It was unlikely, after all, that the one-eyed woman he was chasing would linger in Braskir after setting such an elaborate trap to lure him out. She’d be on the move again, and if he stayed still, all he’d be doing was letting her slip further and further out of reach.

  He needed a way to track her. A way to stay one step ahead instead of reacting like a cornered rat every time she made a move.

  His gaze dropped to the glass case in his hand again.

  This little thing might just turn out to be the relic I need.