Radeon and Calyx moved on to the next matter once the tea was gone and the cups sat cooling like small, harmless lies.
"Calyx, bring out the Vision crystals you hauled in," Radeon said, pointing toward the side of the pavilion.
At the gesture, a dark space opened and the stones ca spilling out in a clattering rush.
Seven colors tumbled together, bright as candy and just as likely to rot your teeth.
They piled into the corner, glittering under canvas shade, and a fine dust rose with them, sharp on the nose like ground glass.
Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan closed in as one. They ringed the heap tight, telekinesis pinning it down so no shard could skitter across the wooden floor.
Then Calyx stiffened.
Sothing touched his mind. Not a voice. Not a thought of his own. A clean, cold notification sliding in.
[Received 500 kilograms of Vision Crystals.]
[100 Shareable Contribution Points will be awarded.]
Radeon only watched as the material poured down.
The clatter filled the pavilion, bright stones striking bright stones, until the pile swelled into a mound near three ters tall, a gaudy little hill of seven colored crystals in various sizes.
Calyx’s eyes widened the higher his contribution points rose, not with worry but with a greedy sort of awe.
[Received 500 kilograms of Vision Crystals.]
[100 Shareable Contribution Points will be awarded.]
When the last Vision crystal slid free and clicked into place atop the heap, he felt it like a door shutting.
A pulse of regret followed, sharp and childish.
He should have taken more.
The thought ca uninvited, and Calyx even hated himself for it. His hand went still. His throat bobbed once.
Then he called up his status page, needing to see it again with his own eyes, needing to make sure he had not misread the ssage.
{Na: Calyx Lurienna}
{Age: 17,072 Years}
{Cultivation Stage. Peak Spirit Transfiguration (weakened state)}
[Tasks]
[Success] (4)
[Failed] (1)
[ssaging] (99 )
{EXCLUSIVES}
[Contribution Points]
[Non-shareable: -270] (Pay Debt)
[Shareable: 3200] (Share Funds)
[Material to Contribution Exchange] (Select Items in Personal Storage)
[Item Shop] (Unavailable)
[Martial Library]
[Personal Storage]
"Jolly good show, Master Radeon, jolly good show," Calyx exclaid.
Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan stared at Calyx like he had lost what little sense a dead man could keep.
His outburst ca out of nowhere, a sharp breath and eyes gone wide.
Calyx did not keep them in suspense. He sent his updated information over the ssaging.
Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan saw what had caught his eye. Contribution points.
The number sat there plain and bright, and it changed the air in the pavilion.
Elation hit first, quick as a laugh. Envy followed right after. Even a wraith could taste another wraith’s fortune.
Calyx did not waste ti grinning. He settled his debt first, neat and imdiate. Then he split what remained five ways and handed shares out to them all.
"It was a mission item," he said, steady. "We were only tasked with a kilo."
Radeon watched the exchange without comnt, then spoke as if rembering an afterthought.
"If it’s not registered mission loot," he said, "use Material-to-Contribution Exchange. The system will buy it."
Maeron’s face tightened. Ewan’s did too. Bitter thoughts rose up in both of them at once.
Back in the pagoda, they could have hauled out the alchemic furnaces, they could have stripped the place down to stone and profit.
Now the pagoda had collapsed. Sneaking back in was close to impossible, and the chance was likely gone for good.
"What of the Groundshrank Armadillo Intelligence Agency mission, my lord?" Oisin asked, his hunger plain in the way he leaned in. "We could set to it at once, Lord Radeon, only I find no ntion of it in our task-roll within the system."
Radeon shook his head.
"I already pulled it from the board." His gaze stayed calm, almost bored. "I divined what’s inside that agency. Fewer people than you think, and the ones left are strong. That place was a bait to sothing huge."
The five wraiths exchanged looks. Pity, frustration, and the sting of wasted ti moved through them. No one argued.
Ewan’s curiosity found an easier target. He nodded at the glittering mound of seven colored stone piled in the corner.
"Master," Oisin said carefully, "I’m no hand at alchemy. What purpose do these stones serve?"
Radeon stepped over, plucked up a stone the size of a thumb, and brought it to his nose.
It slled faintly sweet, faintly sharp, like washed sugar on clean tal. He bit down. The stone crumbled between his teeth with a dry grit.
The wraiths watched his mouth, expecting a wince, a cough, a drugged blink. Calyx lifted a hand, impatient.
"This isn’t a hallucinogen. It’s parts for an array," Radeon said.
Maeron and Ewan stared at the pile again, then at each other, flabbergasted. They had called themselves premier-grade alchemists once. How could they miss it?
Radeon saw the thought and gave them a sliver of explanation.
"You can swallow them or smoke them. Once they break down, they mirror whatever dicine or drug the array’s keyed to. It’s divinizing mixed with mysticism. Not on both of you. Not your skill."
Understanding clicked through the group. That was why there were no obvious nodes, no visible strings of power for the naked eye to catch. The trick was inside the body, not around it.
"So that madman downstairs." Ewan glanced at Radeon. "You saw him too, Lord Radeon. That ans he only needed to make one drug, or one dicine, and the stone copies the effect. Is that right?"
"Correct," Radeon said.
"And the energy to mimic it, where do the stones draw the power from?" Maeron started to ask the next question.
Radeon’s eyes stayed on the glittering heap.
"You guessed it already. It pulls what you think it pulls. Vitality. Consciousness. Soul."
Even dead n could flinch. Calyx frowned hard, disgust pulling at his mouth.
Cruelty like that felt unnecessary, even to soone who no longer breathed.
His gaze shifted to the eldritch seed beside Radeon, sitting there quiet as a clot of night.
"Master Radeon," Calyx said slowly, "You an to say we retreated because..."
Radeon nodded.
"If that array’s feeding on tens of thousands, it’s not small. It runs deep." He set the stone back into the pile.
"Eldritch Seeds don’t move for free. They don’t work without fuel."
After Radeon finished explaining, he reached into his sleeve and drew out a rolled blueprint.
He spread it across the pavilion table with two fingers, neat as a clerk laying out a bill.
A Life Conjuration Array. Maeron and Ewan had never seen this exact pattern, yet the work was not beyond them.
The logic of it sat plain in the lines. They read it at a glance and felt it was possible with the materials they had in hand.
They moved at once to the tree that grew under the pavilion, its trunk scarred with a seam that did not belong to bark.
Radeon looked at the pile of Vision Crystals and worked on it right away. Qi gathered in his palm.
He pressed his hand to his side and pushed. Flesh gave. He did not flinch. His jaw set.
His fingers worked inside his own body, hunting the right piece by feel.
Then bone scraped, and with one hard pull he tore a rib free.
Radeon inhaled and drew the misfortune within the bone into himself, swallowing the backlash before it could lash out at the pavilion and everyone inside it.
He tossed the rib onto the glittering mound of Vision crystals. Not to be wasteful, he let his blood spill as well.
Qi crawled over his wound, knitting it just enough that he would not drop. He did not seal it fully.
Then he waited only long enough for the others to clear space.
Radeon raised both hands and began compressing the crystals. His qi pressed down, layer by layer, grinding stone into tighter stone.
Three and a half tons beca a single mass. The clatter died. Heat rose. The sll of powdered mineral stung the nose.
Radeon glanced at Maeron and Ewan.
"Heat it. Twice a candle fla," he demanded.
The two wraiths went to work. Their aura bled into the mound in careful asures.
The glittering hill shrank, the colors folding inward, until it was no more than a half ter crystal sphere.
They carried it down through the tree mouth and into the secret catacombs beneath.
The array was already laid out on the floor, lines cut and inlaid with a craftsman’s cruelty.
When the sphere was set at its heart, the array lit up.
Light ran through the array grooves like liquid fire. Maeron and Ewan adjusted the Vision Crystal ball, seeing it set in place. Radeon nodded to start.
Its surface crawled, swelling, collapsing, as if sothing inside it was trying to rember how bodies were supposed to work.
It rose and stretched into the rough shape of a man.
No face. No features. Just a blank head and the suggestion of shoulders.
Radeon watched it without blinking.
"Heat it until tal starts to lt."
Oisin and Elsin obeyed. The stone around them glowed. Maeron and Ewan shielded the array from the side.
Radeon took out his needles. He stepped close and began to carve. Not hacking, not guessing.
He pierced with the calm of a surgeon. Cheekbones. Brows. The soft sag of age around the mouth.
The small asymtry that made a face feel lived in.
The blank settled into an old man with a pleasing, sagely look. It breathed once, shallow, as if unsure the habit was still required.
Then its eyes opened. Radeon held his palm out in front of it, a silent demand.
The conjured old man reached inward, into himself, and produced what Radeon had seeded into the work.
Bone. Ribs like pale crescents, slick with new life. With the bone ca sothing else, a faint pressure in his mind, like a crowd leaning forward in worship.
A kind of faith. Obsession.
The residue of countless hands, adoring the crystal as if it were their god.
Radeon took it in. The ache in his side eased. His bones felt denser, heavier, as if they had been tempered.
He turned to the five wraiths. His voice stayed level, like this was all ordinary housekeeping.
"From now on," he patted the old man on the shoulder, "Eldric is the head of Cairnlight Barterhold. The five of you understand?"
Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, Ewan, and Calyx were full of doubts now. Not because the old man was in charge.
It was the na he had chosen, so ominous and so conspicuous, in a ti of upheaval.
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