For old times' sake, my ass. Apostolos mentally grumbled to himself. He was waist-deep in muck that he really didn't want to know the full details of, all while Rory was whistling, clearly having a great time even though he was also waist-deep.

"How are you so nonchalant?" Apostolos grumbled, casting an annoyed look at Rory.

"Oh my not-quite-young, not-quite-apprentice, this doesn't even top my top five most disgusting things I've had to wade through. And those top five were all from one place."

"You can't ford a path or something?"

"I could, but I'm trying not to flex too much of my capabilities right now. This is your adventure."

Relax, Apostolos, you couldn't kill him even if you wanted to.

Sighing, Apostolos shook his head. They'd been journeying into the Blight Khan's territory for a little over three hours now and had largely avoided detection, mainly for the sake that there weren't a whole lot of monsters around to begin with.

"So, this Blight Lord, Blight Khan, whatever, what exactly do you know about it?"

"Not a ton," Apostolos answered truthfully. "Most of our information is derived from Blight monsters we've killed or reconnaissance from some of the Khan of Blue Lightning's people, er, snakes."

"But what you do know?"

"It's in a four-way deadlock against three other Khans, fighting for some territory, but the details of that battleground or the other Khans themselves are even less known, as the Blight Khan's territory is the closest and it's also a roadblock for further investigation."

"Makes sense," Rory said. "But for four Khans to be locked in a deadlock over some territory, it must have something rather valuable there."

"Or they just want to expand their territory." Apostolos pointed out.

"While that is a definite possibility, I find it the least interesting."

"What, are you basing it on the Khan of Blue Lightning's lack of interest in expanding?"

"No," Rory refuted. "That has more to do with the fact that our favorite Khan is trying to force the aural affinity of their territory under their complete control, not intending to rule over a poison waste. The other Khans might be more than content to rule over areas that don't perfectly align with them. It would allow for faster expansion, but their foundation would be weaker overall, from a literal and territorial perspective."

"I still believe they might just be seeking a territorial expansion, more territory, more resources, more power, with the ultimate goal being the total dominion over the third floor."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Why?" Apostolos asked, frowning as he noticed gunk clinging beneath his nails.

Gross.

"The third floor is large. In total, I'm assuming something like one hundred different Khans could fit down here. The Khans aren't mindless monsters, assuming the Khan of Blue Lightning isn't an outlier."

"Given its Blight Commander showed clear intelligence on the level of a person, I'd assume not."

"Exactly," Rory agreed. "So, if one Khan began swallowing up a bunch of other territory, I suspect you'd see Khans beginning to work together. This is where the consolidation of your territory comes into play. Expansion undoubtedly allows for resource accumulation. Still, without consolidation, the sheer degree of power you can call upon in your own territory is limited, waning the further you travel from the center. Within the confines of Ehkorrus's influence, the pneuma responds to me to a degree that doesn't exist elsewhere. This means that even if the pneuma isn't very dense, I can gather large amounts of it far faster than a hypothetical opponent of equal strength might."

"And the same would apply to the Khans; thus, you don't believe total dominion over the third floor is possible."

"Possible, yes, feasible, no." Rory amended.

Apostolos mulled it over, considering the words. His thoughts were only interrupted as the waist-deep gunk finally receded, the two of them slowly emerging from fording a massive river of pestilence.

"I'm pretty sure a lower tier would dissolve into a festering soup just being near that river," Rory said, sounding far too chipper.

"Probably," Apostolos agreed before pointing ahead. "Looks like company."

Together, there was a pack of nine oversized cockroaches, or what looked like cockroaches if one ignored the open slashes like gills running down their body, occasionally spewing a mix of green blood and pus.

"Blight Carriers," Rory said, eyes scanning an interface. "Only level sixty?"

"Yeah, they exist solely to infest areas with blight," Apostolos confirmed. "From the reports we've gotten, if they aren't removed, they can pervert an area shockingly fast."

Snapping his fingers, Rory was suddenly holding an object that Apostolos was unfamiliar with.

"What is that?"

"A slingshot."

"A slingshot?"

"A low-power ranged weapon. Huh, I'm surprised no one in Ehkorrus came up with a slingshot. Ehh, whatever, I can introduce the idea."

Wanting to question what it did, Rory answered the unsaid question by raising it and pulling the sling back, as a red crystal appeared within. Releasing the sling, it shot forward, puncturing one of the weak monsters.

"Uhh, Rory? It's not even dead."

"Duh."

"Duh?"

A moment later, Apostolos understood as tendrils erupted from the unfortunate monster, ripping it apart like a creature hatching from an egg as the tendrils lashed out at the nearby blight carriers, a single swing of the tendrils tearing them apart.

"What was that?" Apostolos hissed.

"Growth concept, turned into an attack. Learned it years ago. Not exactly a pretty form of attack, and it doesn't work well against stronger monsters."

"Why is it sickly green?"

Apostolos stared at the fleshy tendrils flailing about, sickly green with chunks of calcified pus clinging to them.

"It's like cannibalizing super cancer," Rory answered. "So, it uses up what already exists to form itself."

"What's cancer?"

"Cancer: Malignant and invasive growth or tumor, especially one originating in epithelium, tending to recur after excision and to metastasize to other sites."

Apostolos stared at Rory in confusion, the way his former master had instantly lurched into definition in such a monotone voice, taking him off guard.

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"What? I had to memorize this sort of stuff for college. It's been a long time, but I still retained some of it," Rory said, tapping his forehead.

"I'm not sure I understood most of those words, but I'm not going to bother asking."

"Smart man," Rory laughed as they marched past the still flailing meaty abomination. "Any other interesting blight variants I should know of?"

"Ehh, you've got Blight Crawlers, level sixty-seven or sixty-eight monsters. A pack can be dangerous for tier sevens, but that's by our standards. Blight Thecosomatas. Level sixty-five, they aren't dangerous themselves, but they tend to fly out of reach and pepper the environment with blight dust, which heals blight monsters and obviously harms non-blight things. But again, I doubt that'd be a problem for you to handle."

Rory nodded along, not disagreeing.

"Blight Mites. They're not very large, ranging from the size of my thumb upwards to the size of a small critter, and are another monster that isn't particularly dangerous alone, but they're closer to a living organic trap. Step on a Blight Mite hive, and tens of thousands will rush out like a living dust cloud, covering you head to toe. They'll try to eat their way inside your body, but if they can't do that, they will instead explode, splattering corrosives."

"Hmmm. That sounds interesting,"

Apostolos frowned. Rory showing signs of interest in the Blight Mites of all things was alarming.

Pushing the thought aside, Apostolos listed off any variant of blight monster he knew of that might be interesting to Rory. While most of them he'd never seen personally -none of them had seen- it was information given to them by the Second Prince, so it was sure to be reliable.

As they continued, Rory would occasionally withdraw a weapon from his inventory, for some reason preferring the sling shot, and handle any monsters that appeared. It was only when the monsters that appeared began to be groups of tier sevens that Rory swapped to something a little more potent than the dinky slingshot.

"Rory?" Apostolos finally asked after he'd cleared out their seventh group of level seventy-one blight snappers. "What exactly is your goal here? You said old times' sake to explore, but this feels like you've got a destination in mind."

"Oh, yeah," Rory nodded in agreement. "That's because I do. Originally, I wanted to check out this territory a bit and get a better feel of these blight monsters, and yeah, it's ugly as sin," Rory crinkled his nose as he took in the landscape that looked like an expanse of living, festering flesh, burping up clouds of noxious fumes, and seething with festering pustules. "But that mention of Blight Mites got me really curious."

E.O.N., damn it, I knew it was a bad sign that he seemed interested.

"I've been thinking of what I wanted to do to better equip Ehkorrus for the future," Rory continued, turning as Apostolos finally realized that Rory was following something, not just meandering for no reason. "I intend to retrofit the walls into something closer to a living thing, or a pseudo-living thing, more closely aligned with the municipal affinity of Ehkorrus. When you mentioned these Blight Mites being basically a colony of tiny monsters that exist to serve as a biological landmine, how could I not want to steal that idea?"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I need to capture a hive," Rory said. "But I don't need some plain sub-colony. Oh no, I want the Prime colony."

"Wouldn't that likely bring us close to the central domain of the Blight Lord?" Apostolos suddenly realized, worried. "Also, won't that take us a long time to push that deep into its territory?"

"Oh, sure it would." Rory agreed. "Normally, that is."

"Normally?"

"Because I'm cheating, duh. These domains are folded space, and Khans can expand or contract the space to fit their needs. For the Khan of Blue Lightning, in the past, he kept his domain spatially contracted to outsiders; his control was much more consolidated inward, and thus, he'd rather bring an invader directly to him. The other Khans, meanwhile, are fighting off assault from enemy forces, so they'd want to expand their space, preventing a blitzkrieg from occurring."

"Blitzkrieg?"

"A rush to the heart of their territory," Rory explained. "Now, I'm cheating because we're cutting through the spatial expansions."

"How?" Apostolos asked.

"Seams Unseen, and my own grasp of space concepts. Folded space corresponds with other points of folded space, such as when you fold a piece of paper; two points will touch each other. This is similar, except that multiple points can touch at once. I'm identifying those weak points and cutting straight through them. All of this is possible because this Blight Lord has more of a focus on expansion rather than consolidation."

"Oh!" Apostolos's eyes widened. "Its grasp isn't firm!"

"Bingo, if I tried this in the Khan of Blue Lightning's territory, ignoring that we're allied, I'd find these spatial 'tunnels' zipped tight."

"That actually makes a lot of sense. You think you can teach others this?"

"Maybe, but it's going to be a lot harder to grasp without the background knowledge I've got. But I can try if you have anyone really suited."

"I'll see if I can find anyone," Apostolos said. "So, I understand how you're cutting this trip down, but how are you locating the hive itself?"

"Technically, I'm not," Rory answered. "I'm following logic, my assumption is the further in we punch, eventually I'll catch notice of something that matches what you'd expect from a hive of these Blight Mites."

Feeling less assured, Apostolos went silent as they continued for some time longer, the density of tier seven monsters growing until Apostolos felt the need to speak up.

"Uhh, Rory, I'm pretty sure they know we're here now."

"What gave that away?" Rory asked as he finished slaying a group of Blight Knights, a small swarm of boomerangs having cut them down like wheat to a scythe, said swarm still flying around in parabolic flight patterns.

"Have you locked on to the hive yet?"

"Not quite," Rory said. "But I can feel we're getting close."

"And what happens when-"

Apostolos was cut off, as instead of a group of Blight Knights, three Blight Commanders appeared, rushing over a cresting hill atop oversized Blight Hodags, monsters that were even higher level than the commanders themselves, albeit devoid of any intelligence.

"Hmm, yeah, they've definitely realized they've got invaders," Rory said. "Seventy-five, seventy-five, seventy-six, and three level seventy-seven beasts. Now we're starting to show actual resistance."

It was amazing to Apostolos that Rory could say that so casually; each one of the blight commanders was, at worst, a near equal for himself, and here he was discussing it as if they were finally worth a warm-up. It was something he had come to accept, or he thought he had, but he still felt his mouth go dry.

"Foolish invaders," The first of the commanders said as it neared them. "Be thy pawns of the-"

"No, not pawns of anyone," Rory said, clicking his tongue in annoyance. With the click of his tongue, his swarm of projected boomerang-like blades shot forward, carving into the flanks of the hodangs as they began to stamp their feet in annoyance, trying to gnash as the annoying gnats cut into them.

Leaping from their steeds, the three towering commanders charged forward, slashing with clawed hands as three-prong slash marks the color of rot ripped through the air toward Rory. Sweeping his own arm out, he instantly held his bone staff, arcs of heavenly energies colliding with the blight magic. Three against one, the opposing forces cancelled out in a cloud of green and blue smoke.

Apostolos could have joined in, but he could tell that Rory was entertaining himself, the slight upward angle of his eyebrow the telltale sign that he was only half-focused on the battle, thoughts on something else.

A few more times, the opposing forces clashed, the blight commanders oddly wary of approaching.

No, not oddly. Apostolos reminded himself. Rory was a high-tier-seven, bordering on peak. For the blight commanders, only marginally past mid-tier-seven, it was likely they would be far more cautious against an opponent of his caliber than Apostolos, whose level was within spitting distance of their own.

And yet the caution didn't matter, as after a few minutes of magic colliding, Rory snapped his fingers.

"Found it,"

"Found what?" Apostolos asked, having been distracted by the battle, just how casual Rory was.

"The hive, duh."

"How?"

"These three stooges," Rory jerked a thumb at the Blight Commanders, who took the moment to raise their arms overhead, a single orb of yellow and green appearing above them. "Oh, one second, that actually has some oomph to it."

Holding his hands together in a as if here were holding a large ball, Apostolos watched as Rory's hands began to light up with sparks, arcing from the fingers on his left hand to the fingers on his right hand, traveling downward, and arcing out from his right thumb to his left thumb, faster and faster until it was like a funnel of heavenly energies.

"What is that?" Apostolos asked.

"Application of heavenly energies in a rotating 'circuit', it gathers momentum and speed, building up in strength, and is only limited by my own ability to maintain the circuit. All these blight monsters are giving me a hell of an opportunity to test out my ability to utilize heavenly energies with freeform magic. It's been a few decades now that I've been able to handle heavenly energies. Still, they're generally worse than just using basic electricity or lighting, except against monsters attuned to corruptive affinities, so you can probably understand why I haven't gotten a ton of practical work in."

It was amusing, in a weird and almost alien way, how, facing down a combined, last-ditch attack from three Blight Commanders, Rory was lecturing about the nature of what he was doing as if it was no big deal.

"Alright, that's about good enough," Rory said as a concentrated ray of blight energies shot forward, meaning to spear through his heart. Releasing his hold on the swirling funnel of heavenly energies, a chaotic swirl of blue and gold lightning bolts shot forward, shredding the unified attack and exploding in front of the masked faces of the Blight Commanders. Obscured by a dust cloud from the explosion, when the seconds ticked by, what was left were three corpses, torn asunder by the energy that seemed to care little for their natural defenses. Even their steeds had been reduced to quivering hulks of festering flesh that would spasm, their appendages replaying the signals of their death throes as they tried to fend off the boomerangs that had carved them into chunks.

Still staring at the sight, Apostolos shook his head as Rory grinned at him.

"Now then, let's go nab that hive."

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