At first glance, the rockfall looked worse than it actually was. Though the distraction of the ancient skeleton made it harder than it should have been to really look past it, to be fair.

  Given the limited space that lay beyond the concealed door, the girls waited for me in the main cave for the moment while I used my Manipulate Element

  Prodding the skull a few times with a clawed hand, I confirmed that it wasn’t going to get up and bite me anytime soon. The last time I’d ignored corpses in one of the ruins, they’d reanimated and attacked me, Kassandra, and Rieka. But the skull simply rocked in response to the prodding and then fell free. So I scooted it carefully to one side and focused on the collapsed stones.

  Running Manipulate Elementvery dense considering the fine particles that make it up. But they were comparatively easy to crumble instead of granite. Which meant my work would be a lot easier to reshape them.

  The collapsed stones were starting to merge back together from the weight of the overhead stone, and given enough time would have filled in the passage entirely. But using my Manipulate Element

  “Liam, how’s it going?” Kassandra called from the entrance after around ten minutes of work.

  I glanced back to check on her and found my sweet little lamia peering warily down the tunnel my way. Backlit by a second light source that Shayla had set up outside the tunnel, the shimmer of the light in her hair and on her scales was far more alluring than it should have been.

  “Good, should be through in a bit,” I answered and kept pressing upwards with both hands.

  I’d used Shape-Shifting

  The one thing that this was good for was training my Mana Reservoir Grant Power

  , I thought with a snort as I scraped another handful of softened stone away from the pillar I was shaping and crammed it into a crack to fill that hole in. My magic flowed after the stone, melding it into place as if it had been that way all along.

  “Okay, just wanted to make sure. Do you want one of us in here with you now that there is more space? Just in case something jumps out or is hiding in the rocks?” Kassandra asked while I was turning that idea over in my head and I paused.

  Looking back at my dwarf lamia once more, I could see the concern in her eyes and it didn’t take long for me to figure out what might be bothering her. The last time they’d left me up to my own devices in one of the human ruins, I’d set off a lightning trap and nearly killed myself. While I didn’t expect something like that to happen again right now, there was no reason not to be careful.

  “Sure, if you want to keep watch for something sneaking up on me, that’d be nice.”

  My response got a sunny smile from the busty snake girl and she promptly snuggled her coils underneath herself to stand watch, her spell rod held at the ready. I could hear the girls talking on the other side of the wall, but nothing concerned me so I didn’t pry.

  “How have things been, Kass? I don’t think I’ve asked you for a while,” I asked, turning back to what I was doing. Pressing upwards with both large, flat paws, I pressed mana into the ceiling and flexed it upwards, reinforcing the arch some more before ordering the sandstone to harden once more.

  “Good! I’m assuming you mean with class and everything, right?”

  “Yes and no,” I grunted as the weight overhead shifted and I had to brace myself firmly before lifting a massive hunk of rock back into place and fusing the ends together. “I just realized that things have been so busy lately, I haven’t checked in with my dear Nugget on how she is doing. Physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

  “Ah,” Kassandra said, giving a little giggle and wiggling down into her coils. “I take it you are concerned about how I’m taking your relationships?”

  “Somewhat,” I bent and picked up another large hunk of stone, pressing it to the ceiling and using the Manipulate Element

  “I’m doing fine, Liam,” Kassandra replied, her voice full of warmth and love. “I have no issues sharing you with the others, especially since they are all good girls and friends of mine. If I had to share you with someone like say… Josephine? That would be entirely different and I wouldn’t hesitate to bring it up.”

  “That’s good. I wouldn’t want to be involved with that woman either, so no worries there,” I said laughingly. Josephine was another noblewoman who had decided to make it her purpose to harass Kassandra for the dwarf lamia’s friendship with the princess, believing her to not be worthy of such a connection. For the most part, she’d done it through her minions, but it had been increasingly obvious that those goons had been doing it at Josephine’s request.

  “Oh, I’m not worried at all. I’m certain there would be ways to get rid of her if she tried,” Kassandra said, this time her voice going icy for a moment before it went back to her normal light and friendly tone. “Besides, I know you wouldn’t touch someone like that, Liam. You know what kind of a bitch she is.”

  Doing my best to ignore the brief, violent moment from Kassandra, I instead snorted and just shook my head.

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  “I’d have to not have eyes to miss it. Did we ever find out what happened in the wake of the competition?”

  The last time I’d seen Josephine, it had been during the end of semester competition between the summoner classes, and her polar worm summon had nearly killed me before I’d brought it down since the creature went wild and was aiming to attack the girls. She’d been escorted out of the arena by Queen Gemma’s guards, considering that her summon had been on a collision course for Rieka as well.

  “Last I’d heard, Josephine was no longer a student at Juneau. Rieka told me that she was being confined to her family's estates since this was her first infraction.” Kassandra growled low in her throat at that and I couldn’t fault her. One of the times that I’d been summoned had been to rescue my dwarf lamia when a prank went out of control.

  Josephine’s lackey’s had doused her with water as a prank, but Kassandra had panicked and lashed out with her ice magic. This had the added effect of heavily chilling the water that soaked her, which nearly sent Kassandra into shock because of her cold-blooded nature.

  , I thought with a grin that I was careful to hide from my lover. I didn’t need her teasing me again.

  Instead, I focused on something else that would happily distract Kassandra before she spotted my grin.

  “So, Kass. Why don’t you tell me about your estates, since we’ll be visiting them after we are done here?”

  I swear the room got brighter with how much she lit up at that, and Kassandra began happily nattering on about the new orchards she had established and the plans she had for the village near her home. Listening to her talk away helped distract me from the mind numbing labor I was performing.

  <><><>

  As soon as I broke through to the other side, the other three girls piled into the corridor to guard me while I finished widening the passage and ensured that we could get through without a problem. Kassandra actually slithered past me, taking up a point position to cover my back while I shifted the last of the stone out of the way.

  Once it was safe, I pushed past her once more to hold the lead while the rest of the girls moved up too. Shayla had shifted the light spell from my hand earlier to the wall, but she plucked it free with her magic and flung it forward down the dark corridor to reveal what waited for us.

  Chaos, battle, and ancient remains decorated the corridor beyond, telling a tale of blood and pain that lingered long in the past.

  While the passage up until now had been a mixture of natural sedimentary rock, the deeper part of the corridor had instead been lined with dense granite bricks. Those bricks were far more sturdy than the natural sedimentary rock, but even they showed the damage caused by this ancient battle.

  Molten stone had run and pooled on the ground, surrounded by scorch marks and the ancient stains of blood long dried and gone. Bones intermixed with rusted metal lay scattered about the corridor, and not all of the bones were human in their origin. Enough time had passed that the decay no longer stank, but I swear I could the stain of death in this place.

  “Again…” Jane murmured, her voice unsteady. “Again we found a place that was ravaged by battle. But what kind of fight went on here? Were they defending? Invading? There are legends of the humans, but we don’t know where they went. Just that they all died, seemingly overnight.”

  That bit of information was news to me. I’d known that humans were creatures of legend for the people on Cortha, which I’d been leaning into somewhat with my Shape-Shifting

  “Be careful,” Shayla insisted, flicking her spell rod to stick the light spell to the wall about twenty yards down before conjuring another to repeat the gesture. The corridor wasn’t wide, but it did vanish deep into the earth. “We don’t know what else might be hiding amongst the remains. You mentioned undead before, right Liam?”

  “Yeah,” Rieka answered for me. “We ran into undead and golems back at the Shadow Mountain facility, as well as the summoning traps that you remember, I’m sure.”

  “Definitely,” Shayla said with a shiver that sent both her antennae and wings dancing.

  “Single file,” I advised, getting nods from the girls, and started forward.

  As much as I didn’t want to disrespect the dead, I couldn’t take chances right now. The girls were more important to me than any kind of misgivings I might feel here. So as I worked my way down the corridor, I banished my boots into my Dimensional Pocket

  I passed over a dozen skeletons within the first twenty feet, but they started to thin out more as I got further down the tunnel. Unfortunately, the battle damage just got worse. It became rapidly obvious that the reason that the ceiling had fallen in was because of the damage caused by the battle.

  Deep gouges marked the floor and walls, with different scorch marks to mark types of attacks. I’d been around Rieka long enough to recognize the specific style of scorching that lightning leaves behind, and the spikes of shaped stone told me that earth magic had been used as well.

  “Whatever happened here, they fought ,” Shayla whispered from the back of the group. I nodded in agreement without looking back, focusing forward as we went.

  The first of the traps was easy to spot, as the stone plate had been dislodged and now sat crooked, revealing the faintly glowing runes underneath it. I spotted the plate lying on the other side of an odd, quadrupedal skeleton and held up a hand to stop the girls.

  “Hold up, trap. Let me check it,” I said aloud, getting quiet noises of assent from them.

  Shifting my left arm into the scorpion-tail configuration, I used that to sweep aside the skeleton before peering closer at the array. It looked a lot like the one that we’d found in the previous complex when I’d pried up one of the pressure plates, and since the runes underneath it were still glowing, I figured that the trap was still active, though damaged.

  I thought and made sure that all the girls saw it as well. Jane dug about in her bag before producing a large lump of white chalk that she held up, nodding towards the plate questioningly.

  “Mark it, but be careful,” I warned. Jane bobbed her head quickly in agreement before scampering forward to leave thick lines of the white substance around the plate’s edges. While she worked, I caught Rieka’s eyes and my princess nodded in understanding at my look. She’d keep an eye on Jane for me as well.

  Stepping past the small scholar, I kept going, this time using the reach of my tail-arm to check the bricks in front of me for any triggers. That was until I remembered that I could use my Manipulate Element

  Again, I had the girls stand back before I purposefully set off the trap, stomping on it with one foot before leaping back.

  My girls were ready and waiting, and four different spells tore into the conjured creature as it took shape in midair. What I was fairly certain had been some kind of fire-breathing goat was electrified, impaled with ice, sliced with hardened wind blades, and crisped with focused light before it even finished solidifying.

  The body crashed to the ground before dispersing in a cloud of mana once more, just as the other summoned creatures had before.

  “Well, that answers one question that I had,” I muttered while Jane moved up to mark the brick with her chalk so the others would avoid it.

  “What is that, Liam?” Shayla asked, offering me a waterskin to drink from while we waited.

  I took a deep pull of the liquid and sighed in relief. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until I’d started to drink, but I didn’t want to have a bunch of liquid sloshing around in my stomach if this got into a fight. So I returned the waterskin to the moth woman and explained.

  “These bodies, the non-human ones I mean,” I said, gesturing to the quadrupedal corpse that lay nearby. “They aren’t summoned by the traps. So something else must have brought these creatures in here.”

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