The Harvester

When Svanya came out of the Gula, she immediately located what she was looking for. Her senses picked up on the floating island far into the distance better than even Rakna had.

"…I see," she grimaced when a terrifying presence abruptly concentrated on her. She didn't have to do anything to counter it since Lilia's buffs resisted it for her. Without wasting a second, she rushed forward and her speed peaked instantly. It was as if her movements had ignored all forms of wind-up or acceleration.

She blitzed toward the Dungeon dozens of times faster than sound. As soon as she did so, a barrage of multi-colored gems shot out of nowhere. One of those had been enough to punch a hole through Rakna's torso before he could react, but Svanya simply waved her hand with a sneer.

"I may despise this affliction… but do not believe I failed to harness its power," she mumbled.

Without fanfare, they all disappeared out of view as if erased from Existence.

* * *

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A large draconic silhouette with six arms, wearing a dark robe, stiffened inside the Dungeon. "That girl…" The Chintamani Lord's oddly soft tone echoed and he fully turned his head in the direction of the 'offender'; his jewels illuminating his slitted white and black eyes.

"Empirical Dissociation Syndrome?" The creature muttered to himself. "Even Systema who draws upon the Laws of the Spiritual Tree cannot sustain the life of a mortal like this…" He said and then noticed something else about the woman. "Ah… a half-breed. A World Sage…? That explains it. She seems of royal lineage as well. Quite a unique human."

The Lord chuckled as she watched her approach. "Well, should I entertain myself a little?"

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Svanya's pupils narrowed and summoned a sheathed longsword in her hand. It looked ceremonial in appearance with all the expensive decorations it possessed. She gripped the handle and clicked it out of its scabbard right as a giant carved jewel flew at her from above like a meteor.

And, incongruously, as if the time taken to swing the weapon had been ignored, Svanya sheathed the sword back and the jewel was slashed in two. The two halves whizzed past her and crashed into the ground below, releasing yellow trails all the way.

'…the energy packed into them didn't detonate,' Svanya thought warily and glanced down at the cut jewel. She shuddered when she saw dirt, stone, water, and air gather around each half. Before long, two giant golems made from earthly elements were raised with the divided jewel as their cores.

She was sure that there wasn't such a spell imbued into the precious stone when she cut it. But it somehow spawned a golem; one for each of its split parts. That wasn't normal. It was as if the very nature of the jewel automatically created a body with what it could get its hands on.

Wordlessly, she allowed them to swing their colossal arms at her and held her sword vertically in front of her. She waited for them to be as close as possible and then revealed the pristine blade of her weapon for half a second before it was retracted with another metallic click.

On cue, the golems' arms split as if peeled in two directions. From their knuckles to their shoulders, hundreds of meters worth; all of it was neatly sliced.

Svanya's eyes flicked toward the Dungeon and she activated her power again. This time, what was ignored was the distance between her and her destination. Not unlike teleportation, she traversed the rest of the distance in one instant.

Truth was, while it was a fool's errand to do so, she was one of the few in her guild that could have actually made their way to this place without Rakna's Gula. For most, teleportation would have compensated for the distance.

For her? Making the trip with her innate speed would have indeed taken potential years, but the power earned from her affliction was a different matter altogether. She existed, and at the same time didn't. This bizarre state she lived in was eventually exploited for herself.

If she had to get rid of a projectile, she could switch its existence from real to nothing. If she had to swing a sword, she simply did so while in a state of 'inexistence' and when she returned to 'reality', the world would catch up to her action. If she had to go somewhere, she could erase her existence from where she stood and reform herself somewhere she had a spatial awareness of.

This was the power of the Unseen One that had unnerved Ensis himself. Of course, it had its limits and could be overcome with raw power, but the latter was something she also possessed.

"You use it well, child," a voice boomed outside of the Dungeon and Svanya shivered. She gazed at the floating island from up close, renewing her impression of it.

The dirt seemed like amber, the stone was silver, the vegetation was made of emerald and jade, the water looked like liquid sapphire, the fruits were rubies, and the citadel built in the center of the island had at least a hundred more types of gemstones incorporated into it. Even the clouds in the direct vicinity of the Dungeon resembled diamonds and quartzes more than anything else.

Fascinatingly, Svanya wasn't overwhelmed. The combination of brilliance and color somehow felt natural to the eye and blended in with its organic counterpart.

"Are you a friend of that young wolf?" The voice asked and she scowled.

Svanya remained silent and extended her hand, touching an invisible barrier.

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Hidden Dungeon, Chintamani's Palace, discovered!

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Entry Requirements: None.

Level Limit: None.

Party Limit: 10.

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Do you wish to enter?

Yes/No

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Please select a difficulty:

⦓ ??? ⦔

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Svanya furrowed her eyebrows. 'It's worse than expected...'

"Frightened?" The voice returned with a teasing tone and her expression twitched. "If that is all you're going to do, princess, then you might want to leave as soon as you can."

The regal woman shuddered at his words and before she knew it, tens of golems like the ones she had partially destroyed just a moment ago began to rise from the land around the island, and even more behind her. Each of them was big enough to be considered a true titan.

Hexagonal jewels of various colors sprouted from the center of their torsos and began to charge large rays pointed at her. Just one of those could level a city, much less all of them at once. Altering the state of her existence wouldn't be enough to dodge or defend. 

"Tch," she clicked her tongue and flew up, circling a golem that was cutting off her line of sight with the Gula; she could only 'teleport' to places she could see with her own eyes. Her soul became thin and switched states; but unexpectedly, she found herself reappearing halfway to the portal.

She widened her eyes and then swiped to her right with her fist, deflecting a wind blade heading toward her. At the same time, a flock of pterodactyl Wilden swarmed her, releasing an unnaturally high amount of aura for their level and blocking her advance. One of them especially looked like a wyvern and was flying where she had intended to 'teleport' to.

Normally, regular monsters of the Fifth Plateau wouldn't even survive a flick of her finger, but each of those in her current vicinity had a strange feature; a jewel encrusted into their foreheads.

'He can do it with living beings too?' She scowled. 'And it makes them strong enough to interfere with my Énas Midén? Just how much power do those jewels contain? And how?' She wondered and tossed her sword into the air. 

She curled her fingers and crossed her arms as if pulling on something tied to each of them. Light glimmered around her and the Wilden froze in place. Svanya twirled her wrists afterward and in the blink of an eye, the hundreds of artificially enhanced beasts had their wings clipped.

Their blood rained as she caught her sword during its fall. She dashed forward in a burst of speed, approaching the Gula, where the unscathed Wyvern began to charge a breath with the help of the shining white jewel on its forehead.

Svanya gripped her sword and narrowed her eyes. "Get out of my way," she spat and in return, the wyvern roared out a white beam of raw energy. It didn't feel like mana or ki; it was as if someone had extracted the very concept of power and given it shape.

"[Lepída Plégmatos,]" she whispered and hundreds of glowing strings coiled around her blade as she unsheathed it. Then, once again, her body skipped all physical steps and before the white wave of energy could strike her, it halted on its path and she rocketed into it without a care.

From her mere movements, the energetic attack collapsed into square shapes as if a grid had gone through it and partitioned it. The Wyvern was similarly immobile, but when Svanya reached it, she did not even need to make contact for the body to crumble in the same way.

And, as she sensed the golems about to fire their attacks, she swiped the white jewel that had been fused with the Wyvern and jumped into the Gula.

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The Chintamani Lord chuckled to himself after she was gone and snapped his fingers. His golems immediately stopped and their energy flowed back into their cores. Without difficulty, everything was canceled and the golems rejoined the landscape of the Fifth Plateau's swamp after falling apart.

"She pilfered one of my jewels, huh?" He remarked in amusement. "Oh, well, it's irrelevant. I await the next time you visit… along with the wolf who is supposed to devour me."

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* * *

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Svanya gracefully landed inside Rakna's training room, rendering her momentum nonexistent. She breathed out in relief and looked at the therian who had been in the middle of dismissing a crystal-like deck of cards out of view.

They nodded at each other and Rakna approached the Gula. He grabbed the edge of the portal and then pulled it down, almost like closing a curtain. When the two edges of the elliptical gateway got close, they attached to each other like magnets and closed for good.

"So?" Lilia tilted her head at Svanya.

The regal woman grunted. "It's worse than we thought. Also…" She trailed and looked down at her hand that she knew should have been gripping a certain jewel. But all that was left was a handful of white powder. "…that Boss is the real deal."

"Solo?"

"It's not that bad," Svanya shook her head. "There are no requirements or level caps. And the party limit is 10. Normally, that would have been more than enough for our guild's caliber, but… not only is the Boss powerful enough for his presence and abilities to bleed outside the Dungeon to a great extent, but the difficulty option was locked and redacted. I'm not sure 10 of us is enough…"

She proceeded to recount what she saw while Rakna's eyes wandered toward the white dust that had slid down her grip. Golden crosses flashed over his pupils and he frowned slightly.

"Do you see anything?" Svanya eventually asked him as Lilia was busy writing down the content of their conversation in the Guild Chat before she forgot it. 

"Not exactly…" He mumbled. "Though, this jewel was definitely a Chintamani… sort of."

"How so?"

"I believe it's a piece of a bigger whole. A Chintamani should essentially be something on the level of a Philosopher's Stone. It's most likely not 'transmutation', but a concept equally powerful. That it crumpled to dust in your hand means what you took was just an extension; a bit like the material of my body that loses power after getting away from me for too long."

"Hm," Svanya hummed in understanding, even if she was missing some details. "Then, is this based on distance? The moment I took the portal, it lost all the power it had inside of it."

"Right. You said each of them had extreme amounts of energy inside of them and could act as cores for all kinds of vessels?"

"Yes. The way those golems were formed or how the Wilden were 'possessed' seemed like a natural reaction to the stones themselves, not a skill or spell. Also, the energy itself had no affinity. It felt removed from ordinary types like heat, electricity, light, or motion."

"Uh, then something similar to Cura's Nirvana… or my obsidian star's points," Rakna held his chin in thought and recalled a term he saw just earlier on The Philosopher's Sleeve.

'Original Transmutation… similar to Original Mana,' he thought.

"{It could be related to the Lost Era,}" Fray chimed in. "{The more I hear the term, the more I have a hunch that it relates to those times. Hans told us, didn't he? That back then mana was something you breathed in like air. Maybe to us, you could classify that mana as the 'original one'.}"

'Hm, that's reasonable. But what would the Chintamani Lord be in that case? Is he a relic of the past like Hans and Gulon, or… is the Chintamani itself the relic, and he's just the holder?'

"{You could always ask the Wailful Nightmare if he knows anything about it.}"

'Will do.'

"Hey. Efficiency master," Lila suddenly said and Rakna slowly looked at her.

"Are you… calling me?"

"Yes."

"…please don't call me that."

"…master?"

"That's worse..." He facepalmed. "Hell, if you start calling me that way after returning from my territory, your father might seriously murder me."

She blinked and then shrugged. "Chat," she simply said.

Rakna sighed and opened the Guild Chat.

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<Credo ><!-- --> Obsidian, how many places out of the ten will you need in the party?

<Blood ><!-- --> Damn, the boss is really trusting the kid… wait a minute… That's discrimination! No one cared about my opinion when I first joined!

<Clown> I believe… you being you is more than enough for an explanation.

<Blood > Fuck you!

…

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"As lively as ever," Rakna deadpanned and focused on the message Ensis had pinged him in. He was asking how many people he would bring to the Dungeon. "...can't help it," he muttered to himself, and without warning, gray lines began to fume under his skin, startling Svanya and Lilia.

"Lanata, Hans, Ceresta, Fiora, and Kaelith…" The therian frowned as he listed the names. The roster suggested to him by Founding Intuition wasn't that surprising, but there was something else the ability was trying to tell him that he couldn't quite understand.

He was about to answer Credo's question when a realization hit his mind. "Of course…" He smiled to himself and then replied after disengaging his Firmament Monarch ability.

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<Obsidian ><!-- --> Give me four slots; me included.

<Credo ><!-- --> Understood. We'll discuss a date for the raid later on.

<Obsidian > Got it.

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"{Four?}" Fray asked in confusion.

'Think about it for a while and you'll get it,' Rakna snorted.

"{…?}"

"Well, my work here is done," Svanya sighed and returned her longsword to her storage.

Lilia hummed audibly and looked up. "Stay. Socialize," she nodded with determination.

Rakna sweatdropped. "Knock yourself out… but if you want to socialize, I don't recommend going for Hans, or Cura, if he visits. Try Ceresta or Evelyn, I think you could be good friends."

The young woman mused for a while before nodding.

"You too, Svanya," he followed up and the blonde's expression shifted as if she had heard something totally unforeseen. 

"You probably don't… 'socialize' a lot, as Lilia eloquently put it, but try if you don't have anything else to do. In fact, consult Hans about a method to make others remember you. If it was up to me alone, I wouldn't be confident in developing a solution any soon, but he might be able to come up with something."

Svanya gawked at him in a mix of hope and uncertainty. "I… will try," she muttered. "However, are you not coming up with us?"

"Nah, I have a few things to review with my status and items," he said and sat cross-legged on the floor once again. "And most importantly… I'm going to finish a Quest right now."

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