The Kingdom of Zephyria sat in the shadow of Cardella geographically and in the shadow of its own geological inheritance in every other sense, built across the mouth of the oldest and largest dungeon in the known world.

A structure so vast that its lower floors stopped behaving like floors at all by the 70th floor and started behaving like separate dimensions, with open skies and weather systems and terrain that had no logical relationship to the rock several kilometers above it.

Both Zephyria and Cardella had entrances to that dungeon, and they alone shared that access to it, which had made them neighbors in a geographical sense and allies in the political sense for as long as either nation had maintained records of being either of those things.

The dungeon itself had an estimated depth of 1000 floors, of which approximately 150 had been properly documented across tens of thousands of years of organized exploration, and the pace of that documentation had slowed considerably as the floors grew stranger and the things living on them grew more powerful and less interested in being studied.

It was on floor 150, in the ruins of a city that predated almost every civilization currently operating on the surface, that a team of Zephyrian archaeologists had found the monolith.

Pitch-black stone, etched with a ritual in a script that had taken eleven months to partially translate, and dating, by every method available, to the First Age, which was approximately 1,84,000 years ago.

The implication that arrived alongside the dating was, if anything, more significant than the ritual itself, because the monolith had been placed in what the ruins clearly indicated was a city square. Which meant that people of the First Age had not merely found floor one hundred and fifty. They had built there. And they placed such a powerful ritual as mere decoration for one of their city squares.

Which also meant they had been considerably deeper, and the true extent of the dungeon’s explored history was not 150 floors but an unknown number well beyond that, and the knowledge of what those deeper floors contained had been lost entirely.

The findings had been classified at the highest level Zephyria’s royal family could enforce, and the circle of people who knew about them only included The Adventurer’s Guild, the Royal Family of Zephyria, and a small number of allied nations whose trust Zephyria had maintained across generations.

And of course, Pantheon knew as well, because Pantheon was counted among Zephyria’s oldest allies and because information of that magnitude eventually found its way to organizations that had been operating for three thousand years and had learned to listen for it.

What Pantheon had not anticipated was that Luke knew too.

Lady Strelitzia set her cup down.

"How do you know about this?"

The chuckle Luke let out was so obviously forced that even a child could see through it.

"Multiple contacts," he said.

"They are?"

The chuckle died. His shoulders drew inward by a fraction that on any other person would have been invisible, but on Luke it was more than visible enough.

"Master, that is not really the relevant point here, you see, because the information itself is what matters, and the source of the information is somewhat secondary to the broader geopolitical question I was actually trying to raise, which is our stance on the ritual itself, and I think if we focus on that, and have a very productive..."

Lady Strelitzia looked at him.

Just looked at him.

Luke knew better than to keep yapping.

The ocean moved beyond the open balcony.

A gull called somewhere in the distance.

And Luke sat very still on the sofa with his hands on his knees and a face dripping with regret.

Then, in a voice that had lost approximately all of its volume, he said, "Queen of Eldanith."

The silence that followed was one of a kind.

Lady Strelitzia’s eyes went through several things in rapid succession.

The recognition.

The political nightmare those two words signified.

Pantheon’s alliance with Eldanith, and the specific position Eldanith occupied relative to Zephyria, which was neighboring and allied and historically stable, and the specific position the Queen of Eldanith occupied relative to the King of Eldanith, which was married, and the specific position Luke occupied relative to all of that, which was a catastrophically disastrous affair.

All the while, she just stared at him.

He had already begun the process of making himself smaller on the sofa, shoulders coming forward, back curling slightly, which on a man of his physical construction looked deeply unnatural, like watching a siege weapon try to appear non-threatening.

"You said multiple contacts," she said.

Luke said nothing.

"Who else?"

Luke said nothing, which was itself a form of statement.

"Who else!" Lady Strelitzia raised her voice, which she had not done in a considerable period of time, and the sound itself had considerably more physical presence than most powers in the world.

Luke’s whole body flinched as though he was struck by lightning, and the words came out like a waterfall.

"Princess of Zephyria, the twins... and their mother, wife of Vallaskar’s crown prince, Nyxoria’s Royal Archmage, Countess of Brennath, Lady Seraphel of the Eastern Accord, the High Inquisitor’s sister who is... technically not a royal but has access to classified briefings through the Inquisitor’s household, Duchess Vael of Mirendor, Princess-Regent of Orvyn, the Naval Commander of the Southern Pact who is also the third daughter of the King of-"

And just as he paused to take a breath and continue, Lady Strelitzia held up one hand, and Luke immediately stopped speaking.

While she sat, marinating in what her dear disciple had just been given for a moment, working through the names and titles and the specific political entanglements that each of them represented, the alliance implications, the intelligence leak pathways, the chain of pillow talk that had apparently connected Luke to one of the most classified archaeological discoveries in modern history.

And the expression that moved through her face was not anger exactly, though anger was present; it was one of logical deductions that kept producing escalating and cascading geopolitical disasters.

"You..." she breathed, voice trembling slightly in rage, and then stopped.

Luke sat very still as she took a slow, deep breath through her nose and said-

"Verbena is right."

Luke looked up meekly, his expression asking the question he didn’t dare voice out.

"We really should castrate you."

Luke’s face went white as a sheet in a mere instant. Because he knew his master never joked.

"Master, wait-" he said, arms already flailing, and voice damn near cracking, "Wait, I’ll cut them off myself, all of them, every contact, gone, completely, I swear on the Boomstick. And you said I should build an independent intelligence network, you said-"

He caught her expression and stopped mid-sentence, looking like he might actually cry.

"You will sever every one of those contacts," she said after another long, slow breath. "And if word reaches me that even one of those situations has produced a political incident, the resolution will not involve a surgeon."

"Yes, Master," he said, nodding with more vigour than he had fought Nom-Nom with.

"Now," Lady Strelitzia said. "Our stance on the Summoned Heroes..."

Luke straightened slightly, and the relief of having a topic that was not the previous topic was very visible in how he did it.

"It is neutral for now."

"May I ask why?"

"The ritual, one dating back to the First age, describes them as extremely powerful," she said. "By current standards..."

"They would be gods!"

"Effectively. So before any position can be taken, we must first establish with certainty whether that man is the Destined Hero or the Demon God, and whether his counterpart has appeared."

She looked at the ocean and continued. "If he is the Destined Hero, then Verbena’s theory is proven true. The Hero appears first. The Demon God follows. The Hero is the true initiating cause of the Cycle."

"I’m not sure I follow, Master."

"If he is the Destined Hero, we need him under control. Once that is confirmed, our stance on the summoning will shift toward support." She turned back, looking Luke in the eye. "We cultivate him. We develop his power until he is capable of managing the Summoned Heroes, because Heroes pulled from another realm and given power on the scale of the First Age will not arrive with any natural allegiance to this world’s existing order. We need something capable of keeping them in line. And with his abilities and their firepower combined, eliminating the Demon God before the Demon God can consolidate should be achievable with manageable losses."

Luke turned that over for a moment.

"If it’s pure firepower we need for managing the Summoned Heroes," he said, with a furrow in his brows, "... wouldn’t the Demon God be a more straightforward asset? Our Founder did it once. He and the Demon God operated as allies."

"He was Arlen Hale," Lady Strelitzia said, and she spoke that name with utmost reverence. "The first and only person to break the Cycle of Regression through unity rather than force. The probability of replicating that approach under current conditions is near zero. We choose one and eliminate the other, and the Destined Hero is the correct choice."

"The Demon God is the stronger option on paper."

"On the surface, yes. But the fallout with Cardella and with Lady Sera would be significant and sustained, and we cannot afford that opposition while managing the Red Moon and a summoning of that scale simultaneously." She picked up her cup again. "We secure the Hero. We eliminate the Demon God before he becomes a strategic problem. Then we commit our resources to the ritual." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Luke nodded slowly. "What’s stopping Zephyria from moving forward on the summoning now?"

"Resources. The ritual requires mana and material investment at a scale that exceeds what Zephyria and its current allies can collectively provide." She set the cup down. "We can provide the difference. We alone can make up fifty percent of the requirement."

Luke was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "One more question."

"Hm."

"Couldn’t Aunt Nirvana identify him whenever she chooses? With her mastery of Fate and Probability, pinning down whether he is the Hero or the Demon God should only be a matter of thought."

"We have been unable to establish contact with Nirvana," Lady Strelitzia said.

Luke’s brow came together. "For how long?"

"Long enough that it is no longer a communication issue." She looked at him steadily. "Which brings me to your next assignment."

Luke’s eyes moved to the psychological evaluation sitting on the center table between them.

"The clearance-"

"You are not a fragile grunt, Luke. I will not invest my personal time, effort, and resources into cultivating an emotionally vulnerable man-child that must be coddled after every setback... So walk it off." She held his eyes, ensuring he understood every word she spoke. "You have fifteen minutes to do so and assemble your team here. This mission is level-black, and I will brief you personally."

Pausing for a beat, her gaze moved to the endless ocean.

"You are going to Shinkotsu."