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His heart was still hammering.

He held back from calling her. He didn’t exactly trust himself right now. His free evil +3 helped wizen him up.

The smartest thing was to act unfazed and give himself time to think. More importantly, he should check on his party members.

They were all doing their own thing during the winter lull. Naomi had gone west into the wilds to train. Gilbert and Bianca had gone east, but for separate reasons. Hannah remained in the village as the chief architect and protector, mostly focused on her own studies, experiments, and consistent stream of side quests.

Because the distance was so great, Zarian would’ve usually remained blind to their activities. That wasn’t the case anymore with Spectral Spider Network +2, which made the distance trivial.

Having a partial scaling to the Wonder stat made the experience of transmitting his attention down the phantom threads smooth and clear. He found Naomi first on the spider network, and his heart was hammering again.

He became her. He felt her heart racing, her blood rushing. He felt how her emotions were a cool blaze under her tranquil and clear-minded mentality. He felt psychic energy crackle around her flesh while her body worked like a miniature giant of raw vigor.

He felt all of that, especially with how smoothly Naomi invited him into her world via the mind spider. She’d learned to influence hers the best because of her Psionic Affinity.

It took a few seconds for Zarian to reorientate and see that she was fighting a lesser aberration of her own. It was in the high Level 70s, which worried Zarian some. Should he use Void Authority to enhance his next Void Step and help?

He held back for now and observed.

The corrupted monster had the face of a man while it had the body of a drake. It was a nightmare to face, yet Naomi brawled it with no hesitation.

Every blow Naomi landed struck with a shockwave of psionic force and giant might. She turned the aberration’s flesh into mince, its bones into powder.

She sent it tumbling backwards, forcing her to chase at rapid speeds to keep hitting it again and again across the snow-laden land. No matter what got in their way, such as trees, walls, hedges, or hills, they plowed straight through.

The creature healed rapidly, but Naomi struck while it was healing again and again. Eventually, she flattened the creature into the side of a fortress hill. She kept raining punches nonstop and burrowed the creature from one side of the hill to the other.

She struck so many times she defeated the speed of its healing. She defeated the creature itself.

Then she came to a stop and acted like everything was perfectly fine. She calmed down quickly, almost scarily so. She had grown a lot the past four months.

“I’m okay, Zarian,” she said. “Damn thing interrupted my training.”

Zarian used her mouth to speak. “I had to face ten of them at once.”

“Lucky,” Naomi replied. “I probably could’ve handled three at once. Any more, and I would’ve needed to use Aura Ignition.”

Zarian used her face to smile. “You’ve gotten better.”

“I’ve been working hard while you studied all day and night,” Naomi said. “How are the others?”

“I’m going to check on them. See you at the village later.”

Zarian followed another phantom thread all the way to Bianca. He became her. He saw the night sky through her eyes. He heard and felt everything through her.

Blocky clouds surrounded her, with icy winds swirling about, making her colorful elven dress go aflutter. As she looked down, Zarian saw the ground was far below her bare feet.

A thin board of moon light kept her aloft while she held a silverish sword of sharpened starlight. She was looking down at the sliced form of an aberration she’d just slain, the two halves twirling around on their descent, corrupted blood pouring out and mingling with the falling snow.

Bianca was okay.

Zarian jumped to Hannah’s Point-of-View.

The Runic Engineer sat on her throne in a room designed perfectly for her. She was looking at screens of magic holograms that fed her livestreams of various areas around the village where she’d set up her golem eyes.

She was currently looking at a screen that observed a patch of land north of the village. The thump of runic artillery sounded through the magic holographic display. The village’s northern guns dumped their payload on several aberrations that were trying to make way to the wall.

The artillery was holding the aberrations back, but the corrupted creatures only needed one shadow step or teleport to get free of the barrage.

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Before the worst could happen, Hannah touched a runic keypad on the armrest of her throne. She changed one of the artillery guns to shoot a different payload.

The night became day. The aberrations screeched from the burning brightness of the solar flare artillery shot. Then they became weaker as another salvo of hard-hitting runic guns obliterated them.

It was at that moment Zarian realized why he’d struggled a little. He didn’t want to admit it aloud until he checked on Gilbert.

He found the Knighted Healer face-to-face with an aberration, close enough for them to glare eye-to-eye. He felt Gilbert’s rage. He felt the man’s defiance in the face of pure evil. He felt Gilbert’s unwillingness to bend to the fear because of his Willpower and his Free For Real sub-alignment, which had Zarian pumped up along with him.

Gilbert wasn’t alone. He had foreign adventurers cowering behind a copse of snow-ladeb trees, unable to help against such a powerful entity. Without Gilbert, they would’ve been dead.

Knowing this, Gilbert had gone hog-wild in the fight, even to the point of riding the aberration like a bucking bull.

Slip the Sleipnir ran in while wearing mystical armor that glimmered under the night. The Sleipnir smashed into the side of the aberration with a heavy charge, sending the corrupted creature tumbling with Gilbert still mounted.

The Knighted Healer kept slamming his fist into the monster’s face while holding on with one hand, still riding the creature while pummeling it. Zarian felt Gilbert’s growing wrath.

He felt the skills Gilbert was using and noticed the corrupted creature becoming more sluggish with time. The aberration’s rapid healing ability and vitality weren’t working as effectively, not against Gilbert.

The Knighted Healer roared, leveraging his advantage, raining down the punches until he burst the aberration’s head.

He didn’t come out perfectly fine. But all of his injuries rapidly healed like he’d never suffered a hit.

Zarian pulled back since Gilbert was too juiced up on Adrenaline Jolt +2 for conversation. At the very least, Gilbert was fine. He’d proved capable enough to face the new corrupted creatures Shadowfell had created.

Zarian returned to his own body, regaining his own perception that was familiar to him. He also came away with a profound understanding.

“The aberrations are dark resistant,” Zarian said.

“What do you mean, my alpha?” Ezda asked, raising her head slightly. She was still in a groveling pose in front of him.

“I was wondering why they were enduring my darkness better than most. I hadn’t realized the most basic explanation was the answer.” Zarian reached up to adjust his monocle.

It wasn’t there.

A corrupted creature had destroyed it during the fight.

Whelp. He was back to looking young and foolish now.

Zarian shook his head. He continued his explanation. “They have high resistance to my darkness. That’s why I struggled so much more than usual, which is interesting.”

Zarian rested his chin in his palm. “Challengers are adapting to me now. Also, my quote-unquote wife is one of the few who can outlive the Darkrun Apocalypse, so she’ll be one of the best at adapting to me. Eventually, others might learn from her and follow her example.”

“You’re smiling,” Ezda said.

Zarian jerked back while on his throne. He blinked rapidly at Ezda. He didn’t know what to say at that moment, so he snapped out something quick via his free evil +3.

“I have the right to smile. Do you?” Zarian asked.

Ezda held her head low.

Zarian grimaced. Maybe that was too much salt in the wound.

He didn’t feel like apologizing, however. He let the wind and flurry of snow fill the silence between them.

Looking around, he saw the Blood Prairies dominating the landscape. The crimson glow extended far into the north.

He imagined the territory promised many horrific types of creatures, some that even the gnolls feared. But he imagined few were as fearsome as the new corrupted creatures of Luciana Shadowfell Darkrun.

“I have a request,” Ezda said, breaking the silence.

“What is it?” Zarian asked, with a more gentle tone.

“I want to join the freedom alignment,” Ezda said, licking at her teeth. “I’ve discussed this with the other elders. We wait to see what will happen to me.”

“What about Evil God Killall?”

She shifted nervously in front of him. “You are greater than Killall. You’ve killed all. And had us revived. Let me be the first gnoll of freedom.”

Zarian knew this was not an easy decision for her or the other elders of the Blood Prairie Savages.

She was forgoing her way of life. She was practically making herself a sacrifice as an experiment for the tribe.

They had no idea what would happen if one of their own, an elder at that, became a creature of a new alignment. For all she knew, being part of freedom could backfire, then she would get put down by her own kind.

It was brave.

And it made Zarian happy.

The only way for freedom to spread was through its members, which could happen through a leader or any member. It didn’t come up as an option when selecting classes during advancements. It had to happen at the grassroots level.

The World of Castles and Caverns was the only world across all of Infinita that held members of the freedom alignment.

There was one cool perk about being a Freedom Leader, however, other than being recognized as a leader. Zarian and the others hadn’t realized until weeks after becoming the first people of freedom.

The leaders could swap new members into any of the sub-alignments.

“Ever thought of seeing what good feels like, but with the aspect of freedom?” Zarian asked, extending his hand.

He heard a screech behind him. It sounded like a certain type of avian with a bald head. Or maybe he was hearing things.

Ezda gawked up at him, her canine mouth falling open. It was like she was seeing the true face of the devil.

After she regained her senses, Ezda stayed conservative. She stuck to what she was familiar with.

She took Zarian’s hand and transitioned from evil +1 to free evil +1. Ezda became the first free gnoll across all the worlds and the entire universe of Infinita.

Freedom was spreading.

Zarian celebrated by bringing out dozens of boxed meals from Para’s pocket dimension. He shared them with Ezda, which worked as an apology for snapping at her earlier.

It didn’t take long for Ezda to see he could keep up with the wild appetite of a gnoll elder. He even out-ate her, which left Ezda quite shocked among other things.

Para ate some of the corrupted bodies and stored away a few for later examination.

Once they finished eating and resting, they left the Blood Prairies and went south.

It was time to head back to Ride-or-Die Village and check on things.

He was certain the village’s Head Acolyte for Shadowfell had much to say about the new corrupted creatures. Until he had that conversation among others, Zarian ruminated on the new potential challenges and the possibilities of his advanced grimoires.

Should I advance a spell now or wait until I learn more spells?