The wind whistled through the rocks, but neither Lena nor Jake spoke for a long moment. They stared at Reidar because they were going to fight a creature that was at the same level as many of the monsters they had avoided until that point.

Level 335.

It was a threshold they hadn't crossed yet. Silas was stronger, sure, but they had expected the underlings to be manageable. Viren was significantly stronger than Aaron, the man who had nearly killed Jake in Creamont.

Lena looked toward the town. Her mind was full of thoughts. "That's… higher than expected."

"The church must have completed some circles already," Reidar said. "It's the only way that comes to my mind that would explain these high levels. Maybe the Progenitor himself made the circle back then, when he appeared in Havenwood, and this would explain the sudden level spike. But if that's true, nothing says he didn't use it on others."

"Yes," Lena said. "But if that's true, how come he is asking his underlings to make a new one? How come he didn't conquer the world yet?"

She paused.

"If the circle was already complete back then, the Progenitor should be stronger now. Strong enough to have conquered half the continent by now."

Reidar considered that. It was a logical conclusion, but it didn't match what they were seeing. If the Progenitor had access to unlimited power, why was the Church still researching new circles? Why bother with Havenwood at all? Lena's questions were legitimate. Of course, Reidar had no idea of the reason, but he could make assumptions.

"Unless the circle had limits," Reidar said, working through the logic. "Maybe it wasn't a permanent power source. Or maybe it could only gather a certain amount of mana at a time, and given how challenging it is to get to a higher level, I get that the jumps between levels, even for the church members, must be high."

They were talking about Millions of mana points, after all.

"That would explain why they're building new ones, why they're experimenting with different configurations."

"It might be."

"What about Viren?" Jake asked.

"He uses Shadow Magic."

That intrigued the kid, as he found it cool. "What does it do? Make him invisible?"

"Yes, among other things, but I don't think that's the main application he is using it for," Reidar said, remembering the spike that had impaled the Vorathid Forager.

"Manipulation would be a better word. He makes the shadows solid. He can use them to sense movement, to attack, and to defend. He turned the darkness in the room into a weapon just by twitching his finger. It's insidious. You won't see the attack coming because it'll come from your own shadow."

"Great," Lena said. "A shadow wizard with attributes higher than a raid boss."

Reidar looked at the town again. The walls, the guards, the kill zones.

"We can't fight him head-on," Lena said. "Not in a fair fight. At Level 335, his attributes will dwarf ours. If we walk into that basement, he'll crush us before we can touch the circle."

"It's not like we have a choice, Lena. The magic circle must be destroyed."

"Let's draw him out," Jake said. "Or distract him."

Reidar nodded. "We're going to need a lot of light."

—***—

Viren stood alone in the basement's silence. The shadow spike he had summoned dissolved back into the floor, leaving nothing behind but a small pockmark in the concrete.

There was no corpse. No blood. Just the lingering feeling of foreign mana that was rapidly fading.

He stared at the empty space. A lesser man would have dismissed it. A lesser man would have assumed it was a rat or a trick of the damp air. But Viren hadn't reached Level 335 by ignoring the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.

He walked to the wall and slammed his hand against the heavy iron lever mounted there.

The alarm didn't wail. Instead, a thumping noise began to resonate through the building's pipes that signaled maximum alert, and soon a man reached him down in the ritual chamber.

"Captain," Viren said. "Seal the gates. Full perimeter lockdown. I want every light active and every weapon in hand."

"Deacon?" The captain was confused. "We have spotted no one. The scouts report clear sectors."

"The scouts are a mass of cock-sucking idiots," Viren said. "Someone is here." He was sure of it.

He turned back to the ritual circle.

Silas had warned him. Before the Archdeacon left for Ashwick, he had pulled him aside. Silas's eyes had been wide, maniacal, filled with the paranoia of a man who knew he was being hunted. But it wasn't just that; shame and rage were also there, because apparently, the Archdeacon had failed in something for the first time.

Silas warned him. Silas warned Deacon Viren.

"He's persistent, Mikko. A summoner. He uses numbers to overwhelm, and he has eyes everywhere. If you feel something watching you, don't look for a man. Look for a swarm."

Viren looked at the ventilation grate. It was empty now, but the surrounding dust had been disturbed.

"A swarm," Viren said.

He didn't have a body to show the guards. He didn't have a captive to interrogate. Logic dictated that he shouldn't disrupt the circle's charging cycle for a hunch. Activating the full defenses drained the mana that should have gone into the circle.

But Viren didn't need a strength boost at that moment, and the circle wasn't complete either. He wanted to survive, so postponing the magic circle completion was not a problem.

He moved to the heavy blast doors that separated the ritual chamber from the upper levels.

"If you are out there," Viren said to the shadows, "come and try."

The man walked back to the center of the circle. He raised his hands, and the shadows in the room obeyed him. They peeled away from the walls, thickening and coalescing into a solid, swirling barrier around the array.

He wasn't going to take chances. If Silas was right, the enemy wasn't just a raid party. It was Reidar Miller. And if Miller were here, the walls outside would just be paper.

Viren sat cross-legged in the center of the swirling darkness. He closed his eyes and extended his senses into the shadows, turning the entire room into his web.

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