The moment was magical.

Light broke from the Stormglass Quartz in pulses, each one throwing the quartz field into motion. The stones caught the glare and hurled it back in fractured bands. Every crystal around him carried the pattern forward, their surfaces brightening in perfect succession.

Then it ended.

Fabrisse stood very still. Nothing burned, nothing broke, and yet he found himself waiting for some sort of echo, or a tingling sensation crawling along his skin whenever he channeled aether through his limbs. Yet, everything ended there.

He frowned, almost disappointed. Perhaps there had been a reaction, subtle enough that only someone with proper attunement would have sensed it. He had no aether detection spell.

Anabeth, on the other hand, gasped like she'd just witnessed the birth of a star. "Sir Henry!" she cried, whirling toward the knight. "You are very much radiating with power! I can feel the magnitude from here! An entire army of magi would kneel before you!"

He glanced at the motionless knight, who hadn't so much as twitched since the first pulse. "Is he?"

"Absolutely," she said, eyes wide, the reflection of the Stormglass still dancing across her face. "The harmonic stabilization was transcendent. The resonance field must've amplified his core tenfold!"

He stared at her. "What's your measurement basis for that?"

"Basis?"

"Quantitatively. How did you determine the amplification factor?"

Anabeth threw her arms out in exasperation. "Quantitatively? I can feel it, Fabrisse! His aether signature is absolutely resplendent. It's swelling across the entire field like a symphonic crescendo!"

Did she conduct all her stratal experiments through vibes?

Because if so, that would explain so many of her published results.

Though curious, he decided to press no further. The knight growing stronger didn't affect him in the slightest. He was only here to help out, get quests done, and borrow Anabeth's scale.

Speaking of quests . . .

The side quest was NOT completed. This meant that the rock that reacted to the Stormglass Aetherquartz was either a rare-grade (unlikely since an epic-grade rock would most often react to another epic-grade rock or above) or a legendary-grade (even more unlikely because, well, legendary). It was just his luck that he had achieved the statistically improbable outcome of invoking a reaction without collecting a single epic-grade rock out of thirteen total samples, which was probably roughly equivalent to winning an Order-wide lottery twice in one week.

Typical.

Anabeth was already gathering her notes, while Sir Henry stood to possibly leave on cue. Right afterwards, Anabeth said, "I suppose that concludes our part of the experiment. Sir Henry, shall we return and record the data?" Then she turned to Fabrisse with an almost celebratory smile. "And congratulations, Kestovar! You found the right rock. You won the game! I'll make sure to find you something worthwhile in my next field expedition—perhaps a proper rare-grade sample. Or, oh! I could bring you an elemental conduit stone—those can be slotted into artifacts quite elegantly."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Oh? A rare rock—wait. Leaving? Fabrisse's heart jolted. No, no, no. She couldn't leave yet. He hadn't completed the quest, which meant the epic-grade rock had to be here somewhere. The system wouldn't give him an incomplete prompt otherwise.

"Wait," he blurted, perhaps too urgently. "We can't leave."

Anabeth blinked twice. "Can't we?"

"Yes. I mean, no. That is—there's . . . there's a secondary resonance quartz here somewhere."

She tilted her head, intrigued but skeptical. "A secondary resonance quartz?"

"Yes," he said, already internally wincing at the direction this was going. "I saw something else that reacted the same moment the quartz we held out reacted to the Stormglass Aetherquartz, which was why I was unfocused and missed the aetheric power up earlier. Highly localized reaction. Probably a stray fragment that synchronized with your earlier stabilization pulse. The harmonic pattern suggests it's . . . well, unique. Epic-grade, most likely."

Her eyes glinted. If she was any bit suspicious, at least her facial reaction hadn't shown it. "And where exactly did you detect this 'unique' quartz, Fabrisse?"

He pointed vaguely toward the far corner of the cavern. "That corner. I could feel it resonating during the last pulse, but it must've gone dormant again."

"Then why didn't you pick it up earlier?"

"I—because I just saw it," Fabrisse said, his voice gaining a suspicious degree of scholarly conviction. "Not during the initial surge, but during the secondary refractive cascade of the Stormglass pulse. The ambient resonance would've masked any independent reaction before that. It's, ah, a timing issue."

Anabeth arched a perfect brow, which seemed pretty skeptical now. "A timing issue, you say."

"Yes," he said with utter seriousness. "Quartz luminescence delay. Perfectly well-documented in deep-strata resonance theory." It was documented, but not perfectly. That was inconsequential to his argument.

Anabeth shared a look with the knight before turning back to him. "And you're certain this fragment would be epic-grade?"

He nodded, already committed to the lie. "Absolutely. The reaction pattern fits. I know the signs: phase inversion and angular deflection."

Anabeth hesitated just long enough for him to know she recognized at least one of those terms, and that it was, unfortunately, legitimate.

"Are you really certain?" She asked.

"Yes," he pressed on. "I saw that afterimage that lingers when the resonance field collapses too cleanly. It's a hallmark indicator of high-grade material. You wouldn't have seen it because you were observing the knight's aura, and he, understandably, occupies the broader bandwidth."

"I see. You must have excellent aetheric sensitivity, Kestovar!"

He managed a modest cough. "Yes."

"You're always full of surprises! What else can you do?" Anabeth then turned to the knight, delighted. "Ser, did you know Kestovar here is the binder of the legendary artifact, Eidralith? He's performed feats few magi could even conceptualize. He can command non-aetheric rocks and has once stabilized leyline folds single-handedly!"

Now that's definitely not what happened . . . Which speaks to the credibility of her claims regarding this 'knight' earlier.

Nonetheless, that didn't matter right now. What mattered was that she believed him.

Then the knight suddenly spoke, "Show me to the rock, or I shall carve truth from the dust myself."

[Skill Detected: Intimidation Aura]

Fabrisse froze in abject terror even though there was no reason to. Why is he saying that? It doesn't even mean anything. Logical extrapolation failed him, yet he felt scared all the same.

Anabeth laughed. "Sir Henry, please do not terrorize the local population," she chided and gave him a tolerant look. Then she turned to Fabrisse with the same blithe. "Come, Kestovar. Show us the quartz. Let us find your epic specimen."

How can she—how can anyone—just act like that after he said something so profoundly bizarre?

He stared at Anabeth for a moment, trying to parse the logic of anyone in this cavern, including himself, and came up empty. Surely there was not a single sane person here.

Yet, the quest wouldn't complete itself, and Anabeth was already on the move. He reluctantly followed.

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