The paved street turned into a dirt path that wound its way between the fields. I was a little surprised that the people here had managed to recreate a replica of pastures on the side of a volcano, and I was once again a little taken aback they were doing this so close to potential danger.

But then again, this whole volcano was supposedly one gigantic Icon, so I supposed things were far more under-control than how it initially appeared.

“Do the cave-sheep survive on this grass?” I asked. “It doesn’t exactly look nourishing…”

“No,” Revayne said. “They actually feed on mana stones. You will see few to none of them because they’ve most likely been devoured. Cave-sheep can be ravenous.”

“Mana stones, huh? Just like slimes.”

Revayne nodded. “The volcano’s interior is capable of producing mana stones. As far as I’m aware, it’s because of the influence of the lava, and soil fertilized with ash are capable of growing mana stones. The general process is seeding the soil with both fresh ash and mana stones recovered from the dungeon, until said stones sprout on the surface too.”

“Huh. Interesting.”

“Mm. The people of Zairgon were lucky to discover cave-sheep could subsist off mana stones like dungeon slimes and some other monsters, as you pointed out. Other places have it much easier. The Velt herds in the west eat practically anything and only rarely. The Stormflocks on the coast don’t even need to be fed. They hunt monsters on their own.”

“If the cave-sheep eat mana,” I said. “Wouldn’t they technically be classified as monsters, since their bodies are clearly processing and interacting with mana?”

“Hmm? I suppose you are right. I’m not certain about their classification, if I’m being honest. I’m not an expert in such scholarly matters.”

Maybe not, but she was clearly rather knowledgeable about farming practices. It made sense, considering her family supposedly farmed insects. I was curious why she had decided to become a guard instead of a farmer like the rest of her family, but the door to the distant farmhouse opened and a Rakshasa dressed in light linen garments stepped out.

“Greetings,” Revayne said as we walked over. She had already murmured that she would take care of most of the talking. “You must be Shepherd Navor. We are here to investigate a matter you might be able to help us with.”

The Rakshasa’s eyes flickered over our clothes. “Two humans. One a city guard and one a cultist… How might I help such an odd pair?” He frowned at how Revayne’s face was still buried in her book. Even now, she didn’t bother pulling it down. “And are you actually here to talk to me, or…?”

“Don’t mind her,” I said apologetically. I lowered my voice. “I think she has some sort of condition.”

Revayne stepped on my foot to shut me up. “It’s about one of your missing sheep.”

Navor’s dark eyes widened, his storm-grey skin turning a little darker. “You found Wilka? Oh, Praise the Woven Way! I haven’t even made a report yet.” He was suddenly bustling backwards. “Oh, where are my manners. Please come in, have a seat, we can—”

Revayne’s brows twitched and she held up a hand. “This is fine. I don’t believe our conversation will be that long. The news we come to deliver of your sheep isn’t a pleasant one.”

“Ah… Go on, then.”

Revayne explained my tale, asking me to corroborate it and to correct any parts she got wrong. It was actually quite alright. She summarized everything almost perfectly. I just had to add some more personal touches about what the cave-sheep had looked like and acted.

“Yes…” Navor sighed. He rubbed his small grey horns in distress. “That is indeed Wilka. Poor girl. How could she have ended up in the dungeon?”

“That’s what we’re investigating,” Revayne said. “We’re sorry for your loss, but we need all the details you can provide us. I have a few questions, so please answer them with as much depth and breadth as you can.”

Revayne really was great at the whole detective thing. Her questions weren’t too numerous, but very specific and drilled down to the exact information we needed to figure out how the cave-sheep ended up from a pasture to the dungeon.

There was actually a decent amount to parse. I learned about the shepherd’s daily habits, about the number of cave-sheep he actually had, about how often he took them out and how far, about how many people visited him and how many he saw around the area, about any potential enemies he might have, and more besides.

We were also told the exact day that the shepherd had started noticing that one of his sheep was gone. Four days ago. That was a day before my dungeon expedition.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to recall even half of what Navor told us, but Revayne appeared to have no problem. Every time the Rakshasa answered, she would repeat back what he had said in a soft mutter in her own words, and the page of her book would turn on its own every so often.

“Oh yeah, now I remember seeing the sheep several days ago,” I said at one point when the Rakshasa mentioned taking his cave-sheep to a veterinary healer’s place. “I can’t recall if I saw you too, but uh, the cave-sheep were obviously more interesting. No offence.”

Navor gave me a small smile. “None taken. I think my flock are more interesting than me too.”

“That would be the day before you started noticing Wilka was missing,” Revayne said, critical eyes entirely on the pages of her book. “My suspicions are she was… lost along the way. You don’t happen to count your cave-sheep after every such trip, do you?”

“I’m not paranoid, no.” Navor’s face fell. “But I might be now…”

I offered the poor guy a commiserating smile. “My cousin used to lose her cat once every other year. She went nuts every time it happened. It’s awful.”

“My cave-sheep are not my pets,” Navor said. “I am well aware of their true purpose and that our time together is limited. But every departure is difficult, no matter how many I care for and how often I have to let them go. Caring for them always creates a bond.”

I patted him on the shoulder. He took it adroitly.

The conversation ended before long. Revayne had been right. The whole thing had been to the point and not really time-consuming. We thanked Navor for being open with us and Revayne promised she would keep him updated as soon as she found something worth reporting.

“That was productive,” Revayne said as we returned the way we had gone. “I will need to inspect his entire route on that day.”

Her eyes roved over the pages of her book. I sneaked in a peek and found scribblings I couldn’t decipher. Even the Universal Language Approximator didn’t help. Very odd. It definitely wasn’t the official language in Zairgon that people used every day.

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“You’ll keep me updated too, yes?” I asked hopefully.

The corner of her mouth crooked up in a small smile. “I won’t need to if you come along.”

“I’m not sure I want to play the role of Dr. Watson.”

“What?”

“Uh, fictional sidekick to a fictional detective. Back where I’m from.”

“I see. Well, suit yourself. You are involved in the matter. It’s getting more convoluted as time goes on and I’d like to get to the bottom of this before things deteriorate further. So yes, I will keep you informed. Much the same way you kept us informed about the Thralls in the dungeon.”

We were again entering the more populated areas of Ring Three, back on paved streets surrounded by cramped buildings again. The streetlamps cast warmth as well as light over us.

“Speaking of,” I said. “Are you guys heading to the dungeon anytime soon?”

“We already did, actually. A team of guards went to inspect the dungeon itself while the commander had a chat with your adventurer companions. She confirmed you story and also convinced the Adventurer’s Guild that the city guards would handle the matter of the Thralls. You were… rather canny at implying the implications of letting this get out of hand.”

I smirked and flicked the collar of my robes. Well, it didn’t have a collar, so the neckline had to do. “Sometimes, I’m pretty good at figuring out just what buttons to press to get what I need.”

We were about to part, but there was something I had noticed during our conversation with Navor that I couldn’t not bring up.

“The shepherd,” I said. “He mentioned something familiar. Praise the Woven Way…”

Revayne immediately tensed. She had tried to suppress her reaction, but I was able to note it. Bless Gutran for making me pay too much attention to people’s stances and postures and muscles. “Are you wondering how Scarthralls who stole a man’s cave-sheep and the same man could so fervently say the same thing?”

I nodded, though that wasn’t quite the goal of my query. “What is it? Is it something to do with the Weave? I saw you react to it. You don’t like it, obviously. It sounded like something… not quite right, especially with those stupid vampires using it, but when there’s regular people saying it too…”

Revayne took a deep breath and sighed, putting her book down for once. She did remember to carefully tuck a finger in between the pages so she didn’t lose her place.

“It’s a symbolic mantra,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve had phrases like that back in your birthplace, yes? People claiming the name of some deity they put all their faith in, the one they thank whenever something goes right, the one they believe will make everything right when things fall apart…”

I nodded. That was common everywhere. “People believe in gods. Is that what the Woven Way is? A religion of sorts?”

“It’s… what it has turned into, yes. People essentially putting their faith in the Weave above all else and sometimes to the exclusion of all else.”

That last bit made her lip curl in displeasure.

“It wasn’t quite so intense before,” Revayne went on. “The Weave—well, I suppose you don’t know it’s origin, do you?”

I shook my head. “All I know is that it’s got something to do with your Banished Gods.”

Revayne lead me away to a more secluded spot not far from a Preservatory. The streets of Ring Three were getting a lot more crowded now that the day was underway and everyone was off to work. I even saw a bunch of humans, bedraggled and worn down but determined in their own little ways, making their way to their workplaces.

“The Rupture is what led to… all this,” Revayne said as she briefly explained the history of how things had come to this point. “There were a lot more details, of course, some of which are probably lost for good and we’ll never know, but the main point is the Rupture. A thousand-year-old incident where all the Ascendant-ranked individuals in the world banded together and warred against the gods.”

“Why?” I asked. “What did the gods ever do to them?”

“At the time, there was no such thing as an Ascendant, you understand. The Weave didn’t yet exist. The ones who took action were simply the most powerful beings in existence, standing just beneath the gods themselves. But that was the problem. They were beneath, and there was no way for them to get higher. To reach the level of the gods themselves.”

“Bunch of ambitious bastards, huh?”

Revayne nodded. “With their massive power and knowledge, the Ascendants severed the gods from the realm and locked them eternally in the Beyond, and in doing so, they were able to possess a great power born from the vacancy created by the gods’ banishment. This was what they eventually fashioned into what we know today as the Weave.”

I slowly shook my head. It sounded fantastical, almost like a fairy tale, and I could easily imagine mothers telling their kids about it while putting them to bed. “But they were still Ascendants, right? Even if they weren’t called that? I ask because I heard something about Paths existing bountifully before the gods’ banishment, and Paths are given by the Weave, but—”

I had just remembered what Hamsik had said in our first proper conversation.

“But the gods’ banishment was what created the Weave. Yes, I see your confusion. The difference is that before the Rupture, what we call Paths today were a lot more prevalent. What’s interesting is that the terminology existed back in the day, over an aeon ago. The Weave merely adopted it into its formal parlance to create a sense of… continued order via familiarity, if that makes sense.”

I considered that for a moment. “And here you said you weren’t much of a scholar.”

“It’s merely the minimum education a noble must suffer through. Just because I don’t really care for obsessing about the past doesn’t mean it has no uses.”

“Fair enough. But back to the topic at hand—so Paths were very prevalent before the Weave, but in the process of banishing the gods and establishing the Weave, the old Ascendants made access to it a lot harder? For humans specifically?”

“I don’t think humans received the absolute shortest end of the stick.

“They didn’t? That’s news to me.”

“Well, they didn’t when you consider the fact that a few different races were made extinct entirely.”

“…I see.”

“One of the reasons for the Weave’s rapid widespread adoption was because it could be used as a cudgel to establish superiority. If certain races could acclimatize to the Weave’s benefits and gain power, if they weren’t wiped out like so many others, then they could claim that they deserved to be prominent in the new world order left behind by the Ascendants.”

Adoption led to a tangential line of inquiry, but I was already getting a little overwhelmed with everything I was learning. “And that led to worshipping the Weave itself eventually?”

“Well, yes, but the point I’m making is that the Weave changed everything. The very fabric of society was reshaped, forged into the system we now function under. Potential and power became a lot more stringent, free in some ways and restrictive in others.”

“Restrictive in how not everyone had access to Paths easily any longer,” I said. “But free as in…?”

“Free to go as far as one desires. Magic before the Weave was free and restrictive in its own ways too. Free for nearly everyone to possess, but restrictive in just how far one could climb.” Revayne looked at me critically. “Now, even a human who was never a part of this world to begin with can become a god in time.”

“All for the small price of vastly diminishing the sun of your world,” I said. “And probably a whole host of other things I can’t even begin to think of. Like, I don’t think I’ve seen any natural water or real plants except for the Preservatories.”

Revayne shrugged. “I wouldn’t have paid such a price, but this is the world we were given, so.”

I couldn’t even begin to fathom what ancient, overpowered beings capable of beating gods were thinking when they had brought in the Weave even if it meant destroying society—and the whole world—as they had known it. But it was impressive act, nevertheless.

“The Weave represented something greater,” Revayne continued. “Something bigger than any one person, any one being, no matter how powerful, could ever become. It was almost an ideal. Something to live by. A way of life entirely.”

Her expression was almost awed. Almost. By the end of her little talk, she had gone crestfallen.

“But faith breeds fanaticism, which eventually breeds moral dysfunction. The Weave, or the idea of reaching the pinnacle of creation that it represented, became everything to many. Praise be the Woven Way. The Path that will guide us to the gods. And if you falter from its Path, if you have no way of treading it to begin with, then you are deemed worthless.”

Her voice turned very scathing at the end there. It should have felt some level of satisfying to hear that my initial assumptions about the saying, about everything it implied, was correct.

Of course, that didn’t mean everyone who used that phrase, who worshipped the Weave itself, was a raging dick discriminating against everyone who didn’t. I hadn’t gotten that vibe from Navor, for instance. But I remembered what my conversation with the Scarthrall I had killed had revealed. On why the vampire was determined to hurt innocent people.

It fell in line with what Revayne was saying here. All it took was just one small step, one little warping of the mind, to go from worthless to actively harmful.

She fixed me with a critical look. “So, Ross. Do you want to be immortal too? Do you also want to be a god?”