The crystal pulsed, and Damon didn’t wait to see what it would do next. He lifted both hands, mana surging through his channels, and let everything he had strike at once.

[LIGHTNING LANCE]

Twin bolts screamed across the chamber and slammed into the crystal’s center. The impact broke the silence, blue-white lightning crawling over the crimson surface like living veins.

Chipped pieces of crystal burst away and scattered across the stone floor.

For a moment, the pulse faltered. The steady rhythm that had filled the cave stumbled, skipped, and then began again, faster this time.

Agitated.

[WARNING: CRYSTAL IS RETALIATING]

The red light flared. A wave of crimson energy burst from the crystal’s core and washed over Damon before he could raise his guard. His system screamed, golden text flashing wildly at the edge of his vision.

[ERROR]

[CORRUPTION RESISTED]

[SOVEREIGN’S PROTECTION ACTIVE]

The wave passed through him, leaving behind only a faint, greasy sensation along his skin. A moment later, his system steadied, the golden text settling back into place.

"That all you’ve got?"

[LIGHTNING LANCE]

Another pair of bolts crashed into the crystal, sending more fragments flying. The red pulse was uneven now, fluttering like a fading heartbeat. Cracks spread across its surface, and crimson light seeped through them like blood through open wounds.

[SOVEREIGN’S THUNDER]

Damon lunged forward, golden lightning wreathing his fist. He drove the blow straight into the largest crack, and the crystal screamed.

Not a sound he heard with his ears, but one that rang inside his mind, a shriek of pure wrongness that clawed at the inside of his skull. His system flickered one last time, and then the crystal broke apart.

Fragments rained down over the chamber floor, their red glow draining away until they became dull, lifeless gray. The oppressive weight in the air lifted at once, and the silence that followed was clean.

[SYSTEMIC CORRUPTION CRYSTAL DESTROYED]

[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 2,000]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +200]

[TRIBUTE: 1,243]

[QUEST COMPLETE: INVESTIGATE SOURCE OF ROGUES]

[ADDITIONAL TRIBUTE SOURCES UNLOCKED]

[TRIBUTE GENERATION ACTIVE: DOMINION]

Damon stood in the center of the chamber, breathing hard, surrounded by the dull gray remains of the crystal.

"Dominion?" he said aloud.

The system answered with a new screen.

[DOMINION — PASSIVE TRIBUTE GENERATION]

[EFFECT: GENERATES TRIBUTE BASED ON THE NUMBER OF SUBORDINATES AND THEIR ACTIVITY. CURRENT RATE: 5 TRIBUTE PER (NORMAL) CLASS ACTION PER SUBORDINATE.]

[ACTIVE SUBORDINATES: SERA AZURE, LENA HARTWELL]

Five tribute per class action. And it didn’t specify Damon anywhere.

That meant it could be treated like another way to gain exp while doing absolutely nothing, like when he was stuck in the infirmary. That was 240 tribute per day, assuming the two fulfill that condition every hour.

Combined with active farming, his tribute income had just effectively doubled or tripled.

A laugh escaped him, short and disbelieving.

"That’s broken. That’s completely broken."

"Not only that, this is just with them existing as ’normal’... but the new passive also says it scales based on their activity, so this skill is hiding even more than that. If a normal action is five, then does it classify actions that are greater than normal as well?"

"I’ll figure this out later once I’m with them..."

He looked around the chamber one last time. The crystal fragments had lost all their crimson glow, reduced to inert gray stone. Whatever sentience had inhabited them was gone. The bodies of the students still lay scattered across the floor, and Damon’s brief surge of triumph faded.

Ten dead.

More if there were other caves like this one. The rogue in the forest. The three at the waystation. Whatever was causing these crystals to appear, it likely wasn’t a one-time event.

But that was a problem for the academy. He’d done what he could.

"Is this it... no resistance? No random golem appearing to fight me?"

RUMBLE!

The sound echoed from deeper within the cave, a low, grinding rumble that vibrated through the stone beneath Damon’s feet.

"Guess I talked too early."

He turned toward the source, hands already raised. What emerged from the darkness of the tunnel wasn’t just another wave of infected students.

Ten students, their eyes hollow and ringed with red, shambled forward with the same jerky, predatory gait as the ones at the waystation.

Behind them, four dire boars snorted and pawed at the stone floor, their tusks gleaming with faint crimson light. And scattered among them, a grotesque menagerie of smaller creatures, rabbits, mice, a fox with matted fur, all bearing the same dilated pupils and faint red rings around their irises.

The crystal didn’t discriminate. Anything with a system, or anything close enough to be caught in its radius, had been twisted into a puppet.

Then Damon spotted the elf.

Male, tall, with the same sharp features and pointed ears as the elf from before, the archer who’d saved him during the Banshee incident.

But this elf wore an academy uniform beneath a foreign-looking sash, and on his arm, a band that marked him as an exchange student meant to bridge the surprisingly wide cultural gap between the races despite the centuries that had passed since the first portals opened.

His eyes were just as hollow as the others.

"The academy’s definitely going to have a lot of paperwork explaining that one."

Damon muttered. An exchange student with a corrupted system? That was a diplomatic incident waiting to happen.

He cracked his neck and raised both hands, mana already surging.

"Ten to spare, the rest to put down. I can do that."

The horde surged forward as one.

Damon’s opening volley carved through the first rank. Twin Lightning Lances struck the lead student square in the chest, the impact lifting him off his feet and hurling him backward into two others.

All three collapsed in a tangle of limbs, smoke rising from their scorched uniforms.

The boars charged through the gap.

Four of them, their tusks gleaming with that faint crimson light, their eyes hollow and dilated. They moved faster than any boar had a right to, the corruption driving them past their natural limits.

Damon sidestepped the first, letting its tusk shear past his shoulder, and drove a Thunder-enhanced fist into its flank. Golden lightning exploded on impact, and the boar’s legs buckled. It crashed onto its side and slid across the stone floor, carving a shallow trench before slamming into the cave wall.

[DIRE BOAR DEFEATED]

[EXPERIENCE SHARED: 400]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +40]

The second boar wheeled toward him, but a Lightning Lance caught it mid-turn. Twin bolts punched through its skull, and it collapsed without a sound.

[DIRE BOAR DEFEATED]

[EXPERIENCE SHARED: 400]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +40]

The third and fourth came together, tusks lowered, coordinated in a way corrupted beasts shouldn’t have been. Damon leaped backward, his boots skidding across the stone, and fired another pair of bolts.

One struck true. The other glanced off a tusk, arcing into the ceiling and showering the chamber in sparks. The wounded boar staggered but kept coming, its corrupted instincts overriding its pain.

Damon met its charge with a Thunder strike to the forehead. The impact cracked bone, and the boar’s legs gave out beneath it.

The fourth boar didn’t stop. It plowed through the space where Damon had been standing a heartbeat before, its tusk gouging a fresh furrow in the cave floor. Before Damon could counter, a bolt of something searingly hot screamed past his ear.

Fire magic.

The remaining students had regrouped. Two of them stood near the back of the chamber, their hands raised, flames flickering in their palms. The others formed a loose semicircle, blocking his path to the exit.

And behind them all, the elf exchange student watched with those hollow, red-ringed eyes. He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t attacked. He only stood there, observing, as if waiting for something.

"You’re their leader, aren’t you?" Damon muttered. "Or the crystal’s favorite puppet. Either way..."

[LIGHTNING LANCE]

He aimed not at the elf but at the fire mages. The bolts caught one in the shoulder, spinning her around and slamming her into the wall. The second mage’s fireball flew wide, exploding against the ceiling and raining embers across the chamber.

Damon closed the distance.

He moved through the students like a current through water, ducking under clumsy swings and sidestepping wild grabs. These weren’t trained fighters anymore. They were husks, their techniques degraded by whatever the crystal had done to their minds.

A Thunder strike to the chest sent one crashing into the wall. A Lightning Lance caught another in the back. The fourth boar lunged at his flank, and Damon vaulted over it, driving a Thunder kick into its spine as he landed.

[DIRE BOAR DEFEATED] x2

[EXPERIENCE SHARED: 800]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +80]

[TRIBUTE: 1,403]

The chamber fell quiet.

Only the elf remained.

He hadn’t moved from his spot at the back of the cave. His hollow eyes tracked Damon’s every movement, but there was no fear in them. No aggression. Only that same unsettling patience.

"You’re different from the others," Damon said, approaching slowly. "The first one had enough sanity to talk, the ones at the waystation attacked on sight, these ones fought like puppets."

"But you? You’re just... standing there."

The elf’s lips parted. His voice, when it came, was a dry rasp, barely more than a whisper.

"S-Soverei—"

SLASH!