The bullet shot through the air, not nearly as fast as if fired from my wand, but much faster than I had expected. Even more unexpected was the fact that it held up until it smashed into the neighbor's wall without breaking down mid-flight. Light flashed, and then came the sound. A crazed roar enveloped the courtyard as the red thread burst into a surge of raw energy. The wall exploded, sending a hailstorm of stone smattering against the walls.

  "Well," I muttered. "That worked better than expected."

  So I could use the threads after all. The explosion was less contained than the bullets from the Chambers of Crushing, and it didn't explode near the target, but inside it, functioning more like a normal bullet than a magical one. Still, I could use this, so long as I figured out a way for my threads to not fade with time. I couldn't keep feeding them with magic, and after they were plucked from the veil it would continually drain.

  Still, this was a step forward. I could make a few each day at the very least, which would result in a hell of a lot more than zero. Now I had a reason to craft bullets of my own, if I ever became proficient enough in the smithy.

  I stood up from the chair, happy with my day's work and headed to the bedroom for my daily reading. The last few days may have been somewhat monotone, but I was enjoying the feeling of constant progress.

  The green book was the subject of the night this time as well, and like the day before I didn't understand much, but I was getting there. Sera even answered a few of my questions, albeit unhappily.

  After some time I put the book down and went to sleep with a bunch of runes swirling around in my head. When I woke up the next day my world was still spinning slightly, it kept going until I had my fill of breakfast that I'd brought from the old person's apartment in Turkey.

  While eating, I laid out my plans for the day and decided that scouring the remaining three layers was the best course of action. I'd done all the experimenting I needed to do the day before, now all that remained was to learn the bloody craft. In other words, the hard part. I knew myself well enough to know that I'd implode internally if I didn't limit the time I spent in there, so that's what I would do, limit my time spent in the smithy.

  And what better way to spend your time than with adventure? Or so I figured.

  I finished my breakfast and got dressed in my armor. Then I left the smithy behind after securing traps on all the doors and windows so that I could see if anyone entered while I was gone.

  It was far from perfect, but if I dealt with anything on the same level of intelligence as the stumblers or the body control of the doctor, it would be enough.

  Like before, my footsteps echoed through the half-circle street, bouncing seemingly endlessly against the walls of polished white stone. The view would likely never disappoint. There was something about it that just screamed 'exotic'.

  I hurried through the first three layers then headed inside the fourth for the first time. The middle layers were both much fancier than the first two. While the fourth layer had fences and engraved gates, the third had walls painted with intricate art, each of them taller than me by a good few heads. If I wasn't Blessed, scaling them would prove troublesome, but I was.

  Using Burst, I leapt up and grapped the ledge up high, heaving myself up onto it. Beyond the gate, lay a massive mansion. It had a uniform appearance, with five windows to each side of the front door, and three levels tall. The roof was slanted and held a skyroof that had been left open, a relic of the outside, I reckoned, since there was no sky down here, only crystals and cave roof.

  I scoffed. "How vain." There was no other explanation for it. The people who lived here must have built the damn thing to show off. They built it because they could, because they wanted to flaunt their wealth and superiority over the outer layers.

  This whole area of the empire seemed nothing more to me than a segregated mess. I couldn't even imagine how living here must have been, each layer looking down on the next, and then there was the massive castle itself, which looked down on them all.

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  I walked the length of the wall, whistling and studying the house. Apart from the impractical enormity of it, and the boisterous add-ons, it looked like any other building down here, just larger, and painted. If I had to guess, the buildings in this layer belonged to the lower high class of the bailey, rich enough to live in nice houses, but not rich enough to bridge the gap into nobility.

  Dropping down inside the courtyard I sent a cloud of dust exploding into my surroundings. I brushed it off my coat with a tired expression and walked toward the door, fingers interlocked behind my back like some kind of naval officer.

  I knocked on the door a few times, and heard the satisfying clacking of thick wood reverberate inside the house. When no one answered, I cleared my throat, took a step back, and kicked the door in with Burst.

  Every part of my act was entirely unnecessary, but when alone for long periods of time, you needed to find ways of entertaining yourself, or you'd go crazy.

  I stepped inside the house with a look of disdain. The layout was simple. Straight ahead of me there was a wide staircase, it split to both sides in the middle and looped back around like a goat's curved horns.

  A corridor separated the length of the house in the middle. The side with the front door had amenities, kitchens, common areas, reading rooms, that kind of stuff. The side toward the back had bedrooms.

  I looked into a few on the first floor, but they were all quite underwhelming, likely belonging to servants or less valued members of the household. The other floors, on the other hand, differed greatly.

  The second floor was reserved for the kids with play areas, and rooms filled with archaic toys, things I'd seen back on earth, but never really given a second thought, the type of toys you'd have to settle for when at a very old person's house over a holiday. Those dreadfully boring days. I shuddered at the thought and headed up to the third floor.

  Now we were finally getting somewhere, I concluded with a smile. The floor was divided into two parts only, one to the left of the stairs, and one to the right. In a fit of nostalgia, I decided which to enter by decree of eeny, meeny, miny, moe, which resulted in me entering the door to the left.

  The door creaked open, revealing a wide bedroom with a bed larger than any I'd ever seen. With a bed frame of carved wood, it covered no less than a fourth of the massive room. Most likely, it was large enough for twenty or so people to lounge. The bed had a canopy reaching all the way to the ceiling with see-through fabrics hanging down like veils. I brushed one aside and recoiled back, feeling a wave of bile burning at in throat.

  "What the fuck," I muttered.

  Bones and rotting flesh. The twenty or so people that fit in the bed seemed to have died in it too. I don't know how I hadn't smelled it before, but the stench was unbearable now that I'd pulled open the curtains enshrining the tomb.

  I pinched my nose and swallowed. "Fucking hell."

  Their skeletons lay on each other in a messy pile as if they'd been embracing each other when they met their end. One particular cadaver sat propped up against the headboard, arms around two others, pulling them onto a ribcage with traces of lingering skin. The head was missing, having most likely fallen into the pile of bones below.

  A master and his harem?

  I shook my head and left the room behind, making sure to close the door so that the damn smell wouldn't follow me. Now I didn't really want to enter the next room, but I had to be thorough in my examinations or I'd get ambushed sooner or later. I was sure of it. If I had the choice, I would much rather be the one attacking than defending, so this needed to happen.

  I took a breath, steeling myself, then pulled open the double door to the remaining room. My heart raced, yet when I peeked inside all I saw was... nothing.

  It was completely empty.

  Drag marks littered the floor in criss crossing patterns, like someone had used chalk to draw on the pale stone. I tilted my head and stepped inside. If my eyes didn't deceive me, this was the first sign of life, apart from the bodies next door, that I'd seen.

  So far, I'd seen no signs as to what might have happened to the people of the sixth layer. This at least gave me some sort of idea. Some died, others escaped, or at least tried to.

  "Poor sods if they had to haul a bed that size out of here," I mumbled.

  It just wasn't fair to the servants if that was the case, not that it mattered. The Empire was built on a hierarchal society. They valued power over all else, or so I'd come to understand from the tale of the Cobbler's rise. But power came in many shapes and forms, just as it did on Earth. You could be a powerful warrior, a leader, or just a disgustingly rich merchant with a nose for good business, all paths led to power if you were successful enough.

  To the people of the Empire, the servants weren't worth less or anything. They just weren't as competent as the powerful. If they were, they had every right to seize the same power themselves.

  In reality things weren't so simple of course. I felt a scrape in the floor with my fingers. The gash was deep and irregular. It must have been heavy as hell, and taken a lot of people multiple tries to drag out, hence the irregular depths of the drag marks. They moved in bursts until they needed to rest.

  I stood back up and gave the room one last look before closing the door behind me. Now all that remained was the last floor in the house, the attic.

  A wave of stale air was the first thing that hit me as I climbed the last flight of stairs, not the type of air you'd expect when the skyroof was left opened. I covered my nose and mouth with my sleeve as I proceeded, begging to not be met with anymore smelly surprises.

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