Depthless Hunger

Chapter 73: A High Clan Party

As soon as Kai and Zae Zin Nim set foot in the Corinin clan estate, they were the center of attention. Kai knew everyone was looking at him as the brutish thug playing at being a clan member, so he was glad that she drew some attention away. In addition to all her makeup, she wore the cloud-covered silk from her homeland.

It revealed how unhealthily thin she was, but that only made it look like she couldn't possibly hide anything on her person. Even though he knew to expect it, he wasn't sure where she carried the Krysali vault piercer in her clothes. Step one complete.

The two of them were set upon by other young clan members, Orgoron and lesser clans as well as Corinin. He noted that Zae Zin Nim introduced herself as "Hanelay Cloudspire." Close enough to a Goralian name to seem normal, though they hadn't discussed it first. Maybe she felt more protective of her true name than she had let on.

When they clarified that they weren't partnered, the crowds quickly isolated them. Meanwhile, Razz entered separately and made a show of arguing with the guards. Once he was inside, he seemed to get along well with the others, simply ignoring those who glared at him. Dommag Corinin came over to talk to him for a while and soon left in a huff.

Kai realized that he was being too passive and forced himself into action.

Pushing directly for an invitation to the inner estate would make him look like the wrong kind of brute, so Kai instead approached a group of young men. They appeared to be engaged in some sort of drinking game, downing glasses and then trying not to wince.

"Can I join?" Kai stepped in and picked up one of the glasses. Immediately he realized that it was another potion-quality drink.

"If you think you can." One of the men, an Orgoron hunter, looked supremely confident. "I don't think you have mana that potent in the north, so you might want to start slow."

"Well, catch me if I pass out." Kai smiled and then drank the entire glass.

It burned going down his throat, but that was because the potion tasted like it was half alcohol. The mana itself was intense, just not directed toward any specific end. Compared to Juray's carefully planned potions, it was nothing. Fortunately, the alcohol had enough of a kick that he winced instinctively, which prompted a laugh from all the other men.

"It'll take more than that!" Kai slammed the glass down with unnecessary force. "Now, does this game have rules, or do I just drink all these?"

As the drinking game began, he kept his eyes open. The bravado seemed to bore most women, but there were a few looking at him, since he was living up to his reputation as a barbarian. Ignoring them, he looked for Zae Zin Nim.

She seemed to be uncomfortable with all the attention. After struggling for a while, she claimed to need rest and retreated to one of the gardens outside the main building. From his vantage point, Kai could see unarmored Corinin guards following her. Even if she really did need to get away from the crowd, leaving early was smart. By the time they actually executed the plan, the guards would be tired of watching her do nothing suspicious.

By contrast, Razz was drawing as much attention as possible. He was shamelessly flirting with two different women, which seemed certain to fail. It looked like he was the butt of the joke and he acted like he didn't realize it. In a strange way, Kai respected the man more for that.

After half a dozen drinks, Kai realized that the mana was never going to overwhelm him. It might be denser than he was used to in the north, but his body was used to far more intense experiences. Something within him seemed to just soak up all of the liquid mana... and it seemed to be working on the alcohol too. He had to fake being a little drunk, just enough that all the other men would keep trying as they drank themselves under the table.

"Enough of these silly games!" Kalliay Corinin was dressed even more extravagantly than before and she used a massive fan of peacock feathers to break up the group. "I'll not have you all vomiting in our ballroom! Now Kai, dear, wouldn't you rather have some more refined company?"

"Sure." He slurred his response just a little and let her lead him to a sitting area.

The couch she led him to was the softest thing he'd ever sat on. He couldn't help but settle back into it, even though he knew what was happening. This was what he wanted, in theory. Kalliay wrapped herself around one of his arms, treating him like a trophy, and pressed a drink into his hands.

Was he supposed to take her advances seriously? She was so much older than him, he couldn't imagine that she'd really be interested. A whole circle of women associated with Kalliay had come along, much closer to his age, and they began to ask questions. He knew how that game was played: there was no need to lie, because his honest answers made him seem like a provincial ruffian anyway.

Even as the women giggled, Kai wondered if he would be the weak link in their plan. He had no clue what he was doing. Was he really supposed to seduce someone? If Juray could have seen him, she would have laughed herself sick. Honestly, he wished that he had her advice, bizarre as the thought was.

When Kalliay handed him a second drink, he didn't think much of it, but by the third Kai realized the truth. She had seen how much he drank, and unless this was an elaborate plan to prove his true limits, she was trying to get him drunk.

"You're nursing that so much, dear boy!" Kalliay shook her head at the drink in his hand. "Why not live a little? We want to see how you celebrate up the north, after all." As she purred, she ran the back of her fan along the back of his neck.

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All at once Kai was sick to his stomach, and it wasn't the alcohol. The juvenile part of him had been anticipating what might happen, but now he just felt tired. None of this was what he wanted. There had to be another way to get an invitation...

The flirting was interrupted by the sound of someone being violently sick. Everyone turned to see a large man vomiting into a bin, which prompted a mix of laughter and scorn. But no one said anything when he uncorked a healing potion and drank the entire thing. Even from a distance Kai could feel its potency... that potion had been worth hundreds of Goralian Eagles and the man had just used it to get over a little sickness.

As his stomach turned a flip, Kai put a smile on his face and wrapped his arm around Kalliay Corinin's waist.

.

..

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Alone in the garden, Zae Zin Nim reflected on the differences between celebrations in Deadwaste and in Cloudspire. There was no shortage of debauched revelry at home, but there it was something inflicted on society's inferiors. Here, everyone seemed happy to degrade one another. She was supremely relieved that her foreign status and reserved disposition allowed herself to separate from the crowd.

If she hadn't known Kai Clanless better, she might have thought that he enjoyed it. He was a young man, after all, and in her experience young men were extremely predictable when it came to certain subjects. Yet she knew what he looked like when he smiled, a fierce grin that came out of nowhere, and this didn't even deserve to be called an imitation.

She couldn't watch him the entire time without drawing attention, of course, so she looked away and tracked the qi of the group. Eventually they left with Kai, the old woman half-supporting him as he pretended to stumble. Zae Zin Nim was glad there was no one to see her face.

The guards had stopped paying attention to her and simply patrolled the garden, so she easily slipped into the shadows. Keeping track of Kai's movements, she moved in parallel outside the estate. They must have given him an invitation to the interior, but if it didn't go how Razzagah had said...

Just when she began to worry that the situation had gotten out of hand, Kai broke from the others. She wasn't sure what excuse he had made, but his qi approached hers rapidly. Then she caught just a glimpse of him in the window of the balcony indicated, beginning to stumble through.

"Kai, not that way!" An attractive woman pulled him back into the estate with a laugh. The balcony doors closed and she couldn't hear them anymore.

While waiting long enough to ensure that they had moved on, Zae Zin Nim prepared herself. Her essence had been obscured from the beginning and now she fully shrouded it so she would be nothing but a ghost to spiritual senses. She took more time than she might once have, because mana users had proved less incompetent than she expected.

Eventually she took the chance. In a single silent leap, she reached the balcony where she had last seen Kai.

A metallic square lay just in front of the balcony doors, just as they'd discussed. Zae Zin Nim picked it up and examined the unusual mana formation. No traps, just a form of identification. Gripping it in one hand, she passed into the inner estate. Just as had been promised, no alarms rang at her presence.

With the first two steps of the plan complete, the rest was up to her. She had memorized the estate map, so the only difficulty in traveling to her location was avoiding the occasional servants passing through to the outer party. They all used their own squares to open the doors, but theirs were attached to their sleeves instead of in the form of invitations.

When she tested her own, it worked in the same way. Not all of the doors within were sealed with mana, but she followed the procedure anyway. Soon she left behind all signs of the party as she moved deep within the Corinin estate. That brought her to the vault door, exactly as Razzagah had described.

It might have been a major obstacle in Deadwaste, but Zae Zin Nim wasn't particularly impressed. She could have overpowered the mana binding the great stone slab and a real cultivator could have simply punched through it. Instead, she was forced to use a crystalline device that slowly undid the seal.

This "crystal cultivation" ...she could admit that some of the techniques were similar, but it seemed like such a cheap copy. Perhaps the inhabitants of this Krysal place were immigrants from Cloudspire, or shipwrecked sailors who had washed up on shore. She had no real evidence for the theory, aside from the fact that the Krysal City States were across the ocean from Cloudspire.

Eventually, however, the device did its job. The stone slab opened silently and Zae Zin Nim walked into the Corinin clan vault unopposed.

Compared to what she had been expecting, there wasn't much. No sacred treasures with mystical powers, no millennia-old ingredients? The vault was basically a cube carved out from the stone that served as a storage chamber. Dust covered various containers stacked along the walls and there was even a set of paintings no doubt moldering and losing their value. Only a section with shelves and documents looked to have been used recently.

Then she spotted the mana pool and she forgot about the rest.

Technically she should have looked for the documents first, but Zae Zin Nim barely considered this. She had what she wanted within her grasp, so everyone else could go to hell. Kai was the only person she owed anything.

The circular pool had been covered by a slab of metal, but when she pulled it aside, the entire chamber was illuminated by sapphire light. Mana flowed underneath and she was surprised to see that it wasn't truly a liquid. This was no mana-charged water, as with the potions favored on this continent. Instead the power flowed in pure form, like a flame burning without fuel.

Zae Zin Nim took a careful breath and sat down beside the pool to prepare herself. This was her chance to overcome what had blocked her cultivation for so long. She needed to take the leap as soon as she could possibly do it right.

Kai had told her there was nothing to it but instinct. She suspected that what he said was true for him and would not be for her. Technique analysis had never been her strength, so she had only slowly been developing her understanding of Classes. Her teachers had told her that advanced essence management was unnecessary until her cultivation had broken free from the first realm, but now it might prove critical to her survival.

Still, she could only prepare so long. Eventually she would have no choice but to trust herself to abstract danger and instinct. Hopefully the tension sustained as they fought their way in would be enough for her to awaken.

She stepped into the pool and immediately fell to the bottom. The mana swirled around her soul, beginning to suffuse her... and then it began to conflict.

As fragments of her soul ground together, Zae Zin Nim let out a silent scream within the mana. Her cultivation had advanced too far, occupying the space within herself that her new Class was awakening. It was as if an alien seed had been planted in her dantian, now spreading roots that would crack everything she had struggled so hard to gather.

Zae Zin Nim desperately tried to reach to the edge to pull herself free, but her hand fell into an abyss of mana and the power pulled her back down.

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