The road south felt different from every other road he'd walked.
Not the terrain. The weight of what he was carrying — not physically, the formation was light, the travel configuration easy. The weight of what the Evaluator had said. We gave it. The x1000 is the System's approximation. It is larger than a thousand.
He walked with it for the first hour without speaking.
Calder walked beside him and didn't speak either — the particular silence of someone processing information that required the full capacity of a Level 68 Necromancer who had spent eleven years in a tower thinking about pre-System frameworks and was now thinking harder than he had in all eleven years combined.
Maren was on his other side.
Also silent.
Also thinking.
Sera was three paces back, writing. He could hear the stylus moving — the specific rhythm of it, faster than usual, the analytical mind working through implications faster than the hand could keep up.
