They didn’t attack us directly, at first. Not the way I had assumed they would. Instead, they swerved past until they were positioned behind us, which essentially made them block the path forward.

  “Get out of the way before we kill you,” Ugnash growled.

  The nearest Scalekin sneered. “I’d like to see you try, you overgrown demon.”

  That was when they attacked.

  My heartrate spiked. The enemy was fast. The first Claw moved so fast, he practically disappeared, an effect no doubt helped by the shadowy threads making his form indistinct in a way not dissimilar from how Khagnio used Stealth. A second later, loud clangs and a spray of sparks indicated where twin knives had struck Ugnash’s tower shield with fatal power.

  I couldn’t be distracted by the fight between those two because the other Scalekin was making a beeline straight for me. Apparently, I was a bigger threat than Cerea.

  Thankfully, I was ready. I already had my mace in my hand, and though the Claw moved no slower than his companion, I wasn’t a slouch either. In fact, as I raised my mace in time for the hammer head to clang against my assailant’s knives, I evaluated the Claw to be no more than high-Iron. Maybe low-Silver at best, if I was being generous. He might have been fast, but that blow had held little Power behind it.

  I considered using my shield to block but taking the time to equip it now would just leave me open to getting slashed. Defending with my mace it was.

  “Don’t get too cocky,” the Scalekin said an instant before flinging himself back and disappearing.

  Cerea’s crackling bolt of lightning missed him by a whisker. She had timed it so that I wouldn’t be in danger in case she missed, but even then, her aim hadn’t been able to overcome the Claw’s evasion.

  Then the bastard reappeared with blurring speed to my left. The knife swung in, leaving a stinging slash across my upper arm, before the Scalekin disappeared. My mace had already been swinging in, but it missed as the Claw disappeared once more. He hadn’t even stuck around long enough for Cerea to aim and fire her electricity a second time.

  The same trick repeated a few times. With his shadowy version of Stealth, my opponent disappeared and reappeared a few times, always in quick succession and always leaving a laceration here, a slice there, until blood was starting to leave me wet in more areas than not.

  He was trying to wear me down. Death by a thousand cuts. Literally.

  The counter wasn’t difficult to find. When he performed his little trick again, I didn’t even bother defending properly. He knew he couldn’t strike too hard and leave a blow that would be fatal. That would overextend him, allowing me to capitalize with a powerful counter. It was why he was forced to take me down piecemeal.

  Plus, I was confident that my Vitality was high enough to successfully resist most of the danger presented by my opponent. That was why the wounds he was leaving stung but didn’t hurt much.

  [ Sacrifice

  Your Sacrifice reward has cured one instance of [Minor] poisoning. ]

  “Shit, Udarthis was right.” The Scalekin spat to one side. “The toxins aren’t working on you.”

  Right. That was why I wasn’t even distracted by the minor pain. Which was why I could focus on the mana threads I had been sending out all this time.

  Gravity grew to life on the ground, constructing a flat circle with Field Manipulation. I drove Infusion through it, turning the field heavy everywhere around me in a radius of half a dozen feet. I could have tried weighing down his weapons, but then he’d have dropped them.

  That said, I still sent in some threads just in case for later.

  The Scalekin, seeking to attack again, couldn’t react fast enough to the sudden field of enhanced gravity. He stumbled. His Stealth was still active, but the noise alerted me.

  My mace was swinging in with all the Power I could muster.

  The connection was satisfying all the way to my core. My mace didn’t hit the Claw’s body because he had raised his knives up fast enough to block. But the strength behind my strike couldn’t be stopped that easily. The Scalekin shrieked a little. His body flickered into existence as he was forced back, almost lifted off his feet before he thumped down twenty feet away.

  Cerea stepped forward to take full advantage. Lightning arced across her fingers before zapping straight at our downed opponent.

  Credit to the bastard, he was able to evade even a spray of lightning bolts. Or at least, it looked like he did, because he disappeared and there was no outward sign he had been hit.

  But I smiled. I could smell the charred flesh where he had suffered a blow from Cerea.

  He wasn’t attacking. Taking a reprieve. Didn’t mean we had won, though, or that we could suddenly rush forward to get to our destination tunnel on the other side of the chamber. That’s what he was waiting for. A mistake from our part that he could take advantage of.

  We weren’t fools. But at the same time, just waiting things out was to our detriment. Simply stalling us here was working to the Claws’ and to Zoltan’s benefit.

  Over to the side, Ugnash was easily holding his own against the Scalekin he was facing. He had even taken far less wounds than me, while in turn dealing more damage too. The few times the Claw appeared out of thin air to ineffectually strike Ugnash, I spotted heavy bruises all over the poor bastard and a general expression of despair. He was losing.

  And yet, it was still being dragged out. We were still dancing to these stupid jerks’ tune. That had to change.

  “Ugnash,” I said. “We need to take these guys out, fast.”

  I wished we had the same kind of telepathic communication that the Councillors used. While the plan I intended to execute had crystallized perfectly in my head, explaining it to Ugnash would take an axe to its effectiveness.

  “I’ll kill him,” the big Rakshasa growled.

  “No need,” I said. “We’ll use the same trick as we did against the Sight Flayers and just go.”

  Ugnash needed a second to understand, but he was smart. He got what I meant.

  There was no point in waiting for the bastards any further. At least, not the one who was refusing to attack me.

  When the second one reappeared to attack Ugnash, he just blocked with his shield. At which point, I transferred the lingering threads of Gravity still within Ugnash to his opponent’s weapons. He disappeared immediately after the exchange, but that was fine. Now both Claws had their weapons infected with my Gravity.

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  I hadn’t tested if I could move threads around remotely between connected bodies even when I was no longer in direct contact. It seemed my Spirit had progressed far enough to allow that now.

  Then I focused on Infusion as hard as I could. After using Gravity all the while that we had, I had finally started feeling the first hints of mana exhaustion. The limit of the magical energy my body could channel was finally within sight. But I didn’t care. Not when I had the chance to trap down both the annoying pests at once.

  With surprised shrieks and hisses, I heard both Claw members slam down to the floor. Ugnash was already moving, rushing in to take advantage before his enemy released his knives.

  That left my opponent, whom I couldn’t get to before the heavy knives were clanging to the ground. Without their Scalekin master in tow. I swung my mace hard, but it missed. A gust of air whooshed past my right side.

  I twisted my head, yelling out, “Cerea! He’s coming for you!”

  Cerea dropped the lightning sparking between her fingers, the electric arcs dissipating to nothing. We couldn’t even see the bastard, much less target him.

  Except for when he appeared an instant before attacking. He might not have his knives, but he was facing just a mage, after all. There was no need for real weapons to take down a magic user. The Scalekin had his arms jerking forward to deliver a fatal blow to Cerea’s neck.

  She ducked a little, like an instinctive dodge, but then she charged into the attack.

  My eyes widened at how fast it all went down. I hadn’t even seen her put her hand inside the monochromatic swirl of her Dimensional Storage, nor did I catch her drawing a thin, sharp sword from within. The subsequent flash of light as the blade slashed forward made me blink.

  With a cry, the Scalekin fell to the ground, clutching the wound on his side.

  “I might make fun of you for not being a proper mage sometimes,” Cerea said, looking at me while she sheathed her rapier back into her Dimensional Storage. “But never think that means a mage gets to be any less dangerous up close.”

  “Duly noted,” I said.

  A loud clang announced where Ugnash had taken care of his own adversary too. He had just slammed his shield down on top of the Scalekin’s head, and now the Claw lay there motionless.

  “All done here?” he asked.

  I kicked my Claw’s boots, inserting Gravity threads in there to weigh him down. “Yep.”

  “Then let’s—”

  A loud thump interrupted us. We all turned towards the rockfall that I had allowed to lock us in when I had tried to stop the Roaring Claws. It was shaking, cracking apart, smaller rocks splintering out with every loud blow. Something was inside.

  An arm thrust out next. A solid metal arm, drenched in blood. Then the rest of the familiar body emerged.

  Ugnash growled as Shagor stepped out of the rockfall, his wide serpentine grin taking us all in. He even regarded the two fallen Claws briefly.

  “Oh, looks like I wasn’t too late,” Shagor said.

  “This one’s different,” Ugnash muttered.

  I nodded. “We have to be careful.”

  The flash of movement was as fast as I had expected it to be. Shagor tried to thrust himself over us, probably seeking to position himself just as his subordinates had to block our path forward. But Ugnash had seen it coming and intercepted the half-Rakshasa, half-Scalekin in the nick of time. Metal fist connected with tower shield, and both were forced back a few steps.

  “Go!” Ugnash said. “I’ll hold him here.”

  Shagor laughed. “That’s what the other one said too. And yet, look where I am now. Right where I need to be.”

  I swallowed. The blood on Shagor’s arm… Was he really strong enough to take down Khagnio? Had he grown in the month or so since I had fought him?

  “Let’s go, Ross,” Cerea said before dragging me away.

  Right. No time to get caught up in worries and hypotheticals. We were all capable enough to handle anything we faced, and we needed to have faith in each other that we could.

  Just about a couple hours left on the timer for mana implosion.

  So I took up my mace, adding as much Gravity to it as I could, then went over and crushed the head of the Scalekin I had been fighting. He had barely been able to resist. Void-purple threads were weighing down his whole body via everything he had on himself, clothes and weapons and all. Blood splattered outwards from the point of impact.

  My heart was thudding, my throat clogging up and turning dry. When was the last time I had actually killed someone in that sort of cold blood here?

  Debilitating them wasn’t going to work. Not with the existence of healing potions.

  Shagor’s eyes widened, “You—”

  I cut him off. “You guys came here to try and kill us,” I growled. It wasn’t just the necessity of safety that was making me act. I had no time to inspect it, but the fight had brought up memories of the Scalekin who had attacked me in Ring Four. The one who had insulted me—insulted the Elder. “Don’t be surprised you’re dying in the attempt.”

  At seeing his companion get killed, the other Scalekin tried to struggle and protest, but I was driving Infusion to its limit, regardless of the cloying sensation of hollowness within me. Shagor tried to intercept me, but Ugnash blocked him once more. He saw the necessity of what I was doing.

  The next Scalekin suffered the same fate as the first.

  It was odd to realize just how competent Aurier really was just then. The blood and other bits that should have clung to my mace after the brutal blows were simply sloughing off the weapon at a steady rate, leaving it almost completely clean. I wondered if I could even smell any traces of the gore that surely had to be left on it.

  The distance of my thoughts from what I was currently doing helped me get through the act.

  “Now we’re going to go,” I said. “And you better not die, Ugnash.”

  “I won’t,” he promised.

  I didn’t know what had happened to Khagnio, and I was determined to believe Shagor was just bluffing. Regardless, I hadn’t been about to leave Ugnash in a bind. My Gravity would have run out soon enough, and then Ugnash would have been facing a terrible uphill battle just to survive against so many opponents. In fact, Khagnio might have even faced odds like that.

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Vitality Attribute has risen by one Rank.

  Vitality: Silver VIII ]

  Cerea and I rushed off. Apart from the mana implosion timer that we needed to keep in check, we also had to get to the treasure. Plus, there was the concern about this Eyelined Beast…

  “Always sobering,” Cerea said as we headed through the next tunnel. We were moving fast enough that we didn’t even care about the eyes popping out of the walls to try and give us chase. “To remember that sometimes, the monsters we have to kill aren’t dungeon beasts.”

  I nodded grimly. “We had to do what we had to do.”

  The trek through the tunnel was a little longer than I’d have preferred, ideally, but we were soon faced with a gigantic pit we had to descend.

  “This is good, actually,” I said. “I think.”

  “How so?” Cerea asked.

  I started using Gravity again. Along the way, I had drunk a mana potion, refreshing my body’s ability to channel mana. There was absolutely zero time to waste on letting my body naturally regain its capacity. “The deeper this thing goes, the farther any surge of mana released by the mana implosion has to travel.”

  “Ah, right. The deeper this pit is, the less of a chance there is for your mana to explode out of the dungeon itself.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  The problem with a pit I couldn’t see the bottom of was that using Field Manipulation was going to be impossible. For me, I could still float down pretty easily by using Siphon on myself. But where I could affect the gravitational force on Cerea’s gear, her actual bodyweight wasn’t something I could mess with.

  “Well, this is where the other kinds of gear we get come in handy,” she said.

  Basically, she rappelled down the side of the pit. She was an expert at it. So much so, I was sure she’d have been perfectly at home on a cliffside back on Earth. Or down Ephemeroth’s slope, I supposed. Honestly, I probably needed to learn about all the knots she tied and gear she used before long.

  I floated down alongside her to keep her company, a little antsy that we were taking longer than was ideal but trying not to let my impatience get the better of me. Soon enough, a warm glow emanated from below. Lava.

  And with it came a sullen roar.

  “I think someone didn’t appreciate being woken up early,” Cerea muttered.

  As the light grew brighter, the monster far beneath us became clearer too. I found myself gulping just a little.

  “Can you handle that thing on your own, Ross?” Cerea asked.

  “Why?” I frowned. “Are there…?”

  “Yes. We’ll have guests, I’m sure, and if we’re not ready for them, we’ll be in heaps of trouble.”

  I considered as we slowly approached our upcoming battlefield, as the final monster grew clearer and bigger, as its stench and its rumbling roar started making my nose and ears cringe. “No.”

  “No?”

  “We’ve got just over an hour till my mana implosion now. That’s how long I need to survive until everything in the dungeon gets wiped out by the detonation. Well, everything and everyone that isn’t prepared.”

  “I know.” Cerea rappelled down farther alongside me. “That’s why we’ve got all the protective runes. It’ll be fine, Ross. Don’t worry.”

  “You were supposed to be getting out, not using runes. I just want you to prioritize taking cover when the time comes and not on things like beating these bastards or securing the treasure or things like that. None of it matters if we don’t survive.”

  “We will survive.” Her eyes blazed with encouraging determination. “Don’t get too dour on me now, Ross. You’re forgetting we aren’t here to just survive. We’re here to thrive.”

  Thrive, was it? Maybe I was letting the last few incidents get to me too much.

  I looked down at the beast awaiting us and slowly mustered a smile of my own. She was right. This wasn’t something to hide from. This was an opportunity we had to grasp, that I needed to claim. With reasonable precautions, of course.

  Distantly, I wondered how often Cerea had faced situations like the one we had just faced. Ones that demanded decisive, if brutal, choices.

  Then we were in the presence of the final, roaring barrier before the dungeon’s treasure.