Gideon had recovered his mana—slowly, painfully, while they rested after the wasp ambush—but the mental fatigue lingered. He walked with the heavy, plodding gait of someone whose adrenaline had crashed hours ago.
Elara, by contrast, seemed to be gathering strength from the forest itself. Her movement had regained its fluid, predatory grace. The limp from her broken ribs was almost gone, likely suppressed by high-tier painkillers or just sheer willpower. She moved through the dense undergrowth like smoke, barely disturbing a leaf, while Gideon crashed behind her like a runaway tractor.
"Lift your feet," Elara instructed without looking back. She was perched on a mossy boulder, scanning the path ahead. "You're dragging your heels. Noise attracts aggro. Aggro costs mana. You don't have enough of either to waste."
"I am conserving kinetic energy," Gideon grumbled, hiking his burlap sack higher on his shoulder. "And for the record, my glutes are burning. I was promised a power fantasy, not a hiking simulator."
"You want power?" Elara pointed a gloved finger down the slope. "Earn it. We're entering the Flood Zone. The mana density here is higher. That means the spawns are nastier."
Gideon wiped sweat from his brow. The air had changed. It was humid, thick, and smelled of sulfur—like a geyser basin. The temperature had climbed steadily for the last mile, turning the cool forest air into a sauna.
"Why is it hot?" Gideon asked.
"Variants," Elara said, dropping from the boulder and landing silently. "Sometimes, when the mana pools in a specific area, it corrupts the local wild life. You get Mutations."
She stopped at the edge of a clearing. "And it looks like we found a big one."
Gideon stepped up beside her and looked down.
The clearing was dominated by a shallow pond, fed by a stream that trickled down from the rocks. But the water wasn't flowing. It was boiling.
Great clouds of white steam rolled off the surface, hissing as they hit the cooler air. The mud around the banks was baked dry and cracked, steaming slightly.
And in the center of the boiling pond, something was pulsing.
It was a slime, but it wasn't the cute, blue gelatinous blobs Gideon had farmed back at the crash site. This thing was the size of a minivan. Its body was a churning, viscous mass of deep crimson and charcoal black. It glowed from within, a rhythmic, angry light that looked like molten slag cooling in a forge.
[ Magma Slime (Variant) - Lvl 9 ]
"Level nine," Gideon whispered. "That's almost double my level."
"It's a Variant," Elara corrected, her voice calm. She leaned against a tree, crossing her arms. "Thick hide. Burns on contact. And if it stays in that boiling water, it'll heal faster than you can hurt it. "She looked at Gideon. "It's yours."
Gideon blinked. "Mine? Elara, that is a sentient lava lamp. It is boiling the water it sits in. If I touch it, I will melt."
"You have a shield," Elara noted dryly. "And you have a sword. And you need the XP. If we want to get you to Oakhaven without the guards laughing you out of the city, you need to hit Level 10. This kill will get you close."
"You could kill it in two seconds," Gideon pointed out.
"Less," Elara agreed, a faint smile playing on her lips. "I could Phantom Step behind it, sever its core, and harvest the loot before it realized it was dead. But I’m already Level 50. This experience points yield would be a rounding error for me. For you? It’s a milestone."
She stepped back, effectively ceding the battlefield to him.
"Consider this your practical exam, Scientist. Show me you can handle an elemental threat without burning your mana pool in the first ten seconds."
Gideon looked at the slime, then at Elara. She wasn't going to help. She was the safety net, sure—if the thing tried to eat his head, she’d intervene—but she wasn't going to carry him.
"Fine," Gideon muttered, drawing his Bent Sword. The iron felt cool in his hand, a stark contrast to the stifling heat of the clearing. "Thermodynamics. It’s just heat transfer. I can handle heat transfer."
He stepped out of the tree line.
The Magma Slime sensed him immediately. It didn't have eyes, but the surface of the red goo rippled. A pseudopod of molten slime rose from the main body, pointing at him like an accusing finger.
GURGLE-HISS.
A jet of steam erupted from its body as it began to slide out of the pond. It moved surprisingly fast for something without legs, burning a black trail into the grass as it advanced.
"Okay," Gideon said, planting his feet. "Hypothesis It’s a fluid. It'll squash if I hit it. But it's radiating heat like a furnace."
He checked his mana. [ MP: 500 / 500 ].
"Shield," Gideon commanded.
He raised his left hand.
[ Radiant Lattice Shield ]
The golden hexagon snapped into existence. He didn't cast the dome this time; he cast a standard, man-sized barrier, angling it to cover his front. He was learning. Conservation of energy.
The Magma Slime didn't charge like the beetles. It surged. It reared up, forming a wave of red sludge, and crashed down toward him.
"Block," Gideon grunted, bracing his shoulder against the magical surface of the shield.
SPLAT.
The impact was heavy—like being hit by a wet mattress—but the Strength 35 held firm. The slime splashed against the golden light, unable to penetrate the lattice.
"Ha!" Gideon grinned, peering through the translucent gold. "Non-Newtonian rejection! You can't get through the geometry!"
Then he felt it.
It wasn't force. It was temperature.
The air inside the shield bubble spiked instantly. The golden light of the Radiant Lattice was transparent, which meant it let light through.
And infrared radiation—heat—was just light with a longer wavelength.
"Wait," Gideon gasped, sweat instantly drenching his tunic. " The lattice... it's letting the heat straight through!"
The slime was pressing its body against the shield, effectively wrapping Gideon in a blanket of magma. The heat was passing right through the barrier, cooking him alive in his own armor.
[ Environmental Damage: Extreme Heat ] [ HP: 345 / 350 ] [ HP: 340 / 350 ]
"It's an oven!" Gideon yelled, stumbling back. "I built a convection oven and put myself inside it!"
Elara called out from the shade of the trees, sounding bored. "Your shield blocks matter. It doesn't block energy. Adjust or roast."
Gideon scrambled backward, the heat radiating off the slime singing his eyebrows. The monster gurgled, sensing weakness, and prepared to lunge again.
"Adjust," Gideon panted, his mind racing as the temperature in his immediate vicinity climbed past 120 degrees. I need to change the filter. I need to block the heat signature, not just the mass."
He looked at the slime, then at his shimmering, golden shield.
"Physics," Gideon choked out, raising his hand again as the magma wave crashed down. "Don't fail me now."
Gideon stumbled backward, his boots skidding on the baked, cracked mud of the clearing. The Magma Slime surged forward, a tidal wave of molten jelly that hissed and popped as it moved. It didn't have a face, but the way it tracked him—a relentless, rolling mass of aggression—felt deeply personal.
"Back!" Gideon yelled, thrusting his left hand out.
Shield!
The golden hexagon materialized again, hovering in the air between him and the monster. It was a perfect construct of hard light, solid enough to stop a charging beetle.
The slime slammed into it.
SPLAT-HISS.
The impact shook Gideon’s arm to the shoulder. The creature didn't bounce off like the beetles or the wasps. It was a fluid. It splattered against the flat surface of the shield, spreading out until it covered the entire hexagonal pane in a thick, pulsating layer of red sludge.
"Blocked!" Gideon gritted his teeth, bracing his legs against the weight. "Matter state rejected. You can't get through."
Then the air inside the shield screamed.
The Radiant Lattice was translucent. It was designed to let light in so Gideon could see what he was blocking. But by letting visible light through, Gideon had inadvertently created a window for the entire infrared spectrum.
The heat didn't go around the shield. It went through it.
It was like standing behind a single pane of glass while a flamethrower was fired at the other side. The radiant energy passed through the lattice instantly, turning the air around Gideon’s face into a blast furnace.
[ HP: 330 / 350 ] [ HP: 325 / 350 ]
"Hot! Hot!" Gideon yelped, squeezing his eyes shut as his eyelashes singed. He scrambled back, breaking the shield connection. The golden pane vanished, dropping the blob of magma onto the ground.
The slime didn't care. It simply reformed, gathering itself back into a mound, and rolled toward him again.
"It’s not working!" Gideon shouted, retreating toward the tree line. "The shield is permeable to thermal radiation! I’m blocking the punch but eating the fire!"
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"Then try something different!" Elara called out. She was leaning against an oak tree thirty feet away, carving an apple with her dagger. She looked infuriatingly cool. "You're the one who keeps bragging about how your magic is 'math.' So do the math, Gideon. Fix it."
" I can't just 'fix' how light works!" Gideon argued, ducking as the slime launched a glob of burning goo at his head. The projectile missed, hitting a fern behind him. The plant burst into flames instantly.
" If I make the shield dark enough to block the heat, I won't be able to see! I'll be blind!" Gideon reasoned, panic making his voice shrill. "If I can't see, I can't block! It’s a paradox!"
The slime cornered him against a cluster of boulders. There was nowhere left to run. The boiling pond was to his left, the burning ferns to his right.
The creature rose up, towering over him. It glowed with a deep, angry cherry-red light, the heat rolling off it in shimmering waves.
Gideon raised his shield again out of pure instinct.
Sheild!
The slime crashed down.
This time, Gideon didn't drop it. He couldn't. If he dropped the shield, the magma would physically crush him. He had to hold the weight.
But the heat was unbearable. His burlap tunic felt like it was starting to smolder. The skin on his face felt tight and dry, like old parchment.
[ HP: 315 / 350 ] [ Warning: Core Temperature Critical ]
"Think," Gideon wheezed, the air burning his lungs. " It's just infrared, he thought, mind racing. The lattice is letting the long waves in. I have to reflect them."
He stared at the golden light of his shield. It was yellow-gold because of the frequency of the mana he was using. It was a default setting. A standard visible-light construct.
Why is it gold? his mind raced. Because it’s refracting a specific wavelength. If I want to stop heat... if I want to stop infrared...
He thought about the spectrum. Ultraviolet was high energy, short wavelength. Infrared was low energy, long wavelength.
To block heat, he needed a material—or a lattice—that interacted with long wavelengths. He needed to tighten the mesh? No, that would block matter harder but let waves through.
He needed to tune the lattice.
He needed to shift the frequency.
"Red," Gideon whispered, sweat evaporating off his nose before it could drip. "I need to red-shift. If I match the frequency of the heat, I can create destructive interference. Or at least a mirror."
The slime pressed harder. The golden shield began to buckle under the thermal stress, the edges flickering.
"Elara said to earn it," Gideon grunted, his boots sinking into the mud as the weight bore down on him. "Okay. Let's earn it."
He closed his eyes, ignoring the searing heat on his face. He focused on the mana flowing out of his hands. He didn't visualize a wall this time. He visualized a prism.
"System," Gideon growled. "Recalibrate output. Shift lattice frequency. Target: Infrared. Make it a mirror!"
He pushed. He didn't just pour mana in; he twisted it. He tried to force the light to change color.
"Burn me?" Gideon shouted at the glowing monster above him. "I'm about to change the laws of physics on you, you glorified candle!"
The golden shield flickered. A ripple of deep, dark crimson started to spread from the center of the hexagon.
The golden light of the Radiant Lattice Shield was flickering. The structural integrity was holding against the physical mass of the slime, but the mana bonds were fraying under the sheer thermal intensity.
Gideon felt his skin tightening. It was the feeling of standing too close to a bonfire, but he couldn't step back. The bonfire was trying to crush him.
"Frequency," Gideon gasped, his eyes streaming with tears from the heat. "Lower... the... frequency."
He visualized the visible light spectrum in his mind—a rainbow ribbon of data. Violet was at the top: high energy, short waves. Red was at the bottom: low energy, long waves. And right below red was the killer: Infrared. The invisible heat that was currently boiling him alive.
To block it, he couldn't use a general-purpose shield. He needed a filter. He needed to compress the lattice until it became a mirror for long-wave radiation.
"Shift," Gideon growled.
He imagined grabbing the "knob" of the wavelength and wrenching it counter-clockwise, fighting the System's default setting with every ounce of his will. Downshift. The blinding white light yellowed. Then it bled into orange. Finally, it settled into a deep, angry red.
[ Alert: Manual Override Detected. Efficiency Penalty Applied. ]
The change began at the center of the hexagon. The brilliant, holy gold that marked his Paladin-esque aesthetic died. In its place, a deep, bruised crimson bloomed, with flickers of dark gold.
It spread like blood in water. The yellow light darkened, heavy and ominous, turning the translucent barrier into a wall of solid, opaque red.
[ Skill Modified: Radiant Lattice (Thermal Variance) ]
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
The moment the shield turned fully red, the heat inside Gideon’s small pocket of space vanished. It didn't dissipate slowly; it was cut off, as if someone had slammed a blast door shut.
Gideon gasped, sucking in a lungful of air that was still hot, but no longer searing. The HP drain stopped.
But the MP drain began.
The cost of forcing the shield to act as a thermal mirror wasn't efficient. It was a brute-force hack. Gideon watched his mana bar, which had been comfortably full, suddenly nosedive.
[ MP: 350... 280... 210... ]
"It worked," Gideon wheezed, " but the cost... the drain is huge!"
The infrared radiation slamming into the shield was reflected instantly back at the source. The Magma Slime, which was used to radiating heat outward, suddenly found its own thermal output mirror-slammed back into its body.
HISSSSSS.
The sound was like a steam valve blowing. The air in front of the shield superheated. The slime’s surface began to boil violently, bubbles of black tar erupting as its own temperature spiraled out of control.
The creature recoiled, screeching in a confusion of steam and pain.
Gideon didn't let up. He couldn't. If he dropped the frequency for even a microsecond, the heat would return. He had to hold the "Red Note" perfectly, like a singer holding a scream.
"Vent it!" Gideon yelled, the veins in his neck bulging. "Push the reflection!"
He shoved his hand forward. The heat radiating off the slime hit the shield and was vented sideways, blasting out from the edges of the crimson hexagon.
The ferns on Gideon’s left didn't just catch fire; they vaporized. The mud on his right turned to dry dust in a second.
[ MP: 150... 120... 90... ]
The numbers were falling faster than he could think.
"Elara!" Gideon screamed, his voice cracking with panic. "I can't see! The shield is opaque! I'm holding a blind spot!"
He was safe from the heat, but the deep red color blocked all visible light. He was standing in the dark, holding back a monster he couldn't see, feeling the vibrations of its boiling body slamming against his hand.
"Hold the line!" Elara’s voice came from somewhere to his right. She sounded calm, but there was a sharp edge of focus in her tone. "Keep it red! You’re cooking it with its own output!"
"I'm cooking myself!" Gideon shouted back, sweat pouring down his back. "The drain is exponential! I have seconds, Elara! Single digit seconds!"
[ MP: 60... 45... 30... ]
The familiar, terrifying hollowness of mana starvation clawed at his chest. The "withdrawal" he had felt earlier was scratching at the door, demanding entry.
"I can't hold the variable!" Gideon gritted out, his knees shaking as the slime slammed against the shield again, desperate to break the mirror that was killing it.
[ MP: 15... 10... ]
"Now!" Gideon screamed into the red darkness. "Do it now or I drop it!"
The world inside the red haze was collapsing.
Gideon’s mana bar was flashing a critical red, a single-digit countdown to total failure. The [Radiant Lattice Shield] was no longer a stable construct; it was a screaming, vibrating load that was actively eating his consciousness to sustain itself.
[ MP: 8... 5... 3... ]
"Elara!" Gideon shrieked, his voice raw. "I am out of integers! Dropping in three!"
The Magma Slime, confused and boiling in its own reflected heat, sensed the weakness. It coalesced its semi-liquid bulk for one final, crushing surge. It loomed over the crimson hexagon, a towering wave of superheated slag ready to bury the annoying little man who had turned off the lights.
"Drop it," Elara’s voice whispered.
It didn't come from the woods. It came from the shadow at Gideon’s feet.
Gideon didn't question it. He didn't have the bandwidth to question it. He simply let go.
"Disengage!"
He cut the mana flow.
The crimson shield vanished instantly.
The sudden absence of the red filter was blinding. The clearing was flooded with the angry, orange glare of the Magma Slime. The heat, no longer held back by the mirror-lattice, slammed into Gideon like a physical blow.
But before the slime could crash down on him, the shadow moved.
When Gideon dropped the shield, the sudden blast of light from the slime cast a long, sharp shadow behind him—a perfect, dark corridor stretching back toward the trees.
Elara didn't run. She didn't jump. She stepped out of Gideon’s shadow.
It was a seamless transition of matter. One moment she wasn't there; the next, she was launching herself from the darkness directly at the exposed, boiling face of the slime.
She was a blur of motion, the [Cloak of the Umbra] trailing behind her like smoke.
"Phantom Step," she murmured, her voice calm amidst the roar of the fire.
The slime was focused entirely on Gideon. It never saw the threat. It didn't have eyes to see the glint of the dual daggers in Elara’s hands, coated in a dark, necrotic energy that seemed to drink the light around them.
[ Skill: Soul-Sever ]
Elara hit the slime mid-air. She didn't slash at the surface; she drove her blades deep into the center of the mass, aiming for the mana core that Gideon couldn't see but she could feel.
SHIIIING.
The sound wasn't wet. It was the sound of fabric tearing—the fabric of the monster’s existence being unzipped.
The necrotic energy of Soul-Sever bypassed the physical resistance of the magma. It ignored the heat. It struck the mana circuit holding the slime together and severed it.
The slime froze.
The towering wave of magma hung in the air for a split second, defying gravity. The angry orange glow turned a sickly, bruised purple where Elara’s daggers were buried.
Then, the cohesion failed.
SPLAT.
The slime didn't explode; it lost its surface tension. The terrifying monster dissolved instantly into a puddle of harmless, cooling lava. Elara landed gracefully on a dry patch of rock, flicking the residual goo off her blades.
Gideon wasn't so graceful. He collapsed backward into the mud, scrambling away from the wave of cooling slag that washed toward his boots.
"Is it dead?" Gideon gasped, shielding his face. "Did we turn it off?"
The puddle hissed, bubbling weakly, and then began to disintegrate into pixels. The heavy, sulfurous smell of the clearing was replaced by the clean, digital scent of loot.
[ SYSTEM ALERT: THREAT NEUTRALIZED ] [ TARGET: MAGMA SLIME (VARIANT) - LEVEL 9 ] [ PARTY KILL BONUS APPLIED ]
Gideon lay in the mud, staring up at the sky. His chest was heaving. His mana bar was sitting at [ 0 / 500 ]. He had zeroed out again, but this time, he was conscious.
"You used me as bait," Gideon wheezed, pointing a shaking finger at Elara. "You used my shadow as a transit tunnel."
"It was the only safe approach vector," Elara said, sheathing her daggers. She walked over to where the core of the slime had been and picked up a glowing, red orb. "The heat was too intense for a frontal assault. I needed you to blind it, cook it, and cast a shadow deep enough for me to jump. You served your purpose."
She tossed the orb to him. Gideon fumbled it, catching it against his chest. It was warm, humming with energy.
[ Magma Core (Rare) ]
"You're welcome," Gideon groaned.
Then, the sound came.
DING.
It was a beautiful, resonant chime that seemed to vibrate in his bones. It was followed by another. And another.
DING. DING.
[ LEVEL UP! ] [ LEVEL 6 REACHED ] [ LEVEL UP! ] [ LEVEL 7 REACHED ] [ LEVEL UP! ] [ LEVEL 8 REACHED ]
"Whoa," Gideon whispered, sitting up. "Three levels? In one kill?"
"It was a Level 9 Variant," Elara said, unimpressed. "And you're a low-level. The experience curve is steep at the bottom. Enjoy the jump. It’ll slow down soon enough."
Gideon pulled up his status sheet. The numbers were staggering.
[ NAME: GIDEON VANCE ] [ LEVEL: 8 ] [ UNALLOCATED STAT POINTS: 30 ]
"Thirty points," Gideon did the math. "Ten points per level. Times three."
He stared at the unallocated pool. This was it. This was the "RAM upgrade" he had been waiting for.
"Don't spend them all on Intelligence," Elara warned, watching him. "You just saw what happens when you have a big engine but a weak chassis. You almost melted."
"I didn't melt," Gideon defended, standing up. He felt tall. He felt... dense. "I suffered a thermal regulation failure. Different problem."
He looked at the stats.
- Intelligence: 50 (Base)
- Constitution: 35 (Base)
- Strength: 35 (Base)
- Endurance: 30 (Base)
- Agility: 30 (Base)
He needed more mana. The Red-Shift maneuver had proven that complex physics required exponential energy. But Elara was right; he also needed to survive the casting.
"Balanced build," Gideon muttered. "But weighted toward the processor."
He dumped 10 points into Intelligence. If he was going to break the laws of physics, he needed a bigger battery.
[ INTELLIGENCE: 50 >> 60 (MP: 600) ]
He split the remaining 20 points across his physical stats, shoring up his defenses.
- Constitution: +10 (45)
- Strength: +5 (40)
- Endurance: +5 (35)
[ STATS UPDATED ]
The rush of the upgrade hit him. It wasn't just energy this time; it was clarity. The forest didn't just hum; it sang.
He looked at Elara. For the first time, the level gap didn't feel quite so infinite. He was Level 8. She was Level 50. He was still an insect compared to her, but he was a very, very smart insect.
"I'm ready," Gideon said, clenching his fist. The air popped audibly around his fingers.
"Ready for what?" Elara asked, raising an eyebrow.
"For Level 10," Gideon said, looking deeper into the forest. "Let's grind." Then the world started to spin.
“Right after you rest a bit. You look like you’re going to throw up," Elara said, rolling her eyes.
"I..." Gideon swallowed hard, the taste of ozone and adrenaline heavy in his throat. "I admit, the internal telemetry is... suboptimal."
“Sit," she ordered, her voice losing its edge and softening just a fraction. "Eat a ration bar. Drink some water. Then we can talk about conquering the world. Deal?"
She steered him toward a large, flat rock near the path.
Gideon sat down, he looked at his shaking hands, then up at the beautiful dark elf who was currently saving him from face-planting into the dirt.
"Deal," he whispered.