Red emergency lights glowed faintly in the oppressive dark. Boiling pipes radiated heat from our left and right. A cool breeze rose from the grated metal walkway. Sweat trickled down my cheek as Coatlie murmured, “Finally, we go somewhere nice.”

  “You take me to the most wonderful places,” I drawled to Vanya.

  Upon her insistence, she took the lead in our little after-enchanting jaunt in the upper mechanisms of the Commander’s tower. Her submachine gun hung loosely in one hand while the other held a device that pointed a needle to traces of nitroglycerin, an explosive ingredient. “When we find the terrorist, we can suggest they perform their skulduggery in more pleasant environs such as cafés or the backs of bookstores.”

  “Hiding in plain sight is a surprisingly effective sabotage technique. I can’t recall the number of times slaying a rival group of monsters earned me enough trust to infiltrate a community and ruin critical infrastructure or assassinate their leaders. It’s also significantly more comfortable than disabling a whole sector of temperature control and preventing repair drones from addressing the problem. How did you find this place?”

  Vanya checked a corner around the pipes with her gun before turning left down another walkway. “One of my roommates bugged the entire school and heard the Commander students complaining about the temperature in the upper floors. It seemed odd enough that I checked with maintenance about the source. They were still assembling a team to check out this area. If this criminal moves every few days, then they’ll always stay one step ahead of the work crews.” She stopped at a ladder up and stepped aside. “Luckily, our terrorist isn’t stupid enough to leave a light trap.”

  I stepped around Vanya while carefully moving all the orbiting spirit stones around her. “It does imply a grander purpose than simple destruction. Any malcontent with a light-bulb and a battery could call celestials.” The resulting mid or high tier monster would kill far more humans than mere bombs. It was a shame the creatures seemed disinterested in anything but humans.

  Vanya tapped one of the stones as I climbed. “What was the point of putting newt eyes in stone?”

  I flexed my left arm and the pieces snapped into a round disk on my forearm. “While the shield is in its dispersed form, I can see through the eyes, giving me all-around vision.” Jeremiah retired to his dorm after our dungeon run and didn’t stay with me as I smelted all the spirit stones we harvested into these few rocks. The MP efficiency was terrible, but the durability, mass, and weight kept stacking until I had a proper tier 3 material. I smashed the newt eyes in during a moment of hubris to create seeing-spirit-stone. Enchanting it with the Durability, Animate, and Perception abilities during class depleted a lot of my supplies.

  “Doesn’t that give you a massive headache?”

  “Quite! But the burden is lessening over time.” In truth, the Perception ability wasn’t terribly useful with how refined my senses were and how blurry a newt’s vision was, but adapting to the strain would leave me more prepared for more advanced equipment later. The only way I could get ahead of others with my ability was by bearing trials they wouldn’t think to try.

  When I opened the hatch to the next floor, I sent a rock through the crack to scout the area above. No wire-trap this time. The collaborator had been here. We found more than a few explosive traps that could have done serious damage to us or the school. Unlike Jeremiah, my disarming skills were up to the task and avoiding accidental triggers.

  “All clear.” I proceeded to the next floor and secured the platform for Vanya to ascend. “The temperature has fallen. Likely a monster effect.” We had already encountered low tier demon spiders, tentacle bundles, and bats along with—more alarmingly—slimers, a low tier spirit capable of covering their foes in harmless goo. They could be banished with enough physical force, but their presence implied a leak into a spiritual plane or other spirit manifesting conditions, none of which were good.

  Vanya examined her device again after closing the hatch. “The tilt is settling, the bombs should be on this floor.”

  “I concur.”

  She rolled her eyes. “On what basis?”

  I tapped my nose.

  “Are you a bomb-sniffing dog?”

  “Our senses become more sensitive as our shades grow. Most heroes unconsciously let their aura dampen stimuli. With training, you can suppress that reflex, and then with more training, you can interpret the sensations.”

  “Duh, I know that.” Vanya continued down another walkway. “That doesn’t mean you can track like a bloodhound.”

  “Physically, I didn’t approach parity with canines until about 32%, but human intellect lets us extrapolate better from worse senses, so my nose has been useful for much of my career.”

  She sighed. “Makes me wish I could grow my shade that much without going completely mad.”

  “I personally consider it a different kind of sane. In Fa?rie, I’m the mad one.”

  “Not that you aren’t deeply mentally unwell.”

  I furrowed my brows. “My mind is entirely sound. I check it routinely and correct for errors constantly.”

  Vanya laughed. She then glanced back and quieted. “Oh… You’re serious. Oh Mari… Oh Mari no, that’s not how that works. If meditation and aura techniques could preserve mental health, then the elder elves wouldn’t have their difficulties.”

  “Please, I’ve heard it all before. A mental disorder is a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior. By that metric, none of my idiosyncrasies qualify. Sure, I can’t sleep a full night without magical compulsion, but I don’t need to sleep, so that doesn’t matter. With the right mitigation tools, what would be a mental disorder on someone else is merely a fun quirk on myself.”

  She stepped toward me and placed a hand on the side of my helm. “Hey. You only have one life. The slow destruction of your mind isn’t inevitable. Instead of developing more elaborate coping mechanisms, spend some of that effort on healing.”

  “Why pity me? I have hunted your kind and reveled as they burned.”

  “No one deserves madness. Besides, I can’t change your mind if you lose it.” Vanya smiled. The night sky of her eyes poured into mine. Distant stars twinkled in those abysses, pulsing with mystery and hidden depths. In those cosmic whirls, I tried to find how she could care about me in ways I couldn’t for myself or others. The closer I looked, the more stars I found. The more stars I found, the more lost I was, but not so lost that I didn’t perceive the flicker behind me and feel the approaching cold front.

  My shield snapped together on my back as I pulled Vanya into a hug and used my aura to reduce the heat transfer around us. A gale of frosty torrents rolled past us and iced the ceiling and pipes next to us.

  Vanya and I then went back to back in a fluid motion as my shield floated to my arm. She asked, “What is attacking us?”

  “A rare monster with indeterminate invisibility and possibly flight.” I followed discordant sounds through the pipes with the tip of my blade. While I couldn’t be certain that it was the monster, it was my best guess. “It has some form of incorporeal method too.”

  Darkness then spread from our feet and expanded outward in a spherical pattern. Vanya’s breathing quickened and her aim became more erratic, the elf unused to poor vision. After one second of indecision, she crouched and began rummaging through her pack. “Cover me.”

  My shield broke apart and orbited around us. If a silent creature tried to attack, then it would have to avoid the rocks. Otherwise, I focused on feeling vibrations through my armor. Even perfectly stealthy creatures tended to disturb the air with their passage. Detecting those micro-currents would foil most assaults and grant an instant to counterattack.

  A ripple of air from above indicated displacement by a large creature becoming solid. I met its blade with mine. The creature bore down on me with the weight of a mountain. It was all I could do to deflect the attack and step out of the way, letting the monster cleave through the walkway between me and Vanya. Bolts snapped and metal shrieked as the floor flew apart, sending us to the ground below.

  Once out of the darkness, Vanya kicked off a wall and gracefully backflipped to the floor. I dented the walkway next to her with a heavy thud. She continued to rummage through her bag. When I glanced up, the creature had vanished once again.

  “Got it!” Vanya held a glass vial that radiated concentrated starlight. When another bead of darkness formed between us, she held her vial to it and the darkness dispelled.

  I slowly turned in a circle, searching for the monster. “The spellcaster is physically stronger than me, making it a tier 5 or 6.” This promised to be a challenging fight for me alone. Ensuring Vanya’s safety on top of that seemed unlikely. “I would suggest a withdrawal, but I doubt the creature would let us.”

  “Yeah, we’ll have to—”

  Vanya’s next words were lost to me. A sudden impulse wanted me to lay down my weapons and make peace with the attacking monster. Such untoward thoughts immediately triggered a reflexive aura stabilization of my mind. The impulse was stubborn and took all my will to shake off. By the time I was free of it, Vanya was holding her head and mumbling.

  She let out a dry laugh. “Why am I trying to be friends with you when there are better options?” She then raised her gun and fired.

  I blocked the bullets with my shield while attempting to dodge her aim. No matter how erratic my movements, she maintained a perfect lock on my position. Great, another friend turned against me. At least this situation should only be temporary once I disabled the source. Though, finding the source of this compulsion was proving difficult. What has all these abilities?

  We weren’t fighting multiple monsters—I would’ve detected them—but what had such eclectic talents? No, a name wouldn’t help me right now. I needed to find the creature first. When Vanya reloaded, I jumped around the ceiling and poked through the walls with my aura while attempting minor physical property changes. If there was resistance to my efforts, then that would indicate the presence of the creature.

  Vanya’s bullets continued, and I kept my shield in front of her aim. The collective vision from the shield let me do that without having to keep my eyes on her. I don’t know if fighting my friends better counts as a good use case for an ability. I didn’t have time to lament my own poor design decisions while searching for my real prey.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Eventually, I found a section of pipes where the gaps between them resisted my changes. I then drove my blade through those gaps and felt the familiar tearing of ethereal flesh. A resonant roar of pain rewarded my efforts, and mist flowed around me to coalesce into a 3m tall monster covered in lamellar armor. She bared her tusks at me and swung her ōdachi one-handed.

  A last second block preserved my life and sent me skidding down the walkway until I was next to Vanya. Seeing the creature’s orange skin, gray armor, and long flowing black hair broke her out of her trance. “What kind of monster is that?” she asked.

  “That—” I righted myself and shook the stiffness from my shoulders. “—is an oni, a spirit from the orc’s world. They can only be banished through fire.” Oni were thought to be orcish spirits of conflict. Since orc culture had been dealing with portals far longer than ours, constant warfare was their norm, making their conflict spirits multifaceted intelligent creatures with their own more antiquated society. An oni was much like an exaggerated orc warrior of myth. Their constant regeneration represented a culture that saw growth through conflict.

  Vanya switched to her six-shot grenade launcher. “Bind her sword arm so I can hit her.”

  Easier said than done. I charged forward at the monster. She waved her free hand and faded from vision. At least five abilities: flight, strength, spellcasting, regeneration, and shapeshifting. The Oni closed the distance with a thrust that I only avoided by striking the side of the blade as I dodged left. She followed up her attack with a shoulder check that sent me rolling back to Vanya. Invisibility breaks after an attack. Creature’s speed is greater than my own.

  I finished the tumble on my feet and coughed blood into my helm. “Ew,” Coatlie complained. My heavy breathing was my only response.

  “You still conscious?” Vanya fired a flour grenade, briefly outlining the oni before she followed it with a fragmentation round. Like she predicted, the oni sliced that grenade in half before it could explode. The remaining halves detonated with muted force, which was enough to ignite the flour. “Now would be a good time to move!”

  With a jerk, I bolted forward, blade relaxed to a whip and shield half-formed by my arm. When the oni lifted a hand and blasted cold, I blocked the frost and caught her hand in my whip. She curled her arm and pulled. Rather than fighting her strength, I leapt with it. An ōdachi swept from the ground to ceiling in the hopes of bisecting my Mari-sized projectile. My shield reformed with her blade inside of it, letting me pull the strike to the left, clearing the way for me to arrest my momentum by slamming my head into hers.

  “Bah! Dic tek fengnal!” It might have been the concussion, but some of her words were intelligible.

  As her left hand swung for my side, I straightened my blade and grabbed her throat with my other hand. The Oni ignored her hand flying off and rammed her stump into my side, denting my armor and breaking a rib. My aura delayed the resulting momentum long enough for me to jam my sword between her ribs. When I flung to the side, I dragged her +300 kilo frame with me. She dropped her sword and grabbed the back of my head.

  The metal around my skull groaned under her attention. I screamed, “Vanya! Take the shot!”

  My ally didn’t question my call and landed an incendiary grenade in the creature’s maw. With my armor’s Fire Manipulation ability, I redirected the blast around me and only experienced a brief 200°C increase in temperature. I still blacked out from the heat, but only for a moment.

  When I came to, the oni was glowing like a bonfire and stumbling around while screaming. She then stood tall, raised her right hand, and blasted herself with a wave of frost. Vanya exploited the opening by incinerating her again.

  In deathly silence, Vanya methodically launched grenade after grenade. The oni tried transforming into a gaseous state to slip away, but Vanya was quite content to roast the inner workings of the school to flush our prey. A delighted cackle escaped her lips that was so full of innocent monster slaying joy. “Suck on these ‘nades, bitch!”

  I flopped over and grabbed the oni’s sword with my free hand. Sure enough, the creature turned solid and made a desperate lunge for it. I tossed it away from both of us while pulling lingering flames to the oni’s face. She gave me one final vindictive kick before the flames crawled through eyes and melted her brain. The spirit fell to her knees with a thunk as her flesh faded out of existence.

  With a groan, I pried myself from steaming pipes and collapsed onto the walkway. Vanya rushed over and tried to help me pull off my helm. “Ow! You are way too hot.”

  I pried my helmet off and sucked in cool air. “I know, but more people need to say it.” I sipped on a healing potion while I tried to remove the dent in my armor.

  “Ha ha. But seriously, I could fry an egg on your armor. Shouldn’t you be dead?”

  “Durability increases with your shade. That includes heat resistance. If oni weren’t specifically weak to fire, then your grenades wouldn’t have banished her.” After radiating off the excess heat, I concentrated my aura on the dent and used cold smelting to make it more malleable long enough to pop back out. It would need a more thorough repair and check later, but that should do for now. Not that I have the materials to replace it.

  Vanya scanned the oni’s lingering possessions. “How strong was that monster?”

  “Tier five. Oni are extremely versatile, but their weakness to fire is entirely too common to rate at a higher tier. There are ones with enchanted gear that mitigates that weakness, and those are tier 6. As spirits, they tend to not explore our world with much caution. A death here merely sends them back.”

  She grinned. “That’s still the strongest monster I’ve slain. How about you?”

  “I’ve soloed a tier 5 before.” Vanguards tended to engage in the practice of monster dueling and rated themselves that way. “The only tier 6 deaths I’ve seen have been in raids against high tier monsters, but I don’t count those. The Savior tends to clear the chaff.” Beams of radiance falling from the sky, monsters worthy of their own sagas crumbling to dust by the score, the real foe looming in the distance.

  “Were you there when he killed the Titan spawn?”

  I shook my head as I rose and began to collect the oni’s blade, armor, and satchel. “Not the first one. Only his closest allies were present for that, and none of them will talk about the details. They’ll only confirm that he killed it by himself. I’ve been there for later raids.” A wistful smile crept across my face. “Most raids only drive off an approaching high tier monster or Titan from the path of Last Stand. Actually killing the creature is a whole different experience. Those raids are fun. Hopefully, humanity will slay a tier 8 soon.”

  “One day...” Vanya’s longing look matched my own. “Alright, let's go look at what the Oni was defending. There is no chance our terrorist didn’t hear that fight and flee—if they were even here at all.”

  We trekked back up a floor and to our destination. The collaborator had set themselves in a cozy alcove next to a window that let in the sun’s light. Unlike artificial light, celestials never spawned in sunlight, implying either a special property of the light or that the sun itself observed wherever its light touched. Within the window’s light was a half-assembled bomb and a spirit summoning circle. The script was unfamiliar. I leaned forward and examined closer before jerking away. “Dammit!”

  Vanya shielded her eyes. “Is it a memetic trap?”

  “No, far worse. The summoning circle is in orcish, and it worked, which means they know the language. Fuck, of course no one else noticed. Being able to recognize the language at all could tempt orc assassins.” I didn’t say how that brief glance gave me all the clues I needed to learn the word for ‘summon’. That forbidden knowledge could get me killed. I stomped on the circle and scrubbed the MP-infused chalk with my foot before Vanya could fall for the same trap.

  “How did an unafflicted human make a working summoning circle?”

  I scrubbed harder, dragging grooves in the concrete. “They can’t. Spirit summoning circles are a very weak kind of spell. The spirit does most of the work if you provide enough MP rich sacrifices and a rite pleasing to it. It’ll come over, but to get its attention at all, you have to call for it. The call requires uttering a note in your native magical language.” Which humans don’t have.

  “I know. The occasional elf will dabble in fey summoning or spellcasting… It never ends well. But if this is orcish, then…”

  “Yes, there is a good chance the collaborator is a mythical half-orc or…” I trailed off, my mind not wanting to accept the possibility.

  Vanya walked in front of me. “Or what?”

  “Or… High Orcish is a magical language humans can speak. That would explain why the orcs are so adamant about us not learning their tongue, but there has to be more to it than that!” I paced. “Even if our species are so similar to allow for speaking it, the spell still wouldn’t work unless we were also metaphysically similar. No, I reject my two previous conclusions. There must be a third reason. Perhaps they have an artifact from the orcs to assist them? Yes, that’s more likely.”

  She crossed her arms. “Why are you discounting the possibility of a half-orc?”

  “It’s been... tested.”

  “By who? Why haven’t I heard of this?”

  I grimaced. “There are avenues of research the Hero Union only lets ‘committed’ heroes see.” At Vanya’s growing offense, I clarified, “You have to butcher several towns of monsters down to the last man, woman, and child before Absolute personally gives you the needed classification. Many heroes don’t have the stomach for such labors. I won’t get into the details, but humans and orcs can’t naturally have children.”

  “Such research seems… needlessly cruel.”

  “What?” I guessed at what Vanya was thinking. “Oh! No no no, the experiments were in vitro. If half-orcs were possible, the Hero Union planned to integrate them into our society to give us natural spellcasters. As you can imagine, the potential backlash from even considering such a plan could be catastrophic.”

  Vanya scowled. “That’s disgusting. Humanity doesn’t need to curse itself further. We already have shades and horny fey plaguing us.” She turned to the bomb. “Let's disarm this and look for any clues.”

  I crouched by it. “It’s missing a detonator, so we’re fine.” I scooped some of the clay and tasted it. “Huh.”

  “Let me guess, through taste alone, you’ve determined the materials came from Hartgrove Industries?”

  My eyes widened. “Yes actually. They have a proprietary stabilizer that has a subtle lime flavor. How did you know?”

  She tapped a box with the family’s logo. “Through training and intensive study, I’ve learned to read the labels first.”

  I spat out my explosive gum. “Hmmm, most of these materials are store-bought. You wouldn’t need the Exemplary ability to make a bomb with this. My initial assumption may have been wrong.”

  “No, really?” She tilted her head in mock amazement. “The great Exemplar was wrong! We should tell the papers, so they can report on this earth-shattering event!”

  “Learning from my mistakes is the core of my ability and who I am as a hero. I have erred greatly before and will do so again.”

  “Truly, an example of humility for us all,” she deadpanned. The light in the room began to dim as the sun set. “Take these and ask Riena about them. She’s a Hartgrove, right? We’ll discuss what you’ve learned tomorrow before alchemy and plan our next move.” She then yawned. “Otherwise, it may be a good idea to get to our dorms before the school becomes infested.”

  “Sure. Before I go, did you want any of the oni’s materials?”

  She waved away the offer. “Not for Crafting, but I would like to keep a trophy.”

  I handed her the ōdachi. “Here, you don’t have enough swords.”

  She accepted the weapon. “I prefer knives. They are better up close. If I have enough room for a sword, I can shoot them with a bow or gun.”

  “All weapons have their use. In fact, let me exposit their virtues.”

  Vanya groaned as I went into a long and in-depth rant/lecture on the subject matter. By the time we left the temperature control section, Vanya had decided to flee from my illuminating words at top speed. I chuckled and navigated back to my dorm.

  Once there, I stumbled onto my team playing a board game. Casimir beckoned me. “Mari, so nice of you to join us.” His tone implied this was another medically mandated hangout session.

  I suppressed a sigh and piled the bomb components onto an end table next to Riena. She didn’t even glance at them as I sat between Nyla and Derek on the other side of the coffee table. “What are we playing?”

  Riena shuffled and passed out cards. “It's a deck builder slash territory control game. Your cards have different effects depending on where you play them and the surrounding cards. You can only play one card on your turn, and the rest of the rules are on the cards themselves, so it’s pretty simple.”

  I grabbed one of the cards she gave me and examined it. “What does ‘this card triggers an additional attack phase every turn’ mean?”

  “Well it’s…” Riena began to explain the real rules, which quickly made my head spin. Derek, Casimir, and Nyla gave me looks full of schadenfreude as another inmate joined them in this social prison.

  For Riena’s sake, I did my best to learn and play the rules right.