Ranthia hadn’t been down long—she couldn’t have been; the moons in the sky essentially hadn’t budged. And yet. Yet the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a small part of Republius that stared at her with a single glassy eye.

  It felt accusatory.

  Secundia was gone. Republius was gone. Leoios was still fighting though.

  Ranthia struggled back to her feet, she was wounded but she was fine, it wasn’t her first head wound. It wouldn’t be her last.

  Ranthia steadied her footing just in time to watch Leoios end up pinned between two tentacles. An instant later, before she could meaningfully react, he too was gone. Just like that, her ambitions to join his fight crumbled. The final words she had ever said to the man were to curse him.

  Not that he deserved any less. If he hadn’t restrained her…!

  Ranthia shuddered. A tiny, logical piece of her mind screamed that she needed to run. The rest of her mind was seized by guilt and hatred, and logic was smothered beneath the cold rage that burned through her veins like ice, far colder than any Hail (rest well) ever conjured.

  The monster had killed her entire team. Leoios had enabled it. …As had she. Had she just refused his orders sooner…!

  Xaoc, watch over them. Do what you can to ease their journey through Samsara. Secundia was genuinely good in the way few can manage. Hail—Hallus—was creative and always friendly. Mettlea meant well, even if he struggled to live up to it. Penticus was a good man, devoted to making Remus a little safer for his daughter’s future; gods and goddesses, I don’t even know where his stupid bird went. Pibius… lived up to his reputation, usually. Republius had the team’s best interests in heart, even if we didn’t always know it. …Leoios should have been better, but I respected him once. None of them deserved to die like this. Nor any of the people that lived here; no matter how insane they had to be to live next to The Ocean.

  But don’t worry.

  I’ll make things right.

  Ranthia immediately cut her prayer without waiting for a response and smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. It wasn’t a determined smirk like she assumed it was either; it was something a bit more… twisted. Anguished.

  She turned back to the building she had been smashed into. It seemed sturdy; she had no idea how sturdy, but it had to be good enough. The door was locked, but it failed to hold up against a single infuriated kick. Ranthia hobbled—ow—into the storeroom and immediately began to channel.

  Soon enough she was ready. Several moments after her channel concluded, she inhabited a mirror image and glared balefully at the raging oceanic monstrosity. It had killed her entire team. But it had made a fatal mistake.

  It hadn’t killed her.

  Ranthia roared as she closed in on the monster. Cold hateful fury tore through her mind and soul. Her hatred for the monster. Her hatred for herself. She needed to avenge her party, she needed it more than anything.

  In her fury, she fought as an Adventurer. There was no rhythm—no grace.

  Mirror images appeared, scattered about as best she could manage with the poor lines of sight. Even with the devastation, she was still inside of a decently robust city—blind spots were more common than clear lines of sight. But even an image that stumbled forward blind was an advantage, anything to keep her from being quite as obvious of a target as she closed in.

  Ranthia channeled while she ran. At last, she was in range. It was a stupid move, but she was so blinded by her fury that she never quite realized it.

  She threw an image atop the kraken and shifted onto its body. Immediately, she tapped [Void Edge], [Flowing Momentum], and [Echoes of Devastation] and began to lash out. With the Void and her other skills behind her strikes, she carved through the coral armor with ease—clearly it wasn’t backed by vitality—and drew blood.

  System notifications triggered, but Ranthia activated her most aggressive preset and further restricted it to kill notifications of targets over level 700. She didn’t care. Levels, new skills, none of it mattered—only the life and death struggle for revenge.

  One of the shorter tentacles came for her. Ranthia started to channel, even as she evaded it. The beast was fast, but it seemed unused to trying to grapple things that were on its own body. Ranthia even scoured coral off the tentacle while she evaded, leaving scattered cuts along it.

  [Echoes of Devastation] wasn’t quite the same as [Cross Strike] had been. The secondary ‘impact’ came along the path of the original, half a heartbeat behind. This meant her cuts were slightly deeper than they were before—though she no longer got to inflict two cuts for every swipe of her knife. The skill favored depth, not spread.

  Which might be a problem—cutting slightly deeper wasn’t going to accomplish much with a target so ridiculously massive!

  Ranthia continued to squirm across the large head fin atop (on the backside of? she wasn’t sure how the creature should be oriented) the kraken as she evaded the tentacle, delivering cuts as rapidly as she could to it and the tentacle. The coral made footing treacherous, but [Rhythmic Grace] still had [Steps into the Void]’s effects that helped offset that problem. If this was the best the creature could do, she was fine—so long as she didn’t get careless…!

  [Combat Awareness] screamed. Ranthia barely had time to understand the scope of the attack. She started to shift to one of the mirror images she’d left scattered about in the streets—long since immobile, she’d stopped even trying to divide her attention after she got up there—but there wasn’t enough time.

  Ranthia kicked off the coral-covered kraken and launched herself off of it.

  Even as a wave of Darkness erupted from the monstrosity.

  Ranthia’s perception twisted as she went from airborne and in danger to suddenly back in the streets. The image that she abandoned was erased by the surge of Darkness that surrounded the kraken, moments before the full-body attack faded.

  “Just full of tricks…” Ranthia snarled as she glared at the kraken. The attack was uncomfortably similar to [Repulse the Unworthy], which gave her non-subtle regrets about abandoning the Skill if it was that powerful—

  “Gods and goddesses, what is wrong with me?!” Ranthia hissed, as she at long last remembered that she had classed up. She wasn’t some berserker trying desperately to land a fatal blow damnit!

  Ranthia took a moment while she breathed and studied the kraken. It seemed to have lost interest in—or perhaps awareness of—her for the moment. The pointy head-fin thing was atop the creature, below that was its strange cylindrical body. There were two massive eyes on either side of the body, which extended far enough out that she suspected the creature had few blind spots. There was an odd spigot-looking organ sticking out near the eyes—she had no idea what it was. Beneath(?) the creature were two massive tentacles, with large blobs of clubbing flesh at their ends—these two were by far the longest and seemingly most powerful of the beast’s limbs. It primarily attacked with those, but when it seized something that its piteous mind thought might be food it brought the item to its smaller tentacles—of which there were at least six, possibly eight—which brought the item underwater toward the main body. Fair odds there was a mouth somewhere under there.

  Enough gawking. Ranthia started forward again, but she didn’t take a step. She pirouetted, then swept her foot forward as she tried to find her rhythm once again. She was concerned that it might be hard to dance with how angry she was, but her body fell into an impromptu performance immediately. Her soul sang and the ice that flowed through her veins ignited into a passionate inferno.

  She was still pissed beyond reason and sense, but she was ready to channel her fury.

  Ranthia reached out with [Reflective Motility] and found the images that were still active. Many were gone, but not all; she had them dance forward as well, even as she began to bolster their numbers. She couldn’t make them dance well in the numbers she was attempting, but they screened her as she closed back in.

  The kraken had receded into the water some—it seemed unwilling to stay quite so emerged for too long—which gave her a brief opportunity to get close while its reach was limited. If she could keep damaging the main body, it was just a matter of time until the beast took damage it couldn’t ignore so readily. The coral she’d sheared off hadn’t regrown yet for some reason; had the Dark pulse really taken so much out of the creature?

  If so, perhaps she truly could win! A savage smile crossed her face as she greedily drank in the mana the arcanite in her vest had to offer. That gave her enough mana to shift once, though if she could avoid shifting she could fight for a good while off the same amount of mana. [Vision of the Void] was using up most of her mana regen to allow her to see through the dark haze around the kraken though, which meant she needed to find something—

  [Combat Awareness] had always proven its worth. Rigira had tried to convince Ranthia not to rely on it, but in the end the dwarf never managed to best the Skill. Her failure reduced the impact of the lesson that she’d tried to impart more than just a bit.

  Until the moment when Ranthia panic-dodged a sudden attack she hadn’t sensed coming. [Combat Awareness] remained silent, even as debris across a swath of the area launched into the air. Even as image after image was annihilated in the span of the barest beat of a heart. Ranthia’s own reaction had less to do with her survival than sheer luck did—only the outermost periphery of the attack had reached her.

  The kraken was almost completely out of the water, no longer where it had been positioned a moment before. A wave of dissipating Steam washed over Ranthia a heartbeat later, even as she stumbled back to where it was safe.

  Only for her legs to immediately fail her.

  Ranthia fell to the ground, catching herself painfully on her elbows. The pain felt… strangely distant though. Her gaze lowered to her body.

  What was left of it.

  Better than half the laminar of her armor was just… gone. With it went her skin, flesh, and more than a few bones. The half-delirious thought that she was fortunate she’d already drained her arcanite vest of its mana flitted through her mind when she noted that half the vest’s material was gone.

  The fall had displaced several of her organs. Others were probably reduced to pulp by the blow she hadn’t quite managed to dodge.

  She needed to channel. Right. Ranthia tried to concentrate, but the pain reached her moments into it. Her grasp on the channel faded as her consciousness dimmed under the onslaught of the agony. Precious mana lost. She still had enough—that was an 8, right?—but it was a desperate struggle to hold on. Her vision blurred and dimmed.

  She wasn’t going to make it.

  At least she tried. At least she’d join her team. Tatius. Pupius. There was something poetic about everything coming to an end at last. She’d hurt the thing, at least. Not that she was delusional enough to believe the shallow injuries she had inflicted threatened the kraken’s future; even half-dead she knew better.

  Hexara’s face flashed through her addled mind. It was the memory of the woman she loved, crying in her arms out of worry for her. She… she couldn’t do that to Hexara! She had found the perfect rings, a perfect green that was merely a couple of levels away from Hexara’s own eye color—so similar that most people seemed unable to tell the difference between the hues. Godsdamnit, she didn’t have time to indulge in reminiscing—it was getting harder and harder to focus. The rings were… where were they? They were in her chest. Her chest had been in the wagon.

  Ranthia’s gaze flicked toward the water, her vision suddenly clearer than it had been before. Fragments of the wagon stuck out of the water, practically beneath the damned kraken. It was going to end up crushing the rings!

  Ranthia’s outraged concern gave her just enough will to hang on through a second attempt to channel. The world exploded with sound as more of her precious images were erased. But there were still two.

  At some point in the aftermath, the channel concluded and Ranthia dimly chose the nearest image and activated [Reflections of Reality]. Just a few more heartbeats, that was all she needed to hang on for.

  Had they always been so slow?

  Ranthia gasped desperately for breath the instant she found herself in a new body. The urge to shudder and collapse was intense, but she fought through it. She wasn’t done, godsdamnit! Her gaze found the kraken, busy stuffing what looked like sacks into the water. Oh, look, the damned monster had found something it considered to be a snack in the rubble somewhere!

  [Mana: 493/27500]

  Ranthia’s mind filled with the most profane—borderline blasphemous—swears she knew when she noticed her mana. It wasn’t near enough. She could tear through that much mana in moments. There was zero chance she could kill the accursed monster with that little mana. She didn’t even have enough to pray for Xaoc to intercede and rain judgment upon the beast—and gods and goddesses, she was tempted.

  She needed more. Ranthia climbed the nearest fragment of a building, seeking height for a better view. The wagon had plenty of arcanite—the stores were roughly half full—but she had no idea where it was. She was too low on mana to even seriously consider trying to dive into the water right in front of the kraken.

  Still, there had to be some somewhere in the city. Even if she wasn’t attuned, she just needed a bit more time to draw mana from it. Arcanite was easy to spot, it was a shiny gemstone that glowed—and it was still night so the glow would be more prominent. Not even [Vision of the Void]’s night vision quite offset just how much brighter flames or such were at night than they were by day, in some bizarre twist of the skill.

  It was kind of strange to survey Massilix. To the South, most of the city was… just fine. There were even gawkers, some of which pointed at her. The devastation only covered about a sixth of the city—that which was closest to The Ocean. In that narrow strip of the city there was little more than rubble, evidence of carnage where people had once stood, and more than a few fires that spread amongst the rubble.

  And no signs of arcanite, of course. There were bound to be various small stones hidden amongst the debris, but it had been somewhat optimistic to hope for something visible.

  The kraken finished its snack, and its two club-tipped giant tentacles extended into the rubble once again. She needed to move soon, yet indecision weighed on her. She needed to fight, but she couldn’t, not without mana. Gods and goddesses, if only there was some way…

  A glint in the moonlight caught her eye.

  The kraken itself provided her with an answer! Ranthia would have laughed if she wasn’t nominally trying to not draw its attention yet. Their wagon hadn’t gone down without a fight in its own way, it seemed. There was a large, jagged chunk of arcanite impaled into one of the fleshy clubs, glowing amidst the pale blood that leaked around it.

  Ranthia leapt off the remnant of the building she had been perched upon and moved silently through the rubble-strewn streets and alleys. Closing in on one of the most dangerous parts of the kraken was idiotic, but the arcanite had to be a boon from Xaoc—what were the fucking odds of it impaling itself there otherwise? Clearly, He wanted such a destructive beast slain! The thought warmed Ranthia’s heart.

  She was still within His plans.

  Not that the kraken cooperated. Its tentacles flitted through the rubble with ease, as it searched for more snacks. Every time she closed in, the tentacle completed its current search and moved elsewhere. Ranthia’s plans turned more and more outrageous as her frustration mounted. Not that she had a ballista with chained ammunition, a Gravity [Mage] class with four-digit power, or the improbable ability to all but stop the flow of time for other beings.

  Ranthia even caught up to the wrong tentacle twice before she finally caught up to the one with the arcanite embedded in it. The instant she was in range, Ranthia hurriedly danced closer to lay a hand on the arcanite. She—and the others from her deceased Ranger team—had been attuned to specific arcanite stones that poked through the walls of the wagon, which drew power by some means from the larger reserves like this was a part of. This meant that she wasn’t attuned to the large chunk of arcanite. It resisted her pull, as she mentally grappled with the strands of power and tugged them into her.

  Worse, it meant she could only pull mana from it while she had direct contact, which was less than ideal in the current situation.

  The kraken had noticed her, it seemed. Ranthia danced and tried to maintain—or, rather, regain—contact with the arcanite as she dodged the kraken’s halfhearted efforts to squash her like a bug. She’d tried to cut the tentacle with her ‘free’ hand, but the cheap knife chipped when it deflected off the surprisingly sturdy Coral. The lack of [Void Edge] made for a stark difference in how much of a barrier the kraken’s armor skill was.

  Mana came to her in bursts as she managed contact for precious moments at a time. Soon enough she had images running interference and distractions. Even as she danced around the club of the tentacle. She dodged under its swipe, then had to leap over its sweep. By the time her mana was a third of the way filled, she was using her Warrior class to its full potential; Void-empowered strikes cleaved Coral out of the way in short order.

  When she couldn’t get a hand on the arcanite, she focused her attacks, striking the same(-ish) place just beneath the tentacle’s club again and again. The wound steadily deepened as she depleted her supply of knives.

  A burst of Steam took her left arm off below the elbow. [Combat Awareness] had actually warned her that time, but she failed to quite get clear. Ranthia just gritted her teeth and pressed on, one-armed. The wound had been seared shut, she was fine. She was channeling, yes, she wasn’t stupid—but she could fight as she was for a bit longer. She was on a timer after all.

  The kraken clearly was aware of pain; it jerked its tentacle away every time she cut it. Which meant that sooner or later it would take her seriously. A second tentacle would be too much to evade like she had been. And if it did that… Steam-powered lunge or whatever that had nearly killed her before, with how close she was, it would likely be immediately fatal. Her only saving grace was that every injury she inflicted was so minor on the scale of the beast.

  It wasn’t something she could fell with 8 cuts. She couldn’t even possibly win with 256 or 512. Frankly, she doubted even 16,000 cuts would be sufficient. Every injury she inflicted was less an injury and more of an annoyance. Given the scale of the monster, it was likely assailed by minor nuisances quite often that sought to take a bite. Its armor skill suggested as much, limiting the potential for smaller or weaker creatures to inflict harm upon it. Fortunately, her proverbial fangs were sharper than most.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Her images barely distracted it, yet she made sure to send them out elsewhere when she could spare the attention. Anything to keep its sole focus from landing on her.

  Finally, she was forced to shift when one of the barbed hooks caught her leg. A short(?) time later she had recovered her mana from the arcanite once again, just in time for [Combat Awareness] to warn her of an impending fatal blow.

  The kraken had thrown a chunk of the city wall at her! [Rhythmic Grace]—now that it was aware of the danger—provided a path of escape as Ranthia hurriedly danced across the collapsed remains of a business. A three-story business that had an exit in a lower ring of the town, closer to the water.

  Ranthia dropped through the rubble and rolled clear, just before the impact of the large chunk of stone threw fragments of debris into the air, along with a cloud of dust.

  Ranthia sprang to her feet and advanced with stealth—which paired awfully with dancing, for some reason—before things had even settled back down. She had mana—for the moment—but in obtaining it she’d strained another resource dangerously. She was down to three knives. The only supply of them that she knew of was pretty much directly under the damned kraken.

  Sure, there were bound to be knives scattered about in the rubble around her. Had she had better familiarity with Massilix, there were bound to be blacksmiths in the area she could try to raid for knives. Unfortunately, everything around her was ruined to the point that there was no sense in searching for knives to scavenge—the smart play was to do the stupid thing (which perhaps proved more than anything just how focused she was; she didn’t even balk at that thought).

  Stealth was the solution here.

  …Or so Ranthia thought until the damned monster started to throw more rubble around. Some of it smashed into the area where she had been. Then a large chunk of granite—why was she paying attention to the material?!—got thrown into the intact part of the city!

  She refused to believe that the accursed monster was destroying the city to flush her out, but the screams still spurred her into action. She was a Ranger! Her duty was to keep those idiots people safe!

  Ranthia threw out more images once again, as wide a range as she could manage. Her inhabited body could remain stealthy, but her images had to distract the creature!

  Ranthia continued to close in on the water. Her images were destroyed in bulk periodically, as a thrust of a tentacle or a burst of Steam or a thrown chunk of a building eradicated them. The creature sometimes lost interest in her, but seldom for very long, especially as she and her frequently replaced images drew nearer. By some fortune the creature seemed bestial enough to lack the sense to strike down on the area she carefully left clear of images; at this range her ability to evade was wholly dependent on how the kraken attacked.

  The Steam-charge would probably kill her before she could possibly react, especially since [Combat Awareness] had been blind to it. The kraken seemed to try to avoid using it regularly, much like the pulse of Darkness, which suggested the Skills had some form of downside. The kraken had to recede into the water every 800 heartbeats or so, and every time Ranthia expected to die. Yet it continued to drag itself back out of the water instead of using its Steam-charge and resume its onslaught after a short time spent mostly submerged.

  Paradoxically, the period while it was submerging was probably her best chance to get into the water. The churning of the water induced by its bulk would make her entry less noticeable, and she’d have a bit more distance—even if the creature was more likely to see her.

  Ranthia reached the water and waited. The kraken began to recede. And so Ranthia swarmed its body with images, as quickly as she could produce them. Her images lacked most of her weight until she shifted into them—something she had learned at the Academy on the sands (ignore the fact that Hunting was the one that pointed it out, she would have noticed eventually—probably). Still, she had to hope the sight of her across its body drew its attention and it was too dumb to notice that she should have been much heavier than that.

  Ranthia dove into the water—bless Hunting’s insistence on swimming in the Nostrum for training. A hurried assessment and… there, near the rocks. A cracked crate with knives spilling out of it, surrounded by fragments from the wagon, with two other identical (yet intact) crates next to it. Hurriedly, she grabbed the cracked crate and one other, before she surfaced to hurl them back onto dry land. But just before she could dive back into the water for the next, suddenly she found herself pulled in deeper. It wasn’t a subsurface tide though, the pulse of Darkness faded away around the kraken and the water rushed in to replace what had been erased by the attack—and holy gods and goddesses, how much material was that?!

  Staggered by the potential mana costs of that attack, Ranthia kicked and swam until she was back to the last crate and carried it with her to sweet, solid land. She sprinted to the crates and kicked one of the intact ones open—apart, arguably—before hurriedly grabbing a handful of knives. Then she twirled away from where the crates had landed amid the rubble of what was once probably a tavern. She couldn’t linger—she’d be screwed if the kraken smashed the crates into a dense blob of metal, and there wasn’t time to strategically place them at the moment.

  She restocked her belt while she moved. She hadn’t grabbed enough knives to quite refill it, but it was good enough. She could pass by the crates easily enough as needed—hopefully. For the moment, she was focused on the three shorter interior tentacles that were grasping for her.

  Ranthia danced among them as she landed cuts and slashes on the more fragile, smaller appendages. She cleaved away swaths of the coral, then focused on cutting. Where possible she tried to overlay her cuts across existing ones, deepening them. But she was also channeling, just to be safe.

  Her images danced along with her. She’d already learned that shifting didn’t foul the rhythm of her dances. If anything, her mirror images and her shifting were a part of her true dance, additional aspects to her potential rhythm that she’d been denied for too long. With the images and her shifting in her repertoire once again, her dance became more complex—more chaotic. More her.

  It was a taste of what she could become. And all she had to do was end the kraken.

  Contrary to expectations, Ranthia danced until her knives were spent. Only then did she allow [Reflections of Reality] to go through its activation sequence. She shifted to an image hidden near the crates and hurriedly restocked before the kraken found her again.

  The battle rejoined. Ranthia went for the tentacle that the arcanite was embedded into, to resupply her mana. By the time her mana was restored, her knives were dangerously low. The alternation was to be a fact of Ranthia’s life, no doubt.

  The sun had risen at some point, though Ranthia failed to notice. [Vision of the Void] and her narrow focus made time irrelevant. The dance was all that mattered. She remained mobile, just another Ranger amidst her images. She embraced the chaotic, manic rhythm that she embodied.

  Slash. Leap. Cut. Twirl. Slash. Leap. Knife thrown into an existing wound.

  She danced among her mirror images. They danced with her; their echoed efforts became more graceful as time passed. It all came so much more easily while she danced, it all felt so much more natural. At some point, their motions had become almost as smooth as her own, though their dances were harmless. She shifted among them, moved with them, but she was the only one that could strike a wound.

  Not that she controlled the battlefield.

  Her arm was crushed, she shifted. The merciless dance of death continued, unabated. She was delivering another slash within moments, as she fought her way for the arcanite.

  Ranthia was fast, she was evasive. She was deadly. The dance was the culmination of over fourteen years of combat experience (plus an unknown number of years of contextless knowledge), bolstered by training from the best warriors she had ever known. Tatius’ unshakable resolve. Pupius’ speed and tactics. Hunting’s eye for weaknesses and flaws. Rigira’s unrelenting assaults. Plus, the other lessons drilled into her in the Ranger Academy. Her prowess for the art of the dance spoke for itself. She was so much more than she had been just a few years ago.

  Yet the kraken was far more. It was far faster, far more dexterous, and far deadlier. The tyranny of stats was firmly against her in the battle.

  Yet Ranthia refused to yield. She hated the kraken to such an extreme extent that she knew she would never forgive herself if it escaped. She was outmatched, but it didn’t even matter. She just cursed the thing anew and fought on with every setback.

  She had barely even recovered half of the mana she had spent when a blast of Steam erupted from one of its tentacles. Her legs were erased. Her sandals went with them.

  She hit the ground, but she shifted before the kraken could finish her off. The near miss barely even bothered her. She was getting used to agony. She was getting used to nearly dying. Instead of freaking out, she cut.

  The shattered remnants of an apothecary was enough of a distraction that it nearly cost her dearly. Her hip was struck by a glancing blow while she tried to look within. She was low on mana, so she used images to distract the kraken while she raided what was left of the shop.

  There was no time to try to parse out what most of the potions were, her eyes instead found a display of twenty mana potions. Ranthia hobbled to it and drank two on the spot (no, she had not missed the taste), before she swept the rest of the wax-sealed seashells into a sack she found. She had just enough time to leave the sack in a hopefully-safe location before she could finally shift to a body without a fractured hip and/or leg.

  The dance was rejoined yet again.

  Pain was irrelevant. She took injuries so often the pain had just kind of become background noise, like the backdrop of the devastation in the city. Just another misfortune. She dodged and avoided, but the kraken was too fast and now that she had its attention, its attacks were too precise. Injuries came practically every several breaths. That was fine, she just had to hurt it more. A slash made with practically every breath meant she was still winning.

  Not that the calculus involved made a whit of sense.

  The dance. Shifting. Slashing. These simple actions were her world. The only interruption was when she had to recharge her mana or gather more knives, only then did her world grow. Only while she was pursuing one or the other did she bother throwing her knives; it went through her limited carrying capacity too swiftly.

  Armor was lost as she was wounded and broken. It was irrelevant. At some point she’d lost her quiver, though she didn’t care—she had discarded the bow before Leoios had even died. Her belt was the only thing that mattered at that point; she needed it to carry her knives.

  If the kraken had realized that her increasing amount of skin bared to the world identified which image she inhabited, it had enough cunning to not let her know that it had realized as much. It was an irrelevant what-if to worry about. For now, her images worked as distractions.

  The sun lowered in the sky, unheeded by either combatant.

  More knives. More pain. More cutting. The dance continued. Ranthia couldn’t even spare the attention to appreciate just how absurd the wagon’s arcanite was—the stone embedded in the kraken’s tentacle had yet to even dim any further than it had been when she started. She was focused on trying to land more blows on the oversized tentacle near the fleshy club every chance she got.

  If she could just free it…

  Ranthia fought the tentacles among the ruins in the city. She wounded them and bled the beast. The kraken learned its lesson, paid in blood and dismemberments. By the time it stopped sending its more vulnerable, smaller tentacles at her, one of them was all but unresponsive and at least four others were severely wounded. Those were the easy ones.

  The two massive tentacles with the clubs on them were far more resilient. And far more powerful.

  Ranthia and the beast inflicted suffering on one another as best as they knew how. The cuts she inflicted on the creature steadily deepened. It tore at her over and over. Ranthia had to keep her channel up at all times, the headache barely acknowledged; it was just another piece of her brutal dance with death. Mortal wounds were the same as crippling wounds—they required an urgent shift to a fresh image before she perished. Nothing more, nothing less.

  The stock of stolen mana potions was gone well before she inflicted her first serious wound on the kraken beneath the moonlight: at long last she severed the fleshy club the arcanite was embedded within.

  Resupplying her mana became mildly less fraught, though the arcanite becoming immobilized had its own risk. She had to time things carefully, to avoid the arcanite getting buried—or shattered—by a thrown chunk of heavy rubble. Without it, she had no hope of victory. Gods how she wished she had it attuned to her though, it would have made her battle far less deadly.

  The kraken became far more wary. It seemed disinclined to let any of its tentacles near her.

  Thank Xaoc, it was exactly what she’d hoped for.

  Ranthia waited for it to be in the process of rising from the water, then threw an image on its main body and shifted. The beast was reclined enough from its efforts to immerse itself in the briny water that Ranthia was able to run straight up to one of its gargantuan eyeballs. Mercilessly, she slashed as rapidly as she could manage while she channeled. Knife after knife disintegrated as she ensured she had completely destroyed the functionality of the surprisingly robust eye.

  Two of the more intact smaller tentacles came for her. One of the serrated suckers caught her while she channeled, but she was able to escape to another image before the beast could dismantle her.

  Her mortal foe had become more wary, more defensive. It protected its remaining eye desperately. Suddenly it was willing to risk its tentacles again.

  The sun rose once again to the continuing violence. More cutting. More knives consumed by the Void she wielded. More pale kraken blood spilled. More dancing. More shifting. More endured suffering. The crowd in the intact majority of the city went ignored as people came and went.

  For some, life went on. For her, devastation was her only companion as she and the kraken sought to return one another to Samsara’s embrace.

  One of the shorter tentacles was severed near the shoreline. The large tentacle that still had its club was next; one of her cut points finally got enough depth that the remaining muscle—or whatever that stuff was—had insufficient resilience to support the weight.

  At that, the kraken seemed to recoil from her again. Ranthia wasted no time; her mana was full enough. She threw an image onto the slippery rocks near the kraken and shifted to it.

  The monster was upright, which limited her options. Instead, she began to hurl knives as fast as she could. Desperate for every advantage she could get, she tried to accept any General Skill on offer that might support her knife throwing prowess at such range. [Sustained Chaos] clearly leveled even as she threw her increasingly potent and accurate knives. Most found their mark.

  And, just before Ranthia was forced to dive off the rock and into the saltwater, the eye succumbed to her onslaught. The monster was blinded!

  For the first time, Ranthia dared to hope for victory.

  And then the kraken dove into the water. Fury coursed through her—the damned thing thought she was going to let it escape?! After all of that?! Rage and hatred birthed stupidity, and Ranthia dove in after it.

  Had the kraken been intact she would have never caught up. Fortunately for her, the damage to its tentacles seemed to slow it down. That or it had no idea how to swim blind. For whatever reason, she was able to reach it.

  The only problem was she only had four knives left. The beast’s anatomy was a complete mystery to her, and [Flowing Momentum] gave her no indication of where to attack to maximize her few remaining knives. On instinct, on whim, or perhaps some subtle guidance from her Skills—Ranthia made her choice.

  [Void Edge] consumed more mana than it ever had before. [Echoes of Devastation] too. But she unleashed four slashes in rapid succession, directly on the odd spigot-looking thing that seemed to be blasting out water under pressure. The organ tore and shredded.

  She had been focused on her own attack. Both she and [Combat Awareness] missed the warning signs—or perhaps the kraken had learned and suppressed them. The Dark energy attack washed over the kraken’s body a heartbeat after Ranthia’s final knife was spent.

  The attack landed. She was repulsed from the kraken’s body, even as her own body was eaten at and devastated by the attack. Thank Xaoc she had been channeling.

  She was even luckier that she had blinded the kraken, there was no way it would have missed its opportunity to finish her off otherwise. [Reflections of Reality] wasn’t an instant Skill, even once it was fully charged with mana.

  She was only barely in range of the mirror image she had left near the shore, but barely was good enough. Ranthia found herself back in the body and gasped desperately for air. She needed to think; she had to figure out another way to go after the damned monster—it was still going to get away!

  The kraken surfaced, its tentacles grasping desperately at the rocks and reefs near the shore. A bitter, relieved laugh escaped Ranthia’s lips, and the dance began anew—once she restocked her knives and charged her mana.

  Day turned back to night once again. But the stalemate was done. She had crippled her opponent, after all. It was still deadly and capable of ending her in a moment of carelessness, but weariness was held back by adrenaline and raw—and no doubt increasing—stats. Ranthia continued to fight at her best.

  Other tentacles were severed or crippled one after another. With the kraken down to a single primary tentacle—one that she’d already severed the club from—her momentum was greater than ever.

  The kraken was blind. It was bleeding. It was dying. The Dark surges had stopped. The blasts of Steam had grown rare. No Coral grew on its flesh and the few segments it had left were flaking off on their own. Its mana was clearly gone.

  But a dying animal seldom just gave up. The struggle continued. Things had become easier for Ranthia, but no less deadly. Until, at long last, she was able to shift back onto its body after she charged her mana one last time and restocked her knives. The momentum of the battle finally called her back to where she could do the most harm.

  Shift. Slash. Prance. Slash. Pirouette. Slash. Twirl. Slash. Shift. Slash.

  Ranthia was a whirl of devastation. She savaged an odd organ that she found beneath the strange hood that covered the top of the kraken. Then she went for one of its eyes again, and pressed her attack there, carving deeper and deeper into the kraken as it struggled to try to dislodge her.

  It was impossible to miss that it was weakening.

  [*ding!* You have slain a [Kraken] (Coral, level 789), [Kraken] (Steam, level 707), [Kraken] (Dark, level 549)!]

  Her foe stopped moving, just like that. Ranthia continued to attack for a brief time, confused. There had been no final, decisive blow. Just another cut like a hundred thousand others. She hadn’t even gotten that deep into the eye; she doubted she had reached anything crucial.

  Not every battle had an epic finale, she decided.

  The knives she had drawn tumbled from her hands. She wanted nothing more than to just collapse. Her body and mind formally registered their litany of complaints with her the instant she settled out of the mindset of urgent combat. She stayed on her feet though.

  Her duty had never been to the kraken, after all. Her duty had been to Ranger Team 13. She had to recover their supplies and the items that proved their existence before divers and treasure hunters could loot any of it.

  Ranthia swallowed her thirst, hunger, exhaustion, and the agony her head reported. With effort, she forced her body to start moving again. She dove into the water once again.

  First, she located and hauled a suitable crate out of the water. One that was long and large. She set it down on mostly flat ground, where a dock had once stood. It was filled with mundane tools, which she discarded. She needed the space.

  Her mind felt like mush and her body begged her to stop. She pushed her weakness aside and focused on her duty. Her last crate of knives was retrieved. She restocked her belt—civilians were approaching and those eager for loot might need to be discouraged. Then, unceremoniously, she dumped what few remained into the long crate and discarded the broken crate that had housed them. Ranthia submerged briefly, then went back to the surface for her next stop, wielding a short sword that she had spotted. With a nontrivial amount of effort, even aided by the short sword, she eventually hacked the large chunk of arcanite out of the severed massive club of the tentacle. She dropped the short sword and hauled the precious arcanite back to her long crate.

  The sun rose as the guard and a few braver citizens approached the deceased kraken. There they saw a nearly nude Ranger, wearing just the tattered remaining bits of her armor, diving into the ocean. She stayed down until some crate or chest or such popped up. She hauled her retrieved goods over the slippery rocks, even those soaked in kraken blood, with ease and dropped it into her crate.

  After a brief bit of whispering, one of the city guard finally approached her—having failed to get out of the duty. She ordered him to guard her crate and its contents with his life. Something about her dead, dark tone—or possibly her terrifying eyes—made him salute and take position. Or perhaps, just perhaps, it was an act of pure gratitude to the Ranger that saved… a considerable percentage of his city.

  Ranthia felt detached as she continued to salvage everything she could of Ranger Team 13. Everything that mattered. It all fit into a single crate that reminded her entirely too much of a coffin every time she looked at it.

  It was made worse by her idle thoughts.

  She shouldn’t have won that fight. Once rage and hate left her—she was too exhausted to even hate herself any longer—her mind finally grappled with the obvious. If she had to redo the fight against the damned kraken, there was a very real chance that she’d fail, even knowing how she won this time. Gods and goddesses, if she fought the monster a thousand and twenty four times, there were probably only a handful of times she won among all the outcomes.

  She had been stupid to press the battle. The kraken was dead. Massilix—most of it—was saved. Hu-fucking-zzah. Her team was still dead. What good had she even done?

  At last she was done with her task. Her past four dives had turned up nothing else worth salvaging. She dismissed her morbid collection of forgotten mirror images, including two that she had been forced to abandon during her dives when she tried to stay under for too long. Then, for the first time, tried to shift back to her true body.

  Thank Xaoc, it was still there.

  That success drained some of the tension and the last of her strength. Her real body was safe. Bruised, battered (fuck her leg still bothered her from when she kicked the door down), but safe. There had been a very real chance that it wouldn’t have been intact. Painfully and weakly, she slowly walked back out then back down to her crate and shut it with a final effort. Then, lacking any better ideas, she crawled on top of the crate and—at long last—allowed herself to succumb to her own weakness. Her exhausted mind was entirely unable to make any sense out of her notifications when she checked them, and soon she blacked out into something that was somewhere between sleep and raw unconsciousness.

  [*ding!* Congratulations! [She who Dances with Chaos] has leveled up from 260 to level 301! Per level: +100 Strength, +100 Dexterity, +100 Vitality, +100 Speed, +8 Mana, +8 Mana Regeneration, +5 Magic Power, +5 Magic Control from your class, +1 free stat for being human, +2 Mana from your element.]

  [*ding!* [Rhythmic Grace], [Void Edge], [Flowing Momentum], [Echoes of Devastation], [Divine-Touched Identify], and [Ranger’s Lore] have leveled from 260 to level 301!]

  [*ding!* [Void Affinity] has leveled from 260 to level 293!]

  [*ding!* [Vision of the Void] has leveled from 58 to level 101!]

  [*ding!* [Sustained Chaos] has leveled from 4 to level 59!]

  [*ding!* [True Grace] has leveled from 27 to level 88!]

  [*ding!* [Reflective Motility] has leveled from 248 to level 256!]

  [*ding!* [Mirrored Moves] has leveled from 63 to 101!]

  [*ding!* [Reflections of Reality] has leveled from 63 to 119!]

  [*ding!* [Ranthia’s Covenant with Xaoc] has leveled from 65 to level 88!]

  [*ding!* You have obtained the General Skill [Knife Throwing]!]

  [*ding!* [Knife Throwing] has leveled from 1 to level 59!]

  [*ding!* Your Skill [Knife Throwing] has merged into [Sustained Chaos]!]

  [*ding!* [Combat Awareness] has leveled from 260 to level 295!]

  [*ding!* [Fast Learner] has leveled from 210 to level 220!]

  [*ding!* [Sexy] has reached level 211!]

  fan content license provided by !

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  Nozomi Matsuoka.

  Sarah "Neila" Elkins.