Gordon ran at full sprint, as fast as he could. For one of the top members of Farthest Run, that was considerably faster than could be expected from someone his level. The rest of his team was behind him. Or rather, what was left of it.

  That Arcanist was taking a trip back in the team’s bag of holding. Aughal didn’t have a way to bring people back from the dead anymore, but after what he’d seen Gordon knew they needed to deny the bodies of their fallen from the enemy.

  There’d been rumors of what had happened in Threst, spread through the unreliable means of the rare traveler moving between regions. Those that had come to Aughal since the new Collapse could be counted on fingers, as long as you borrowed a friend’s too. Say one thing about the Tyrant, they’d stopped the monsters that had tried capturing the citizens. Threst, having opted to keep some of its settlements populated, hadn’t been so lucky.

  This was the result of those attacks, it seemed. The ‘monster’ his team had barely managed to slay had originally been avianoid, no doubt about it. A former Blessed too, considering he recognized a handful of the powers they’d used. More than anyone should have to put up with, dead or alive.

  What was clear was they needed to get back to the city. No coordinated enemy would send just one of a new weapon to show what they were capable of. It had been long enough since those attacks that whatever they’d done to the people of Threst had finished, giving the Crest an army of former mortals. The massive mountain range that had stunted progress in this part of the Octyrrum must have played into their favor now, as the only regions he’d heard had come under attack were the two directly bordering the one that had fallen.

  Gordon tried to keep a positive outlook, but he knew this wasn’t sustainable. It took years for a mortal to reach level 2 on average, and that was for those who didn’t hit their wall. Yes, more conflict would level their people faster, he himself was closing on 4 if he didn’t mind some disparity to intelligence, but regular monsters could be made spontaneously from the Crest, and it could do more if it got one of them.

  Dark days are coming, Gordon thought, the screams of the twisted avianoid following him no matter how fast he blitzed across the dunes. Ah well. It was a good run while it lasted.

  …

  Whether it was the people Soraso had sent through or delvers in the past, someone had picked the ruins down to the bones and then mined for marrow. Upon leaving the cargo elevator the blinking yellow line was joined by a green one on his map, indicating that the only real safe space was an area directly adjacent to an uncorrupted rift. After that, it was yet more hallways and empty rooms.

  The next floor up had a similar general layout, though there seemed to be larger personal rooms on average. There was even another transport corridor, though this one wasn’t stacked on top of the first but offset. While Shuni scouted ahead to make sure they wouldn’t walk into a crawler, Daniel occasionally checked out some of the side rooms only to come away disappointed. It appeared that his only hope for loot from this dungeon would come from places inaccessible to any without administrative permissions from the Arcadian.

  An armory should be the perfect lootbox then, right? They were almost there. Shuni had found a security gate her daggers wouldn’t scratch right before where the blinking yellow line ended. He’d received an Arcadian security alert upon reaching it as well as an emergency override option to force the gate open, which he was now prepared to activate. The only issue was what was waiting for them in the armory.

  He’d taken Keen Senses and Underbrush Step as his borrowed powers from Hunter, having had to remind himself of the second one’s existence when thinking of stealth options. It normally applied to the favored terrain of the user, which for Hunter had been grasslands, but heightening it to level 2 gave around half of its benefits at all times. While his extended senses had failed to detect what Shuni had in the room beyond, it did appear they’d made their approach without drawing notice themselves.

  “You’re sure it’s just one?” Daniel whispered. “Can you tell anything about them?”

  “Nah, I’m only getting a presence. I can’t tell how strong they are, just that someone is in the general area.” Shuni noticed the feathers on her arm were slightly propped up from the tension and smoothed them over. “Enough to stop anyone from using Sneak Attack on me, but that’s about it. Either they’ve got stealth too or they’re over my level.”

  Daniel looked over his group and thought about Kahvin pre-ego neutering. “I think we can take an average level 3, anyone stronger than that’ll give us trouble. Worst case I’ll go for the rift and try to snipe it out from under them, then buy you guys time to escape through it.” He pulled out what looked to be gray balls made from loose fabric and passed one to each party member. “Most of you have items that can cause a smoke cloud, but these work way better. I have some that’ll cause an incendiary or electrified cloud, but I’m holding those as a last resort.”

  “Damn, you do spend most of your time enchanting.”

  “Well, when you don’t have to spend time advancing.” Smoke bombs distributed, Daniel zoomed in on the next room and slotted his phone back in. “It’s a straight shot from here to the armory. Looks like it’s just a big room, but we can’t trust that. The lectorum didn’t have the benches or those display posts marked. If it looks like a fight we can take, same logic as last time. Sigron’s tanking, Shuni and I deal damage and peel for Khiat.”

  “We’re not getting mana back without destroying those projections,” Khiat pointed out. “If I spend everything here, there’s not much I can do later.”

  Sigron somewhat skeptically put the tip of one of his enchanted arm’s fingers on one of her arrowheads, the entire thing better than what he could make his fist. He combined the gesture with a humorous shake of his head.

  Daniel echoed the sentiment. “Don’t hold anything back. If they look like a pushover then it’s fine, but if we get serious we get serious.” He gazed up at the wide door, which was split down the middle and appeared to be made of the same material as the transport tunnel. Same as the frame around it. Whatever the ruins had been constructed from broadly resisted age, and he doubted any battering ram he enchanted could get past these. Fortunately, he didn’t need one. Using the emergency override, Daniel opened the door and gestured for the team to move forward.

  …

  Two problems immediately surfaced with Daniel’s plan. For one, the security override he used to enter the armor only kept the door open for a brief time. Once inside, the door closed and gave no option to reopen it. It appeared the Arcadian was only concerned about its administrator getting into a secure area, not out. Khiat was able to force the door open a few centimeters, but only just by that much, and they didn’t want to commit everyone to the attempt because of the present danger.

  What was more concerning was that the rift wasn’t immediately accessible. Given that they served as mini-Spokes for the Arcadian it might have been predictable that the one in the armory was protected. From the initial hallway with the security door there was an open lobby about ten by fifteen meters wide. If it wasn’t bad enough that this would restrict his ability to use Power Shot, there were other security doors here blocking access to the rest of the space.

  From behind a wire cage that had been woven from the material that continued to resist his identification power, Daniel could see the astral rift far back in the space behind the cage enclosing them. From the outline on his map, it looked like the two rooms off to the side were smaller storerooms, while the one opposite of the entrance was the main armory which housed the rift.

  Fighting projections here would have sucked, Daniel immediately thought. There were gaps in the cage at spots like there would be at a bank or ticket kiosk, though they all had a screen pulled down over the opening leaving a space of only eight centimeters or so. “Shuni, are they still here?” he whispered.

  The Rogue was glancing around with a hunted look on her face. “Yeah. Stick by the door.”

  “Are- ktch,” Sigron coughed, moving the arm that had already changed into a shield over his mouth. His eyebrows furrowed as he concentrated, but he was unable to complete whatever it was he was trying to incant. The Knight’s prolonged mutism after having his curse cleansed was comparable to the fact that he was still missing an arm after having the infection from the room cured. While Threst had replaced one of those, the Knight still had some work to do in recovering the other.

  It was also a moment of weakness their enemy took advantage of. Daniel felt something prickle the edge of his senses before an automatic reaction took place, defending his head from a perceived attack. His attention was diverted for only a few seconds, though he wasn’t the only one attacked during that time. He heard a curse from Shuni and a grunt from Sigron and made a snap decision. “Back up! Bulwark!”

  From what his enhanced senses had picked up, it sounded like a cluster of ranged attacks had hit them rather than something charging out of hiding for them. There was a crushing pressure on his off forearm which he’d used to block whatever had been going for his head, but the buckler was resisting the squeeze enough to make it negligible. Instead, he tossed the blast bow backward into the entrance hallway, quickly pulled one of the mock walls out, and made real use of it for the first time.

  With the former bounty of wolf fur finally running low, Daniel had decided to enchant them as level 1 versions instead of level 2 to save material. This took away from their durability, though his powers helped bridge part of the gap. The basic construction he’d enchanted was sections of hardened material separated by stretches of flexible fur. That had been all he needed when sacrificing them to tank fireballs, but here they needed cover.

  To that end, he used Construct Shield and targeted what he’d physically added to walls after enchanting them. The power didn’t affect any worked or enchanted material, but the H-frame made of regular non-magical hide he’d purchased for a handful of gold coins worked just as well. As it flew out the stiffening frame flattened the wall, creating a three meter high and four meter long barricade that stood on legs of empowered hide that connected to the frame.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  The wall rattled as an attack hit it from the other side, though it neither penetrated nor knocked it down. It would be easy enough to do so from up close because he’d been forced to leave it free standing. When whoever had thrown those attacks didn’t come through or around the side, Daniel and Sigron dragged it back to fully cover the hallway. Daniel finally glanced at his arm at that point and found vines trying to crush it. He caught the Knight’s eyes as they both reminisced, though in this case there were only three strong ones wrapped around rather than the remnants of a pseudo-earth gestalt.

  “Are you alright?” Khiat asked, an arrow nocked but bow undrawn.

  “Get that needle out!” Shuni shouted, ignoring the question as she pointed to Sigron’s shield arm. The Knight raised an eyebrow as he plucked a long, thin spike of metal from his metallic arm. “Doesn’t matter. This is a Rogue, level 2 or 3 at most. Higher and we’d be dead already.”

  “We’re not exactly weaklings,” Daniel protested as he used a fire dagger to remove the vines, but his confidence waned as he read the sick look on Shuni’s face.

  “It’s a poison Rogue. You get one with the right kind of powers and they can corrode golems.” She took several deep breaths, a bloodied needle impossible to miss in her hands. “I’m good, I’m good. I can keep up and this stuff will wear off.” Another thud against the wall, which continued to hold. “Good call.”

  Daniel checked through the bag of holding with his potions, frowning. “I don’t have anything for poison. Will a healing potion work?”

  “Won’t stop it, but it’ll help if someone gets hit by a few.”

  Khiat walked forward and raised her voice. “Stop! We’re from Threst. We were the ones who came through here first. You don’t need to fight us.” There was no immediate reply to her plea for nonaggression.

  “Not that I want to be the one making this point,” Shuni said quietly into the silence, “If all the people in here are Rogues, Soraso might not have sent them.”

  “Don’t see how they could have gotten in here then. Whatever, let’s say they won’t talk to us,” Daniel ventured. “The only Rogue I’ve fought ran away the moment we could have fought them. Now that they’ve lost their surprise, you think we can take a level 3?”

  “Maybe.” Shuni walked over to the security door, slightly pained during her steps but otherwise uninhibited by the dose of poison she’d been hit with. “Only way out?”

  “Yep.”

  “Got that going for us. My main concern is if they’ve got some way of warning their friends like we do.”

  Still watching the wall for any signs of the Rogue trying to sneak by while they were talking, Daniel shrugged. “Someone comes to bail this guy out and they abandon their rift. That happens and I’ll get a notification. It’s not like they can use the rift to teleport out.” Something bothered Daniel after he said that and he looked at the door too. “They aren’t administrators. How did they get in here in the first place, or behind that cage?”

  “Not every Rogue teleport power needs line of sight.” Shuni shook herself again and walked back to the wall, handing Daniel his blast bow back. “I can get behind that cage, but there’s no way I’m taking them one on one.”

  “I don’t think my arrows will fit through it either,” Khiat said, before some of the chitinous plates on her face contracted. “The sun arrow, maybe? Or I could try shooting through those slots.”

  “We’ll have to find where they were hiding first. Anyone see where those attacks came from?” Daniel asked the group.

  “I was still trying to open the door.” Sigron gave a thumbs down after Khiat, though Shuni gave it a moment’s thought before answering.

  “That big room in the back. Makes sense, they can throw from multiple angles through the grate.” She lightly pushed one of the daggers he’d enchanted for her against the wall and frowned when it cut. “Damn.”

  “It’s only level 1,” Daniel said in defense of his craft. “I can pull out more to block different directions, the only thing is I can’t take them down once deployed. Not unless any of you can dispel set powers like Thomas.” He strained his hearing again and sighed in disappointment. “Still can’t pick them out. If I can lay eyes on them I can use Mark Weakness to reveal them.”

  The slightly faint sound of metal stretching entered the background and the other three watched as Sigron stretched out his arm with some effort to make a large but thin tower shield. Making it that big required him to use most of his forearm as well, limiting his range of motion. The reason for the sacrifice was made clear when he lined up the edge of his shield with Daniel’s wall.

  “Good thinking. I’ll set up another one, we push into the room. Anyone gets in trouble we pull back here.” He looked toward the dusker and asked one last question. “Khiat, this guy is trying to kill us. I’m not saying we do the same if they surrender, but are you going to have any problems aiming for them?”

  Khiat’s eyes looked to the side and didn’t recenter as she answered. “I can do it. I don’t want to kill them, but I’ll do it.”

  “All we’re asking. Don’t forget we’re with you. Bulwark.” Daniel took the second mobile wall and lined it up with the first, Sigron taking the other side and placing his right arm on the first wall to move it in tandem with his tower shield. Shuni put a hand on both of their shoulders to stop them from moving.

  “Hey, just a tip. Watch the ceiling when you’re moving.”

  “It’s flush with the corridor,” Daniel replied, confused.

  “Might not matter.” She didn’t explain and only let go, allowing them to proceed. The Rogue and Khiat had weapons drawn, ready to react to an incoming attack.

  Why is this reminding me of high school gym? Daniel thought as they got halfway into the first room, narrow spaces visible through gaps in their walls. Oh right, arena dodgeball. I liked that better.

  Sigron cleared his throat and tried his incantation again. “Ar… Are, Area-.” His lip curled in frustration as he couldn’t force the rest out. Daniel was ready to move, but no attack capitalized on the moment of weakness.

  Looking around, he couldn’t see anything off. Unhooking the spark torch on his waist, Daniel Snap Shotted it through the thin gap leading to the back room of the armory and brought out another, leaving very few shadows in their surroundings. “Alright, I think that room’s small enough. I’m going to smoke him out.”

  As he was saying this, Shuni had grown difficult to look at directly and was looking around the front of the middle shield. At least, that’s what it seemed like she was doing, Daniel couldn’t be sure if it was her or if she’d shadow cloned herself. Either way, the avianoid’s eyes widened when she got far enough out. “Don’t!”

  Too late. The smoke bomb had already cleared the lip of the bag of holding when there was a flicker of motion around the side of the front wall. A stiletto-like dagger pierced the back of his hand through to the item, causing an intense cloud of smoke to burst out centered on him. As Daniel had said before, adding the wolf fur to the item had effectively stacked the material bonus with the item’s effect to create a thicker, more persistent smoke cloud.

  What’s worse, this smoke bomb had created an incendiary cloud. Throwing a regular smoke bomb at a stealth specialist would just give them cover, but Daniel had hoped creating a damaging area of effect would draw out the Rogue. Adding the fire affix to a smoke bomb didn’t make it do ridiculous amounts of damage as it was still a utility item when you got down to it, but he was in the center of the cloud and was feeling the burn. He could barely see the light from the torch on his hip, though the projected notifications that came through on his shield were close enough to read as he activated Moment of Clarity.

  System Alert: The effects of Feature: Diminish Awareness have been completely negated due to the special properties of ???.

  -

  System Alert: You have been inflicted with Poison from Ability: Slow Toxin. Your Defense: Endurance has successfully nullified the poison from the latest attack due to enhancement from Feature: Fortitude overcoming the aggressor’s Offense: Intelligence. All Damage: Non-physical and sustained effects from this attack are ignored.

  -

  System Alert: You have been infected with Curse from Feature: Cursed Weapons. Your Defense: Wisdom was not sufficient to overcome to aggressor’s Offense: Wisdom. Damage received from the source of the curse will be enhanced until they are slain, the curse is dismissed, or enough time passes

  Curses? Fuck. While it was nice to see Fortitude doing something for a change, the situation had turned from tactically balanced to complete catastrophe. He didn’t even want to switch to Beast Mode because of how important landing Identify Creature and Mark Weakness were. It would have been nice if he could have used this moment of frozen time to try and scout for the Rogue with his enhanced senses, but as Hunter had griped about all along, those weren’t usable when the movement of time was so slow that only light was usable as a medium.

  I’ll have to hope Sigron can clear the smoke with his shield, he thought, working on the team’s next moves while his mana drained away. I don’t have an ability that will do it myself. Telekinetic Reach maybe, but it only works on one item at a time. Doubt it counts the cloud as one. Everyone will just have to manage until we get clear.

  Resuming time, Daniel Dodge Rolled through where the gap between the two walls he’d made should be as he shouted, “Sigron, use your shield as a fan!” He didn’t dare fire his weapon as he landed as, while Identify Creature still gave him the locations of his friends, the spread and ricochet of the blast bow would still put them in danger. Bone claws it is- what the fuck!?

  Lowering his blast bow to stow it, Daniel went to retrieve his melee weapons when he saw that every bag of holding he’d had, as well as the dagger sheathed next to them, had been stolen. There’d suspiciously been no clear attacks made in the seconds after the smoke bomb went off, but he’d assumed the Rogue was maneuvering to hit someone. Did he steal my stuff while I was mid Dodge Roll!?

  The loss of his pouch was felt in more ways than once, as his necklace was still stored there. He’d just lost his Totem Warrior powers. “Protect your gear! He’s stealing!” A gust of wind answered his callout as agitated red-orange smoke swirled. There wasn’t enough to fully disperse it, but it was enough for Daniel to barely make out a shape moving among them that wasn’t tagged by Identify Creature. He burned more mana on the startup cost for Moment of Clarity to make sure he could get it off, and when he did, he realized this was a completely different kind of fight.

  Hexscuttle Stalker - (3) (Rogue: 2, Forced Transmutation, ~Converted~)