So she couldn’t run. Fine. How else did she get out of this?

  Fight her way out?

  How many opponents were there? Two in front, at least. Atmospheric Sense found four more in close proximity, all approaching quickly, and more, too indistinct to count, beyond them. How many were truly more opponents, and how many were double-counted from the looping air?

  But, even if it was just six or so, that was still too many. She was only level 23. These enemies were all 30 and up. That was a difference of at least seven, all over the Gate.

  And she’d already spent a large chunk of her resources running.

  Stamina: 113/138

  Focus: 299/549

  And what would beating them even do? For all she knew, space would keep looping, whether they were conscious or not.

  Whether they were alive or not.

  But what else could she do?

  Ask nicely?

  Cass raised her staff and squared her shoulders. Her aura cloak flared to life around her.

  “Let me go, and I won’t hurt you,” she said. Somehow, that had come out as a confident command rather than a shaking plea.

  Was it too much to hope he’d just back down at the threat of violence?

  “Cute,” lvl-31 said, raising his shield and sword in return. Lvl-30 raised his as well.

  Her stomach rolled, but she pushed forward anyway, calling Tempest Blade to the end of her staff. Wind sprang to life in twisting blades, begging to be released on her foe, eager even if she was not.

  Lvl-31 stepped toward her while lvl-30 circled.

  They were both big men, the kind Cass expected did football or wrestling, with wide shoulders and square heads, made to look more angular by their helmets. They wore heavy armor under green tabards emblazoned with a copper crescent.

  The design was repeated on their shields, honking rectangular things as wide as their bodies and tall enough to cover from shoulder to knees.

  Two on one.

  Two on one, while she was under-leveled and more reinforcements were coming?

  She did not want to fight them. But investigating the loops would be difficult while there were guards at the loop’s nexus. Her options were to take them out before reinforcements arrived or puzzle her way out while also dodging every guard looking for her here.

  They weren’t enviable options.

  Cass threw a Tempest Blade at lvl-31. The blade of wind slammed into his raised shield, not even scuffing the metal plate.

  He stepped toward her.

  She threw another, wrapping it around his shield and aiming for his unarmored face.

  She braced herself. There would be blood. Maybe bone.

  The blade of wind roared across the distance, invisible and slicing. It struck his cheek, only to break against his skin.

  What?

  Cass threw another and another in quick succession. They broke one after another.

  They shouldn’t break like that. Her Will of 81 held the blade all the way into her target. Her attacks hadn’t glanced off unarmored skin since Uvana and Tempest Blade was even more vicious than the Wind Blade that preceded it.

  He charged her, shouting, “That all you got, demon?”

  Her heart pounded in her ears.

  Lvl-30 continued to creep around the edge of the room, looking for her back?

  She backpedaled, throwing another blade in his face as he charged her. It didn’t even slow him.

  He swung. She Dodged right, his sword passing inches from her body, and darted across the room, away from both paladins.

  Lvl-31 chased after her, but he was slow. Far slower than she expected. His stats must be in something other than Str or Dex.

  That was good. He couldn’t hit her if he couldn’t catch her.

  Except she couldn’t hurt him either. Did they intend to make this a battle of attrition? Perhaps they expected their Stamina reserves to last longer than hers.

  That seemed a reasonable bet. She looked like—no, she was—a mage. They’d assume her stats were focused on the Mental row. They couldn’t know she got free points in End with every level.

  The only question was if their slow and deliberate movements and higher levels meant their Stamina would outlast her necessarily faster ones. Or if their allies would arrive to relieve them before they tired themselves out completely.

  And those allies were coming. She could feel their lumbering approach drawing nearer down the corridors.

  She’d deal with them next, somehow.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lvl-30 raised his shield. It glowed a dark, forest green to her Mana Sense. What was he—

  Liminal Mana Sense answered her question, her understanding of mana and similar energies expanding to match her mastery of her highest-leveled skill:

  Aura Bash

  [A Skill concentrating one’s aura into an object to empower a weapon or tool.

  Estimated time to execution: 2 sec]

  Oh.

  But what could he do with that all the way over there?

  Cass sidestepped another of Lvl-31’s sword strikes.

  [Estimated time to execution: 1 sec]

  That really only made sense if he could throw his aura like Alyx.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Oh.

  The glow brightened to a physical light, visible even without Mana Sense. As it reached its zenith, he swung his shield arm forward as if shield bashing the air. Only a wall of green aura burst from it instead, flying far faster than Alyx’s aura swords ever did.

  Cass darted out of the way.

  But lvl-31 was suddenly in front of her, in the way. His shield glowed a slate grey to Mana Sense.

  [Unknown Spatial Warp Skill]

  That didn’t tell her much, just enough to be sure it wasn’t her senses playing tricks on her. He hadn’t been in the way when she’d started moving. He was now.

  She tried changing directions, ducking backward.

  She almost Dodged it anyway.

  Almost.

  Another inch, and she would have been clear. Instead, the wall of aura clipped her shoulder.

  Color inverted as Liminal Dodge fixed her mistake at the cost of her Stamina. Her body sagged under the sudden expenditure.

  Stamina: 61/138

  Cass gasped as the color returned.

  50 Stamina consumed for such a glancing hit? Liminal Dodge’s cost was directly proportional to the damage it avoided. How strong were his aura attacks? How much trouble would she have been in if Liminal Dodge hadn’t negated it?

  There wasn’t time for this worry. Lvl-31 was still advancing.

  She couldn’t let this continue. Her chances of outlasting them had just gone up in smoke. She had to turn this around.

  Her ranged attacks hadn’t worked so far, and she doubted throwing more would change that. Would it be different at melee? Wind Blade had been stronger at that range, and Tempest Blade was functionally similar.

  She had to try.

  Tempest Blade surged along her staff, the winds turning like saws. She lunged, stabbing her glaive around lvl-31’s shield.

  His shield swung out, batting her spear wide as he stepped in, his sword following his momentum.

  Cass Dodged out of its arc, the blade sweeping through empty air with a rush of wind past her ears, and pulled her staff up and around, swinging it back down.

  His shield caught it, forcing it along a glancing path away from his body.

  She darted back, only to find lvl-30 behind her. His sword stabbed for her middle back.

  Dodge twisted it into a glancing blow, her body contorting out of the way as the metal of his blade cut through the aura of her cloak and passed through her Ephemeral Robes to grate against the plate beneath as it slid off.

  Lvl-31 didn’t wait for her to recover, his sword swinging across for her neck while she was still distracted by lvl-30.

  She pulled her staff up to block.

  His sword chopped into the staff’s hardwood, the reverberations running up and down her arms. He tried to pull away, but his edge caught, pulling her with him.

  His Strength effortlessly yanked Cass forward, but she didn’t let go. She would not be disarmed. That never went well.

  But this left her open to lvl-30 behind her. She couldn’t let herself remain on the hook like this.

  What else could she do? Time slowed as Alacrity sped her thoughts and she looked for an answer.

  She couldn’t pull her staff free. She refused to give it up. Could she pull stone spears from the ground?

  She pressed Elemental Manipulation out through her feet and into the surrounding glass. It slipped from her grip like water through a sieve. And something else sparked through it, warning that trying anyway would have consequences.

  No glass spears, then. What else?

  Fire, maybe?

  She let go of her staff with her left hand, reaching forward to lvl-31’s sword hand. She summoned fire to her open palm and snatched his wrist.

  It was armored. Of course, it was armored. But metal conducted heat, didn’t it?

  The metal glowed, the heat increasing as she held it.

  Lvl-31 just stared at her. Not screaming, not fussed in the slightest.

  Lvl-30 swung at her.

  She was out of time.

  But she refused to drop her staff. There had to be something—anything else—she could do.

  All 76 points of her Alacrity ground time to a crawl as she frantically looked for another option.

  She could Liminal Dodge. That would cost a lot of Stamina, but she had plenty left for now. It might give her the extra seconds to wriggle her staff free of 31’s sword.

  Or she might be in exactly the same position, minus another chunk of Stamina.

  A decent backup plan, then. What else could she do?

  They were so much stronger than her. She wasn’t meant to face off against opponents like this yet.

  How was she supposed to compete? How was she supposed to survive?

  She needed more power. A lot more power.

  Like lightning?

  The thought startled her. But why not?

  Elemental Manipulation could redirect it. She’d never summoned it herself, but really, how was it different from fire, which she summoned easily?

  The thought burned in her mind.

  Lightning.

  Like the crocodiles of the Catacombs.

  Like the shockwave of the Lord of the Pass.

  Like the raging storm over Uvana.

  Her staff buzzed in her hands. She was again standing on the boat leaving Uvana. Lightning rained from the heavens. The atmosphere buzzed. The air tasted of ozone.

  A blade of blue lightning sprang to life along her staff as Tempest Blade jumped at the image. It pulled at her Will, barely controlled, demanding to be released.

  And who was she to stand in its way?

  31’s blade intersected her new lightning-infused Tempest Blade. His metal sword blade. Held by his metal-plated armor.

  A grin slipped over her face as she pulled the lightning from Tempest Blade down his sword with Elemental Manipulation. The lightning happily ran down its length, gleefully jumping at her command from blade to metal gloves.

  He flinched, his entire body seizing as the lightning ran rampant through him.

  But did nothing to stop lvl-30’s sword behind her.

  The colors inverted as Liminal Dodge transmuted the direct hit into a near miss, placing her an inch to the right of his blade.

  Stamina: 28/138

  Focus: 250/549

  And taking a chunk of Stamina and the wind from her lungs with it.

  But it gave her the second she needed. She twisted, pulling her staff free of his sword, a chunk of wood coming away with the blade.

  She darted away, already drawing another lightning-infused Tempest Blade to her staff. It pulled against her control, the lightning demanding to be unleashed, like a rabid dog pulling against the chains of her Will to bury itself in the paladin’s body.

  She released it on lvl-30.

  The blade crackled in the air, its leading edge sharp even as sparks fell from the trailing one. It was solid in a way lightning had no business being.

  And it was fast. It crossed the room before she’d even thought to arch the attack around her opponent’s shield.

  It slammed into that shield, burning black scorch marks into the green and copper design, the sparks hungrily looking for more places to run and finding nothing but the insulation padding along the back.

  Shield shots would do nothing, not at this range, at least. Maybe if she was closer, she could pull the electricity across to his body with Elemental Manipulation, like with lvl-31 and his sword. But if she wanted to keep her distance, her lightning blades would need to hit the man himself, not his shield.

  Speaking of lvl-31, he was already pushing himself back to attention, shaking off the effects of the electricity she had pumped through him. What were these people made of?

  She didn’t have time to speculate; she drew another Tempest Blade to her staff and let it fly.

  She was ready for its speed this time, holding it tightly the whole way. Lvl-30 raised his shield to block again, but she pulled the attack wide, arching it around him to hit his chest.

  The lightning burned through his fabric tabard and sparked as it hit the plate metal beneath. He spasmed as it made contact, tendrils of lightning escaping their blade form to run rampant through his flesh.

  But Cass’s Will held most of the lightning in the shape of a blade, stabbing into his plate. Will-backed lightning burned at Fortitude-reinforced steel until steel gave way.

  The chain mail beneath the plate split before her blade. The fabric and flesh below burned.

  It was going to kill him.

  Like a spell released, the lightning blade exploded, lighting bursting in every direction, leaving scalding black spots over his tabard and exposed armor.

  Cass released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Had her Tempest Blade broken because her Will wavered, or was that just the extent of a single blade?

  Only more experiments could answer that.

  The next Tempest Blade was already mounted upon her staff. She swung to throw it.

  “Fortitude’s Aegis!” A voice rang out over the halls, deep and heavy and filled with power.

  A green force field appeared between her and the paladin. Her Tempest Blade shot into the barrier and exploded into a sea of blue sparks.

  Behind her, another paladin—the owner of what Cass could only assume was the skill Fortitude’s Aegis—had arrived. With him, half a dozen other paladins stepped out of their respective hallways, their shields raised and ready.

  Order of the Copper Crescent Paladin (lvl 29-33) x8

  Order of the Copper Crescent Captain

  Lvl 40

  [The leader of a devout order of paladins. This tauran stands stronger and more beloved by his goddess than any other in his order. Defy his goddess at your peril, for he shall be the one to see you regret it.]