My knife flew true and soared right past Alpha's left side just as he spun and lunged in that direction. That made him collide with the ribbon tied to the hilt of the knife. In a blink, the force whipped the blade 3 times around Alpha's torso, effectively tying the long silk ribbon to his body.

When it ran out of ribbon, the knife bounced against his chest. In that second, the softly glowing runes marked onto the face of the ribbon pressed against the glowing rune matrix protecting Alpha. At the same time, the orc general slammed a heavy mace onto Alpha's head. The rune barrier flashed, and the ribbon blazed like a torch as mana thundered through it, powering my rune script and discharging excess energy into the air as pure heat.

The intensity of the rune matrix around Alpha grew brighter and brighter as the magical energy coursed through it again and again, building upon itself but not discharging into rebound force like before. Alpha stopped and glanced down in annoyance at his glowing body. The ribbon blackened under the intense heat that I could feel 10 feet away. Despite the sudden spike of heat, three other orcs stabbed swords or thrust spears at Alpha and more power rushed through the matrix and got caught in the endless looping.

It had nowhere to go, but kept cycling back into itself again and again. Some of it did escape as discharging heat that warped the air, but it was just a fraction of the total power the rune matrix absorbed. The orcs stumbled back, hair curling and blackening. Grinning, I silently urged on the infinite loop, expecting to see the entire rune matrix crash and wink out.

Instead, it exploded. An enormous blast of energy erupted, tearing huge gashes across Alpha's hide and flinging all the still-living orcs away. I crouched, managing to withstand the blast, but still stumbling back a couple steps. Alpha staggered, looking more surprised than hurt, and turned away from me in the process.

I deactivated Mirror Cloak and lunged in, already swinging the 3000 pound Earthshaker Maul as it appeared in my hands. Alpha must have heard something because he spun just in time to take the Maul in the chest. I bared my teeth at him as the massive weapon blasted through his rib cage. Just to make it fun, I triggered Hammer Strike.

2000 punches worth of additional kinetic energy blasted through Alpha, liquefying organs, snapping bones, and turning him into a big leather sack full of jelly. Alpha careened away, spraying enormous amounts of blood as he crashed and bounced out of sight down one of the distant tunnels.

"Runesmith for the win!" I laughed, pumping the giant maul overhead.

Then a spear cracked into my side, launching me tumbling sideways. It didn't penetrate my armor, but totally caught me by surprise. As I rolled back to my feet, one of the orc captains barreled in, spear raised to thrust into my throat.

"Ungrateful," I muttered as I slapped the incoming spear aside and head-butted the ugly orc.

My Embersteel Battle Helm flashed into view and rang with a surprisingly musical chime from the impact. The orc's forehead cracked and the force sent him reeling backward. The other 7 still-living orcs were regrouping quickly, but with me as their target now.

"Really?" I mean, I understood loving to fight, but they took battle frenzy to a whole new level. The orcs raised weapons and charged.

I triggered Energy Ward and power poured into me as the aura began draining the orcs who rushed uncaring through it to attack. I moved with the gentle nudges from my aura, side-stepping or dodging the attacks even as they deflected just past my body. I tossed my maul back into my inventory and switched to my blades.

Echo and Scalebiter felt light as feathers after that enormous maul and I danced through the orcs, drawing deep from my Agility. As their strikes deflected away, I struck back, killing one after another until only the orc general remained.

At level 50, the general possessed an entire magnitude greater strength than any of the others and he growled as I ducked under one of the heavy blows of his mace, scraping Scalebiter across his chest armor.

"The enemy of my enemy should not have ventured here."

"Got that quote wrong, buddy."

He lunged again, even as more and more of his life force was drained by Energy Ward. I side-stepped his vicious downward chop and drove Echo through his throat, while pouring in a bunch of mana. The blade slashed deep, releasing a pressure wave of blood before the echo strike finished pushing the blade the rest of the way through.

The general's head dropped to the ground, teeth still gnashing at the air as he joined his shattered army in the final slumber. Alpha had done most of the work defeating the orcs, but I still looted the bodies. Waste not, and all that.

I got a laughably small number of mana crystals, a bunch of useless weapons and armor, and 86 orc fangs with poison damage. The only interesting thing was an ornate bone necklace I got from the general that gave increasing boosts to Constitution and Agility based on how many followers I had.

Interesting, but it'd be more useful if I had any followers. Now, to find Alpha and finish him off before he regenerated. Whistling to myself, I jogged into the tunnel I'd blasted Alpha through. Splashes of blood made following his trail easy. Hopefully that rune script had drawn power from his pool of regeneration, leaving it mostly empty.

A moment later, as I jogged across an intersection with a cross tunnel, Alpha exploded out of nowhere to my left and crashed into me, knocking me off my feet. He seized me by the chest as his deadly jaws slammed down over my face.

My Embersteel battle helmet flashed into view, then shattered under the grinding force of his jaws. His teeth sank into the secondary head shield from my goggles, and that shattered too, but the tiny delay gave me a chance to punch him under the jaw with my silver Wolverine claws extended.

The silver claws drove deep, leveraging his jaws away from my face just as my last barrier shattered. His bottom fangs scraped my cheek before I wrenched his head away.

We crashed to the floor hard and Alpha heaved, driving his claws against my chest. Probably wanted to try ripping me in half again, but this time his claws didn't puncture my inner layer of armor.

With my free hand, I drove my other Wolverine claws into his throat and wrenched them back and forth with all my strength. Ghastly wounds tore open, but not nearly enough blood poured out. He was healing almost real-time.

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He stank like blood and gore and rabid dog, his coarse hairs scraped against my armor, and his heavy breathing filled the tunnel. When he realized he couldn't rip through my armor, he lunged to his feet and slammed me bodily up against the ceiling.

So I triggered Phantom Step and let his own momentum hurl me up into the stone. I wasn't moving too fast and could drop back down in less than 5 seconds, but I let myself fly upward for 2 seconds to check a hunch.

Sure enough, I floated up through the floor of yet another cavern. There, I deactivated Phantom Step and reactivated Mirror Cloak as I crouched on the floor and looked around.

I'd ended up in a huge cavern, glowing with soft, warm light with no obvious source. The cavern was more like the first big goblin cave, but with a huge pillar of stone in the center, reaching up over 200 feet to a smooth stone ceiling. A narrow winding stone stair spiraled up the pillar to an opening in the ceiling.

Spokes of 10-foot rough stone walls extended out in curving patterns from the central pillar, as if it used to spin, dragging the walls like long swirling tails behind. Halfway across the cavern from the central spire, they started tapering off, finally disappearing about three-quarters of the way to the outer wall. And in each of the wide spaces between those curving walls camped squads of half a dozen trolls.

I should have figured it would be something like trolls. At each level of the dungeon, the humanoid monsters had gotten bigger. The trolls weren't as big as some of the giants I'd fought in Giant Valley, but they weren't pushovers either. They reminded me of the cave troll from the Lord of the Rings movies that attacked the company in the Mines of Moria. Around 15 feet tall, with thick, alligator-like hide covered in thicker plate mail. Most carried huge bashing weapons like clubs, cudgels, or mauls.

A distant wolf howl echoed from my left and I spotted the entrance cave that led up from the orc level. Sounded like Alpha had found it and was coming fast. Hopefully those wounds in his face and neck from my silver blades were hurting a lot. I'd forgotten I'd enhanced them with Soul Slice, so I'd done some spirit-level damage too. Good. Alpha needed to suffer a bit before he died.

Alpha's howls roused the nearest group of trolls. They rose, swept up weapons, and lumbered into a loose half circle facing the distant cave entrance. When I jogged closer to the entrance cave and passed the end of one of those curving stone walls, the trolls in the next sector were glancing toward the cave mouth, but not rousing. I guess they figured one wolf wouldn't be worth the trouble for more than one group to deal with.

Worked for me. I ran to the entrance and left a few more welcoming traps for Alpha in a kill zone encircling one of my few remaining bear traps. Around it, I set 2 Stygian Ichor shrapnel grenades, 2 Stygian Ichor foggers, 2 acid grenades, and 2 lava grenades. Around those, I set 4 of my energy barriers. I used one of my amazing remote detonators with each component. They made life so much fun.

Retreating from the crazy trap area, I tossed 2 Create Darkness potions. They shattered, blanketing the entire trap zone and the cave mouth in impenetrable darkness. Alpha would know I'd created the darkness, but if he wanted me, he'd have to go through it. Last time I used the darkness, I'd just hidden in it. Hopefully he figured I was trying to do the same again.

He might just try jumping through, so I remotely triggered the energy shield directly in his path. If he tried jumping, he'd bounce off right into my traps. Now all I had to do was wait a minute for him to show up.

Except the 6 trolls that had started gathering noticed the darkness and lumbered forward, swinging weapons in great, ponderous arcs to loosen their shoulders. Crap. If they blundered into the traps before Alpha, they'd wreck my plan.

"I do need the experience," I muttered as I cracked my neck and broke into a jog to intercept the pack of rock trolls. I didn't have time to waste engaging in close melee with them, which gave me the perfect chance to try stacking a couple of my new class spells.

"Divergent Strike. Level 3. A high-impact attack that detonates across an area 5 feet in diameter per level with major kinetic damage. Blast wraps all enemies caught inside with convergence mana, weakening their spellcasting and preventing absorption of basic or attuned mana for 10 seconds."

I aimed for the spot in the center of the group of trolls. My level-3 spell should cover just enough area to catch all 6 of them. As I cast it, I stacked on Elemental Harmony to include 3 potions of ice immunity. My Force Weaver ability increased the resulting power of the synergized spells by 75%, while adding another 100% kinetic energy to it. I figured that would produce a noticeable improvement.

I got way more than that. The synergized spells detonated like an invisible meteor from space. The ground exploded, cracking the floor all the way down to the lower orc tunnels, and the force hurled the huge trolls across the cavern like rag dolls. Two smashed right through the 10-foot curving wall blocking their sector from the next one farther from the entrance. Two others somersaulted all the way across the cavern to splat against the outer stone wall with thunderous impacts.

The final 2 trolls, who had been in the center and nearly on top of the detonation point, got blasted straight up almost to the ceiling before falling back down and basically exploding against the floor on impact.

"Yes!" I shouted, then cringed when a cascading chorus of deep-throated roars sounded all around the pillar.

Maybe I should have thought that one through a bit. I'd prevented the closest squad from interfering with my trap, but at the cost of alerting all the others.

Behind me, a howl of anger and pain from Alpha spun me around and I mentally triggered all my remaining traps using the remote detonators. I couldn't see the effects, but I heard them. The thumping of grenades detonating, the whooshing of intense flames, and the howling of Alpha as he was inundated with lava, acid, and superheated fire.

At the same time, he got shredded by Stygian shrapnel that pumped him full of the poisonous and regeneration-blocking Ichor. More Ichor poured into his lungs with every howling breath from the Stygian foggers. And the energy barriers kept everything corralled around him, compounding the damage and preventing him from immediately escaping.

I wanted to go finish Alpha, but more trolls were coming fast, so I let him savor the agony of my traps. I triggered Loot and Soul Feed on the 2 piles of dead troll mush nearby, then set my tether points and shot across the cavern to the 2 trolls who had gotten blasted through the dividing wall. They were both badly hurt, but not dead, wrapped in invisible convergence mana that messed with using their abilities and prevented them from absorbing more mana to regenerate.

I crashed into the back of the first just as it sat up, landing Maul-first and crushing its skull, then shot across to the second one, catching it under the chin with my Maul as it started to stand. The impact shattered its jaw and sent it back-flipping away. I paused long enough to fire an exploding crystal blade into its broken face before triggering Loot and Soul Feed on both monsters.

Using Tether Slide, I sailed to the outer wall and finished the other 2 trolls, who were worse off. Fighting trolls up close while they were ready was tough and very dangerous. I definitely preferred ambush tactics. I'd gained a lot of levels in the past 3 days, and it honestly surprised me how easily I beat down those huge trolls.

Sure, they were smaller than many of the giants I'd faced recently, but just a few days ago, they would have seemed like terrifying threats. Now they barely slowed me down. Anything under level 50 wasn't much of a challenge any more. It felt good.

Unfortunately, that killing spree drew the attention of another group of cave trolls. All 6 were lumbering toward me, despite Mirror Cloak's protection. I'd been moving fast, so either they'd spotted me, or they'd seen the glowing chains of Tether Slide.

Behind them, way out on the other side of the cavern, Alpha padded out of the clouds of darkness, his bloody, mostly hairless body visibly healing. Even from that distance, I could tell he was pissed.

The first group of 6 trolls that appeared around the curving wall closest to him gave him a target for his rage. Alpha howled and hurtled into them, a blur of teeth and fangs and berserker fury.

That would keep him busy for a bit and hopefully weaken him further. I had no doubt he'd slaughter that group of trolls and the ones behind them. It sounded like 2 other troll packs were converging on Alpha. That should give me enough time to finish off the pack heading for me.

So I deactivated Mirror Cloak and beckoned the trolls on. "Let's dance."

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