Something was…not wrong. But different. Deviant.

The God of Thunder pondered it as Kade Noelstra maneuvered the needles into his body and toward his core. The very nature of them—the magic the God of Thunder had imbued them with, and the energy they currently held from Yalerox—allowed them supernatural sharpness; they'd parted Kade's flesh only the bare minimum necessary to make contact with his physical core.

Up until the moment the needles contacted Kade's ruined core, everything had proceeded as the God of Thunder's eidetic memory knew it would. He'd prepared the Hurricane Paragon's core, siphoning off just enough of her power to reduce it to a bearable level for his pupil and weakening its bindings to the point where a simple nudge would break it along precise lines, releasing her energy into controlled points that lined up with Kade's core's twelve weakest points.

If everything had continued as he'd planned, his core would have been re-binding itself around what was left of Yalerox's, locking itself in place as a C-Rank core without Stormsteel's natural weak points. Most of Queen Mother Yalerox's energy would be used in the binding process, leaving Kade with only a handful of Stamina and Mana to begin rebuilding with.

What was happening instead…

Eugene blamed the shadow mage. She was the cause of at least an eighth of Kade Noelstra's strange deviance. And this was definitely her fault.

The God of Thunder hoped it wouldn't change the reforging ritual too much. But for the first time in the process, he couldn't be sure. And he couldn't change any of it, either.

Power. Overwhelming.

It poured into my core's structure. Filled the cracks in the six orbiting bands with liquid lightning that sparked and shimmered even as it slowly solidified into a brilliant gold. Surged into the space between, thunder and lightning, wind and rain, until there was no space left.

Then it kept coming. The Hurricane Paragon's power had been incredible—especially tied to the Eye of the Storm—and even now, with whatever the God of Thunder had done to it, it was still… irresistible. I couldn't fight it. Not on this battlefield.

Not that I didn't try. As the hurricane raged inside of me, I tried to tamp it down, to pack more and more of it into my core. The portal metal bindings around it strained and warped from the pressure. My teeth ached from clenching them, and veins stood out on every limb as I pushed myself more and more. I fought for a long time. For hours. Minutes. An eternal instant that stretched forever in the time it took me to blink.

But I couldn't fight it—not if I wanted to win.

I didn't just want to win. I needed to win. I needed my core back together, intact, in whatever shape I could get it into. Too many people were counting on me. Jessie. Ellen. Even Jeff. He was lost and broken, and until he could pull himself together, I needed to be there for him.

And most importantly, myself. I was counting on myself to get stronger. I couldn't let any of them down, and I definitely couldn't disappoint myself.

So I stopped fighting Yalerox's power and shut my eyes.

And when I opened them, I sat on the top of my shattered, cleaved precipice of a mountain.

I couldn't fight Yalerox—not even her core—without my skills. And I didn't want to fight her. I wanted to win. Victory didn't mean beating her power. It meant using it to finish my core's repairs without fracturing it worse than it already was.

Two things needed to happen. First, I needed to finish using the hurricane core's energy to…weld the liquid lightning into the portal metal frame, trapping the storm inside of me. That was the easy part.

After that, I'd have to find some way of getting rid of the excess Mana. Of bleeding it off, or compacting it into something manageable. But either way, my core wouldn't be able to hold it all. Not forever.

First things first.

The needles were empty. They had to go. I focused my will on them and pulled them free from my body one at a time; they slid out almost painlessly, with only the faintest trickle of blood from each puncture wound. I threw them off the mountain, letting them clatter off the dark rocks and onto the sand below. They hit the ground like ten-ton boulders, shooting dust clouds up all around me.

I ignored them. They weren't important. Eugene could salvage them later. The liquid lightning was still flowing across my core's frame. I grabbed the fluid around the too-smooth keystone. It burned like the surface of the sun, but I squeezed and pushed, packing the golden-white material into my core's weak spots until it solidified into a lustrous pattern. I worked on it for a long time—packing and pushing, scraping off the excess and moving it to places where there wasn't enough. The golden lacquer felt gritty and sandy under my fingers, and they grew sore and red.

But when I finished the first band and slowly let up the mental pressure I'd been exerting on it, it stayed intact even against the storm inside. It creaked and popped, but it didn't break. The core band's repairs held.

The other five bands followed quickly, and by the time I'd finished, I had six rings, gunmetal gray with brilliant gold patterns that looked like lightning bolts, wrapped around my core. It was holding even against the too-powerful storm—but that wouldn't last.

I tested the repair, pressing the golden lightning-metal with my mind. It gave. Squished under the slightest pressure. As I touched it, the solution became obvious; the weld wasn't done.

It needed heat. Lots of heat. Enough to melt both metals slightly and make one from two.

And I could provide that—once I had control over the rest of my core.

I took a deep breath and started to contemplate the hurricane inside of me.

The problem was simple: Queen Mother Yalerox's core was too much for me.

And the solution was equally simple. I needed to get rid of the excess.

It was how to make that solution happen that I couldn't figure out. How could I take the force of the hurricane—which I'd just trapped inside of my core—and unleash it into the world outside to let it dissipate? Could I even do that? The world outside of my core was…my mental space. Would that even be enough?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

No.

It wouldn't be. I narrowed my eyes at the core structure overhead as it overlapped into my mental space. That kind of force wouldn't break the desert—but it wouldn't go away, either. It wouldn't solve the problem.

I couldn't just jettison the extra Mana. I'd need to eliminate it. And the storm didn't do that. So I sat, and I pondered the golden-gray bars circling overhead. Neither of my Laws would help me, and I didn't have access to my skills yet. So, if none of my tools would solve the issue, then I'd have to form one of my own.

My eyes closed again. The storm couldn't help me. But the shadow could—if I could reforge my connection to Ellen.

"Eleanor Traynor, this is ridiculous," Bob said. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, staring at Ellen across the oversized desk as she glared back. "I have it on good authority that your team hasn't delved a single portal in the last two weeks. Your tank's having an existential crisis, your healer's in therapy again, and your striker is broken. There's nothing for you there, but there's plenty of potential with the Traynor Guild. Come join them."

Ellen's eyes only narrowed further. But for all that Bob was wrong about everything…he was right about one small part of it. She wanted to delve, and until Kade's core was fixed, Jeff got his shit together, and Sophia survived the intense, altered-consciousness psychotherapy she'd requested the second she finished her debrief with the council, the team wasn't delving.

She stiffened suddenly. Uncontrollably. Her core pulsed with thunder. She sucked in a breath.

Bob's eyebrow raised. "You're going to say no again. But that'll only last so long, Eleanor. I've invested too much in you—and in this—to settle for anything less than the best. And you're the best. Now, please, listen to me."

But Ellen couldn't have listened to Bob Traynor even if she'd wanted to—which she didn't. All of her focus was on the storm that had erupted from the darkest depths of her core. It had been so…sudden. So overwhelming. All-consuming. It was power she'd never experienced before, and she knew exactly where it had come from.

Kade Noelstra was mid-repair.

And he needed her. Somehow, he needed her to finish the job.

"Bob," she said, speaking slowly and deliberately to try to hide the urge to run away to her room—or to Deimos. "Bob, I am once again saying no. I have faith in my friends. More faith in them than you've ever had in me. They're not an investment. They don't owe me anything, and I don't owe them."

She stood up.

"Don't you walk out on me, Eleanor!" Bob said.

Ellen walked to the door. "Bob…Dad…I don't owe you anything, either. Goodbye."

Then, as he spluttered behind his desk, Ellen fled for the garage and threw herself into Deimos. "The mountains west of town. Go."

The problem was simple.

The solution was just as simple.

But getting there…that was going to be complicated.

I closed my eyes and focused on the storm within my core. Until Ellen and I could reforge our connection—if we even could—all I could do was prepare and stall.

The first step, then, was separating out the storm's parts. I wouldn't need rain or wind, thunder or lightning. Not for this. All I'd need were the dark, almost-black storm clouds. And I'd need them all. I shifted the core's bars, allowing a tiny gap to form, and pushed against that gap with my will. As the storm tried to pour out, it ran into me. And I forced the unneeded parts back in.

I'd be a filter. Only the clouds would escape to cast their dark shadows across the sun-bleached desert below.

As I worked, I pulled up my status.

User: Kade Noelstra Partial Core Stamina: 03/30 (380), Mana: 20/20 (490)

Skills: 1. Stormsteel Core (C-10, Unique, Merged, God-Touched) 2. Thunderbolt Forms (C-09, Altered, Merged) 3. Mistwalk Forms (C-09, Altered, Merged) 4. Cyclone Forms (C-08, Altered, Merged) 5. Stormlight Bond (C-07, Altered, Merged) 6. Shadowstorm Battery (E-10, Altered, Merged, Dual) 7. Stormbreak (E-10, Unique)

Path: Stormsteel Path Laws: First Law of the Stormcore, Law of the Shadowed Storm

It had changed—a partial core was better than a broken one. I was getting closer. But I hadn't heard from the God of Thunder in a long time, either. That meant only one thing: I was off of his plan, and he was simply observing.

That was fine. I knew what the next step was.

As the clouds built and the desert below grew darker and darker, a point of pitch-black aura appeared on the horizon. It drew closer quickly, and I smiled.

Ellen and I still had a connection. My partial core was enough to sustain it. And that meant…

She broke through the barrier around my mental space without any effort, and her aura buffeted me like the hurricane I was fighting. I tried to talk to her, but the words refused to come. When she tried to say something, it failed, too.

But that was okay. I didn't need to talk to her. I just needed to start the process of pushing Shadowstorm Battery to D-Rank.

There was a loophole. The Stormsteel Path had forced me to find alternative sources of Laws; I couldn't learn them through ranking up my skills. But I wasn't just ranking my own skills up. I was also pushing Ellen's, and there was a good chance of Dual Skill Advancement reflecting the Law-learning process onto me.

And a shadow Law—especially one related to the sheer need we both had for Mana and the lengths we'd gone to to get it—was exactly what I needed.

I closed my eyes and straightened my lotus position. The shadows from the clouds overhead swirled around me as Ellen sat down across from me, knees touching mine. I felt her close her eyes, and felt her strengthen her connection. And we started advancing Shadowstorm Battery.

It started in my gut, deep inside of my stomach. A gnawing pang. Ellen's knee bounced off mine as she flinched from the same, sudden feeling. I focused myself on the pain as it solidified and strengthened. At the same time, the faint light peeking through my eyelids faded. I opened them, but I might as well not have. Outside of the tiny circle provided by Ellen's spell was nothing but blinding, all-enveloping darkness.

Nothing.

As the word sprang into my head, the Shadowstorm Battery activated. It tried to pull Mana from me—and from Ellen. I didn't know where it was going. All I knew was that it was hungry. Hungrier than Ellen had been when she'd pushed to B-Rank while Mana Burned.

It drained my tiny Mana pool dry instantly. Ellen's lasted a few more seconds as the Shadowstorm Battery tried to even us out, then immediately consumed every drop we had. A wave of panic crashed over me, and I reached out to touch Ellen's hand. She had to be worried about Mana Burn. So was I. But I was more worried about…

About feeding the bottomless void that was consuming our Mana.

That was the key. I'd asked for a solution to Queen Mother Yalerox's overwhelming Mana, a way to remove it from my core. And I'd trusted in this Law I was trying to learn. It had to work. It would work.

The shadow was a bottomless void that had…eaten? Yes, eaten my mental space, leaving us in the twilight atop my mountain. And it still hungered. It wanted more. Needed more. It would eat everything I tried to feed it, because—

The darkness pressed down on Ellen and me. My core shook and shivered all around me. I focused my entire soul on the clouds that had to be overhead—then on the storm still imprisoned inside of me.

As the darkness grew, I released a small burst of Mana from the storm. A tiny wave of it—not even enough to cast one of the spells Ellen had given me.

The void reacted instantly. The darkness that had been swelling around us narrowed into a point and surged toward my core.

The Mana trapped inside of me reacted instantly. It tried to press further against the edges of my core. Tried to avoid the hungering darkness outside. Instead, it only succeeded in forcing itself out of my core as I opened more small gaps. As the void touched it, the storm Mana gave way. The hungering void…hungered.

Law Learned: First Law of the Hungering Abyss Shadowstorm Battery: Rank E to D

The void consumes. Devours. Voracious, ever-starving, its power isn't that of destruction or creation, but of obliteration. Its relentless appetite cannot be sated, and that, in itself, is its strength. It will feast. It must feast. This is the nature of shadow and darkness. In embracing this sinister, inevitable hunger, you have taken a step down the deviated Stormsteel Path: The void hungers.

Ellen relaxed across from me as my shoulders sagged and I sucked in a deep breath. My eyes opened to bright light, howling wind, and pouring rain. The water soaked me to the bone as the storm slowly tapered off and left me on my mountain. She reached out and grabbed my hand, a grin on her face—and something else under it. Something more…worrisome.

Then I blinked, and she was gone. I was alone in my mental space, with my partial, incomplete core hemorrhaging Mana overhead.

It was time to finish the job.

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