Lightning flashed and thunder boomed as I finished killing a pack of wolves at the edge of a clearing in the pines. From the moment I'd finished my fight with the hunter mound, I'd been traveling down a rocky slope with treacherous footing and muddy paths. And the whole time, I'd been fighting this pack.

There had been at least a dozen wolves, and they hadn't given up—even after I'd slaughtered half of them with a Thunder Wave and Howling Gale. Now, their corpses covered the slope behind me. The dire wolf that had led them had been the last to die; my arm bled from a dozen places as my faster-than-normal delver's healing slowly closed the bite wounds it had given me.

Stamina: 119/300, Mana: 97/400

I'd been burning through my resources, though, and I didn't have any potions. Even if I did, using one in here wouldn't be worth the cost. I'd need to finish this portal with more or less what I had in the tank. Energy Font could help mitigate some of that—and had been—but it only kept me at between empty and a quarter full on Mana. And as for my Stamina, I'd stopped dulling my pain a while back.

I needed all of what I had left.

The clearing…this wasn't like the last time I'd delved a glade-typed portal. This time, I was pretty sure the boss was right in the center of it. The tree there didn't look like it had been planted there. Someone, or something, had moved it there. Its bough had broken off, and a spectral copy of it sprouted from halfway up its strangely split trunk. I sent an image to Cheddar, and the Sunbeam Serpent took off, circling the clearing.

Tallas's Dueling Blade held at the ready, I summoned a pair of Ariette's Zephyrs and stepped into the clearing.

Before I could react, the broken tree in the center exploded as the spectral copy surged away from me, translucent blue trunk and limbs flailing. Spells appeared around it: wards made from dozens of shimmering magical leaves, a bough as sharp as a spear hovering overhead, and a pair of its own Zephyr-like spells. The bough sliced through the air, and I threw myself to the ground to avoid it. Then I fired both of my Zephyrs as the boss fired its own.

Treant Spirit: E-Rank

Its spells slammed into my back and side, bruising flesh and popping a rib. I ignored it. My own spells both hit, too. Spectral bark shattered and cracked as the boss's wards slammed into place a second too late. I grinned, spat dirt from my mouth, and switched from Cyclone's casting stance to my defensive Mistwalk, one hand back, one on my sword. Then I readied myself—

My danger sense flared, but I reacted too slowly.

Something slammed into my free arm. Flesh tore, blood sprayed, and the impact tossed me to the side. I hit the grassy earth hard enough to jolt my sprung rib, rolled, and watched the spear-sharp bough reverse course mid-air. It slammed into the ground next to me, then disappeared through it without hurting a blade of grass.

I used Cloudwalk and accelerated my body, then started running. Between the wind charge-powered effect and my Script, the bough missed when it erupted from the ground again. Another Zephyr zoomed overhead. I ducked, and it missed. Then I was closing the gap to the boss.

As I closed in, it stopped running across the clearing. Its ghostly branches rose up overhead; it was taller than most bosses I'd fought, but its branches were thin. I stopped, fell into a high guard, and sidestepped the boomeranging bough. Then the branches crashed down on me.

I parried one—earning a rainfall charge—and dodged the other.

They punched through the ground without disturbing the grass, and I whirled to avoid the bough as it rocketed at me again. Then I slipped into Cyclone stance, summoned another Zephyr, and waited.

This time, when the massive bough ripped from the ground, I was ready. I fired my Zephyr toward it, using Saltspray and consuming the rainfall charge. My spell hit the missile. They exploded into spectral splinters and droplets of water that crashed over me like tiny missiles.

My mind pulled at me, screaming to let me learn a Law. I ignored it for now. I wasn't ready yet.

The treant spirit screamed, the sound like a hurricane ripping through its canopy. Four more Zephyrs pounded into the dirt around me—and into my arm. I almost dropped the dueling sword as one mashed my biceps against my arm bone.

Cheddar screeched. Sun blasted downward, and the boss shifted its spectral shield of blue leaves up to block it. I quickly summoned two more Zephyrs and fired them into the boss's trunk. More bark shattered.

Stamina: 82/300, Mana: 40/400

As the boss flung a Zephyr upward, Cheddar's screeching cut off, and the sunbeam stopped. I ducked toward it. My free hand wrapped around the dueling sword's grip. The leaf shield lowered, but too slowly—between Cloudwalk and the Script, I was already inside its defense. The Zephyrs I'd cast had left craters in the spectral tree's bark. I thrust into one with Rain-Slicked Blade.

The dueling sword's lightning vanished as I attacked, a single-edged, razor-tipped blade of compressed water appearing in its place. Rain-Slicked Blade could slice through stone and steel. Ghostly bark and heartwood offered no resistance. I turned the lunging attack into a cut that severed one of the tree's towering limbs.

Then I backpedaled as the second limb slammed down. Three steps back. Four.

I hit something and stopped. The shield. I tried to get the dueling sword up for a parry, but it was too late. The boss's ghostly limb crashed into my shoulder, driving me to the ground, and something in my hip gave as I overbalanced and twisted. I ignored it and pushed Stamina into my newest wounds.

Stamina: 65/300, Mana: 43/400

The tree pressed its attack, its remaining branch swinging like a flail. It was all I could do to keep the dueling sword between it and me, much less regain my feet. I couldn't escape; the wall of leaves was in the way. And I couldn't press forward. Every time I tried, the remaining branch slammed me back.

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

Another sunbeam ripped into the treant's body. This time, it hesitated for a moment before the spectral leaves formed a shield overhead. And in that moment of hesitation, Cheddar's bright lights shredded the boss's bark and left burning, smoking scars across it. Even better, when the shield did pick up, I managed to get some distance.

I dropped to my casting stance the moment my feet were under me, used Lightning Strikes Twice, and fired a single Zephyr. The echo followed it a split second later, and both hit at the base of the trunk. The impacts forced a split in the tree trunk, all the way from their impact point to the gash I'd carved with my Rain-Slicked Blade.

Two more Zephyrs followed, draining my Mana to nothing. The Stormsteel breastplate vanished, and Energy Font kicked into full gear. Tallas's Dueling Sword flickered, too. When it reappeared, a lightning bolt arced from the blade's tip into the boss's wound, right behind the Zephyrs.

And that's when I noticed it—the key to the fight.

The boss hadn't healed. Not once.

Its gaping wound from my attacks stretched from the base of its trunk to its remaining branch. It burned from Cheddar's sunbeams. And its missing branch hadn't healed at all.

I gritted my teeth, two-handed the dueling sword, and dove back into melee.

The remaining branch glanced off my chest as I ran in. My ribs screamed in agony even through the Stamina-fueled dulling. But I swung, and as I did, I used Howling Gale. The wind blades didn't duplicate as much as they had against the mound or wolf pack, but they shredded twigs and leaves away from the monster's trunk. Even better, they ripped at the boss's shield, letting sunbeams rip into it.

The treant recoiled, screaming like a tornado. Zephyrs fired up into the sky and at me. I used Flareflourish, flashing a burst of white light across the boss. It recoiled, and the Zephyrs went wide.

And that was all I needed.

I hacked into the remaining branch. It creaked, then fell. And as it did, so did the boss.

Portal Collapse in: 59:57

I'd won.

User: Kade Noelstra E-Rank Stamina: 31/300, Mana: 18/400

Skills: 1. Stormsteel Core (D-03, Unique, Merged, God-Touched) 2. Thunderbolt Forms (D-02 to D-03, Altered, Merged) 3. Mistwalk Forms (D-01 to D-02, Altered, Merged) 4. Cyclone Forms (E-10, Altered, Merged) 5. Sunbeam Bond (E-09 to E-10, Altered, Merged) 6. Energy Font (E-10 to D-01) 7. Brendan's Hymnal (E-09 to D-01)

Path: Stormsteel Path Laws: First Law of Stormsteel, First Law of the Thunderhead, First Law of the Clouded Eye

And not only had I won, I'd done it. Every one of my merged skills was either D-Rank or at the cusp of it. Both of my unmerged skills had made it to D-Rank, too. I let myself relax against the ruined stump of the boss's real body, in the center of the glade.

Cheddar landed beside me. His body was covered in bruises from the boss's Zephyrs. "Sorry, buddy," I said. "Should have been paying better attention. I could have unsummoned you before those hit. Let's get you somewhere safe, alright?"

I unsummoned my familiar, and he disappeared back into the interdimensional space I'd tied to my weapon. Then I let the dueling sword vanish, too. I had a lot to do in here, but I could afford to take a minute or two to breathe, let my body start recovering, and feel the pain I'd been putting off.

Not that I liked it. As I forced my remaining Stamina away from the bruises and cracked ribs, I couldn't help but hiss in agony. I'd need to let it return if I wanted to stand up and look for the boss's loot. But for now, I needed to regenerate what I'd burned more than I needed it dulled. So, instead of fighting through it, I embraced it.

Dad had taught me that. Sometimes, he said, the best way to recover was to understand where things really hurt—that way, you could focus on taking care of those injuries while ignoring the ones that didn't matter. And, in this case, I was most concerned about the rib that made breathing deeply agonizing, my dislocated and relocated hip, and the bone bruise on my upper arm. The rest was trivial.

"Where's your team?" a man asked.

I summoned the dueling sword and flooded my body with Stamina before I even realized I was doing it. Before I even turned to face the newcomer. "What?"

"Where's your team? The GC rep outside said a team was already clearing this place. Then she got all worried and said to see if you guys needed help. She let us go in after you." The man—an E-Rank tank, by the looks of his ramshackle armor—stood at the head of a group of six. Most of them were dressed in street clothes, with bottom-of-the-barrel weapons forged from portal metal rather than looted from portals themselves.

I looked them over. A full team. If they wanted to start trouble, I couldn't stop them. So, I forced myself to relax and unsummoned the dueling sword. "I don't have a team. I went in solo."

"You did what?" the tank asked.

A woman behind him with a bow snorted. "You're, what? D-Rank? Low C?"

"No. I'm about to hit D, but…" I coughed, and my rib sent a wave of pain up into my chest and down to the base of my stomach. "Look, you're all pretty fresh, right? I'm going to grab the boss core, but you've got about fifty minutes to search for whatever loot you can find. Last time I was in a glade portal, it was hidden in the boss's hideaway. I don't think this boss had one, so it'll be nearby."

"Why are you helping us?" a man with two daggers asked.

I looked him over. He was just a kid—a year or two older than Jessie. Thin. And scared. "Because this is your first portal, right? You're going to come out of this without any skill levels or combat experience. If you get a piece of E-Rank gear, you'll be a little stronger for your next one."

He shrugged. "Yeah, but why?"

"Because you all need to get stronger, too." I stood up and headed for the boss's corpse. Then I reached in and grabbed the tiny core from inside the spectral body, waved goodbye to the E-Rank team, and headed back up the hill toward the portal's exit.

Jessie Gerald was bored.

Being a Governing Council representative was fun sometimes. Helping new delvers figure out the training centers was kind of cool, and she'd learned a ton about how the GC worked in the month she'd been working. But fieldwork—camping out in front of a portal and waiting—was a unique mix of boring and anxiety-inducing that she couldn't stand. The knowledge that Kade could almost certainly kill anything inside an E-Rank portal warred with the terror of knowing that the portal might break, or that Kade might.

That had been boring, but when the portal vanished, it had only gotten worse. Then, there wasn't any terror. There was only waiting. And Jessie hated waiting.

She was sitting on the curb, halfway through a game of solitaire on her tablet, when Kade appeared in the street. He held the boss's E-Ranked core in one hand, the other holding his ribs, and a smile on his face. "Got it."

"All of it?" Jessie asked.

"No. I left the loot for those guys who came in behind me. But the skill ranks and the core? Got those. Thanks for listening and letting them in. And thanks for telling them to make sure I was alright in there, even if the boss was dead before they got to me."

"No problem."

They stood there for a moment. Awkwardly. Then Kade cleared his throat. "So, you ready to go home? I've got skills to rank up and Laws to learn."

"I can't let you do that, Delver Noelstra," Jessie said. "As the Governing Council representative responding to this portal, I'm required to take five percent of the total portal's value after it closes and all delvers are present. That means you can either put the E-Rank core in your possession up as collateral, pay the average expected take from an E-Rank portal plus fifty percent, or wait for the others to exit."

Kade sighed. Then he handed the E-Rank core over and slumped onto the concrete to wait. "You're being a real pain in the butt, Representative Gerald."

"Just doing my job."

Kade groaned, and Jessie couldn't help but grin. It wasn't every day she got to boss around her brother—and this time, she had the full weight of the Governing Council behind her. She wasn't bored anymore. It was a great day!

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