"Interesting."

The God of Thunder watched as Kade Noelstra fought Khalir. The kid was losing. Undeniably, he was losing. His arm was cut to the bone. Shredded connective tissue dripped blood onto the wooden floor. And he hadn't even truly hurt Khalir.

That wasn't surprising. Khalir was one of the God of Thunder's weakest servants. He'd only ordered the wind spider here on the off-chance that he was able to teach Kade something. But even so, the C-Rank Paragon was still just that—a Paragon.

The kid was stubborn. And foolish. This was a lesson that could just as easily have been learned at the hands of the God of Thunder himself. And unlike Khalir, the God of Thunder wanted Kade to learn, not die trying. That was one thing the God of Thunder was proud of. He had more vision than any of the other Paragons—or at least than any of the other—

"What's this?" The kid was up to something. He wasn't panicking. Injured or not—overmatched or not—he was still in control of the fight. The God of Thunder hadn't seen it right away, and he cursed himself for it. "Sorry, Magda. You need to leave. I have an emergency to watch over. No, it's not you. Some other time?"

Before the electric eel hovering in the air beneath him could react, the God of Thunder picked her up and threw her into a portal he summoned. She was an A-Rank Paragon herself, but that didn't matter; she was a guest in his world, and he could dispose of guests as he saw fit.

Besides, whatever Kade Noelstra was planning was much more interesting.

Every dodge was agony. Every halfhearted parry excruciating. And there were so many legs.

I hated spiders.

Even Cheddar couldn't help. He was pouring on the sunbeams and trying to distract Khalir, but no matter what he did, the gigantic spider just kept coming.

I checked my resources for the dozenth time in the last minute and a half.

Stamina: 43/310, Mana 73/400

I was so close. Just a few more Mana, and I'd be able to strike back. The dueling sword hung limply in my hand; my arm wouldn't cooperate when I tried to riposte after a parry or to roll and cut as one motion. It was essentially useless. Worse, it was in my way. But I couldn't unsummon it, either. The only thing that was keeping me in the fight—my best chance for victory—was the two Lightning Charges I'd shredded my tendons and ligaments to earn.

Khalir loomed overhead. I backpedaled, then threw myself through the air as his wind-cloaked stinger slammed into the hollow wood below. He'd torn huge gashes in the tree behind him, and I was running out of space. Soon, I'd have to double back.

The impact almost knocked the dueling sword from my hand, and I had to use my off-hand to push off. The motion launched me into a corner, and Khalir closed in, jaws and legs clacking.

I had nowhere to go.

Stamina: 48/310, Mana: 79/400

Close enough.

I cast Thunder Wave.

Then I echoed it with Lightning Strikes Twice.

Twice.

It shouldn't have worked. By all rights, I should have been dead. But the First Law of the Stormcore gave me the power to double up on my Charges. I'd been using my Rainfall Charges to fuel Cloudwalk, and I didn't have any Wind Charges, so keeping two Lightning Charges had been easy—as long as I didn't lose the sword.

First, a dozen tendrils of lightning ripped across the gigantic wind spider. My storm met its cyclone. Explosions ripped across the monster's surface, and it started to twitch, but kept coming.

Then a second and third wave of electricity erupted from me, and there was only one place for it to go: directly into Khalir. So it did. The energy burned through the cyclone, revealing the Paragon's thin, lanky legs and body completely for the first time. Burn marks appeared all across its carapace as lightning arced through it, boring holes in its flesh.

Its legs bent backward. They cracked, one after another. And Khalir screamed. It wasn't a hiss or a roar. It was a scream of agony that lasted all of a second. Then he was dead.

Khalir was dead.

I stabbed his body with Tallas's Dueling Blade a couple of times, just to be sure. Then I started searching. The feeling of a Law was close to normal, but not quite right. A Rank-Up Law felt like something in my core, but this time, it felt outside of myself. The pressure and tingling were the same, but…

I needed something from Khalir's body if I wanted to learn the Law he'd been the Paragon of. The core. Every monster had one—even if most monsters' cores weren't worth taking—and I'd used a strange core to get onto the Stormsteel Path to begin with. I rooted around in his carapace, using Ariette's Razor in my off-hand to cut deeper inside. I needed to find Khalir's core. That was the key. The tool I needed to progress down the Path I'd chosen.

For almost a minute, I searched. Spider goop covered my uninjured arm; I tried as hard as I could to protect my wounded one even as it slowly healed. Khalir's gore burned and stung in the smaller cuts across my body. I ignored it.

My fingers wrapped around an icy-cold sphere the size of a grapefruit. It gave when I pulled, squishing in and filling the space between my fingers. Then it popped free, and I stared at a ball of compressed air so tight it was blue-black at its center and jet-white on the outside. It wasn't transparent, but I could see through it all the same. I grinned, sat between Khalir's outstretched, shattered legs, and cracked the core open.

Or at least, I tried to.

It wouldn't open.

I stared at the orb in my hands. The air whistled past my fingers, but I couldn't feel it. At the speeds it was moving, and the hypercompression it had, it should be stripping skin from my bones. Instead, it felt like I was touching a gently shaking Jell-O. The core wasn't actively resisting my attempt to break it. I just wasn't strong enough yet.

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User: Kade Noelstra D-Rank Stamina: 28/320 (+10), Mana: 13/410

Skills: 1. Stormsteel Core (D-05 to D-06, Unique, Merged, God-Touched) 2. Thunderbolt Forms (D-04 to D-06, Altered, Merged) 3. Mistwalk Forms (D-02 to D-04, Altered, Merged) 4. Cyclone Forms (D-02 to D-04, Altered, Merged) 5. Sunbeam Bond (D-01 to D-03, Altered, Merged) 6. Energy Font (D-02 to D-03) 7. Brendan's Hymnal (D-01 to D-02)

Path: Stormsteel Path Laws: First Law of the Stormcore

Yet.

But soon, I would be. I spent a few moments managing my pain and thinking about the core I'd uncovered. What was the Law it hid within? And how could I prepare myself to learn it as quickly as possible?

Right now, my biggest clue was in his main method of attack. He'd used his stinger to launch bolts of wind at me, just like Ariette's spells did. It would almost certainly change Cyclone Forms, or offer me a new understanding of how to use the sword and spellcraft stance to my advantage. I'd already learned something incredibly useful—that Lightning Strikes Twice could be layered.

That alone was almost enough for me to clear my core of spells and try to find a single, heavy-duty D-Rank spell. Echoing Thunder Wave was strong, but what if I built around echoing a proper fight-ender? Could I one-shot bosses? Could I one-shot Paragons?

What would my limits be?

I couldn't think about that right now. I was making a few assumptions—like that this was the Wind Paragon for C-Rank, and that I'd need to collect Lightning, Rain, Sun, and…whatever Stormsteel needed. That meant tracking the Paragons down would only get harder. It also meant that I couldn't rely on Jessie's information to point me at a portal and be what I needed. I'd have to think of some other solution to guarantee the Laws I needed.

And I'd almost certainly have to see a healer for my arm. It might heal naturally, but getting checked over would help ensure I didn't have any permanent damage. The last thing I needed was to lose mobility in my sword arm.

But that could wait until after we'd cleared this portal.

I tucked the core into my pocket, then pushed myself back to my feet. I was unarmored, with Tallas's Dueling Sword unsummoned to regenerate my Mana as quickly as I could. There was a pretty good chance that Jeff, Ellen, and the others had cleared a nice, easy path to the portal world's real boss, and that I could catch up to them without too much trouble.

But that wasn't a guarantee, and I needed my resources if I wanted to be a useful member of the team anyway. I started walking, then carefully leaped through the crevice in the branch. Then, once I'd landed on semi-solid wood again, I headed down toward where we'd been pretty sure the boss gate was.

The delicate door to the boss's room was shut.

I checked the handle. It turned, but even though it wasn't locked, the door wouldn't open. Something on the far side had jammed it shut, almost like it had been roped over. I couldn't have that; I cast a single Slicing Bolt, and the door exploded inward—only for thousands of strands of spiderweb to catch the fragments, stopping them mid-air.

More spiders. I groaned.

Then I summoned the dueling blade and my breastplate and dove into the maze of webbing. It. Was. Everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling, strewn across the floor. Binding Yasmin against the far wall.

And in the center, locked in melee with Jeff's sword and shield and Raul's spear, stood the boss.

Arachno-Mage Larial: C-Rank

I expected the armored, spider-like elf to be a summoner with a name like that. Instead, they seemed to be a lot like the string mage I'd 'worked' with in the Rime portal world. But unlike them, they clearly didn't have a Mana problem. The room was a maze of string and webbing. Ellen was bogged down in the center, surrounded by a cocoon of the stuff, and Karina the archer couldn't get a clean shot off, either. Every time she tried, more webbing wove itself into barriers that deflected her shots.

But the team was winning—or at least, they had been before Yasmin and Ellen had gotten knocked out of the fight and Karina had been rendered ineffective.

I couldn't fight the boss. My arm was still all but useless; in an emergency, I'd be able to help, but only a little.

The boss wasn't the problem, though. Not directly. The crowd control was, and I could do something about that. I dashed toward Ellen's cocoon, slid behind it as Larial threw a strand of webbing my way, and silently apologized as it caught Ellen in the face. Then I started cutting her free. I started with her arms so she could help tear at the webbing that surrounded her; as soon as she could move an arm, she ripped the sticky webbing off her mouth. "Kade, I couldn't breathe!"

"You're D-Rank. I figured you could hold your breath for a minute."

"Shut up and get me out of thi—ouch!" Ellen flinched as the dueling sword cut a thin line through her robe and the smell of burning cotton filled the air. "You know what? Go save Yasmin. I'm fine!"

"Alright," I said.

"Kade, no!"

I ignored her and sprinted across the battlefield as squares of shadow ripped into Ellen's remaining bindings—and her skin and robes. She whimpered, but endured. Good for her; she'd figured out how to handle pain.

Yasmin was a lot easier to free; she was strung up against the wall, but the boss hadn't fully trapped her in a cocoon, just locked her down. A few quick slashes, and she was mobile—and I had two new Scripts running in return.

Ellen started casting something at the boss. I watched as the Orb of Darkness progressed across the room and smashed through a pillar of webbing without slowing. "Hey, it's not magic-resistant?"

"No!" Ellen called back.

"Got it!"

I summoned a handful of Ariette's Zephyrs and aimed them at the five clusters of webbing closest to the boss—and between them and Karina. Four of the five darts hit, and webbing sliced away from the ceiling. Then I summoned a single Zephyr with the last of my Mana and sliced one more cluster away. "You're clear!" I said.

An arrow slammed into the boss, and I let my sword arm relax as the dueling blade disappeared. I couldn't do much more to help with this fight, but I might not have to. The rest of the team was up and running again, and Larial was starting to flag.

It was only a matter of time.

Between Raul's spear-thrusts finally starting to crack their armor, Shadow Boxes rippling across them, and arrows punching into their plate, Larial dropped to one knee. Their staff fell from their hands, and they slammed face-first into the ground.

With the boss dead, the one-hour timer appeared. No one on the team was in the mood to celebrate; as soon as the fight stopped, I stopped dulling my pain, and everyone else looked exhausted. As Karina and Yasmin searched for the boss's treasure trove, the rest of us dropped where we stood, closed our eyes, and rested for the first time since we'd stepped into the C-Rank Arboreal world.

"Thanks," Ellen said grudgingly as I sat in Deimos's passenger seat an hour and a half later. We'd come out of it covered in webbing that wouldn't peel off, and Ellen had complained about the cost of detailing after monster-related car issues. But she'd opened the door, then waited, tapping the shifter impatiently, until I climbed in. "Even though you left me half-stuck, thanks."

"No problem. Can we swing by the hospital? I need to have someone look at this—and no, Jessie, it's not worth summoning a healer for." I pointed to my blood-soaked arm. It was starting to heal, but with my limited Stamina, I couldn't keep it from sending waves of pain up and down my body. "The mini-boss was rough. I shouldn't have won. If it hadn't been for my D-Rank law, I wouldn't have. The arena's setup was designed to get me isolated, and we're going to need to be careful about that."

"Damn," Jessie said from the back seat. "I was hoping to have a day or two off from the hospital."

"If it's any consolation, at least I'm the one getting checked out this time," I said. The core was still in my pocket; I pulled it out and passed it to Ellen, who whistled, then passed it to Jessie in the back seat. "It was worth it, but I want to make sure there's no permanent damage to my elbow."

"Yeah, who'd want permanent damage to their joints?" Jessie deadpanned.

I rolled my eyes.

Ellen drove to the hospital, letting Deimos take the wheel while she looked over my elbow—not that she could do much of anything. When she pulled up and I stepped out with Jessie in tow, she grabbed my uninjured hand. "Next time, we'll be more careful. You've got four more of those to fight, minimum, and I'm not letting you go it alone. Not if I can help it."

"Thanks," I said. I waited until she let go, then turned and walked toward the hospital's entrance. The next time we were out and about, things would be different.

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