My words were empty and tasted like ash. All the bravado in the world didn't hide the fact that we were outmatched.

We were down our A-Ranker. I was the highest-ranked person on our team, at high C-Rank. Ellen was right behind me. And Tathrix, Hurricane Warlord, was an A-Ranker. Not like the A-Ranker I'd helped kill. No. It was named and titled—a true monster of a monster.

The strategy was simple. We had to—

Tathrix all but vanished. One moment, it was there, standing near Carrol's bleeding body. The next, it rocketed across the room toward Ellen, who was already using Shadow Boxing. The skill went off. Tathrix's sword flashed. And Ellen screamed as a chunk of her robe and shoulder flew away.

She'd missed. Tathrix hadn't.

Jeff rumbled across the throne room, closing the gap as fast as he could. He used his taunt skill, then Retaliation. As the sword blows came in, his shield shook, and he had to add Split-Second Shield to the mix. He couldn't withstand blows like that. Not for long. The transparent blue shield wavered and cracked, then reformed. None of his counterattacks even dented Tathrix's armor.

I threw myself into the desperate battle, one hand on my blade and the other summoning a handful of Ariette's Zephyrs. They crashed into the black-armored warlord one after another.

None of them so much as left a dent. But I didn't expect them to. I just wanted the Charges.

As the monster turned to face me, Ellen's first spell went off. A massive bird of darkness crashed into Tathrix, and he staggered. When it recovered, it whirled toward her, sword ready, and vanished. This time, she Shadestuttered the moment it did, appearing behind me.

I switched stances, letting myself drift into a casual defensive posture with my casting hand tucked behind my back. With Jeff out of position, I had to keep myself between Ellen and Tathrix. She was the only one who'd even disrupted it so far, and we had to stall as long as we could. For Sophia's sake.

I used Gustrunner to pick up my speed.

That was the only thing that saved me. Tathrix's blade cut across my side, right below the Stormsteel breastplate. The cut burned, and my shirt soaked through with blood. If I'd dodged an instant slower, the stab would have skewered me. We were hopelessly outclassed.

Then Tathrix laughed. "You're good for weaklings. This will be fun!"

"And you're bad for an A-Rank," I shot back.

Tathrix opened his mouth to say something, but a beam of light rocketed down from above as Cheddar opened fire. The black armor steamed, and Tathrix vanished, reappearing across the room. Its armor was red-hot from just that moment in the concentrated power of the sun.

It pointed a hand at Cheddar. "Talonstrike."

Before I could react—before I could unsummon my winged serpent, or even move—three beams of pale wind ripped across Cheddar's wings. One of them came off as blood rained down on us, and Cheddar fell from the sky. I unsummoned him before he could hit the ground.

The world shrank. Ellen was somewhere behind me. Jeff was somewhere to my right. Neither of them mattered. All that mattered was the Hurricane Warlord in front of me. Its sword. Its body. My sword. My body.

The battle trance locked in, and I threw myself into battle.

Rain-Slicked Blade. A thrust into Tathrix's back. It punched through. Blood erupted from the wound. Its sword flipped back, leaving a cut across my forehead as I ducked. The blood stung my eyes. I attacked again. The armor caught it. The warlord's wound was already healing. I used Thunderblade. I accelerated. My dueling blade flashed out. Cuts appeared across Tathrix's arm. More blood.

Then the blood started bubbling like someone blowing into milk through a straw. The bubbles congealed, and seconds later, every one of my superficial cuts to his arm was healed.

Worse, Tathrix ignored me. It didn't even try to block my attacks. Instead, it turned toward Jeff.

Its sword flashed again. Jeff's shield came up. Metal sparked. And when the four blows had landed and the ringing, gonglike sound had faded, four lines of bright orange crisscrossed the bulwark, and a triangular wedge the size of my hand was missing.

I kept to Thunderbolt stance, trying to pressure the A-Rank monster. My sword stabbed and slashed as I tried to find the weak points in its armor. Ellen's Shadow Boxing rippled across it, but its armor took the square-shaped cutouts and reformed. Jeff's Split-Second Shield activated, flickered off, and reactivated.

Tathrix wasn't trying to kill Ellen or me anymore. It was trying to carve a path straight through Jeff.

I knew exactly what had happened. Tathrix had identified Jeff as the weakest of us, and it had determined that nothing Ellen and I could do was a threat. It was going after Jeff. When it finished him off, it'd pick Ellen. Then me. And I couldn't stop it.

But I had to try.

I threw a Darkness spell into the space between Jeff and Tathrix. Jeff reacted instantly, backing up. The warlord took a moment longer to figure it out. Then he whirled in place, aura crashed outward, and my spell dissipated. Just like that.

But the spell had given Jeff a moment to breathe. He squared up. His shield was in tatters, and he tightened the strap and readied his chipped sword. Somehow, his armor hadn't taken a hit yet; the scale mail was still intact and unscratched.

Tathrix snorted. "Excellent work. Let's see what you make of this." It grabbed its sword with both hands. Then it pulled, and a second blade appeared. This one howled with wind and rain.

"Landfall!" the warlord yelled.

Both swords blurred. Tathrix seemed to spin at the waist in the center of a whirlwind of steel and cutting air. Jeff backpedaled. His shield took hit after hit as the warlord rushed him, falling apart. I stabbed and stabbed. Ellen's spells all but bounced off the A-Rank monster. The attack went on and on.

When it finally ended, Jeff shook the wreckage of his shield off his arm. Its self-repair had been overwhelmed; it was done for the fight. He stood on the edge of the pit, which began to roil and churn as the insect eggs and larvae inside reacted.

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And Tathrix laughed.

It was still toying with us. It was having fun. Fury filled me.

I let go of the sword with one hand. Then I cast Shade Scythe. The blade of darkness appeared, hanging over Tathrix like a guillotine. Then a second one appeared—and a third—as I burned all my Lightning Charges for Lightning Strikes Twice and repeated it. The three blades slammed into the warlord. It shouted. Then it screamed as armor parted.

Blood surged out from its arm in a fountain as the three blades sheared it to the bone. Ellen cast a spell, and a wave of shadow crashed into the monster's shoulder. Even more blood spewed across the room. The arm flew loose and fell into the pit. Larvae swarmed it, and in seconds, it was devoured—along with the wind blade.

Stamina: 79/370, Mana: 59/470

That attack had burned my resources. Hard. I was all but out of Mana; Ariette's Zephyr and a single Slicing Bolt were all I had left. But we'd hurt the Hurricane Warlord. We'd made progress.

"Now! Get him!" Ellen yelled.

Tathrix's scream of agony cut off. Its Health surged, and its wound scarred over instantly. Then he laughed again. "Queen Mother Yalerox desires your heads. I live to serve her."

The Hurricane Warlord stopped playing.

Jeff went down in eight blows. He wasn't fast enough to keep up, even with Yasmin's Scripts running full-blast. The black armor and portal metal blade slammed into my friend's armor, then into his stomach clear to the spine. Jeff collapsed, screaming.

Yasmin screamed, too. For a horrifying moment, I thought she was charging the boss. But no. She slid to her knees next to Jeff. A second later, so did Sophia. Her face was pale, and she was shaking. But healing trickled into Jeff.

Still, with Jeff and Cheddar both down—and Carrol, too—it was down to Ellen and me. I squared up, dropping into my best defensive stance. The few cuts I'd taken were superficial. Even my forehead's bleeding had stopped, leaving a cracked crust across my face.

I could probably take a hit. Maybe even two. But against Tathrix, that was a second.

Mana swelled. Tathrix moved, and I moved to block him as Ellen cast a spell. My sword lashed out. The warlord barely moved. But he did move. A half-step to the left. Enough to buy Ellen the time to finish casting her spell.

"Darkstorm," she said.

An explosion of Mana erupted from her. Black tendrils formed over Tathrix. They whirled, a storm of thrashing darkness and howling wind. Purple lightning ripped across it. It tore into the Hurricane Warlord. Then it kept tearing. Tathrix screamed again, as much in agony as in rage.

Then a second scream echoed. I stared at Ellen as her voice joined the A-Rank monster's. Her aura flickered. Then it went out entirely.

So did her spell. She collapsed as the magic fell apart.

Tathrix turned. It faced me, only an inch or two taller than me, but somehow, it loomed. Its black armor was shattered and twisted. Beneath it, flesh had been torn and burned, and his Health stitched it back together slowly. "That was good. I hope that one lives. Queen Mother Yalerox will want to learn that spell before she dies. As for you…" It raised its blade. I raised mine, too.

Mana: 89/470

I was out of options. Except one.

I lunged. My sword cut into Tathrix, blade finding one of the myriad gaps in its armor. Then I ran. Gustrunner. Mine and Yasmin's Scripts. Flashstep. Windfall. Everything I could use—except one Lightning Charge. I needed that for my last-ditch plan.

I circled the pit. Tathrix followed, but it seemed to stroll, and even at that pace it was almost as fast as me. "You cannot outrun the inevitable. Yalerox will feast on your core, God of Thunder's Pet."

Tathrix stopped. He stood on the far side of the pit. Mana started to form over him; he'd only used three skills the whole fight, and I couldn't believe he had spells, too. I only had a split second.

So, as Tathrix cast his spell to kill me, I cast my own. Lightning Chain.

Tathrix wasn't bigger than me. And it wasn't heavier. As the chain and its Lightning Strikes Twice twin linked me to the Hurricane Warlord, I leaned back and pulled.

The chains surged to life. Lightning poured into Tathrix's body. Enough lightning to stun it for a fraction of a second. And that was all I needed. The chains went taut. I sprinted back as hard as I could, like I was pulling a workout sled with a ton of weight. And Tathrix tipped over the edge.

As the maggots and larvae swarmed over Tathrix and bored through its armor, I turned away from the suddenly stinking pit. A vent opened above, and something rained down around the edges. Disinfectant or stormwater, I couldn't be sure.

We'd won.

But it had cost us everything.

Carrol was down and out. Even Sophia's best healing had only been able to stabilize him. I'd hoped she could get him back into the fight, but her Mana was almost gone, and she'd barely started with Jeff's dozens of injuries, including his spine. I bled from a half-dozen cuts—some deep enough to be deadly on their own, if I wasn't slowly healing them.

And as for Ellen…

She'd given it her all—literally everything. I stared at her; her Mana refused to recover after the Mana Burn she'd inflicted on herself. And she couldn't stop shaking. It wasn't as bad as my self-inflicted Mana Burn from using Stormbreak. She didn't need the hospital, and she was conscious. But that was the only good news out of our desperate stand against Tathrix.

The Hurricane Warlord had taken Jeff, Ellen, and Carrol out of the fight. And other than its attempt to assassinate Carrol and the last few seconds of the fight, Tathrix hadn't taken it seriously.

We had no chance against the boss. We needed more. More…everything. And there wasn't any more to get. Unless Carrol recovered, Jeff picked himself up and his armor self-repaired, and Ellen miraculously started generating Mana again, we were all dead.

I couldn't do anything more than I was. My core was already wildly unstable. I pulled up my status, just in case.

User: Kade Noelstra C-Rank Stamina: 84/380 (+10), Mana: 37/490 (+20)

Skills: 1. Stormsteel Core (C-05 to C-10, Unique, Merged, God-Touched) 2. Thunderbolt Forms ( C-05 to C-09, Altered, Merged) 3. Mistwalk Forms (C-04 to C-09, Altered, Merged) 4. Cyclone Forms (C-04 to C-08, Altered, Merged) 5. Stormlight Bond (C-02 to C-07, Altered, Merged) 6. Shadowstorm Battery (E-06 to E-10, Altered, Merged, Dual) Open Skill Slots: 1

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

Core Instability Alert

No. All the meditation in the world wouldn't change that alert. Not now. And even if it did, my skills weren't ready for B-Rank. I couldn't power up, and Ellen…she was close. Maybe closer than me. But without Mana, she couldn't do anything. That left Yasmin and Sophia. And a B-Rank support or healer wouldn't be enough.

We only had one option.

"Hey, Eugene," I whispered, "If you're listening, I could use your help."

Eugene—the God of Thunder to the Paragon-infused monsters he was currently massacring by the dozen—grinned.

Kade Noelstra had reached the point he needed to. Desperate enough to reach out. Not resigned enough to give up. Right on the knife's edge. All he'd need was one little push.

One moment, Eugene was killing half a dozen A-Ranked monsters, their multiple arms and legs twitching as electricity coursed through them. The next, the summit of the spire he was in exploded as he erupted from it in his full glory. Before anyone could so much as lay eyes on his dragonic form, he'd concealed himself inside the Eye of the Storm overhead. Then he looked down at Kade.

He was safe. Ish. Not fully safe, but close enough for Eugene's purposes. His friends probably wouldn't die during their quick conversation or the aftermath of it—as long as Kade made it fast.

Eugene definitely would. He had no desire to drag this out any further.

A pair of golden portals opened. The God of Thunder slipped through one, then reached through the other and dragged Kade into his portal world.

The kid looked like death warmed over up close. Pale. Bleeding. Struggling to stay upright.

"Kid, you're doing great," Eugene said.

"No, I'm not. I need more strength. I'm not anywhere near strong enough. I need more. Please."

Eugene snorted. Outwardly, he scoffed, rolling his eyes and staring Kade down. But inside, his core swelled with pride. His weakest Paragon Kade Noelstra might be, but himself damn, was he walking the Stormsteel Path like a champion!

Still, it was time to rip the bandage from the wound. Kade wouldn't keep growing if he kept being coddled. And that growth was the most important thing.

"I will not kill my weakest Paragon for nothing, Kade Noelstra. You cannot reach B-Rank. Not even if I provided the cores and the training. Your own core cannot handle the strain." He sighed dramatically. "The answer to your question is 'no.'"

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