Ranthia knew almost nothing about the Legions, admittedly. She had no idea what the various ranks were or meant, she didn’t know how much training legionaries received before they were thrown into war, and she had no interest in why they favored forming lines.

  She was well versed in exactly two approaches to combat as a group: Adventurers’ and Rangers’. She wasn’t entirely sure if combining those approaches was inspired or insipid, but she ran with the idea before she could talk herself out of it.

  Of course, before she could make any real changes, she needed the legionaries to train and adapt. Ultimately, she didn’t want a pretty Legion force that could march in unison and fight using a strict pattern on a rote form. She wanted them to become what they truly were: 134(ish) powerful classers. Individuals and flexible small groups that could work together to slay monsters safely.

  A deep-seated trust had been forged between the majority of them as they fought and suffered alongside one another for years now. If she could cultivate that, they could evolve. After all, they had—presumably—been through more than any Legion soldier. Honestly, they truly had been through more than most Rangers.

  She would treat them like elite Adventurers—or perhaps like the largest group of Sentinels that Remus had ever seen.

  Either way, she was confident that they would meet her expectations.

  The problem with enacting major change to her base and how her people fought was that the enemy—the monsters that wore people like clothing—wasn’t polite enough to give them time to practice and adapt. The attack that came the next day was a mix of ogres and humans, the same as usual—survivors from the ogress twin’s forces and those that had been camped near their base ahead of the arrival of the twins. They repelled the attack from the walls, Ranthia’s third class got to level 31—she may or may not have had a few complaints about that—and the enemy finally retreated with their numbers reduced.

  Not that it was time to rest with their enemies gone.

  “Retrieval squads, let’s go!” Ranthia called out—loudly enough to be heard by those that she needed to hear, but not loudly enough to warn the shimagu (hopefully)—before she vaulted over the wall. Followed, shortly, by several other men and women.

  Ranthia couldn’t exactly call herself a tactical genius. After all, her idea of how to handle obvious traps was to spring them with overwhelming force and speed in hopes of countering her foes through sheer audacity and power. But, that said, she was pretty sure that the wake of their opponents’ retreat provided the best opportunity they’d have to raid the ogress’ tower.

  Their goal was to recover one of those chains. They had no makeshift sleds or sacks; their goal was to get to the tower, cut a chain free, and run it back to their base as quickly as they could. None of them exactly expected things to go quite so smoothly, of course, but that was the plan.

  Ranthia wasn’t entirely surprised when the plan went awry the moment they arrived, not due to hostile action, but because six of her retrieval squad immediately went rogue to pick through for other treasures. She had wanted them to embrace their chaotic potential, and she supposed that, maybe, they might find something none of them expected. Either way, Ranthia had a chain to cut.

  Naturally, the tower had sagged down on top of the chains, which meant they lost multiple invaluable links and had to cut their chosen chain further down. At least they didn’t lose precious time figuring out which chain was longer—the answer was fairly clear.

  Unfortunately, the chains were iron, rather than steel, but no one had seriously expected to luck out that much. Even if it proved to be low quality, any metal was a deeply appreciated asset at that point—the dwarf’s conjured material was already decaying out of viability on items and patches throughout their base.

  “Hey, Bosslady!”

  …The legionaries were still trying to come up with a title for her, and Ranthia’s recommendation of ‘Ranger’ or her actual name went entirely ignored. She was still a bit scarred over getting labeled “The Slasher of Goblins” by her fellow Adventurers, but thankfully the various attempts to date by the legionaries had been less… mundanely grandiose.

  Bosslady was still objectively terrible though.

  Didn’t stop Ranthia from sprinting over to the man’s position near the tower. He was standing over the shattered remains of the wooden wheel—the one that Ranthia had dropped that obnoxiously heavy warhammer on. Well, shattered wasn’t quite an apt descriptor, the impact had been great enough that the wheel was reduced to bits of shrapnel that crunched under Ranthia’s sandals. A waste in hindsight, but the move made sense at the time. She supposed they could still use the fragments for a fire starter if they swept them up and somehow filtered out the rocks and sand. Assuming a strong wind didn’t beat them to the remnants.

  “I’m not an expert, but I don’t recognize that.” The man explained as he pointed.

  The warhammer had fared poorly in its descent. The handle was entirely absent, and the iron head of the hammer had peeled and bloomed like a flower from the force of its impact. …Which revealed a metal core inside the crude iron that was plainly a different shade and luster than the iron.

  Ranthia had handed off her adamantium spear to the armorers—[Blacksmiths] in their own right—to see if they could make it into anything more useful. After all, she still had a supply of conjured knives (though she sorely missed her bandolier) for the time being, and she was far more effective with them. Still, even without being able to hold the adamantium next to the mystery metal she doubted it was adamantium.

  Actually, [Sense Adamantium] confirmed that plainly. She was going to get used to her new Skillset eventually.

  “Fine, pry it out and run it back, then—” Ranthia started to order the man.

  “Incoming!” Another member of the retrieval squads shouted.

  Ranthia cursed (not quite) under her breath and ran around the tower just in time to see a charging pack of human-sized dinosaurs. Eleven beasts in total.

  “[Harpymimus – Wood], levels range from 207 to 249!” Ranthia called out.

  No one had ever questioned her [Identify] variant. She was grateful for it, but sometimes it left her mildly curious just what assumptions her soldiers had made.

  They were a small team far away from their base, yes, but they were also a War Ranger and several legionaries. The dinosaurs were a nuisance at best. Which made the beasts a strange thing for the shimagu to send at them. They were also the smallest dinosaurs she’d ever seen out of the shimagu forces—they always seemed to prize massive beasts. Still, it wasn’t the time to question why the shimagu were making yet another inexplicable decision, instead Ranthia joined the others in readying her weapons.

  Not that Ranthia’s focus was on the beasts. Instead, she rushed to the chain and lashed out with [Void Edge], freeing it where it had been marked with charcoal. They were officially in a hurry and it was worth deleting a bit of material to get them moving faster. Because Ranthia was not going to trust that the shimagu decided to send a handful of dinosaurs and call it a day.

  “Rabira, Sextius, Curtius, Erucius—focus on defense! Gella, chain’s free, get the rest organized and let’s get it back! Janius, get that mystery metal back to base already!” Ranthia ordered while she replaced the expended knife.

  Rabira was already in the process of driving her spear through the neck of one of the beasts. The woman had a vicious streak to her that Ranthia could admire.

  [*ding!* Your allies have slain a [Harpymimus] (Wood, level 230)!]

  No shimagu kill? Then again, those necks were awfully scrawny so the parasite might be elsewhere in the body.

  Gella soon had the chain underway, but it was dragging on the ground with five of their number—six counting Ranthia—noncontributing.

  [*ding!* Your allies have slain a [Harpymimus] (Wood, level 207)!]

  [*ding!* Your allies have slain a [Harpymimus] (Wood, level 219)!]

  Were there no shimagu parasites in these dinosaurs either? Tamed beasts had always been fairly rare among the shimagu hordes, yet from the troll’s group she’d yet to see a dinosaur with a parasite. …Not that a single therizinosaurus and three harpymimus made for a reasonable sample size to make generalizations off of. Especially since they were all plainly sent to die.

  [Void Edge] was overkill with the dinosaurs’ small size and level, but Ranthia had literally no reason to not use the Skill—saving a blade just meant that it’d decay instead. She removed the heads of two of the beasts, just as Rabira killed her second. The others were using their shield and sword (or spear, in Erucius’ case) to remain safe while they bled their opponents. Killing blows came only once they were confident in being able to do so without risk of injury.

  [*ding!* You have slain a [Harpymimus] (Wood, level 249)!]

  [*ding!* You have slain a [Harpymimus] (Wood, level 211)!]

  [*ding!* Your allies have slain a [Harpymimus] (Wood, level 238)!]

  They were officially better than halfway done with the beasts, but Ranthia still wanted them to stick to a fighting retreat. The beasts had to be a probing attack; there was no chance that the weak dinosaurs would win against them—there wasn’t even much of a chance of any of the creatures so much as drawing blood before they died. The absurdity of the response made Ranthia wary, which made her people wary.

  And yet they finally reached the wall—with greater speed once the last dinosaur was dead and everyone could pitch in on carrying the chain—without any further incident. Were the dinosaurs just used to drive them away? Or did the shimagu elect to not respond further since they already got Ranthia and her team to leave the ruined tower?

  Ranthia had questions, but she doubted the shimagu would answer them. Still, she was already planning future stealthy forays. Salvage would be more limited and slower, but a small group might be able to slip in and out unchallenged.

  She wasn’t a tactical genius, but she could learn from her mistakes. (Usually.)

  “Take this accursed thing back and get it out of my sight!” One of the armorers shouted at her, even as he thrust the (vertical, thankfully) spear at her almost the very moment she entered the new smithy tent.

  “…Okay? What happened?” Ranthia asked, baffled, as she accepted the weapon.

  “Didn’t matter what we did, cracked my best hammer in half trying—the damned thing can’t be forged! I got fourteen levels out of trying and if I was still in Remus, I’d be begging you to let me have a year with it—and probably get some over-focused class offerings out of it—but it’ll just destroy the last of the equipment I’ve got out here! I’d be even angrier if I hadn’t already heard your team brought us a good bit of iron.” The irate armorer explained.

  “Then how did the shimagu manage to make this spear?” Ranthia asked out of bewilderment. The spear was in as basic of a shape as they came—a pointed stick—but clearly someone had turned the metal into that shape.

  “No idea, but I’m not going to risk our remaining smithy equipment to try and find out! With all due respect, Leader, out with you now.” Was his surprisingly frosty response.

  “Fair enough, thanks for trying. …And we did find another mystery metal out there—I hope it treats you better!” Ranthia called back as she made her exit.

  It was a bit petty, but the stream of profanity that followed her out was gratifying. Ranthia didn’t blame the man for being upset—broken tools were a major issue with their current status. But… well, it was hard to not get into her own head with worry.

  She had days to figure out a new source of knives. Even if she selfishly (and stupidly) claimed the entire chain they had retrieved, she could chew through that many knives in deplorably short order.

  It seemed her sole hope had landed on [Adamantium Symbiosis].

  [Adamantium Symbiosis]: Spend time with the adamantium that you control and gradually merge your power with the metal. Adamantium affected by this skill becomes significantly more responsive to all other skills you possess. The total volume of adamantium you can affect with this skill increases with level. Note: You may not unattune adamantium that is affected by this Skill.

  Skill descriptions varied a bit in how thoroughly they conveyed the full scope and limitations of Skills. Some descriptions were better than others. [Adamantium Symbiosis]’s, gratingly, left critical information out.

  The Skill ultimately reminded Ranthia a lot of her old [Spell Reworking] Skill that she had on her Light [Mage] class back when she was a child. The mechanisms differed in some ways, but in effect both required her to concentrate to the exclusion of much else on the process while her mana drained at a notable pace. Somehow the System believed “Spend time” (or perhaps “gradually merge your power with the metal”) conveyed the process adequately.

  It filled Ranthia with dread to use the Skill in a war zone, deep in enemy territory. Thanks to her experience with the focus required for channeling mana into [Reflections of Reality] she wasn’t quite as dead to the world as she had been as a child when she used [Spell Reworking], but it was all too easy to tune out a little too much.

  Helvia’d have a nasty bruise after the woman managed to scare Ranthia half to death by frantically shaking her after Ranthia proved completely unresponsive to words or shouts. Ranthia felt guilty for throwing a panicked punch, but it was a horrid way to get pulled back to reality!

  And Ranthia had most certainly not been drooling, no matter what her self-appointed guard insisted! She’d just probably taken a sip of water and spilled a little without noticing or something. Hopefully.

  Either way, no, the Skill was not something Ranthia was thrilled to use in a perilous situation, but she had no other choice. She couldn’t affect the Adamantium spear at all as things stood. The blacksmiths had failed. She just had to hope that “significantly more responsive” actually meant “would actually work with” her low-level Skills. …And that their enemies would give her enough warning to get shaken out of her stupor before a crisis brewed.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Two days had passed since the last battle. The shimagu had remained in their camp, quiet as any neighbor could strive to be. Ranthia’d taken as much advantage of the time as she could with [Adamantium Symbiosis]—but her newfound duties all-too-often called her elsewhere. The smiths had confirmed they could, with great difficulty, work the newfound mystery metal but weren’t sure what to do with it. One of the shieldwomen requested time with the extremely heavy metal since she was on the cusp of her third class and hoped to get something useful—an easy request to grant. Doc wanted permission to drop one of Ranthia’s favorite vegetables from his growth rotation and spent far too much time talking about the sustainability problem of their current food and seed supply while he glowed so brightly with Radiance that Ranthia was forced to keep her eyes shut inside his aggressively humid tent—approval was personally painful, but she gave it for the good of the base (it just stung even worse since White Dove had plainly taken the letter of Ranthia’s offer and at some point had spirited off with Ranthia’s ENTIRE supply of now-irreplaceable ration bars; the new batches just wouldn’t be the same).

  The mud [Mages] requested access to her arcanite again to change something about the composition in the walls, but they’d already drained every stone she had dry during the rebuilding. There hadn’t been enough time yet for it to recharge, so Ranthia was forced to veto that. Similarly, the cooks had tried to claim the entire supply of their remaining wood, which Ranthia had to promptly intervene in before it became an incident.

  Issues about ranks and who had to follow whose orders were easy enough to resolve. Ranthia knew nothing about the legion ranks or what they meant or encompassed, and she had zero intention of learning. Instead, she ignored all of that to rule in favor of whatever worked best in the exact circumstances. Which all too often meant making the decision that brought people into conflict for them, which often came less easily.

  Prioritizing the iron use was a constant mess. The armorers—smiths—weren’t skilled enough to reproduce the steel arrows that the dwarf had conjured, which meant that the wood problem was getting to be rather pressing. Feathered dinosaurs and birds had become a priority target to bring down and capture for fletching. Ranthia had at first assumed that arrowheads were a non-issue due to their size, but her delusion was swiftly crushed by the sheer scale of how many arrows they used every battle. Only a few [Archers] had Skills to provide their own arrows, and none of them could do it on a scale that was larger than their own needs.

  Conjured stone arrowheads weren’t a solution anyone was happy with, but each [Archer] received a couple of iron-tipped arrows for emergencies too. It was the best solution that Ranthia could find. No one liked it, which probably meant that it was a good compromise.

  Because the [Archers] were far from the only demand on their metal supply. Armor patches took priority, followed by spear tips. That much was easy, they were the base’s most essential gear. Even Remus’ favored short swords used a LOT of iron though—yet many legionaries preferred them. Was an iron sword worth the opportunity costs elsewhere? Were shields a better use? Everyone seemed eager to defer to her judgment—even the [Analysts]—which probably meant that there was no clear answer.

  Picking at random was chaotic, but it also left her feeling guilty about her leadership abilities.

  Late evening gave her something different to be stressed about though. The shimagu were clearly preparing for something. Which made the thick clouds that covered the sky significantly more stressful.

  “When darkness falls and there are no moons to light up the night’s sky, so too shall your own sight be absent.” Those were the key words in the curse that White Dove had laid upon Ranthia. The moonless nights that came roughly once a month were the obvious answer, but what of nights when the moons were obscured from touching Pallos due to dark clouds that promised rain?

  The shimagu’s timing couldn’t be worse. Especially since they were plainly waiting for the suns to set—which meant the troll twin was all but certain to make an appearance.

  If she was struck blind, there was a real risk that everything they strove for would crumble.

  Ranthia’s string of profanity lasted long enough that even the legionaries looked impressed. The Subcommander, in contrast, seemed a touch queasy by the time she finally was forced to stop and take a deep breath.

  The enemy forces had already mobilized and the troll walked in the front, sheltered beneath a large hide carried by ogres. …And behind a barrier of Ooze and Earth conjured by his parasite. The cloud cover was absolute, but plainly the troll wasn’t willing to take many risks when it came to the sun’s rays. But the timing was horrific.

  One of their [Analysts] was timing nightfall and the shimagu forces would reach them shortly before then. Ranthia wouldn’t know if it was safe to engage until after the battle had been joined. Yet the damnable troll was in the front. No one else could possibly counter him.

  Did she dare to go, when she might be struck blind moments into her clash with a superior opponent?

  Ranthia… wasn’t completely sure how well anyone else had heard White Dove’s pronouncement of her curse. She didn’t believe—not for a single moment—that the avatar of death was so generous to make her words for Ranthia’s ears alone, but everyone in her base swore that they had heard nothing. Ranthia appreciated the sentiment behind their professed ignorance, truly. But it left her uncertain about her enemies. Few shimagu had seemed to understand Creation in any capacity, yet the timing of the attack sure as chaos felt like it had to be intentional.

  The troll was testing her once again.

  The 9-by-9 formation was already mustered, waiting to join the fight. The [Mages] and [Archers] that weren’t in the formation were on the walls. Even many of those who formerly were non-combatants stood ready to provide ammunition and support for those that fought. Many of them were hoping to gain a combat-capable third class when the time came, and needed as much experience as they could get without getting in the way of those that defended the base.

  The shimagu closed in. The troll neared.

  Ranthia’s heart hammered in her chest as the distances closed. It was a large offensive with ogres, dinosaurs, humans, and a rare example of other beings among the forces that opposed them. Ranthia couldn’t even appreciate the novelty of seeing her first (presumed) gnoll.

  The troll was about to hit their lines!

  “I’m going!” Ranthia snarled. Grim determination poured through her spirit itself as she readied her spear.

  “Trust them!” Paulla urgently whispered in return. The [Analyst]’s tone suggested she knew something that Ranthia did not.

  It was enough to make Ranthia waver for a couple of precious heartbeats. And then she was too late.

  The troll reached the pretty, orderly lines of the legion.

  And the lines shattered. At first, for a horrible moment, Ranthia thought the troll hit them with such force that he carved straight through a dozen men and women. But no, the legionaries had scattered and avoided him entirely.

  Where there had been a clean, orderly line—instead chaos bloomed as the soldiers gathered into small groups and scattered. Their lack of training and preparation showed—several people started running in one direction, then had to stop and reevaluate where they were going—but the soldiers were already embracing the growth Ranthia had wanted to see out of them!

  Her heart soared, even as the chaos threw the twin and the other shimagu completely off-balance. Many of the hostiles outright stopped moving out of stunned stupidity! And Ranthia’s people were quick to punish them. The momentum of the battle shifted in the favor of their nameless base.

  “Can you see?” Paulla’s quiet voice asked.

  “It’s beautiful.” Ranthia replied earnestly.

  The [Analyst] laughed.

  “You’re good then, the sun just set.” She clarified.

  Ranthia’s cheeks colored, but she immediately started sending out mirror images. Then, as she leapt off the wall, she triggered [Reflections of Reality].

  The troll was quick to react and threw a rock through the center of the airborne image’s mass. But he wasn’t fast enough, Ranthia was already there, deflecting his bizarre weapon with her spear just enough to save the legionary that the troll was trying to kill.

  “Sun’s already set; you can get rid of the junk.” Ranthia suggested, even as she began to tear at the Ooze barrier with the point of her spear.

  Whether the troll understood her words or if he was just that eager to kill her was irrelevant in the moment. The Ooze retracted and the troll lunged at her. Ranthia danced clear of his too-obvious attack and threw two knives with [Sustained Chaos] directly at the troll’s face. The monstrous twin might regenerate obnoxiously swiftly, but nothing liked seeing attacks coming straight at its face. As hoped, the twin turned away and shielded himself with his arm.

  Ranthia tossed her spear to one of her images and rushed in, lashing out with the best strike she could for the troll’s arm, with both knives carving upward side-by-side.

  Troll blood spilled. The twinned strike—at least once [Echoes of Devastation] imparted the follow-ups—was sufficient to get through the armor, but she was a far cry from severing the arm.

  The troll howled and lashed out with his injured arm—though the injuries were already closing—but Ranthia caught his arm and kicked off the ground, then used the momentum he imparted on her to throw herself clear of his swing. Just before she touched down, she had her image throw her the spear, then had the image charge the troll alongside the other seven—er, five, a couple had been destroyed already, it seemed—she had deployed.

  The momentum of the battle still favored Ranthia’s people, but the troll could change that in a heartbeat. She needed to ramp up the pressure. Ranthia’s mana was full, but her arcanite had barely recovered. She was far from an expert at gauging the mana in the crystals by their glow—especially with most of them woven into her armor’s padding, which she rarely removed—but by her own experiences with the life-saving stones she estimated they were probably around 16% recharged at best. Nowhere near full enough to count on.

  She had to budget her mana like she was an Adventurer again. Shifting was expensive but nearly everything she did cost mana. Her images were wearing her pool down steadily, even as their ineffectual reflections of [Void Edge] left only the barest traces of damage. [Void Edge] had to be pulsed so briefly to preserve her decaying knives that it was almost remarkably mana efficient, depending largely on the harm it inflicted.

  Which was why Ranthia was charging back in instead of shifting. She needed to be tactical to counter the troll, which wasn’t her preferred style of combat… but she was familiar with it by necessity. At least she could see.

  Three of her images were destroyed by a swipe of the bone-and-hide weapon before she could arrive. More mana was spent to replace them one at a time. It was kind of unfair that the troll could flick the club in his hand and the other end of the weapon, connected by the impossible-looking strip of hide, could give him such a wide sweep of an attack. The momentum behind it was bone-jarring, but the true menace was the wave of Void energy that engulfed the flailing end of the weapon.

  At last, Ranthia reached the troll again, even as an amorphous notion that masqueraded as a plan settled into her head. It was hard not to notice how thin that strip of hide was that connected the ends of the weapon. If she could even partially disarm the troll…

  Well, for the moment she had to pirouette around his kick. Ranthia tried to jab the spear behind his knee, but her movements and his were far too quick—she plainly missed. Her knife ended up nicely buried in his side though, even if his regeneration pushed it out moments later.

  The next flash of the troll’s weapon tore through her images again. She struck one of his tusks with the butt of her spear in retaliation, not that she had the strength to even chip it. The troll was accursedly tough for something with insurmountable regeneration! Ranthia’s dance proceeded as she replaced the images that were lost.

  But why was the troll ignoring her? Had he seen her eyeing the strip of hide? She’d tried to be subtle, but the troll’s vitality was plainly considerably higher than her own—it was difficult to imagine what his perception might be like.

  The troll even allowed Ranthia to dance behind him. She was never one to resist a good opportunity. She tossed her spear to one of her images and, second knife in hand, lunged forward in an attempt to drive both blades into the back of one of the troll’s knees.

  Her accursed foe just… stepped forward. The difference in their statures was so great that Ranthia was left stumbling and he dodged cleanly, from such a simple motion.

  Not that he gave her an opportunity to catch her balance. The butt of his weapon slammed into her stomach and sent her flying. Through the haze of pain and having the wind knocked out of her, she tapped [Reflections of Reality] and, a few precious moments later, found herself in the image next to the one with the spear. Not quite what she meant to aim for, but it was good enough, especially since the troll immediately kicked the spear-wielding image and shattered it.

  Ranthia caught her spear out of midair and threw a knife at the side of the troll’s throat. His neck was heavily fortified with stones and dense vines, but she hoped she could make the parasite panic…

  Nope, he ignored it entirely.

  They were getting closer to the base’s walls. Both friends and foes parted to give them space as the melee continued all around her. But they were unmistakably moving closer to the base’s walls, almost certainly on purpose.

  The troll could carve straight through them, after all.

  But that also gave her an opportunity. Ranthia howled a war cry as she redoubled her efforts to attack the troll—solely with the spear, for the moment, she needed to save her knives—as she and her images tried to drive him a bit further down the wall.

  If he was so eager to get to the wall, well, she knew exactly who was stationed where. And she knew she was far from the most lethal combat asset her base possessed. Multiple artillery [Mages] could kill far more readily than she could. …And there was one in particular that was (hopefully) uniquely suited to the task.

  Avienus was easy to write off as a bog-standard Earth artillery [Mage], Ranthia had always thought so herself, until she ended up in command and made a point of learning what her artillery could truly do. The man, who looked as plain as his class seemed, was a dual classed Earth [Mage] that conjured and launched pointed rocks. He was slightly interesting in that he’d always launched a bunch of them in one go.

  But the man had [Channel]. And his [Stone Shaper] Skill—among other Skills, both Class and General—let him choose how many stones, what shapes they were, and how much thrust to apply on the moment he unleashed his Skill. He wasn’t limited to small stones and probably had the single most potent killing blow of anyone in the base. He had hyperspecialized to become the best artillery in his level tier that he could manage.

  Ranthia just hoped that it would be enough, even as she fought to steer the troll into the area Avienus could cover. The troll really didn’t seem to like it when she jabbed for his eyes, which made him somewhat easier to steer.

  And hopefully that meant he didn’t notice when Ranthia put an image on the wall next to Avienus and tapped [Echoes Reflected] to make it speak seven simple words:

  “Troll. Big single strike. On my mark.”

  By Xaoc she hoped the Skill had leveled enough to get something that simple right. A misspoken word might be catastrophic.

  The troll soon enough got tired of playing games with her. He suddenly snarled with a volume so great the sound itself felt like a blow that rattled her organs. The strike he made came faster than she’d hoped, but she braced with the spear, even as she activated [Reflections of Reality].

  The Void-engulfed bone struck adamantium. The power behind the blow transferred into her spear and drove it through her bones and flesh, even as the troll’s weapon deflected off. And then Ranthia’s focus snapped to an image two steps away. With a single, reckless lunge she drove a knife right at the center of that thin strip of hide.

  In the moment before impact, she activated [Void Edge] and slashed to cleave the strip away and split the troll’s weapon in two.

  Even as her image on the wall said its final word: “Now!”

  Her knife met hide. Even with the weight of the club holding it taut, the strip of hide deformed around her blow, but that was fine. Her Void was the true attack.

  And yet the hide withstood her cut. The knife was consumed to the point of uselessness. [Echoes of Devastation] barely made the delicate-looking strip of worn material ripple.

  The troll was probably about to laugh at her. At least until a massive spike of stone punched straight through his back, right through where one of his lungs likely were. A bit too low to pierce the heart—probably—but it was a clean hit and Ranthia was covered in a spray of bits of troll, stone, and shredded vines.

  And then the stone spike shattered into dust, even as the troll’s wound rapidly regrew right in front of Ranthia’s eyes.

  Ranthia had seen too much to dare to call such a feat impossible, but it had been improbable enough that she was caught off guard.

  The troll sneered down at her even as his still-regenerating wound was hidden beneath his regrown armor of vines and stone.

  She had one more surprise to try. The troll was already attacking though. She hadn’t expected him to be able to bring the weapon back around so suddenly from such an over-extended position, but she’d misjudged his strength.

  She tried to dance back but there wasn’t time.

  On instinct—or perhaps guided by [Rhythmic Grace]—Ranthia instead leaned back.

  She practically lived in her War Ranger armor. The laminar vest restricted her, but the armor was her lifeline in a war zone. Metal creaked and gave way, as she finally tested just how far [True Grace] and her dexterity went.

  Ranthia bent over backwards to avoid most of the attack. She hadn’t quite cleanly avoided the attack, her chest burned with pain, but [Combat Awareness] suggested it wasn’t a lethal blow. She could work with that.

  After all, she actually had surprised her opponent.

  Ranthia sprang forward for the troll’s face, as she shifted her grip on the spear to its butt. Her fist closed around the metal, as she desperately pushed [Adamantium Manipulation] into the small stretch of the metal that she had affected with [Adamantium Symbiosis] over the past days.

  The metal seemed to split apart in her grasp, and she came away with a tiny, crudely shaped knife.

  A knife made of adamantium. Her Skills found purchase in the blade, just in time for her to jam a [Void Edge]-empowered blade into the troll’s eye. The troll howled, but Ranthia did her best to lock the spear behind the troll’s head and held on tight, even as she continuously poured [Void Edge] into her knife.

  Her mana dropped by the heartbeat as Void consumed without limit. She had no idea how long the crude knife could withstand it, but she was determined to hold on. The blade was perilously short, but she drove to work it in as deep as she could without losing her grip.

  At least until the troll seized her in both hands and, with an angry roar, ripped her free of his head and threw her to the ground.

  She swore the monster smiled, even as her bones shattered.

  She was helpless, but the twin didn’t finish her off or go after Avienus. Instead, it roared a word Ranthia had heard from the shimagu quite often. They weren’t sure if it was closer to Creation’s “withdraw” or “retreat,” but the effect spoke for itself.

  The shimagu began to disengage and leave the field of battle.

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  Nozomi Matsuoka.

  Sarah "Neila" Elkins.