They held their position for an hour while Tom recovered from skill exhaustion. It was not difficult, as they only attacked one at a time, an average time between each assault being around four minutes. It was enough to restore himself, but barely.

  In his nightly training sessions in between healing Briana, he had tested his limits. Provided there were less than two uses of Intangible Power Strike every seven minutes, he could recover from skill stress. Tom was convinced that it wasn’t a coincidence the waves came on four-minute intervals when more frequent ones would have overwhelmed him.

  This floor was as much a construction of his fate as a challenge set by the rules of the darkhole trial. Little slices of luck made what would otherwise have been an impossible task achievable. He understood the limitations of his new skill. Four times at once was the limit to which he could push it. With his tier three-dagger, he could also counter one of them head-on in melee range, and that meant that, theoretically, he could probably take five at a time – or, at least, in quick succession. Not that he ever wanted to be in a position to check that.

  If circumstances fostered a sixth one onto them, they would be in trouble, but he was unconcerned regarding the threat of that outcome. His chances of success here were always based on favourable matchups, and the design of the floor was clear. If he pushed hard and fast, the size of the groups would increase, but, provided they remained cautious, the numbers wouldn’t swell to a level that would truly threaten them.

  Finally, once he was fully recovered, Tom got them moving forward once more. Their progress was slower than before, as he sought to reduce the chance of being overwhelmed by a flood of enemies.

  Over three hours, they advanced another five hundred metres. Most battles were against only one opponent, but, in about a quarter of those, two at once would assault them. After the duos, Tom always paused to recover fully. While he would have liked to push faster, it wasn’t feasible, given the constraints of his abilities, and as far as he could guess, his equipment. His superior weapons were lying unused in his inventory, and he knew they could speed things up if it became necessary.

  Danger Sense went off, and Tom threw up a hand. “Incoming.”

  The others saw this signal, lowered their eyes, and retreated five paces, as planned. Tom put them out of his mind and searched for the cause of his skill’s warning.

  It was a new threat. Once more, it was camouflaged, and had a large head about the size of a washing machine followed by a tadpole-like tail that was only a pace from end to end. It moved through the grass kind of like a snake would have done, even though its anatomy was not conducive to that. Its tail was nowhere near long enough to create the sinuous movements it was producing. It clearly relied on magic for its locomotion.

  It was almost as strange-looking as the blankets had been.

  When it closed in within range of his magic, Tom was not surprised when his Lightning Javelin bounced off its surface. There was no flare of magic shielding. Its resistance came purely from natural armour. He was neither alarmed nor worried about the development.

  It came closer, and he launched the rest of his free magic spells at it – and got the same result. This was going to be a physical fight. Tom had to admit to himself that he kind of liked the idea. He was excited to be able to blow off some steam.

  Tom bounced lightly on the balls of his feet as he waited for it to make its first attack. It was ten metres away, then five, then three. He was ready for everything, but was still studying it. To his visual senses, it was a plain ordinary rock, with a suspicious crack spreading midway through it - one that looked like it could be a mouth.

  The creature stopped, then seemed to sink into the earth. The motion was subtle, and it dropped no more than an inch, but it was enough to trigger his battle instincts. His need to move was bolstered by the alarms that went off in his mind as Danger Sense added its voice to the equation. To the sense, moving forward meant death; not that his fighting experience would have let him do that anyway. Interestingly, moving sideways was just as dangerous. In a blink, without making a conscious decision, Tom threw himself backwards, launching into a back flip to gain extra distance away from the threat.

  There was a crack behind him and, when he glanced back, he saw the monster’s mouth closing over where he had just been standing.

  Tom shivered at how fast it had moved. Without Danger Sense, he might have gone sideways, and he suspected the enemy was capable of adjusting itself over a wide angle, so, if he had done that, he might have been dead now. Once it launched, it was too fast for someone of his rank to avoid. Though it was possible Fateful Repositioning could help; however, he didn’t have his automatic class teleports to save himself here, the way he would have done in his last life. If he let himself be cornered in the wrong spot, he was vulnerable. Danger Sense became useless if it was too late for him to do anything to save himself.

  The alarms had quietened, so he lunged forward and thrust with his weapon while activating Power Strike.

  The glowing metal tip collided with the side of the boulder, then skated off the skin. The scratch was a couple of centimetres deep , but it was clear that he hadn’t penetrated far enough to draw anything resembling blood.

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  Clinically, Tom retreated into his ready stance as he interpreted the result of his strike.

  It was not a good one. Maybe there would be weak spots on that tail that he could exploit, but his guess was that the head was nigh-on untouchable, and he feared the rest of the body was going to be the same.

  The monster was sinking slightly into the ground again, and Tom recognised the signs. Before Danger Sense went off, he was already retreating backwards. This time, he remained facing the creature and witnessed it blur forward, its mouth briefly opening wide enough to swallow him whole before crunching down.

  It was definitely a case of having to be clear of the danger area before it activated the ability. Because the move was telegraphed, it was not dangerous now that he knew how to recognise the signs. As it remained frozen to the spot like the last time, Tom took the second he had to stab it with his spear. He hadn’t bothered with Power Strike, so the thrust only left slight lines dug into its side.

  He could land a hundred similar blows, and not carve as deep as a single Power Strike-infused one would do.

  Cautiously, he settled into a defensive stance once more, waiting to see what the creature could do. Learning all the tricks of an enemy was an important first step to determining how to beat them.

  It started wiggling, a different tell from the other one, and Tom instinctively backed away. Danger Sense screamed louder, so he followed his gut reaction and threw himself sideways.

  Mouth open, the enemy roared through the spot he had stood and finished its charge five metres beyond that. Tom ran at it and struck the base of the tail, Power Strike active. The spear, just like it did with the face, failed to penetrate. Considering that the tail had looked the same as the rest of it, Tom wasn’t surprised, but he had hoped that some part of it would be more lightly armoured. Given its even, greenish-yellow consistent rock grain and no visible weaknesses, that hope was looking unlikely.

  It executed another one of the mini-charges, and Tom assessed the entirety of the scene. He hadn’t noticed any pressure against his mind or any other signs of a psychic influence.

  “You can safely look, but don’t approach.” Tom warned his companions. With his sped-up perception, a small two-times multiplier, it was easy enough to monitor both the monster and the surrounding landscape.

  Tom tested the creature for over three minutes to tease out if there were any other special attacks. Either there were none, or he couldn’t threaten it sufficiently to force it to use those.

  “Have you got the rhythm?” he called out to Kang.

  His friend nodded. “Just the two specials, right? Both of which are telegraphed?”

  “Yep. It feels like it’s probably going to have some sort of AOE spin as well, but as it’s just me harassing it, it hasn’t brought that out.”

  The other boy agreed. “I’m wearing a bracelet. If it has something like that, I’ll know and will be able to avoid it. And I really think you need me to help you. Unless you want the glory of hacking through the armour yourself.”

  “If we had an hour to spare, we still wouldn’t do that, and, given the number of I’m hungry we’ve got from Eloise, we definitely don’t have that long.” Tom responded with a laugh. “Come on, let’s see you put your axe to use.”

  Kang joined the fight.

  Tom had been holding his own advanced attacks in reserve in case more of the blankets came, but the other reincarnator didn’t have the same restrictions.

  His axe was wreathed with shadows; occasionally, a red glow would overpower the spell, and those strikes had an extra level of destructiveness. Every time he swung, Kang hacked slivers of the creature’s thick armour off like a woodchopper. Within a minute, he had carved out a small tree trunk-worth of depth, which was about ten times what Tom had managed in his three minutes of effort.

  Kang danced back, and Tom smiled as he saw yellow blood floating into the sky. Every blow after that opened the wound further, until there was a torrent of coloured liquid streaming up into the air.

  The creature died a few seconds after.

  “You want me to dissect it, right?” Kang asked.

  “I’ll stand guard,” Tom agreed.

  With a single-minded focus, the other boy went to work while Tom was watching for enemies. The dissection took over half an hour, and he put down eleven blanket monsters while they waited.

  Finally, Kang stood up, satisfied. “That thing’s built like a tank.”

  “Anything noteworthy?

  Kang grimaced slightly. “Not really. There’re no vulnerabilities to exploit. The weakest points are the sides of their head. If you focus the strikes there, then it’ll only take about a third of the blows to get through.”

  “That’s it?”

  The boy shrugged. “Yep. It’s a defensive beast.”

  “It’s not like we have a choice of opponents. We know how to kill it, and that’s all that matters. Let’s head back. I think we’ve done enough.”

  “We’ve gone like three hours past lunchtime,” Eloise complained.

  “Less than one,” Tom corrected her. “And it couldn’t be helped. We needed that information. But we can go back and eat now.”

  They retreated, having spent over six hours on the floor.

  “Adam.” Kang demanded immediately when they emerged into their living room.

  Six and a half percent.

  It wasn’t as much as any of them would have liked from six hours of grinding, but it was progress, and permanent progress at that, even after the five percent penalty was applied. If Brianna hadn’t gotten injured, with normal improvement in their efficiency, they would have been able to clear the whole thing without doing anything exceptional. That was provided whatever third or fourth monster out there was not significantly more difficult to defeat than the ones they were currently facing.

  After three days of hard fighting, they gathered together after returning from the floor once more.

  “Adam.” Kang called out.

  Twenty-one and a half percent.

  Tom felt like hitting a wall. He glanced in concern at the now permanently-pale and listless Briana. She was already starting to move more slowly than she had. She could still cast her Razor Water to shred the armour of the rock monsters, but if things went to shit, she wouldn’t be able to dodge anything.

  “We’ve made progress.” Kang said neutrally. “Seven percent per day, in fact. That’s good.” His fists were clenched and his nostrils were flaring. His body language did not match either his tone or his words. “Theoretically...” He stopped talking and looked down, bit his lips, then stared up at the sky for a number of long moments. His eyes, when they met Tom’s, were desperate. “We’re already doing twelve-hour shifts. We can’t do more. You can do the maths as well as me. That’s eleven days, maybe as few as nine if efficiency increases. That’s nine days… Tom, it might as well be fifty,” Unbidden, he glanced at the wan Briana. “You said you had a trump card. It’s time to use it.”

  “I was going to raise this as well. I’ll use it tomorrow. We’ll finish the trial tomorrow.”