The wulven roars, and something happens. Unlike before, this one makes me stop in place. I feel fear coursing through my veins. That’s its third skill, then.

  Quickly, I [Suppress] the effect, stepping back as soon as I can to create more distance. The wulven roars again… and I keep my face calm. I stop in my tracks, frozen, but I’ve already [Deconstructed] the skill.

  When they come at me, I’m ready. The alien snarls at me, ready to tear into me, and at the last moment, I [Suppress] it again. It stumbles, but adjusts, catching themself. But they don’t expect me to move.

  Without hesitation, I jam my mana-needle into one of their eyes. My mana detonates, and disables their skills. Then my axe slams into their other shoulder, digging deep into their hide. It breaks off, and I pull out one of the knives I keep on me, stabbing it into the alien’s thigh, then kicking the wounded leg.

  They buckle with a roar that should freeze me, but falls apart as it touches my ears. I press a foot onto their chest, pushing them over and leaving them on the ground, holding out a knife. They wince, but don’t fight back.

  “I told you,” I say, calmly. “I’m stronger than you.” Blood rushes in my ears. My face hurts. But it’s okay. I’m okay.

  Slowly, I step back, getting some distance. The other wulven are staring at me with a mix of fear and respect. I take a deep breath, and [Suppress] it all. The noise, my heartbeat, the pain, the fury. All of it mellows out.

  A few moments pass with the sleetstorm simply laying on the floor. “Damn,” they say. “What happened to me?”

  Opal grins. “You got crushed, buddy,” they supply. “Absolutely demolished.”

  The lumberjack-looking woman turns to me. “That was… wild,” she says. “What did you do?”

  I tilt my head. “I won.”

  She frowns just a bit. “Fine,” she says. “Me next.”

  “Actually!” Sylves interjects, floating towards her. “You already lost.”

  The woman furrows her brows. “What?”

  Sylves’ smile turns sinister. “Fighting one’s host is quite disrespectful, don’t you think?” she asks. “You eat our food, mortal. Uninvited.”

  “You literally handed it to us!” another group member protests.

  Heartlessly, Sylves shrugs. “No matter. I didn’t ask if you wanted to eat it. I simply said we had food, placed it near you, and then you stole it. Now, wanna put to a test whether I can enforce this?”

  The man flinches back a bit at the intensity of her words. I know she’s deadly serious, too. “You can’t do this!”

  And then, Sylves activates her skill. She’s a fairy now, after all, and one should never eat fae food, right? Because it’s a breach of hospitality. And people who break hospitality… well, they get broken in turn. I watch, as the man’s stomach twists. He curls in on himself in pain, then starts throwing up.

  “Don’t kill him,” I tell Syvles.

  She smiles, sweetly. “Don’t worry, I can’t. All I can do is make their stomachs twist a little. But it’s cheap, and if I do it for all of them… well. Hardly a fight, don’t you think?”

  “Ice cold,” Thatch says. “Nice.”

  One of them still stands up and charges at us, but Inu moved into his path. He crashes against the young woman - then bounces right back where he came from. Where he promptly twists in on himself, curling up in pain from Sylves’ skill.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “We’ll be taking the dungeon now,” Inu says.

  The news slowly sinks in.

  “Please try to stop us,” Opal says. “I’m itching to try out my class in a proper fight.”

  Finally, this seems to stop them. “Fine,” the lumberjack woman says with a grimace. “Fine, take it. It’s all yours.”

  “You won the duel,” the wulven says through winces of pain. “It is yours to take.”

  They do not need to say it twice. Without any more trouble, we head inside.

  - - -

  [Dungeon: Clockwork Grove. Level: 18]

  It’s just a little higher than the dreadburg, and we have five people with classes now. By the end of this, everyone should be over level ten.

  Unlike the Dreadburg, though, the atmosphere is entirely different. There’s no miasma, no darkness or fear, just a gentle ambient ticking noise. Tick, tack, tick, tack. The air sounds of moving gears, and occasionally, there is a hiss of steam.

  The grove is, as it promised, made from clockwork. Not entirely, but enough of it is. The floor has little panels of glass in the grass, letting me look down into layers of moving gears, pipes and vents. It’s very coppery, though little of it has oxidized. There is a hedge maze inside, and as we look at it, one of the walls pulls aside, revealing an opening.

  Bay runs a finger along the walls. The plants seem thorny, but she somehow manages to avoid them all. “Whoa,” she says. “That’s awesome.”

  I feel mana ripple out from her fingers, creating a short pulse. The wall fizzles, then spins, smacking into her and sending her tumbling onto her butt. And she laughs. “Hahahaha!” for the first time, she looks genuinely happy. “That’s so awesome!”

  Oh. She’s a tech nerd. The kind that loves tinkering with stuff. “Do you wanna take the maze apart?” I ask, politely.

  “Huh?” her eyes widen. “Oh, no, I don’t think that’s feasible haha. I don’t have any tools or anything. I’d love to know how those parts work, though.”

  Now I’m curious. I look at my phone. “Your skill, [Pulse], creates electricity, right?” I ask.

  Confused, Bay nods. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s not really correct to say that, but in a way, yeah. Why?”

  Slowly, I nod. “My phone is almost out of battery.”

  “Right,” she says, hesitating. “And?”

  I blink. What’s not clear?

  Thatch gives a soft sigh. “Snow wants you to charge the phone. Maybe even teach how to do it. In exchange, I think Snow’d be willing to take down parts of the maze, maybe scrap them for parts.”

  Bay’s eyes widen even more. “You can do that?!”

  I nod.

  “Yeah, absolutely! I can figure out how to charge your phone, sure, yeah. Uh. Maybe I can even make you a better battery with some of the maze scrap. Dunno how it works yet, y’know?”

  I nod, again. “Deal.” And then, I take the mana in my vessel, pour it into [Deconstruction], and slam it into the maze’s wall. It’s clumsy, working poorly, and I let the skill do a lot of the heavy lifting, but I have a lot of mana for my level, so it does a decent bit of damage. Some of the thorny vines unravel and open up to reveal mechanical insides. Bolts and nuts and screws pop off.

  With a horrible screeching noise, the mechanism to spin the wall comes undone, and the whole thing falls over, breaking at its seams. I smile, just a little, at Bay’s wide eyes as things unmake themselves.

  And then, like a rabid hound, she descends on the once-wall. “It’s a treasure trove!” she yelps, picking things apart. She pulls out wires, metal pieces, connectors, pistons, cogs and gears, looking ecstatic.

  Yeah. A tech nerd, for sure.

  A moment passes and she tosses a glowing crystal behind her. This one actually catches my eye. I slowly pick it up from the ground.

  My mana is at about an eighth of my total, but [Selecting] the piece of crystal doesn’t take a whole lot of effort. “Huh,” I say, sitting down.

  “What now?” Opal asks. “I wanna start killing monsters.”

  I wave them off, not even looking over. The crystal is charged with mana. It’s been prepped and stored by someone. And, unlike when I solidify mine, it’s not dissipating - or, well, it is. Just very, very slowly.

  While Bay still laughs and rips into the mechanical components, I slowly trace my finger across the crystal. It’s crude, but there is something on there. Inscriptions? Runes? I can barely see them.

  “Thatch,” I say. “Come take a look.”

  “Hm?” he hums, then steps to my side, looking at what I’m holding. “What?”

  “Look.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look,” I repeat, tracing the tiny lines with my finger. His eyes begin to glow, then widen, then bleed a little.

  And still, he doesn’t look away. “Holy hell,” he says. “Enchantments.”