The silence after the hobgoblin fight was a physical thing, thick and heavy, broken only by the sound of their ragged breathing. David’s body felt like a single, massive bruise. Every muscle fiber reported its individual complaint. Ow, damn, getting hit by a freight train made of meat is bad for the structural integrity.

  But on the bright side, he wasn’t injured, just a little bruised. It would be a good opportunity to see how quickly his constitution dealt with minor annoyances.

  Rhea was the first to speak, her tone as flat and pragmatic as he had come to expect her to be. “Do we go back?” She had a look in her eye that said like she wanted to keep going.

  Really, who raised this girl—a drill sergeant? Or a sadistic home-owners association overlord? Either way, David felt compelled to track them down and shake their hand… preferably while wearing gloves, just in case their parenting style was contagious.

  David’s mind was already running the numbers. They were upright, they were breathing, and the major threats in their immediate vicinity were currently deceased. By the brutal math of this place, that was a net positive. Turning back means admitting we're scared. Scared is logical, but everyone terrified has died so far. Staying means we're stupid. Let's go with strategically stupid. “What’s your fuel situation?” he asked, his voice rough. “Mana. How much is left in the tank?”

  “I’m good, I’ve hardly thrown. More than half,” Rhea replied, her gaze already scanning the treeline, doing a threat assessment out of habit.

  Jamie looked between them, his face a mask of confusion. “How do you even know that? I just feel… wrung out.”

  “It’s like a low battery warning,” David explained, his tone dry. Or the feeling you get after finals week, but with more demon blood. “You get a headache behind your eyes and a sort of hollow feeling in your gut. You better figure it out quick, Frozone.” He walked over, picked up the spare spear Jamie had been holding, and tossed it to Rhea. Then he pressed his own, better-balanced spear into Jamie’s hands. “You’re promoted. Your new full-time job is to stick to Rhea like glue and turn anything that gets too close into a pincushion. Seriously, figure out your mana gauge. It’s better than standing there making snowballs when things get hairy.” And I need you to be more than a distraction. I need you to be a pointy end.

  Jamie’s hands tightened on the spear’s shaft. “Right. Glue. Pincushion. Got it.”

  They took a few minutes, sitting on the damp ground, passing a warm plastic water bottle between them. The adrenaline shakes slowly subsided. No one was leaking vital fluids. No bones were poking out. It was, by any reasonable standard, a mess, but by their new standards, it was a clean win. A win where I feel like I got run over. The bar is on the floor. David pushed himself to his feet, his body protesting the movement. “We’re not turning back. But we’re not charging in like idiots, either.”

  A plan was forming in his head. It wasn't a nice plan, but it was a practical one. A way to grind a little experience without getting everyone killed. Find the small, stupid things. Let the kids practice. Don't die. Simple.

  They moved out, their pace deliberate, using the massive trees as cover. David’s eyes never stopped moving, cataloging shadows and sounds. Every shadow is a potential new friend who wants to eat my face. This is fine. It was Rhea who froze them next, a sharp hand signal. Through a gap in the dense foliage, a pack of imps—maybe five of them, all seven-foot-tall, spindly nightmares with twitching tails—were scrabbling at the base of a rotten log with something dead inside.

  “Target practice,” David murmured, a grim sort of satisfaction in his voice. Perfect. Dumb, aggressive, and hopefully worth a few points in whatever we’re being measured by. “Rhea. Can you nail them to the redwoods?”

  Rhea gave a curt nod. Her eyes lost focus as she raised two javelins, channeling [Distant Gaze].

  Two of the imps were suddenly slammed backward, their spindly bodies pinned against the thick trunks of two oaks by an invisible force that propelled javelins already in her loose grip. They let out piercing shrieks, their claws tearing futilely at the bark. Nice. Like sticking flies to flypaper.

  “Go!” David commanded.

  What followed was far from a battle; not after the juggernaut they’d just faced—it was pest control. He and Jamie rushed the pinned creatures, driving their spears into the shrieking, writhing bodies with a series of frantic, brutal stabs. The imps had the vitality of caffeinated, high, festival attendees. The shrieks cut off into wet gurgles. Messy. Inefficient. But it gets the job done.

  One of the smaller imps, a scrawny Level 2, had been out of the range of her javelins and was now scrambling backward in terror. The last one, a bulkier Level 3, spun around, its lips pulling back from needle-like teeth in a defiant hiss.

  “The runty one is yours,” David said, his attention already locked on the bigger threat. Time for a quick, brutal lesson. “Don’t overthink it. Just make it dead—Rhea, support him.”

  He turned to face the Level 3 imp as it lunged. His [Battle Sense] lit up, providing a clear, hazy path around the wild swipe of its claws. There. Stupid and predictable. He didn't retreat; instead, he flowed to the side, and as the imp’s momentum carried it past him, he focused a thread of demonic energy into his borrowed spear and ripped a tiny, precise portal across the tendon behind its knee. The leg buckled instantly with a wet snap. One problem solved. Before the imp could even hit the ground, David reversed his grip and drove the spearpoint up through its chin. Then a second time through its chest, then a third through the spine in its neck. It spasmed once and went still. And another. And finally—a combined weak point. The head, neck and chest. Efficiency.

  He turned to check on the others. Jamie was harrying the last imp, his spear jabs unrefined but enthusiastic, while Rhea used short, sharp telekinetic shoves to disrupt its balance. Jamie finally scored a solid thrust to its chest, and Rhea finished it with a clinical stab to the throat. They stood over the corpse, breathing heavily. Not bad. Not wasting mana on kills, either. They're learning. They're not dead. Two for two.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “Don’t get used to this,” David said, wiping black blood from his spear on a fern. Complacency is a faster killer than any monster. “That big bastard we fought was just the local wildlife. We could hit another at any instant. This whole dimension is a deathtrap. The moment we start feeling confident is the moment something we can’t even comprehend shows up to see if we’re tasty.”

  They pressed on, their advance slow and methodical. It was Jamie who spotted the next threat, his hand shooting up so fast he almost dropped his spear. Another hobgoblin, this one a standard-issue grunt, not the collosal variety. It was barely 6’4, still far bulkier than it had any right to be, but all it carried was a long knife, with a sword strapped to its back and less warlike clothing—it was rooting through a thorny bush about fifty yards away, its back to them. Kid's learning. Good. More eyes are always better.

  David looked from Jamie’s determined face to Rhea’s ready calm. “Same song, second verse. Just a smaller choir. Jamie, you’re on trip duty. Ice the floor, fog the windows. Rhea, we hit it the second it’s off-balance. Let’s make this quick and quiet.” Let's see if the lesson took.

  They slid into position with a newfound, determined efficiency. The moment David got close and the hobgoblin took a heavy step forward, Jamie’s sheet of ice flashed into existence under its boot. Its foot shot out, its arms flailing for balance. Rhea’s javelin took it high in the shoulder, the impact spinning it halfway around. David was there in the opening, his spear finding a gap in its leather armor and sinking deep.

  They rinsed and repeated the tactic until it could barely stand, unable to comprehend the assassination that had just hit it—it didn’t hold a candle to its colossal counterpart, and had a very ‘civilian’ feel to it. It was like they’d met the colossal hobgoblin, a trained and battle soldier’s, untrained baby brother. Level six, stronger than all of them, but by now? Barely. David was level six. Jamie, lower, but Rhea? Closer. The fight was over in less than thirty seconds. If they had encountered it just one day ago, it would have killed them. But not today. Like a well-oiled machine. A noisy, violent, bloody machine that needs servicing. But it works.

  As the level 6 hobgoblin crumpled, David looked at his two companions. Jamie was panting, but he held his spear with a firmer grip, his posture less fearful and more focused. Rhea was already quietly pulling her javelin free.

  Alright, David thought, a flicker of something that wasn't quite optimism passing through him. Maybe we can actually do this.

  David didn’t waste a step. While his eyes scanned the terrain and his ears tracked the sounds of the forest, a separate part of his mind was running a constant, grueling drill.

  With every footfall, he focused on the corrosive tingle of demonic energy in his veins. He willed it to move, to cycle through his body in a continuous, flowing circuit. It was like trying to spin a bearing in molasses—a constant, grinding effort of will. Just keep it moving. Don't let it stagnate. Stagnant energy is probably how you end up with tentacles or an extra mouth. He wasn't sure, but it seemed like a safe bet.

  He’d start from his chest, the place generating a constant supply, pushing the energy down through his legs, feeling it burn a path up his spine, across his shoulders, and down his arms to his fingertips, before pulling it back in again. A demonic hamster wheel. The effort was mental, but it left a phantom-physical fatigue, a deep-seated ache like he’d been clenching every muscle in his body for an hour.

  Simultaneously, he flicked [Battle Sense] on and off. Not in the life-or-death bursts of combat, but in short, controlled sparks. On. For a second, the world became a web of potential trajectories. He’d see the way a leaf might fall, the path a bird might take through the canopy, the most efficient way Jamie might trip over a root. Off. The world snapped back to normal. His head throbbed in protest.

  He did it again. On. Off.

  Again. On. Off.

  The first few times, the headache was immediate and sharp, a ice-pick behind his eyes. But after what felt like a hundred cycles, the pain began to recede, becoming a dull, manageable throb. The "on" phase lasted a fraction of a second longer. The information came a fraction of a second quicker.

  So that's the trick, he thought, watching Rhea’s back as she moved ahead of him. It's not a light switch. It's a muscle. A really stupid, painful muscle that gives you a migraine if you look at it wrong. He pushed again, holding [Battle Sense] for a full two-point-two seconds. The strain was there, but it was no longer debilitating. He could now extend its reach for roughly the length of a deep breath without his vision blurring. Progress. Annoying, painful, absolutely necessary progress.

  He fell into a rhythm with his marching. Step. Circulate. Step. Sense-pulse. Step. Circulate. It was monotonous, exhausting, and the only thing that made him feel slightly less like a piece of prey waiting for a predator to notice him.

  By the time they paused for another water break, he could run the demonic circulation almost on autopilot, a low-level hum in the background of his mind. And when Jamie suddenly pointed at a strange-looking fungus, David’s [Battle Sense] sparked to life without him even consciously willing it, highlighting the fungus as a poisonous threat entity for a split second before flickering out.

  It didn’t give him a flashy new skill. It didn't make him stronger. But it shaved a half-second off his reaction time. It made the energy in his veins feel a little more like his own and a far less like a hostile occupant.

  He took a swig of water from a passenger bottle, the mundane action jarringly different to the internal workout. Keep grinding. The system isn't going to hand you anything. You have to pry every ounce of power out of its cold, dead hands. And he got back to work, the demonic energy already beginning its next circuit.

  A long, dramatic sigh cut through the quiet. Jamie shifted his spear to his other shoulder, the point wobbling precariously near a branch. "Are we just going to walk until we find the edge of the world? My boots are full of leaves. I'm the only one here who can make a decent ice cube, and I'm still waiting for my proper, you know, ‘vibe’ to kick in. The strike-in-the-shadows cool vibe. This is taking forever."

  David kept walking, but his shoulders lost a fraction of their tension. The kid's not entirely wrong. We are just walking. Hopefully away from things that want to redecorate us. Ahead of them, Rhea’s posture didn't change, her attention fixed on the path ahead.

  "Maybe your 'vibe' requires stealth," Rhea said, not turning around.

  David turned, "that’ll be difficult when you're talking our entire journey."

  "Hey! I provide essential atmospheric commentary," Jamie shot back. "And I make the floors slippery. That's a core combat strategy."

  "The only thing you're stabbing is the quiet," David said, his voice flat. He could feel the demonic energy cycling through his legs, a familiar, low-grade burn. "And if you're the team core, I must be getting a free ride. My feet feel amazing."

  Jamie's face split into a grin. "See? Acknowledgment. I'm the backbone of this operation."

  "Indeed," Rhea murmured, her gaze sweeping a dense thicket to their left.

  "They'll sing songs about you," David agreed, his eyes tracking a bird's flight. "'The Ballad of the Chilly Floor.'"

  Rhea barked a laugh, the sound too soft and too human for the surrounding woods. Jamie looked unmoved by the comment, his chest protruding further, he nudged a rock with his foot. "It'll be a hit."

  David watched him for a second, this kid who could conjure ice one moment and whine about his boots the next. It's like traveling with a hyperactive, magical squirrel. Annoying, but better than the alternative of utter silence and certain system provided death.

  Rhea paused, holding up a closed fist. The humor vanished, snapped away like a twig. Her head tilted, listening. David’s internal energy circulation hitched, his focus narrowing. Jamie’s grin vanished, his grip tightening on the spear.

  David eyes tracked the movement in the bushes, his grip tightening on the spear. Please don't try to talk to this one, Jamie.