Thanks to Eternal Regeneration and a heavy application of Samantha’s Soothing Spring skill, Asher was back on his feet in no time. Though after that surprise detonation, they did decide to take things easy and wait until Samantha's wings had fully regenerated so she could benefit from Winged Savior again if necessary. Asher could only hope the skill's cooldown would diminish with time as it leveled up, because at the moment, they had to wait a good few hours before her wings manifested once more. Luckily, Asher had a literal library of books Incorporated into his head he could browse through to kill time, and they never went anywhere without Samantha's crochet equipment tucked away inside his rift.

  Despite them delaying their attack, no more demons showed up to wish them a warm welcome while they were recuperating at the top of the stairwell. Asher thought that was a tad strange, right up until they began venturing into the tower once more. It turned out that while there was only the one lesser demon left behind to greet anyone unfortunate enough to trigger the trap that had been put into place, the tower was far from empty.

  The infernal welcoming committee was simply too busy doing grunt work within the library to come and greet them. And they weren’t quite as scared of his Sever the Thread skill as he would have hoped.

  Asher flickered through the astral, letting the imp currently lunging forward with claws aimed for his midsection fly straight through him and crash into the second imp that had been charging him from behind. While the two of them tumbled to the ground in a tangle of claws and teeth, he returned to the material realm, elongating his dagger with Distortion and cleaving through two more imps coming at him with almost literal fire in their eyes.

  “There are a lot more imps than the last time we were here!” Asher shouted, causing another imp’s slash to fail to connect with a use of Distortion before using his temporary longsword to remove its head.

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed!” Samantha shouted back, knocking back an imp that got too close to her with a blast of water from Fountain before dropping to a knee and sniping two others that had gone around Asher and tried to rush her. One clever imp attempted to scale a nearby stack of books and leap down onto Samantha from above, but her newly regenerated wings took care of it in a heartbeat. With barely a thought, an emerald wing slashed up, the razor-sharp edge slicing the imp in half. Her other wing acted as a shield, blocking the two imp halves from landing on her and actually throwing them at another imp who dared try to run at her.

  Asher and Samantha had discovered that while the alchemical station had been rigged to blow, the lich didn’t appear to be in quite the same amount of haste to get rid of its library. The giant level filled nearly three stories high with books had been crawling with imps, all carefully in the process of taking down and packing books up to be moved somewhere else. They had to have been at it for some time, as a good two-thirds of the library had already been emptied out when Asher poked his head in and discovered what was going on. They had briefly debated whether to throw themselves into the horde of imps or not, and in the end, decided whittling down the lich’s forces any way they could would only end up benefiting them in the future.

  Still, Asher didn’t have a ton of experience fighting against swarms of enemies.

  “This is a lot different from fighting through a giant swarm of rats!” he said, deflecting another clawed strike with one dagger before ramming his second into the imp’s head. Yet another imp attempted to take advantage of both his blades being busy to slash at his stomach, but Asher flickered through the astral, causing the slash to hit nothing but air. Before the imp could make a second attempt, he slashed forward, slicing through its throat like it was made of paper. Despite sticking with his steel daggers for now, his demon hunter class was doing some serious work.

  A sudden, violet arrow screamed as it shot over his shoulder, and he flinched as a particularly crafty imp that had the sense not to hiss or scream its approach like its many comrades had a quarter of its head blown straight off, sending it spinning backwards to the ground.

  “Thanks!” Asher shouted, throwing a quick grin back at Samantha in time to see her adjust her grip on her bow and use it like a club to knock back an imp that had gotten too close.

  “Anytime!” she grinned back, aiming a finger and firing a jet of pressurized water directly into the imp’s eye. While it was getting close, she’d yet to evolve Fountain to the second tier just yet, which meant she still couldn’t do any real damage with the skill. That said, a sudden jet of water to the naked eye was still more than a little distracting, and the imp screeched as it flinched back and tried to defend itself, opening itself up for Samantha to quickly nock an arrow and send it directly through its skull. “Reload!”

  Just like they’d practiced, Asher yanked another quiver of arrows out of his Personal Rift and tossed it toward her, using Distortion to shorten the distance between them. Samantha unclasped the quiver she was currently wearing, letting it fall to the ground as she snagged the new one out of the air, slinging it over a shoulder and securing it in a split second. Even that was enough to open her up to another series of attacks, but thankfully, they’d already thought of that. While she fixed the new quiver to her person, her wings got to work, slashing and blocking the three imps that tried to take advantage of her pause in fire. All the imps received for their attempt were a few limbs chopped off, and a thrown dagger to the back for one of them, courtesy of Asher.

  Finally, after mowing their way through what felt like a small army of imps, the battle came to an end. Panting, Asher nudged one of the many corpses with his foot, thankful not for the first time that the serpent leathers they both wore didn’t seem to stain from blood.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Sadly, the same couldn’t be said for some of the piles of books that were scattered around the room, many of which were rather thoroughly soaked with imp blood at this point.

  “I count thirty-two,” Asher said, yanking one of his thrown daggers out of a fallen imp as he looked around the room. “Definitely more than I first thought when I peeked into the room.”

  “Thirty-one actually,” Samantha said, retrieving her arrows with a few sickening pops. “I think you counted the two pieces of the one I cut in half as two different imps.”

  “Whoops, I think you’re right,” he said, squinting at the cleanly bisected imp and nodding. “Thirty-one then. Man, Razor Wing and Winged Shield are a nasty combo. I’m glad you’ve got some protection when it comes to close-range fighting now.”

  “Using my wings like that definitely uses up some energy, but yeah, I can’t complain,” she said, smiling as she flexed the shining wings and stretched them out in the open library. Blood didn’t seem to stick to her green wings either, which was great, as otherwise she probably would have looked like some horrifying angel of death by now. “I got more than a few skill increases from all that. How about you?”

  “It takes a lot to level most of my combat skills at this point, but surviving that explosion upstairs and taking down so many imps seems to have been enough to push them along. Not to mention I did get the one level that really mattered,” he said, grinning with excitement at his notifications.

  Eternal Regeneration - Lvl 33

  Complete Resilience - Lvl 32

  Distortion - Lvl 31

  Personal Rift - Lvl 28

  Comprehend - Lvl 29

  Sever the Thread - Lvl 20

  “Sever the Thread finally hit level 20?” Samantha asked, yanking the last of her arrows from the fallen imps and handing him the spare quiver for him to return to his rift. “Are you going to evolve it now or later?”

  “I don’t see any point in waiting,” he said, shrugging as he focused on the capped-out skill.

  Spend 100,000 shards to evolve Sever the Thread?

  Absolutely, he thought, barely able to contain his excitement. Like Donvath had said, Sever the Thread was arguably his most powerful skill, and really the strongest weapon he had against his more powerful opponents. The fact that few demons even dared come at him now because of it was impactful enough. He couldn’t wait to see what the second tier of the skill would end up being.

  Shards: 202,087

  Sever the Thread (passive) - Lvl 21

  Tier 1: Your attacks are eternal

  Tier 2: Your attacks impact tritessence directly

  “Huh,” he muttered, frowning slightly as he read over his skill’s newest effect. “I can attack tritessence now? What does that even mean?”

  “That’s the official term for the energy that powers skills, right?” Samantha asked. “Maybe your attacks have some sort of energy-drain effect now?”

  “Maybe… I guess there’s no point in wondering about it,” he decided, dismissing the notification with a wave of his hand. “We’ll figure it out soon enough when the next assassin tries to jump me. More importantly, with Sever the Thread hitting the second tier, that leaves me with only three skills still in need of evolution. One in each element, funnily enough. Once I get Recall, Judgement, and Permanence up into the second tier, I’ll have officially passed into the Stage of Bleed!”

  “I’m proud of you for having come so far so quickly,” Samantha said, wiping imp blood off his cheek before leaning forward and giving him a quick kiss. “Excited to see what new skills you end up getting?”

  “You have no idea,” Asher chuckled. “Not to mention hitting those strange Crossroads and having one of my elements start to really influence my own body. I don’t have the faintest idea what that’s going to look like, but I bet it will be pretty cool.”

  “Honestly, I’m still a little bit wary of that whole aspect of elemental progression, but I guess there’s no avoiding it,” Samantha said, frowning slightly as she peered at her own hands. “Though I guess I’m still a good ways off from that myself.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine! Don’t worry, I’d still love you if you were a tree.”

  “Well thanks, I suppose I can sleep easy now,” Samantha snorted. “Anyway, I know it’s not a bunch of powerful potions, but should we take the books that the lich left behind? If it was going through all the effort of having the imps transport them, they have to be somewhat valuable, right?”

  “Definitely,” Asher nodded, looking around the vast room. Despite the fact that most of the books had been taken away already, it spoke to the sheer size of the library that there were still what looked like a few hundred heavy tomes still waiting to be transported. Even if they ignored the piles of books that had been pretty much destroyed from copious amounts of imp blood being sprayed over them, he’d still be straining his Personal Rift for the first time in ages. “Would you mind getting started on the higher shelves? I only need a quick touch to store a book, but this is still going to take a good chunk of time.”

  “Can do!” Samantha said, flaring out her wings and taking to the air as she went directly for the upper shelves. Even after all their hours of practice together focusing on her new element, Asher still found himself staring in awe at the hunter as her emerald wings stretched out beside her, the brilliant green like nothing he’d ever seen before. On the one hand, it was a shame that their color made flying stealthily pretty much impossible, seeing as they stuck out in the night sky like a sore thumb. But on the other, he couldn’t imagine a more perfect color for the forest-loving hunter to have.

  As Samantha got started pulling down dusty tomes from the top shelves, Asher cracked his neck before walking over to one of the piles that had only received a few specks of imp blood. A simple touch was all it took for him to store the topmost tome in his rift, and he paused, turning to look around the room at the hundreds of different books waiting for them.

  One down, he thought, returning his focus to the pile and tapping the second book, letting out a sigh as it vanished into thin air. Only about a thousand to go.

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