Following their surprise encounter with the camouflage spider, Leo and Taylor were even more cautious as they navigated around the gigantic trees. It didn’t help that the colossal plane ended up being filled with countless species of regular wildlife as well, causing the two of them to flinch and think they were under attack on more than one occasion when it was nothing more than a harmless critter foraging nearby in the brush. As they walked, Leo jotted down the rough path they were taking in his journal, along with a copious number of notes regarding the plane itself. While Taylor should be able to lead them back to the rift they came out of with her open-soul technique, Leo felt far more comfortable knowing approximately how to return to the known planarverse on his own. That was one of the curious things about brand-new planes to be discovered.

  Other than the rift one entered through, every other rift within the plane led to a completely unexplored and never-before-seen plane of existence.

  It was while Leo was in the middle of contemplating what kinds of planes might be connected to this new one that they encountered their second magical beast of the day. Though rather than another already too-large insect, this beast was even bigger.

  A lot bigger.

  “What even is that thing?” Taylor whispered from behind their tree as they took stock of the strange magical beast. The creature was at least fifteen feet long and nearly as tall as they were, with a row of jagged, nasty-looking spikes jutting out of its back. Covered in coarse, thick fur, it sat lazily on its haunches, gnawing away at the base of one of the giant trees with its massive teeth. Already there was a pile of wood chips covering the ground between it and the tree large enough for Leo to make a bed out of.

  “Other than the spikes and lack of tail, it looks like some sort of huge beaver,” Leo muttered, spotting the confused look on Taylor’s face. “They’re animals that gnaw down trees and use them to block flowing water.”

  “Does that mean there’s water nearby?” Taylor asked, looking far more concerned about the idea of a fresh body of water than she was about the giant magical beast sitting in the clearing ahead of them.

  “You have really got to get over this dislike of water you have,” Leo snorted. “Though to answer your question, no way to know. These trees are huge. I can’t imagine even a magical beast like this would be able to chew one down very quickly. The question is, do we risk taking it on? The spider was only Grade 20, which means this thing might be even higher. Maybe even Grade 21 or 22.”

  “Good for the soul,” Taylor pointed out, flexing her hands and morphing her fingernails into sharpened claws. “I say we go for it.”

  “I’ll admit, I don’t like the thought of one of these giant trees coming down and squashing us from a quarter-mile away before we even know what happened,” Leo nodded, watching the beaver carefully. “We actually have the element of surprise for once, so let’s try and use that.”

  Thankfully, Taylor was willing to listen to his idea this time around, and rather than launch herself at the magical beast with reckless abandon, she followed his plan. While Leo waited on this side of the beaver, Taylor crept around to the other, flanking the beast with him. Leo doubted they’d manage to take down such a large beast in only a single strike, but the more damage they could inflict upon it while it was distracted, the better.

  Holding up his hand, Leo waited to see Taylor’s nod of approval before he gave the signal. As one, the two of them blitzed out of the treeline, rushing across the clearing at the magical beast and attacking it before it could react to their presence.

  Reaching it first, Leo triggered Rage at the last moment, bringing his sword down on the beast’s exposed neck with all the strength in his body.

  Unfortunately, the magical beast wasn’t caught nearly as off guard as he’d hoped.

  A fresh, thick bone spur erupted out of the top of the beaver’s back, blocking his sword with a painful ring of metal on bone. While Leo’s strike was powerful enough that he managed to crack the bone in half, that wasn’t the only thing that cracked.

  Upon striking such a hard material, his already beaten and battered sword snapped in half.

  Leo didn’t have too much time to worry about that however, as the beast turned with astonishing speed and slammed a paw into his midsection. He managed to get his hands up at the last second, but the blow still hit him hard enough to break him out of Rage, as well as sending him flying backwards and tumbling across the clearing. The good news was that while the beaver was distracted dealing with him, Taylor was completely free to make her own attack.

  Reaching the beaver barely a second after him, Taylor lunged the last dozen feet, landing on the magical beast’s side like a tick with her claws as she sank her teeth into the flesh of its neck. The beaver let out a chittering howl of pain, turning and slamming its body into the hard tree it had just been gnawing down mere moments ago. A flash of fear struck Leo as the beaver smashed its enormous bulk against the tree, and for a moment, he had the mental image of Taylor’s broken and shattered body falling off the beast, lying on the ground in a puddle of her own blood.

  Right up until he spotted Taylor rolling out from under the beast, a feral grin on her face as she sank her teeth into the beaver’s unprotected underbelly.

  Laughing in relief, Leo picked himself up and sprinted back into the fray. Just because Taylor managed to dodge one lethal attack, didn’t mean she’d get lucky a second time. Triggering Rage once more, Leo’s relief instantly morphed into anger that he’d both dropped the skill the first time, and that Taylor would make him worry like that. As he ran, he roared, lowering his center of gravity and smashing his shoulder into the side of the beaver with enough force to make it stagger.

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  “Be careful!” he snarled down at Taylor as she took advantage of the beast’s shock to sink her teeth into one of the beast’s muscular limbs.

  “Shm mh!” she replied, her mouth slightly full at the moment.

  It seemed the magical beast had finally had enough of the two pesky intruders nibbling on it and poking it here and there, as it finally revealed its ultimate weapon. While Taylor was busy ripping out a chunk of its flesh with her teeth, the beaver twisted, barring twin incisors the size of Leo’s entire arm as it attempted to sink them straight into her. Leo hurtled forward, catching the teeth by the sides and stopping them mere inches from severing his partner in half.

  “You’re too reckless!” Leo shouted, unable to believe that Taylor hadn’t even seen the attack coming.

  “I knew you’d stop it!” she shouted back, narrowing her eyes at him even as she took advantage of the beast’s stationary head. Crawling along its body, she slashed through one of its eyes with her claws before sinking her teeth into its meaty neck.

  The beaver howled even louder than the last time, jerking its head to the side and sending Leo flying once more. This time, however, he was ready, and he managed to land on his feet, albeit a tad ungracefully. Angry with himself for letting the beast dislodge him, Leo roared at the top of his lungs as everything else faded away. It was just him and the beaver, and his pesky partner getting in the way of his fight.

  Leo went to throw himself right back into the fray again, before he was hit by a surprise attack out of nowhere.

  Taylor slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him and driving him to the ground.

  “End the skill!” she snarled, her head directly above his own. Her eyes were narrow and dangerous as she perched on his chest like an angry panther, just waiting for an excuse to bite him. Her claws were dug into the earth on either side of him, keeping him pinned down to the ground.

  “Get… off… me!” Leo wheezed, simultaneously trying to replace the missing air in his lungs and buck Taylor off of him. It didn’t help that her braid was dangling against his face, the loose hairs tickling his nose and irritating him further. “The beaver-!”

  “Is dead!” Taylor snapped, cutting him off and causing him to blink in surprise. “My poison did it in! End the skill!”

  Part of Leo wanted to shout at her for stealing his kill away from him like that. To grab her smaller frame and hurl her away so he could get back to the fight. But at the same time, a small part of his mind shouted at him, agreeing with her and demanding he end his skill. The two sides warred for a brief moment, but it was the complex look on Taylor’s face that made the decision for him.

  Seeing the strange blend of annoyance with genuine concern in her eyes, Leo forced himself to take a deep breath, before finally letting Rage drop. Immediately, he realized what had happened, and he dropped his head back onto the hard ground, squeezing his eyes shut as he groaned.

  “I let it overwhelm me, didn’t I?”

  “You told me you could handle it,” Taylor said, sounding equal parts angry and upset as she finally let go of the ground and sat up. “That didn’t look ‘handled’ to me.”

  “It was the longest I’ve tried to hold onto the skill for,” Leo admitted, quickly realizing the problem. “Before now, I’ve only triggered the skill for short bursts, or been knocked out of it before it became a problem. The longer I keep it running, the angrier I get. I think it gets worse triggering it in quick succession as well.”

  “Well either learn to control it or swap it out for another skill,” Taylor said, continuing to glare at him. At this point, Leo finally realized Taylor was still sitting on his chest, and he blinked at the discovery that with his Minor Strength and skill synergy, he barely even noticed her weight.

  “I can’t, it’s too powerful. You saw how hard I hit that magical beast. The thing has to outweigh the two of us by several magnitudes, and I managed to actually push it back a bit!”

  “You wasted time shouting at me instead of attacking the beast,” Taylor argued, shaking her head. “You don’t think as clearly when the skill is working.”

  “I mean, I did still grab the teeth and stop you from getting bit in half, didn’t I?” Leo pointed out.

  “The Leo I know would have punched it in the mouth or tried to damage its teeth after stopping them. Not stand there shouting at me,” Taylor countered. “The Rage skill is going to end up getting you killed.”

  “Okay. Once we find an alternative, equally powerful skill for me to replace it with, I’ll make the switch,” Leo offered, knowing full well that would almost certainly never happen. At least not in the near future. He knew Taylor was right and that the Rage skill was dangerous, but he meant what he said. It was simply too useful of a tool to give up while they were in such a dangerous plane.

  As if she could read his thoughts, Taylor’s eyes narrowed further, and Leo sighed. “Come on, even if you’re right, you have to admit giving up such a powerful skill for nothing would be a far more guaranteed death sentence for us, right?”

  “…That’s fair,” she finally conceded, even if she looked none too happy about doing so. “What about your sword? You lost your weapon.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that,” Leo admitted, grinning sheepishly as Taylor frowned. “To be honest, the sword wasn’t doing much good at this point. As gem holders grow stronger and take on more powerful magical beasts, they require better and better weapons. That sword was some random spare I grabbed from a pile, it was a miracle it lasted as long as it did.”

  “So what, you’re going to punch everything to death?”

  “That’s cute coming from you,” Leo said, raising an eyebrow as he nodded toward her claws. “Now, would you mind getting off me? I’m not going to go flying off the handle the moment you let me up.”

  As though she didn’t quite believe that were true, Taylor waited a few more seconds before finally nodding and getting off him. Taking her offered hand, Leo let himself be pulled up, thanking her with a smile as he finally took in the fallen beast.

  “Now that that’s all out of the way… Why don’t we see what skills a giant, spiky beaver is hiding?”

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