The world came back in a rush of air and ethera as Elijah stumbled to his knees. Above – where his head had once been – a massive axe cut through the air, the speed of it enough to create a gust of wind that sent him tumbling to the side. He crashed into a stone wall, still confused about what was going on.

  And then, the axe descended again, hitting him at the crown of his skull and splitting him in two. He died instantly, only to be remade a second later. This time, he didn’t fall, and his fate mimicked the first time he’d been beheaded. However, the brief moment after his head had been detached from his body gave him enough time to see two very important notifications.

  The first was the system message that he’d expected:

  Elijah had no idea how to interpret that notification, and he didn’t have time, either. Instead, he moved on to the next one:

  Just a simple number. Two digits, though Elijah had no clue what they meant. What’s more, he didn’t have time to figure it out, because darkness had begun to rapidly overcome his field of vision. Still, he saw Hu Shui and Benedict meet similar fates before he once again succumbed to death.

  Elijah died two more times before he managed to survive long enough to see his actual attacker. And it clearly wasn’t natural.

  In fact, it looked like nothing so much as a suit of silver armor, the joints composed of dense flows of blue ethera. However, that armor wasn’t anything like what he might’ve seen on Earth. Rather, its alien design was too square, all sharp angles that would never have fit a human being.

  Its face was a frozen mask of the same shining metal, the features engraved upon it reminiscent of a tragedy mask.

  And the thing was more than fifteen feet tall, armed with a sapphire-bladed axe whose head was almost as large as Elijah’s whole body.

  It descended, and he dodged, already casting Shape of Spores. The axe clipped him, shattering his Shell ability and tearing a huge chunk of his shoulder away. Once Elijah had finished the cast, he used Wild Resurgence to mend the damage. By that point, Hu Shui had been reborn, only to be squashed by a stomp of the creature’s boot.

  He did not survive.

  Benedict came a second later, and though he managed to react in time to avoid meeting a similar fate, his survival didn’t last long. In only seconds, both were dead, leaving Elijah entirely alone to face the creature.

  He pounced, though he didn’t activate any additional abilities. It went against every instinct he had, but the rules of the scenario were clear. Dying wasn’t the end. Rather, it was just a stepping stone to eventual victory. But he assumed that if he defeated the creature – or maybe the entire Primal Realm – alone, then Hu Shui and Benedict would remain dead.

  With that in mind, his task wasn’t just to win. Instead, he needed to claim victory while keeping his companions alive. No easy feat, considering that the thing felt on par with some of the creatures he’d fought in the Broken Crown. He wasn’t certain if it was a demi-god, but it was close enough that the distinction didn’t really matter. After all, it had already proven that it could kill Elijah with ease, which set it apart from most enemies he’d fought in the past.

  The thing let out a scream of rage, the ethera flowing through it boiling with its anger. To Elijah, it sounded like a combination of a train whistle and a lion’s roar – alien in the familiarity of its comprising parts.

  Now that he was in the Shape of Spores, the size difference wasn’t as dramatic. He attacked it on more or less even footing, slamming his shoulder into the thing’s metallic chest. It staggered backward, and Elijah kept up the pressure until it tipped over. The second it hit the ground, it let loose with a massive pulse of ethera that hit Elijah like the shockwave of a bomb, sending him tumbling backward and into the inert portal from which he'd emerged.

  It seared his shell, filling the air with a smell like burned hair.

  Elijah recovered quickly, his massive regeneration giving him an advantage. He dashed toward the fallen creature, falling upon it with all the fury he could muster. His first few blows dented the thing’s chest plate, and within moments, Elijah had managed to crack it.

  Steaming gouts of ethera erupted from the fissures, scorching through his claws and disintegrating his flesh down to the bone. He howled in pain as his ethereal circulation went wild, and even though it only took him a couple of moments to get it back under control, that was enough for the ethereal automaton to recover its advantage.

  A simple punch sent Elijah flying a hundred feet into the air before his back slammed into the roof of the enclosed corridor. Normally, that much force would have shattered stone, but in this instance, the blow didn’t even scratch the surface.

  Elijah fell.

  Right into an uppercut axe blow that very nearly bisected him.

  Elijah survived the gaping wound, though he could feel his vitality waning even as he flew backward. By the time he impacted another wall, he was barely holding on. Wild Resurgence pulsed, adding its effect to his regeneration, but it wasn’t enough. If Elijah wanted to survive, he needed more.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  He refused the call to cast Mycelial Regrowth.

  Instead, he shifted back into his humanoid form and cast his other two heals. They took hold, but given the injury – which stretched from his collarbone all the way to his hip, laying his internal organs bare and nearly severing his arm entirely – he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  He just needed time.

  To think. To plan. To assess his enemy’s capabilities. Until he knew he could keep his companions alive, he wouldn’t use any of his longer cooldowns, largely because he had no idea if they would reset with the next rebirth.

  But he could use one of his less-important cooldowns to check.

  Embracing the ability associated with his Handguards of the Wild Revenant, he activated Hand of Nature. Back in the grove, he’d used the ability a few times – just to test it – but that wasn’t enough to prepare him for the massive, stone hand that erupted from the ground. Covered in moss, it was at least ten feet wide and composed of weathered rock.

  The thick fingers closed around the automaton, and with such force that it came with the sound of crushing metal. The creature let out another train-whistle scream, but Elijah ignored it. With a few extra seconds for his healing spells to work, the bleeding had stopped. His wound hadn’t mended – and he knew it wouldn’t without significant time and some physical medicine – but for what he had planned, he didn’t need his right side.

  He transformed, taking on the Shape of the Scourge, and pounced. His claws raked against the still struggling automaton’s metallic exterior, but he was happy to see that they managed to scratch the surface. He didn’t use Spreading Blight, instead confining his attack to Ethereal Sepsis.

  That was far from enough to finish the thing off, though Elijah was pleased to see the metal corroding a little with every passing second. That meant that his damage-over-time abilities would work, although the spread seemed a little slower than normal.

  Perhaps that was because the foe wasn’t organic.

  Elijah fought on for a few more minutes, testing various avenues of attack. After Hand of Nature, which only lasted for a little less than a minute, dissipated, the battle became a lot tougher. The thing was fast, durable, and immensely strong, and while he knew he could defeat it, it would be no easy feat.

  He also discovered that only Shape of Spores could endure its blows. In his other forms, all it took was a single mistake, and the battle would spiral out of control, ending in inevitable defeat.

  The final issue was that, the longer the fight went on, the more powerful the creature became. Elijah wasn’t sure if the issue was time or if that increased strength was a response to the damage he’d inflicted upon it. Either way, after only twenty minutes, the thing was moving almost too quickly for Elijah to track. Its movements were jerky and abrupt, almost as if it struggled to maintain control, but its power grew so overwhelming that Elijah couldn’t take advantage of what appeared to be a lack of dexterity.

  He could well remember when he’d experienced something similar upon attaining Shape of the Guardian. Back then, he’d spent countless hours doing yoga and shadowboxing so he could control his much-increased strength. The automaton didn’t have the time for that, which put it at a disadvantage.

  It wasn’t enough to grant Elijah the victory he didn’t want, though he did catalogue the information for the next attempt.

  Eventually, the creature’s power became so overbearing that even Elijah couldn’t keep up, and the fight ended when it finally grabbed hold of his head and squeezed. Elijah didn’t even have time to feel the pain before his vision went dark.

  Only a moment later, awareness returned, and he sprang into action.

  The first order of business was to once again use Hand of Nature. Even as he dove to avoid the decapitating blow that had ended his first iteration, the hand of mossy stone erupted from the ground, wrapping its fingers around the automaton. Elijah was already transforming, and it only took a second for him to assume the Shape of the Scourge.

  As he pounced, Hu Shui stepped through the portal.

  “Move!” Elijah screamed.

  To his credit, Hu Shui had already done just that, teleporting to a spot nearly thirty feet behind the creature. His shortswords appeared in his hands, though Elijah yelled, “Keep Benedict alive! I got this!”

  As the words left his mouth, Elijah hit the automaton. This time, he didn’t hold back, and in addition to the passive Ethereal Sepsis that came with every attack, he also used Spreading Blight. Finally, he activated Lurking Swarm, and the crystalline phase spiders pounced, inflicting their own afflictions upon the enemy.

  Elijah didn’t let up until Hand of Nature was on the verge of crumbling. When it did, he sprang into the air, already shifting into the Shape of Spores. Before the transformation could complete, the creature broke free of the restraining spell and surprisingly threw its sapphire bladed axe at Elijah.

  He used Cloud Step, though not to gain altitude. Instead, he used it to change directions, kicking off the cushion of air to threw himself to the side. The sapphire blade whipped past him, end-over-end, before embedding itself into the wall. Elijah used another instance of Cloud Step to throw his newly transformed body at the automaton.

  He activated Throne of Spores along the way.

  Fungal tendrils erupted from the ground, the walls, and from Elijah’s body as he rammed into the creature. They snaked around its legs even as Elijah battered it with his club-like tail and hammered it with his massive fists. He even used the bony horns on his head in an all-out assault.

  It wasn’t as effective as he had hoped, though he still did plenty of damage.

  What’s more, he managed to keep the creature confined so it couldn’t kill his companions. They’d used that time to add their own power to the mix, with Hu Shui darting in, slicing through its legs, then retreating. Meanwhile, Benedict had busied himself with drawing a hasty ritual circle using his own blood. At the same time, he cast a half-dozen spells – curses, really – that weakened the creature considerably.

  “Get it into the circle!” Benedict shouted.

  Elijah complied, directing his tendrils to drag the creature down the corridor. It wasn’t enough, and Elijah ended up putting his own muscles to the task at hand. He wrapped his arms around its legs and lifted, throwing it off balance just enough that the tendrils could go to work.

  But he paid dearly for it.

  The creature battered him, shattering his Shell and breaking bones. Elijah countered its efforts with Wild Resurgence.

  And then, at last, he managed to shove the creature into place. Tendrils wrapped around it, and even though the thing ripped free, there were always more to take its place.

  Then, Benedict cast his spell.

  The blood-drawn ritual circle erupted with red light, becoming shackles that wrapped around the creature's arms and legs. Elijah’s tendrils immediately turned to dust, and even the resultant spores were burned from the atmosphere. Thankfully, the shackles held.

  The sound of Benedict’s chanted spell filled the air, punctuated only by the creature’s train-whistle scream. Meanwhile, ethera gathered, both within and without the circle, until, at last, Benedict shouted some word Elijah didn’t understand.

  The monster collapsed as every ounce of ethera drained from its body, leaving only a scattered collection of battered silver pieces of armor behind.

  Elijah thought it was over until, suddenly, the ground opened up, revealing a portal to what he could only describe as hell. He got a brief glimpse of fire, ash, and erupting volcanoes before something massive blocked his view. Then, a creature climbed free.

  It was no taller than the oni-demon, but it only took a moment for Elijah to recognize that it was even stronger. Four-armed, and wielding as many long, slender swords, the creature’s body was slimmer, its form suggesting speed and dexterity.

  It was also obviously female, as evidenced by its curvaceous body and elven features that reminded Elijah of Nara.

  When it climbed free, the thing bowed toward Benedict and said, “I am here to serve, master.”

  The voice was predictably feminine.

  But Elijah was less concerned with Benedict’s summoned demon than in taking stock of the situation. Not surprisingly, one of the notifications had changed after the last death:

  “It’s a countdown,” Elijah reasoned.

  “What happens when it reaches zero?” Benedict asked.

  “We fail,” Hu Shui answered before Elijah could.

  If you'd like to read more of Path of Dragons, we're almost two full books ahead (book 14 just started) on Patreon. That's 180+ extra chapters, so a ton of extra content for those of you who can't wait to see what Elijah will get up to. Anyway - check it out .

  For anyone interested in discussing the story, you can join my Discord .

  Thanks for all your support, comments, ratings, and reviews!