In a forest clearing, Adarin was desperately dodging the claw strikes of the large winged lizard chasing him. Its meter-long claws kept slashing, cutting down trees with each strike. Each hit shattered his entire sensorium, shook his whole body. He dodged behind trunks, trying to gain time, forcing the creature to maneuver around, just as desperately as he was trying to think. The splintering of wood and a rain of torn tinder accompanied the duel. Each footfall was a vital step in a deadly dance with rules as absolute as chess.

  His mind ran through organic chemistry options. Trying to figure out how to blow the bomb. Gases… He ran down a list hundreds of entries long. I can produce so many fucking organic gases. All of them flammable. But I need something that ignites.

  Slash. Crash. A tree went down and one of Adarin’s limbs got trapped beneath it. The suddenness of the impact jarred his body as he came to a stop with a painful yank. He didn’t hesitate and brought the diamonoid blade down. There was only a brief flash of pain as he cut straight through the manipulator, leaving it behind like a lizard’s tail. But he had been too slow. A claw dug into his core, almost reaching the diamonoid sphere, and Adarin was hurled a dozen meters across the clearing. He tumbled end over end in a shower of torn-up humus, barely keeping hold of the dagger.

  Suddenly his mind latched onto one possibility: hydrogen–chlorine gas mixtures. Photosensitive explosives. Exposed to light, they ignite.

  Now how the fuck do I get chlorine?

  He considered as he sprinted, then came to a stop, but every option—salt foremost—was either impractical or too slow, requiring extraction on too large a scale. Adarin was already scrambling into the underbrush as the creature flapped its wings for a long jump.

  The soldier seized the moment and picked up a boulder, wrapped a manipulator around it. With a hiss of effort he spun his entire body one hundred and eighty degrees, and slung it like a catapult stone. It slammed into the creature’s chest. The vicious reptile screeched as putrefying flesh sloughing away and ribs cracked.

  A storm of leaves engulfed him as the beast landed and snapped at him in one fluid motion. Adarin slashed and scored its snout. This time the elder wyvern jumped back. For a second it licked the blood of its cut nose. Adarin was about to take a short breather, when the scaled enemy lowered its head, raised its wings in an intimidating posture, and screeched at maximum volume.

  Adarin just ran. Okay, okay, okay. Ideas, ideas. I can’t make fire… but what about lightning?

  Then an idea hit. The easiest way to produce electricity if you only add minerals—piezoelectric effects.

  Limited Protocol Database: Piezoelectric Effect

  Certain crystals generate electrical potential when subjected to mechanical stress. Compression or tension displaces charge centers, creating voltage. Reliable ignition source if crystalline material can be generated in situ.

  He circled around his enemy, weaving like a spider through the forest as the monster stalked him. Adarin let his spider-bots loose.

  Now… what sort of crystal can I grow?

  He dove into his database and checked the most common substances in the plants around him—grass, young beeches, old beeches, fern.

  Limited Protocol Database: Common Plant Biopolymers

  Lignin (C9H10O2, C10H12O3, C11H14O4): Aromatic polymer reinforcing cell walls. Amorphous. No crystalline state.

  Cellulose (C6H10O5)n: Linear polysaccharide of glucose. Can form crystalline microfibrils.

  Hemicellulose (C5H8O4)n: Branched polysaccharide matrix. Amorphous, no crystalline state.

  Suberin (C22H42O4): Waxy polyester in bark. Semi-crystalline lamellae possible.

  Cutin (C16H30O2)n: Polyester coating in leaves. Amorphous.

  He scanned the list and fixed on aligned, dehydrated cellulose microfibrils. It was a simple base. It was common.

  The wyvern screeched again and for the third time today it emitted lightning like a phoenix. Adarin felt the air grow sour with the electric charge and noticed sparks connecting the creature with the ground. Hell no! He ducked into a hollow behind a tree, cradling the gunpowder barrel to the ground. The wyvern lit up with a bright, explosive clap. Adarin hugged the soil as the strikes ignited leaves, burned trunks and left black scorch scars like afterimages burned into trees.

  The clearing turned to fire and storm as the beast beat its wings. They fanned oxygen into the embers, creating a storm of burning leaves. Golden ambers danced like the aura of some mythical lord of fire.

  Adarin felt his spider-bots latching onto young beeches, hugging them tight. It took all his concentration to split his mind while the creature charged forward again. Slash—dodge, bite—parry. Each strike carved ten-centimeter gashes into his wooden body.

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  He guarded the gunpowder barrel with ever more desperate dodges. If it gets the barrel, this is over.

  He visualized cellulose’s structure, forcing it into crystalline rods inside the saplings. Fractions of a millimeter thick.

  He reached an old beech, and it survived the monster's first furious slashes, as it circled it. The elder wyvern lunged, wrapping its neck around the trunk, snapping from one side and clawing at him from the other.

  Too late, Adarin realized the trap. The creature caught his leg—his manipulator, the one near the gunpowder. Fuck.

  He swung with all the momentum the gigantic reptile's neck muscles could deliver as the wyvern pulled, flinging him into the air. After a second of end over end flight, he smashed into a tree. His sensorium flickered out again—no sight, no smell, no proprioception, no sound. Blank.

  He reconnected in time to dodge the next charge, loam and decayed leaves exploding where the monster struck.

  Where’s the barrel? He scanned. There—behind the wyvern. Fuck.

  The saplings’ crystalline rods reached a millimeter.

  He flanked, running deeper into the forest. It chased with the single mindedness only a predator could bring to a task. After three frantic seconds he found what he needed: three old beeches clustered around a stone. He darted inside the ring.

  “Come here, wyvy, wyvy, wyvy!” he taunted.

  The wyvern hissed and lunged. Its shoulders jammed between trunks, deadwood raining down. Adarin didn’t wait—he sprinted back towards the barrel.

  The rods reached two millimeters. Good. Almost ready.

  The beast extricated itself slowly, smashing trees. Fifty meters. Forty.

  The clearing opened ahead. Without slowing, Adarin scooped up the barrel and ran for two transformed saplings. I have a bomb, but in my hand. Aerosolize it. Airburst. That guarantees ignition. Hurts me too, but it is the best solution.

  The elder wyvern bore down on him, crushing the undergrowth and small trees effortlessly.

  Five meters from the twin crystalline rods, Adarin hurled the barrel into the air and swung a manipulator like a bat.

  The wyvern flapped, wings folding. Adarin timed it. I can’t let the blast disperse.

  It hit the ground on forelimbs, leaning in for a fluid snap. The teeth missed him by inches. Adarin smashed the barrel.

  A gray dust cloud filled the clearing. He curled his body, all limbs shielding the core by layering themselves towards the dust cloud, towards the enemy. One manipulator lashed out, splintering the saplings. Sparks erupted.

  The world cracked. His sensorium shattered. His accelerometer alone reported: velocity like a cannonball.

  He slammed into something, blankness overtaking everything and every way he had off perceiving himself or the world.

  He waited for the final system message: computronium sphere destroyed. But no—he was intact.

  As he slowly ran through a reboot sequence, the status indicator flared to life first.

  State of body: 63% inoperational.

  Worst damage yet.

  Adarin grinned manically. One by one sensors rebooted. A quarter of his body mass was gone, but the ablative wood armor had done its job.

  He was two hundred meters away in a grove of young beeches, the forest wrecked in concentric circles of devastation. Leaves fell like green snow.

  His heart pounded. Did I get the fucker?

  A pained cry answered. Weak. Alive. Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

  He snarled, dug a manipulator into the soil, and dragged himself back toward the clearing.

  Branches shattered. Bark skinned raw. His spectrometer reported chlorophyll enrichment of the air. How very fucking romantic.

  Another manipulator came online. He drew his dagger. Still stiff, he advanced twenty meters into the clearing. His regeneration from casting Living Wood plateaued. Five functional manipulators have to be enough then.

  The wyvern lay broken, wings gone, back twisted around a stripped beech trunk. It raised its head, ember eyes burning hatred. It hissed into the green smelling air.

  Adarin advanced, dagger ready. “You must think I’m disappointed this isn’t a proper end to our duel. But you don’t understand. The warriors of my world—I killed them with big fucking explosions. That’s the manliest thing I could imagine. This? This is just sweet payoff.”

  He shifted the dagger to a pickaxe grip, braced in a tripod stance, and closed.

  The first snap he blocked with an uppercut of his free manipulator, and answered it by slashing jaw with the dagger from the side. Blood sprayed. The beast recoiled, yet Adarin lunged.

  It tried to strike with a broken limb. He slammed it into the beech trunk, snapping it further. The elder wyvern shrieked in agony as its eyes finally widened with pain. It felt good.

  Adarin pummeled its torso like a machine. The dagger punched through scales, ceramic splinters and blood dust showering him. Stab to the solar plexus. Stab to the gut. He struck the nose, stabbed the throat, and twisted. A geyser of arterial blood drenched him. He screamed in savage joy.

  Then one final blow to the snout, cutting the throat at the skull’s base.

  The elder wyvern gave a soft, broken coo—like air leaking from crushed bellows—and collapsed.

  But Adarin was no fool. They ain’t dead until they’re dead. Back home, that had meant hunting every hidden backup, retracing a person’s entire life. Here it was a far simpler affair. He stepped onto the creature’s head and began sawing where the final vertebrae met the skull. Cut by cut, he beheaded it.

  “Now I’m finally a proper beast slayer,” he murmured.

  Someone behind him began clapping.

  “Well done, well done,” said a smooth, cultured voice.