I didn’t know how much the buff from the Ritual of War stacked with every other buff I was experiencing just then. So far, I had assumed the rank boosts stacked. There wasn’t an easy way to test that.

  Well, aside from seeing how well I measured up against the monster ahead of us.

  “Let’s go,” Revayne shouted.

  We shot at the Bonestrider. With how fast it came right up, even without it taking a single step towards us, that was proof enough that my Agility was through the roof now.

  That, and the fact that I had Drain running. So long as the monster was affected in some way with my Aspects, I’d continue growing faster. Fast enough to match the Bonestrider’s speed.

  Revayne and I engaged it together. I didn’t know how she was withstanding the sheer melting energy my Flare Ignition Charge was blasting outwards. Even the ground I rushed across was turning orange with heat. But withstand it she did. Enough that she wasn’t held back from assaulting our target.

  The monster had no problem taking us both on at the same time. Its responding swings were that fast. I felt my forearm fracture with a spike of pain despite focusing on Empowered Deflection at the instance of the blow.

  If Revayne felt anything similar, she didn’t show it. Instead, she unleashed a storm of inkstained slashes and slices.

  I continued attacking too. But not as directly, this time. Instead, I had so many casts of Lightshade left, I channelled as many of those as I could. My light-clones didn’t suffer the same physical blowback because they weren’t physical to begin with, while Reflexive Mana took me behind the monster, where I could crush through a jutting bone to land a direct hit.

  The blow itself didn’t leave much damage, but the effect was compounded by Immolation. With how much heat I was generating, I vaporized a small portion of the monster.

  My spirit soared. We could do this. We could get through its defences.

  The Bonestrider ignored Revayne’s blows to twist around and strike me directly instead of my less-effective light clones. Reflexive Mana was already throwing me back, so I could focus on the counter. Gravity’s Ignition Charge had the broken chunks of the metal floor floating around me, which I whipped in instantly.

  Most didn’t leave a mark. Molten-hot and sharp though they were, the monster’s hide was tougher than metallic bones. And yet, I managed to lodge just enough on its skin to push out a flood of Gravity with Infusion.

  Using Field Manipulation without care would have messed with my and Revayne’s movement, so this was the next best option.

  With a roar, the Bonestrider still quickly righted itself. Infusion wasn’t going to keep it down for long. Its face glowed, a beam incoming, but I didn’t think about Reflection even for a second.

  A noose of ink wrapped around its neck and forcefully tilted the monster’s head back to make its aim awry. Bless Revayne.

  So instead of protecting myself, I threw out Flare after Flare. With all the heat Immolation was outputting, it took less than a blink’s worth of focus for Concentration to unleash massive blasts of vaporizing energy. But the constant blasts were only a distraction.

  I focused harder. Narrowed Concentration further. Made my brain feel like it was about to crack with how much I was focusing my gathered heat.

  It was easy to see that regular Flare wasn’t having much effect. It was too spread out. So, I had turned my next set of Flares into what was essentially lightsabers with how thinly I had compressed them. They fired in with extreme efficiency, slicing and sizzling into the monster’s neck, vaporizing their way through its gullet. Just a bit more and—

  Like many of the monster’s attacks, I didn’t see the enormous bone bursting out of its midsection to ram into my guts.

  I was flung back far but remained undamaged as Vital Mana just made both the Infusion I had thrown on my enemy and the Immolation burning around my body disappear. I laughed. Fucking creature. I could beat it.

  I would beat it.

  Revayne was hammering all around the monster for a moment, moving too swiftly around to suffer any return blows. She didn’t leave much damage with her sabre strikes, but I saw the monster get dotted with more and more ink.

  “Watch out, Ross!” she shouted.

  A storm of Netherthreads scoured out from the monster. I tried using Reflexive Mana to get through, but the threads were too widespread. No amount of evasion was going to help if every inch of space was dangerous.

  Vital Mana removed my resurging Immolation once again, but it wasn’t enough. When the Netherthreads struck, I felt like I was getting mauled by an elephant’s trunk. My right arm twisted, bent, broke within. I forcefully turned my scream into a gasp.

  “Can you continue?” Revayne asked, voice edged with concern.

  Through the pain, I bit my tongue. “’thore!”

  I Sacrificed the smaller pain in my mouth to earn Pain Sense Control, which made the agony a lot more manageable. My arm's shattered state turned into a non-issue as well when Revayne’s ink wrapped around the entire length and inky threads connected with my head.

  “Move!” she shouted.

  I heeded her warning without a second thought. The monster was rushing us down with blinding speed. Reflexive Mana was all that saved me again. Well that, and Drain’s effects. And the fact that the Bonestrider was targeting Revayne instead of me. Buffed up as she was, she presented a more direct threat at close quarters than I did.

  My feet scrabbled on the metal floor as I forced myself to halt. Focus. We needed to keep up our momentum, needed to keep pegging that thing back.

  All this time, I had kept using Orbit. Obviously, against a monster of that prowess, direct blows from me just weren’t going to be as effective as I’d have liked. Not normally. So instead, I localized Orbit around my mace, gathering the sharp metal debris and heating them until I had basically a drill glowing red-hot.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The exchange between Revayne and the Bonestrider was otherworldly. Every blow released a gong that rippled the air. Revayne was moving around the creature like she had her own version of Reflexive Mana—or maybe she had that Affix as well.

  Her slashes and slices didn’t leave much damage either, but that was fine. All the ink she was leaving on the Bonestrider was slowly constricting it, burrowing into its body.

  I wasn’t about to leave her alone for long, of course. A quick Field Manipulation on my palm and aimed at the Bonestrider shot me towards my target. Just as I reached it, another bone spike lanced out from its lower back. But I was ready, swinging in my drilling, overheated mace.

  With Empowered Deflection helping me tank the blow better, my drilling blow was able to crush through bones to land a direct hit on the monster. The way I managed to make it screech sent my heart into overdrive. It tried to twist around to get to me, but the black ink made its body contort painfully.

  I engaged Flare at the same time, burning and blasting it with heat, focused mostly on the second wound I had managed to leave. Of course, all the little ones from Revayne’s slashes and my earlier Orbit attacks sizzled in agony too.

  More importantly, the blasting impact from the Flare bursts made my body retreat even faster than Reflexive Mana could work. Which was very necessary because the Bonestrider did manage to rotate its head around rapidly, the laser shooting in every direction.

  A rapid series of hammering hits sent Revayne tumbling back. She had dodged the laser to try to keep up the pressure, but it wasn’t to be.

  The exchange should have knocked her out cold, with how one of the blows had crashed into and crushed her shoulder completely. But all that I saw was Revayne wincing as she flew back before more of her ink just overtook her shoulder entirely. And then it was perfectly functional again. It was the same kind of cast she had granted me.

  Revayne’s feet scrabbled on the ground as she landed near me, after I had pulled back by several feet. “We can’t let that thing regain momentum. We can’t let it do anything.”

  Even as she said so, the monster screeched out. The ground began shaking. It was my turn to yell about moving as the metal floor burst apart, spiky bones spearing out everywhere we dodged to. Right. The monster wanted to keep us on our toes, just like we had tried moments ago.

  Revayne was right. We couldn’t let the momentum reverse back.

  “Revayne!” I shouted, rushing straight at the monster. “Together!”

  She got what I meant. Power gathered around her legs, ink swirling and frothing with greater and greater intensity. I wondered if I could time things just right. With the storm of Netherthreads lashing out everywhere, with the spearing bones I needed to avoid, with the monster itself presenting an enormous threat, I had way too many things to juggle mentally.

  I dropped my mace. It didn’t clatter to the ground. Rather, Gravity caught it, Orbit subsequently whipping it around my body faster and faster while still maintaining the drill at its head.

  My hands got busy focusing on Starburst. It was so much easier to gather the mana I needed to activate it. All the buffs had not only enhanced my Spirit and Thauma tremendously, they had also immensely amped up my Aspects.

  So it was that as the power around Revayne’s legs cracked the very air, I had my glowing compression of Gravity, Flare, and Illumination all ready.

  With a screech, the monster rammed at us directly, its wake unleashing a series of shockwaves ripping through the battlefield.

  “Now, Ross!” Revayne said as she kicked back.

  Only to fire herself at the Bonestrider like she had a jetpack strapped to her back.

  I didn’t fire Starburst at the monster. Instead, I slammed it behind me to let loose a blast that would make rocket exhausts weep. At the same instant, as soon as the initial explosion of Starburst had me shooting forward, I channelled Sacrifice. Whatever words I used as a switch were lost in the wind.

  [ Sacrifice

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Moderate] Cast of 1 Compound Aspect. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward: Aspected mana from Compound Aspect now suffuses your body. Next Compound Aspect cast costs no mana. ]

  The Compound Aspect disappeared, but my momentum was already overpowered. To say I went flying forward was an understatement. I was rocketing through the air as fast as Revayne, both catching up and surpassing her a heartbeat later.

  The monster was now approaching us all the faster too, thanks to a sudden jump in our relative velocities.

  My heart clenched again. The impact was going to crush me entirely. I didn’t even have to think.

  But three things hitting at the same time ensured that I delivered the right level of impact.

  As Reflexive Mana acted just in time to swerve me to the left of the Bonestrider, I called up clone after clone of myself with the last of the Lightshade I still had available. The mace spinning around me with Orbit got a big boost to its revolution radius, whipping out in a much wider arc.

  Then there was Revayne slamming into the monster. We had it right where we wanted it.

  The combination of my mace, my multiple clones crashing in with the same force as I would have if I hadn’t dodged, and Revayne herself impacting like a bullet train overcame the monster’s own momentum. An explosion of shockwaves burst outwards, sending me hurtling over the battlefield again.

  Infusion raising my weight drastically helped slow me down as my feet crashed to the floor.

  My heart was thundering as I righted myself as fast as I could. Immolation had disappeared yet again to stave off the damage from the shockwaves, but I was still glowing with the Compound Aspect’s energy. I had reoriented myself just in time. The monster had plummeted into the pit where Amiratha had fallen with a scream.

  I rushed over, my mace forgotten. Revayne was following hot on my heels. We were both sure that the Bonestrider was far from done.

  Proof of that arrived a second later as the ground erupted with more bones spearing outwards.

  “Revayne!” I shouted. “Stay back. I got this.”

  Bless everything in the world that I was able to reach the enlarging hole just in time as the Bonestrider emerged. I used the bone spears to good effect, kicking down and jumping off them with Empowered Deflection on my boot.

  It probably helped that I had cast a wide Field Manipulation with an intense amount of Infusion to draw on everything above and around it. The monster was slowed down just a bit as it had to struggle against the heavy gravitational force. Still, it was bursting upwards at a tremendous pace.

  Shooting straight up to where I had reached, still airborne thanks to Siphon keeping me lightweight.

  “Ross!” Revayne yelled out in warning, her Aspect flaring with ink.

  In that split second before I was hit, time seemed to slow down. It crawled just enough for me to note the way the Bonestrider’s cosmic face glimmered with its starry eyes.

  Then I was using Reflexive Mana to swerve just out of the way. Not out of the way of the Bonestrider’s onrushing blow. But rather, out of the way of the Protostar slamming down like a meteorite falling entirely vertically.

  The gonging pulse of energy my makeshift star let out as it connected with the Bonestrider ripped through my eardrums. Not that I needed to hear to experience the sheer blast of energy and power on display. Flashing, bursting, spiking with virulent energy, my Protostar took the Bonestrider and crashed right back into the hole Revayne and I had dumped it into.

  Forget letting it out again, I needed to take ultimate advantage of the opportunity I had carved out.

  That was why my arms were already drawn back. Why my hands were nearly together. Why I was focusing on all the Aspects I needed.

  To bring to life Starburst.

  If anything, it came even faster than before. The Sacrifice reward had returned all the mana I had used on the last cast of my Compound Aspect and then some.

  So, as the whole battlefield glowed and the Bonestrider was forced back into the abyss beneath the metal, I fired Starburst straight downwards. A pillar of the bursting power of a star rammed into the Bonestrider, pushing it deeper into the darkness.

  Oh, yes. I had to bless the fact that I had lost hearing for the moment. Because the detonation that followed, that combined the destructive capacity of Starburst with the immeasurable compressed energy of Protostar, turned night into day. Obliterating energy was stuffed into every iota of space.

  I didn’t care about rank differences. I didn’t care how much stronger than me the Bonestrider was on paper.

  If a minuscule supernova didn’t kill it, then I had no idea what would.