The Groveplate Guardian hit harder than a truck.

  Mike found this out the way most people learned in the Tutorial: painfully and too fast.

  The massive beast thundered toward him, each step a dull impact he felt in his sternum. Its bark-plated shoulders rolled, thorned horns angled like a battering ram. The forest floor shook.

  He didn’t wait for it to close.

  “Stormstep,” he hissed.

  Mana flooded his legs, and the world blurred sideways. He reappeared three meters to the left, air ripping past him where he’d just been. The Guardian charged straight through his previous position, horns gouging a trench through dirt and stone.

  Splinters and clods of earth sprayed.

  Mike landed in a crouch, pivoted, and let lightning coil around his right arm.

  “Stormstrike.”

  He dashed in, keeping to its blind angle, and slammed his fist—not bare, but wrapped in crackling mana—into the Guardian’s flank just above the foreleg.

  The blow detonated with a sharp crack.

  Lightning tore through bark-plate, blasting a scorched crater. The Guardian bellowed, a low, resonant roar that rattled leaves from branches. It stumbled a half step.

  Good, Mike thought. It feels that.

  A System tooltip flickered briefly.

  [Stormstrike → Effectiveness increased: +3% vs Armored targets (usage-based adjustment)]

  He didn’t have time to appreciate it.

  The Guardian’s head snapped around with terrifying speed for its size. Its amber eyes locked on him. It stomped a hoof, and the ground beneath his feet lurched.

  “Roots,” he muttered.

  Thick roots shot up like spears. He threw himself backward, Stormstep flickering again on reflex. One root grazed his boot; another scraped his thigh, tearing cloth and skin. Pain flared, sharp and immediate.

  He hissed but kept moving, circling.

  Big. Strong. Limited turning speed. Area denial with roots. Charging in straight lines.

  He could work with this.

  The Guardian’s horns glowed faintly green. A halo of spores puffed from the fungi along its sides, scattering into the air like dust.

  Mike held his breath and backed away from the cloud.

  A prompt blinked at the edge of his vision.

  [Environmental Hazard: Spore Miasma]

  Inhalation causes gradual HP drain and impaired vision.

  “Yeah, hard pass,” he muttered, moving wider.

  The Guardian snorted, angry at the lack of immediate target, then lowered its head and charged again. This time, instead of waiting, it angled itself toward a cluster of trees—trying to crush him with falling trunks if he dodged wrong.

  Clever.

  He didn’t dodge sideways.

  He ran toward it.

  Lightning surged along his legs, Stormstep pushing him forward in a blur. He closed the distance faster than the Guardian expected, then dropped low at the last second, sliding under its neck, feeling bark and bone scrape inches above his back.

  As he slid, he drove an uppercut Stormstrike into the softer joint of its front leg.

  Lightning flared.

  Something in the limb gave with an ugly crunch.

  The Guardian stumbled, front end dipping, momentum carrying it forward into a crashing half-fall. One of the chosen trees still toppled as its shoulder hit, branches smashing down in a spray of leaves.

  Mike rolled out of the way, heart pounding.

  His thigh burned where the root had cut him. His lungs worked overtime. Sweat stung his eyes.

  “Not invincible,” he panted. “Just big.”

  The Guardian pushed itself up with a shudder, its damaged leg trembling. The scorched marks on its flank and joint smoldered. Bark cracked and flaked.

  Then the glow along its horns intensified.

  It roared, lower this time, the sound vibrating through the ground. Mana surged around it in a visible ripple, pulling in from the ambient forest.

  The scorched bark began to regrow.

  “What,” Mike said flatly.

  The broken plate knit. Charred flesh beneath filled in with new, pale tissue. The leg straightened a little. Not fully healed, but significantly less ruined than it had been three seconds ago.

  A small notification popped.

  [Groveplate Guardian uses: Verdant Regrowth]

  Regenerates a portion of physical damage over time while rooted.

  The beast stomped all four legs, sending another ring of roots stabbing up. Mike danced away, chaining Stormstep into shorter bursts to avoid getting pinned.

  Spending mana faster than he liked.

  “Okay,” he told himself between breaths. “Damage plus interrupt. Don’t let it stand still and channel.”

  It was like fighting a fortress that could run you down and then undo your work if you gave it room.

  He took stock.

  Stamina: good. Mana: dropping. HP: chipped. Terrain: bad.

  He’d fought worse odds.

  He hadn’t had this much fun in a while, either.

  Back in the ravine, fun was the last word anyone would have used.

  The first raider hit Arin like he thought her light armor and compact frame made her an easy target.

  He learned quickly.

  She stepped into his downward swing, shield catching the blow with a flare of pale gold. The impact shuddered up her arm, but her momentum wasn’t what broke. She twisted, redirected his blade aside, and smashed the rim of her shield into his jaw.

  Bone cracked. He went down hard.

  A flicker of warm light ran along the edge of her sword as she pivoted toward the next threat.

  [Skill: Radiant Edge (Rank F, Common)]

  — Adds a small amount of holy damage to the next strike

  — Slightly increases cutting power

  The second raider swung too wide. She stepped in and cut across his forearm. The added edge of Radiant damage bit through leather and skin, drawing a scream and sending his sword spinning.

  To her left, Vex vanished.

  One moment he was crouched near the wall; the next he was simply not there, his presence sliding into shadow like ink fading into water.

  [Skill: Shade Slip (Rank F, Uncommon)]

  — Briefly blend with nearby shadows, reducing visibility and noise

  — Exiting Slip adds bonus to the next attack if from behind or flank

  A raider with a hatchet rushed past the spot Vex had occupied, eyes fixed on Arin. He never saw the dagger sliding in low from behind, sinking neatly between ribs.

  The man choked, stumbled, and dropped.

  “You picked the wrong hole to walk into,” Vex murmured, easing his weight aside as the body slumped.

  At the mouth of the ravine, two more raiders tried to push in together, using a crude pincer tactic. They hit the first of Vex’s disguised pits.

  One went straight down with a yelp and a wet thud.

  The other’s foot caught the edge, sending him staggering sideways—right into a tangle of vines that exploded from the ground.

  “Rootbind,” Marina said through clenched teeth.

  Her staff glowed faint green as the spell took hold. The vines coiled around the raider’s arms and legs, pinning him. He thrashed, cursing.

  Marina’s heart hammered, but her hands were steady.

  She’d learned something in the Awakening Trial: fear didn’t matter to the System. Actions did.

  One of the raiders at the back—a woman with close-cropped hair and a too-calm expression—raised a hand. Fire coalesced around her fingers.

  Mage.

  “Down!” Arin shouted.

  She raised her shield and invoked another skill.

  “Aegis Ward!”

  Light flared brighter around the battered metal. A translucent, curved barrier appeared in front of her, expanding just enough to cover Marina at her back.

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  The firebolt slammed into it.

  Heat washed over them. The barrier spiderwebbed with cracks but held long enough for most of the spell to dissipate. The remnants splashed against the rock in a harmless sizzle.

  The mage hissed. “Annoying.”

  “Likewise,” Arin muttered.

  Lumi darted between their legs, fur puffed. Her eyes locked on the mage.

  The fox blurred.

  [Skill: Thunderstep (Rank F, Rare)]

  — Short-range instant movement

  — Deals minor lightning damage at departure and arrival points

  Lumi vanished in a snap of static and reappeared at the mage’s face height, materializing out of thin air with her claws already extended.

  She raked across the woman’s cheek and eyes, tiny claws carrying a sharp jolt of electricity.

  The mage screamed, flailing, fire sputtering out as she reflexively grabbed at her own face instead of casting.

  “Good girl!” Vex shouted.

  Lumi landed gracefully, back arched and tail high, and zipped back into cover before anyone could retaliate.

  Marina seized the opening.

  “Verdant Conduit!”

  She planted her staff hard.

  A thick, sturdy vine shot up near Arin’s side, then split. One tendril wrapped around Arin’s ankle; another charged forward under the ground toward the bound raider, then another toward where a raider further in had already taken a cut.

  Pulses of healing energy flowed along the vine, directed where Marina wanted them.

  Arin’s bruised arm eased. The cut on her side from a glancing blow knit a little. The raider trapped in Rootbind sucked in a breath as some of his pain dulled—not by design.

  “Tch,” Marina muttered. “Collateral.”

  She adjusted the flow, strangling that branch of the conduit.

  The trapped raider wheezed as the unwanted relief cut off.

  “Thank you,” Arin said, not looking back.

  “You’re welcome,” Marina said.

  Outside, someone shouted.

  “Inside! Don’t back off! You know what Kade said—if they resist, we break them!”

  Arin’s eyes narrowed.

  She stepped forward to meet the next push.

  The Groveplate Guardian wasn’t backing off either.

  Mike had never fought a bulldozer before, but he imagined this was what it felt like: a relentless mass of force that didn’t care about finesse, only about turning everything in its path into paste.

  He was sweating heavily now, shirt clinging to his back, breaths coming fast.

  He’d landed maybe six solid Stormstrikes—shoulder, leg, flank, joint, horn base, neck. Each one had blown apart bark and seared flesh. Each one had hurt the beast.

  And each time he bought himself breathing room, the Guardian tried to root itself, drawing in mana to heal.

  The only thing stopping it from regrowing fully was his refusal to let it stand still.

  But his mana wasn’t infinite.

  A chill wind slid through the grove, rustling the glowing moss on the trunks. The ambient mana here was thick, heavy like humidity. The Guardian drank from it, steady and greedy.

  Mike’s mana pool, on the other hand, felt like a water barrel that had been hit by an axe a few too many times.

  “Status,” he muttered, mostly to keep his brain tethered.

  [HP: 72%]

  [Mana: 38%]

  Not terrible. Not good either.

  The Guardian snorted, lowering its head again.

  He’d been trying to get to its eyes, or the softer throat, but the horns and neck plates made that tricky. Every time he got too close, it tried to either flatten him or impale him.

  It stomped, and a wave of roots burst in a fan instead of a ring this time, jagged spikes spearing forward.

  He tried to Stormstep—and felt the skill stutter.

  A red flicker appeared.

  [Stormstep: Cooldown 02.4s]

  Too soon.

  He threw himself sideways anyway, relying on raw Agility.

  One of the roots clipped his calf full on.

  Pain ripped up his leg as the spike punched through meat. He hit the ground, rolled, and bit back a shout. Blood ran hot into his boot.

  “Fuck,” he hissed between teeth.

  He forced himself to his feet, favoring the leg. It held, but every step was white-hot lightning of a different kind.

  The Guardian saw the limp and lunged, sensing weakness. For a moment, instincts screamed at him to turn and run.

  Instead, he stepped toward it again.

  If he gave it space now, it would heal. If he flinched, he’d die tired with a fully regenerated monster looming over his corpse.

  He called lightning.

  Not into one fist this time.

  Into both.

  Stormstrike lit both hands, arcs linking between his knuckles. The air around his forearms flickered.

  He drew in a deeper breath, gathering more mana, flirting with the line where his nerves tingled too much.

  “Come on,” he growled.

  The Guardian thundered toward him. Spores puffed around its horns again. The ground shook.

  At the last second, he feinted backward.

  The Guardian committed, lowering its head and shifting its weight forward to skewer where he had been.

  Mike planted his good leg and twisted, bringing both Stormcharged fists down on the side of its skull just behind the horn base.

  Double Stormstrike.

  Lightning erupted.

  The impact echoed like a thundercrack.

  The Guardian’s head slammed sideways into the ground with enough force to send tremors through the grove. One horn snapped off at the base, spinning away to embed itself in a tree.

  The beast bellowed, one eye rolling wildly, limbs scrabbling.

  Mike staggered away, numb from shoulders to fingertips.

  His HP dropped a little further from internal strain, but the skill caught most of it.

  [HP: 64%]

  [Mana: 21%]

  His arms throbbed.

  The Guardian lay half on its side now, trying to push itself up, balance compromised. Blood—dark, sap-thick—leaked from the broken horn stump and one ear.

  “Stay down,” he panted.

  He gathered a smaller Stormstrike, aiming for the exposed eye.

  The Guardian jerked.

  Roots shot up again, wild and unfocused this time, like a last desperate reflex.

  One caught him square across the chest.

  It wasn’t a clean impale like the leg. It was a blunt, rising smash that hit like a battering ram. Pain exploded through his ribs. The world spun. He was airborne for a blink of pure disorientation, then slammed into a tree trunk hard enough that bark bit deep into his back.

  The impact drove the air from his lungs. His vision went white at the edges.

  He slid down the trunk, crooked, unable to breathe, limbs momentarily refusing to respond.

  The Guardian dragged itself further upright, head shaking, one good eye blinking through blood and sap. It saw him slump and forced itself to move.

  Heavy hoofsteps thudded closer, each one an effort.

  “Move,” Mike told his body. No sound came out.

  His chest burned, muscles spasming as his lungs finally dragged in a ragged breath. Another. Pain lanced from ribs to spine and back.

  He looked up through blurring vision.

  The Guardian loomed, shadow falling over him.

  If it stomped him now, there wouldn’t be enough left to bury.

  He tried to raise an arm.

  His hand twitched, arcs of lightning sputtering weakly between his fingers.

  Mana: low. Body: half stunned. Guardian: still regenerating slowly.

  He was outmatched. Out of position. Out of time.

  It wasn’t the first time.

  It might not be the last.

  The Guardian lifted its hoof.

  In the ravine, time fractured into flashes.

  A raider’s sword skated along Arin’s bracer, throwing sparks. She twisted, letting the blow slide off, then drove her knee into his stomach and smashed his nose with her shield. Blood sprayed. He collapsed.

  A second raider—a woman with a hooked spear—jabbed for Marina’s leg around the edge of the half-wall.

  Marina jerked back too slowly.

  The spearhead cut a line along her calf, shallow but sharp. She gasped, nearly losing her footing. Pain flared.

  “Got you,” the raider hissed, drawing back for another stab.

  Lumi streaked in from the side in a blur, Thunderstepping past the spear tip and raking the woman’s wrist. Lightning sparked; muscles spasmed. The spear dropped.

  “Thank you,” Marina panted.

  She slammed her staff down again.

  “Rootbind!”

  Vines surged up, tangling the spearwoman’s legs. This time, Marina twisted her wrist, focusing the spell tighter. Thorns sprouted along the vines, digging into flesh when the raider thrashed.

  The woman screamed.

  Vex, above, spotted an opening.

  He dropped from his branch, Shade Slip shivering around him as he fell through shadow thicker than it should have been. He landed behind a raider who was trying to flank Arin and slit his throat in one smooth motion.

  Blood fountained.

  “You should have stayed in camp,” Vex muttered.

  A weight slammed into his side.

  He hadn’t seen the other raider—stockier, with a small round shield and a short sword—coming around the other flank. The man had used his ally’s fall as cover.

  Vex hit the ground hard, air whooshing from his lungs. The raider followed, sword stabbing down.

  Vex twisted, barely avoiding a fatal strike. The blade plunged into dirt where his stomach had been. It still cut a line across his ribs, hot and hard.

  He grunted, pain flaring, and drove his knee up into the man’s elbow. The sword wrenched free and clattered aside.

  They grappled.

  Strength against agility.

  The raider won raw strength, pinning Vex’s arm to the ground with one forearm across his throat.

  “Got you, rat,” he spat.

  Vex’s vision narrowed.

  He let his free hand go limp. The raider shifted his weight slightly, repositioning to hold him down.

  Vex’s limp hand closed on the small knife he’d palmed when he fell.

  He stabbed upward.

  Once.

  Twice.

  The raider jerked, eyes wide, then sagged as the knife found the gap under his ribs.

  Vex shoved the body aside, dragging in a ragged breath.

  Blood soaked his side. He felt wet warmth trickling.

  “Vex!” Marina shouted.

  “I’m fine!” he lied.

  Arin couldn’t look. She was busy.

  The mage whose face Lumi had attacked earlier had recovered enough to get angry.

  She roared, wiping blood from her eyes, and thrust her hands forward. Fire surged out in a wide wave, not a precise bolt. It hit the half-wall, the vines, the ground.

  Heat punched through the ravine like a fist.

  Marina threw herself down, staff over her head. Flames licked at her robes, burning the hem. Pain seared her ankle where fire kissed exposed skin.

  Arin invoked Aegis Ward again, but the barrier, still strained from earlier, cracked fully this time, shattering under the torrent.

  Fire washed over her shield and armor, searing. The world narrowed to heat and instinct.

  She bit down on a cry and pushed forward through it.

  Light blossomed along her blade again.

  “Radiant Edge!”

  She burst through the thinning fire curtain and met the mage’s wide eyes.

  The woman tried to backpedal, hands lifting to cast again. Her stance was wrong, balance thrown.

  Arin stepped in and cut in a clean, merciless arc.

  The mage’s spell died with her.

  Embers drifted around them, settling slowly.

  Arin’s lungs burned. Her arms trembled. A red burn across her forearm throbbed where heat had gotten under her armor. Sweat stung her eyes.

  She spared half a glance around.

  Three raiders down. One tangled and screaming in vines. One in the pit, suspiciously quiet. One—

  A shadow moved at the edge of the ravine, near the entrance, where the light didn’t quite reach.

  The leader.

  He hadn’t charged with the others. He’d stayed back, assessing, waiting.

  Now he stepped in.

  He moved like Mike did when Mike was not holding back—a smooth, efficient gait that wasted no energy. His eyes were sharp, taking everything in at once: Arin’s burns, Marina’s limp, Vex’s wound, Lumi’s position.

  A faint aura clung to his blade.

  [Skill: Edge of Submission (Rank F, Uncommon)]

  — Slight bonus damage against weakened targets

  — Higher chance to inflict bleeding

  “Kade’ll be pleased with this report,” he said calmly. “You’re better than the last ones.”

  He raised his sword.

  Arin shifted her stance, weight settling, shield up.

  Vex dragged himself to his feet nearby, pale but grinning through the pain. “We’re going to kill your whole little club,” he said.

  Marina, gasping, tightened her grip on her staff and fed a small pulse of healing through Verdant Conduit into Arin’s legs.

  Lumi crouched low, tail twitching.

  The leader smiled faintly.

  “If you live long enough to try,” he said.

  He moved.

  The Guardian’s hoof came down.

  Mike managed to roll.

  Not fully. Not cleanly. But enough that the massive weight crashed into the ground inches from his ribs instead of on them, sending a shockwave of force and dirt over him. A root, disturbed by the blow, whipped across his back, adding another line of agony.

  He tasted blood.

  “Up,” he coughed.

  He forced himself onto his knees.

  The Guardian swayed, one eye half-closed, horn stump dripping. It was bleeding heavily now, but Verdant Regrowth was still trying to work, bark around its wounds crawling and shivering as it tried to knit.

  It reared, preparing to stomp again.

  He couldn’t dodge the same way twice. His leg screamed each time he put weight on it. His mana was frayed. Stormstep’s cooldown crawled in the corner of his vision like an accusation.

  [Stormstep: Ready]

  “Good,” he croaked.

  He pushed off the tree and Stormstepped forward this time, into the Guardian’s shadow instead of away from it.

  Lightning surged up his spine, into his shoulders, down his arms.

  Stormstrike wrapped his right hand again, but he didn’t aim for armor this time.

  He went for the open mouth.

  The Guardian bellowed as he appeared under its head, sound blasting his eardrums. He ignored it and drove his fist upward, straight between its jaws.

  Stormstrike erupted inside.

  Lightning tore through tongue, palate, and up into the skull. The Guardian convulsed, entire body arching, eyes rolling white.

  The force of the discharge blew him backward, his hand going numb to the elbow. He hit the ground hard, every injury screaming.

  The Guardian crashed down.

  For a heartbeat, he thought it was over.

  Then the beast’s chest hitched.

  Ever so slightly.

  Verdant Regrowth, wild and panicked, tried to restart what had been broken. Muscles spasmed. One hoof jerked.

  Mike stared, chest heaving, vision tunneling.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he rasped.

  He tried to stand.

  His leg buckled.

  His mana flickered at the bottom of the barrel.

  The Guardian, impossibly stubborn, tried to rise on three legs.

  “If you stand up again,” he said hoarsely, “I’m going to take this personally.”

  It heaved.

  He swore.

  He forced himself to move, every step a lurching agony, lightning sputtering along his skin like dying embers.

  The Guardian’s good eye focused on him one more time, dull but full of hate.

  It gathered itself.

  He had nothing left big enough to finish it cleanly.

  Absolutely nothing.

  The Guardian lunged.

  He grit his teeth.

  Somewhere behind the pain, behind the exhaustion, behind the mana ringing empty—

  —there was one more card.

  The one he’d prepared before the fight really began.

  The one no one watching would know about.

  He reached for it.

  Thank you for reading!

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