Back when we first fought him, Cyrus and his army had taken the combined might of Richard, Aerion, Eskil, and myself, with Eskil pulling most of the weight.

  I was stronger now, true, but I had no delusions this would be easy. I gave him everything I had, holding absolutely nothing back.

  Hundreds of tiny balls of molten lava [Launched] out from all around me, a barrage of fire that pummeled Cyrus and his ice horse.

  They weren’t alone; I layered the little bullets with water I’d gathered earlier, each hissing as they flew, leaving trails of steam.

  I felt like a one-man army, raining machine-gun fire upon a hapless foe. The pellets pelted Cyrus, forcing him to defend, but he was too tough to go down from just that. That didn’t matter—these were just a distraction.

  The real attack was the steam combustion explosion that followed suit. Not from the tiny pellets, but a steady stream of lava fired out like a fire hose.

  I sent the lava from my right and water from my left, converging at his position.

  The water vaporized instantly, bursting into a steam cloud that superheated the air and threw Cyrus back, smothering the area.

  That gave me my opening.

  I rushed in, cradling a siege bolt in my hand. Using [Launch] it would have had it detonating almost instantly, killing us both, so I threw it by hand before sprinting off in the opposite direction.

  The impact screamed through the air, the ensuing sonic shockwave blowing away the steam and making the hairs on my back stand on end. For a beat the world was only noise and heat.

  When I looked back, I found a crater where Cyrus had been only seconds prior, surrounded by a handful of shattered corpses.

  Cyrus, however, was gone, and I wasn’t naive enough to assume I’d finished him.

  I didn’t think—I moved. I ran with every ounce of speed that my Grace allowed.

  “Well done,” said a voice behind me.

  Light of the Fearless’ twin abilities flared as I dug my heel into the ground, killing my momentum to slash where the voice had come from. Only to have my sword meet nothing but air. Instead of the clang of steel upon steel, my body lurched, and I froze as something cold spread through me.

  I tried to turn, to move and retreat, but I couldn’t. I was pinned in place by some unseen force.

  Then I saw it.

  A sword protruding from my armor. For a long, stunned moment, I just stared at it, brain unable to compute what had just happened.

  It was cold, and the blood that coated the blade made everything click.

  I’d been stabbed through the chest. Funny how it didn’t hurt.

  Right on cue, the pain exploded, and I coughed out a wad of blood, heaving for breath. I felt like I was drowning.

  “A good attempt,” Cyrus said, leaving the sword jabbed into my back, circling around to where I could see him. “You’ve grown stronger, Champion,” he said, pacing around me like the predator he was. “Not strong enough, I’m afraid.”

  I fell to my knees, my faltering strength unable to take my weight.

  System messages raced past. My armor integrity had been destroyed in a single strike. Cyrus stared at me with his icy blue eyes as I reached for the blade buried in my chest, trying and failing to dislodge it.

  My strength was gone, and with each passing moment, more and more darkness crept into the edge of my vision.

  “You should know that each time you die, my army gains respite from this eternal cycle,” Cyrus said, folding his arms behind his back as if lecturing me. “Every death feeds them, so I hope you’ll indulge us. Our last bout was quite underwhelming.”

  My eyes widened.

  “You’re the same,” I rasped. “You’re the… one we fought.”

  “Astute,” he replied. “Indeed. I had wondered if we would meet again after our little bout in the core.”

  “You… put up quite the fight,” I said through clenched teeth. Maybe I wouldn’t really die here, but god, did it hurt like hell. I wished he’d just kill me and get it over with.

  “I have defended cores thousands of times,” he said, stopping to stare off into the distance.

  Somebody’s chatty today…

  “Champions occasionally come along with such strength that I am entirely unable to best them. I cannot, however, recall the last time anyone bested me through strategy alone. Quite the impressive feat. Unfortunately for you, however, you are alone this time. I have but one request—die. And die often. The more you do, the more respite my men gain from this eternal hell.”

  “What do you mean?” I whispered, life ebbing, half-recalling a similar conversation we had in the Trial.

  “I was much like you, once,” Cyrus said with a wry smile.

  It was tough to be sure with my rapidly dimming tunnel vision, but I almost thought I caught a glimpse of… was it sadness in his eyes? Or maybe pity?

  “Enjoy your life to the fullest, while you are still able,” he said, sounding more like an old man than an undead commander, though I supposed he was both.

  The sword twisted in my gut, pulverizing organs. The pain magnified tenfold, and the blackness took me.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I awoke on the same cliff as always.

  “Fuck!”

  One death had been bad. Two was unacceptable. No way the System would be happy with these repeated failures.

  At least there was no gaping hole in my chest. My armor was fully intact, too.

  That was interesting to me. Quickly checking my inventory, I found everything I’d brought into the Trial. Darts, stones, and even my weapon were back to their original, undamaged condition. Most importantly, I had 943 Siege Bolt Cores—the same number I had when I entered.

  All the stuff I’d gathered, though, was gone.

  Which meant these runs didn’t permanently deplete my stockpile—something I wish I had noticed on the previous attempt. Now that I knew, though, I was going to exploit the hell out of it.

  This meant I no longer had to conserve my ammo. I could use the full might of my arsenal.

  I cracked my neck. “All right. Let’s do this.”

  The dragons roared and made a beeline for me, I’d seen their bag of tricks. I was more than ready.

  I fired a volley of fifty siege bolts, blanketing the sky. Then came another, layered so that each detonation filled the sky in all three dimensions. A grid full of mines.

  On previous attempts, one dragon had slipped out of range, but the solution was obvious now. If I saturated the air with enough bombs over a wide enough area, it wouldn’t matter where they flew. There would be no escape.

  True to form, the dragons rushed my cliff and opened their jaws to breathe fire.

  I didn’t let them.

  By the time they arrived, I’d already scooped up every rock I could find.

  I [Launched] them all, emptying my inventory in a barrage of stones. The dragons dodged, of course, but they were never my goal.

  The rocks flew through the air. Most missed, but many hit.

  Siege Bolts detonated one after another, a cascading explosion that grew louder and louder. While not every bomb went off, enough did that the dragons’ fate was sealed.

  By the time the chain of explosions ended, all that was left of the dragons were shards that rained down onto the valley below.

  Two Dragons down. One Leviathan to go.

  This time, I gathered even more lava and thousands of pebbles and stones of every size, nearly filling my inventory.

  I saved a little for water, which I’d collect after annihilating the ice serpent.

  As terrifying as it looked, the snake was massive and predictable.

  As before, I jumped into the air and let it swallow before decapitating it from within.

  With no dragons to harass me, the monster was dead in seconds.

  I switched it up this time, using a stream of lava, which honestly worked almost as well as the Siege Bolts against a being made of ice.

  I jumped out of its neck stump and sprinted to the nearby lake, filling my inventory to capacity.

  Then came Cyrus’s army. I went to work, methodically annihilating groups with volleys of Bolt Cores and following up with shotgun blasts of lava.

  That wasn’t all I did. This time, I laid the groundwork for victory. I ran across the battlefield, leaping and weaving, shattering the ice soldiers with ruthless precision.

  Last time, I’d left hundreds alive. This time, barely a dozen stragglers remained, too cowed to even approach.

  Cyrus charged me earlier than last time, but unlike then, I didn’t rush to engage him.

  Easier said than done thanks to his undead horse’s impressive speed.

  I kept my distance—barely—and dismantled his army until only a handful of survivors lingered. Too few and too scattered to pose any threat.

  Then, and only then, did I turn my full attention to him.

  “You must understand that each time you perish, you are not the only one who stands to benefit. I understand your weapons now, and there is little you can do against me. I’m afraid this round will not end well for you,” he said, shooting me a thin smile.

  “Uh, huh. Guess we’ll see about that,” I said, dodging and activating [Snap] whenever I could to keep distance. Engaging him in melee was suicide—experience had taught me that much.

  This guy was impossibly fast and absurdly tough. Facing him head-on would end the same way as last time. Siege bolts were too slow to catch him, lava bullets weren’t strong enough, and he was too fast to hit with my sword.

  Thanks to my preparations, I didn’t need any of that.

  I shaped my lava into the smallest bullets I could manage and launched them in a barrage by the hundreds. They streaked across the battlefield in a storm of machinegun fire, even as I sprinted and zigzagged, keeping my speed and movements erratic to avoid the undead king’s attacks.

  “Futile!” Cyrus laughed as a splotch of lava splashed off his armor harmlessly. “Or have you gone mad?”

  I ignored him. Only a matter of time now.

  The first explosion came soon enough, ripping the air apart. An ear-splitting crack and a glancing blow that sent Cyrus’ horse off-balance.

  He barely had the time to recover before the next detonation followed. My lava storm tracked him, peppering the surrounding ground, triggering eruption after eruption.

  Each blast shredded his horse’s ice armor, gouging massive chunks away and tossing Cyrus like a ragdoll. Realizing the danger, he leapt clear an instant before another detonation shattered him to a thousand tiny pieces.

  His mount wasn’t so lucky. The thing broke like glass, shaking it to pieces.

  The king landed lightly on his feet, staring at me in confusion. “When did you…” he trailed off, eyes widening as he scanned the area. “Earlier, when you were fighting my army…”

  I grinned. “Minefields are a bitch, aren’t they?”

  I’d buried the siege bolt cores all throughout the area—over four hundred of them, in fact. Hidden and waiting to blow with the right trigger.

  Of course, I had no way of knowing where exactly each one was, which was kind of the point.

  If Cyrus had seen them, he’d have had his men sweep them out. Luckily, my efforts had gone unnoticed, and my arsenal of bolts allowed me to spread them wherever I pleased.

  With Cyrus’s mobility advantage neutralized, I seized the upper hand, darting around him like a hummingbird.

  I sliced and struck from every angle, firing barrages of steam-infused lava whenever Cyrus moved to counter.

  I exploited my Grace to its fullest, activating [Snap] with perfect timing to make my moves that much less predictable.

  Cyrus’s battle instincts were on another level, though, and he countered my strikes regardless of where they came from. Almost like he had eyes in the back of his head.

  Still, both of us knew this couldn’t last in his favor. He was hard-pressed to get a single hit on me, while I rained hell upon him, a blur of firepower.

  The longer the fight dragged on, the more likely he’d slip. While I doubted a being like him got exhausted, a single mistake was all I needed.

  That mistake came when he lashed out, hoping to sneak a quick strike to my throat.

  I twisted aside at the last moment, but he still managed to skewer my shoulder.

  White-hot pain blinded me, and for an instant, I thought I was the one who’d screwed up.

  But when I gripped his sword, locking it in place, I knew I had him.

  I blasted a stream of lava directly into his face. At this range and stuck as he was, he didn’t have a prayer of dodging. This wasn’t a pellet or a bolt—this was an unending cascade of molten rock.

  Cyrus roared as his ice-flesh melted and cracked in the intense heat. Half his face collapsed and he fell, his body half-mangled.

  I expected the usual—some defiant, villainous line about dying a thousand deaths and rising again.

  Instead he stared up at me with his one remaining eye, and something in his look stopped me cold. Not hatred. Not triumph. Fear.

  “Stop this cycle,” he rasped. “End it. For good.”

  “That’s the plan,” I said, more out of surprise at his words than anything.

  “No! You do not understand. Do not fall for—gaaaah!”

  He screamed with agony, and it took me a second to realize it wasn’t because of the lava.

  A blinding light erupted from within his body, growing brighter and brighter, until it exploded, sending a million shattered fragments flying in every direction.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  He’d been trying to tell me something—something important—and some other force, the System, maybe, had cut him off.

  A message popped up, breaking me out of my thoughts.

  Congratulations! You have completed phase one of the Ascendance Trial. Your performance has been noted.

  Initiating next phase…

  An archway materialized out of thin air—one that looked very familiar. It was the same exact tunnel I’d used to enter the Trial. It was embedded into a wall that had materialized with it, only about a dozen or so feet wide.

  I looked around to find that Cyrus’s remaining soldiers had vanished, just like him.

  Thoroughly confused, but with few other options, I stepped through.