The troll hit him full tilt and compressed a bit before Luke was knocked back. He flew backwards and landed hard on his back, knocking his head on his helmet. It took a moment for Luke to clear his head. By the time he did, the monster was sitting on his chest, trying to batter its way through his armor.

  Luke pressed on Machine Bond, trying to reinforce his chest plate. He wasn’t sure if that’s how it worked, but he was trying anyway. He brought his acid sword down on the creature from behind. Even with the magic acid going full blast, it still took enormous amounts of effort to get the sword to bite in. Luke refused to give up and pulled harder, sawing through the monster’s midsection.

  The troll ignored the sword biting deep into his gut and kept battering down on Luke’s chest. His steel plate had bent and the chitin underneath was groaning. If it broke, his ribs would break next.

  “Roll over, roll over!” Bumblebee shouted as he stabbed at the monster, trying to get its attention.

  Luke bucked his hips, trying to knock the troll off, but it was too heavy. With it atop him, he could see that it didn’t have normal skin, it was bulbous and writhing, like a carpet of moving warts. The observation happened in the back of his mind while he focused on tearing the acid sword through the monster’s midsection.

  A Luke pushed his intent into his power armor, urging it to work better. After that, moving the sword was a bit easier, enough to overcome the monster’s natural defenses. His acid sword made it all the way through, cutting the monster in half.

  Not a moment too soon. The troll had torn off his steel breastplate and cracked the chitin underneath. Luke was fairly sure he had broken ribs.

  With the monster in two pieces, Luke was finally able to roll over. He pulled himself up on his hands and knees, taking shallow breaths because of the pain.

  “Get up, get up!” Bumblebee shouted.

  “Just let me catch my breath,” Luke said.

  A large hand reached out and grabbed Luke’s sword arm. It yanked him to the side, knocking him to the ground again. The troll wasn’t dead. The two halves were moving, connected by fleshy tendrils. As he watched, the acid burnt bits were sloughing off and it was oozing back together.

  Bumblebee shouted and brought his sword down on the arm that was holding Luke’s hand. It was a fire sword and the flame burst from the sword in great gouts. It hit the trolls arm and cut most of the way through it.

  The troll made the first sound since it attacked, a high pitched keening sound. Luke pulled back, tearing it further along the blackened cut. The troll’s hand still gripped tightly but he was free again.

  This time Luke hopped up to his feet despite the pain. He used his left glove to claw the severed hand off his gauntlet. He flung it away as the troll stood up on wobbly feet. Bumblebee was keeping it occupied with slashes and stabs with the fire sword.

  “It’s a troll. Fire is the only thing that works. Grab your sword,” Bumblebee shouted.

  Luke’s own fire sword had been magnetized to his thigh and knocked off when the troll slammed him to the ground. He bent down now and scooped up the sword with his left hand. His Mechanical Bond skill told him that his right hand couldn’t hold anything at the moment.

  Mana coursed down his left arm and into the sword. It roared with heat and flame. Luke jumped forward in time to protect Bumblebee’s left half. The troll shrunk back from the second flaming sword, but moved too slow. Everywhere the flame hit, great swaths of skin turned black and tumbled to the ground.

  Bumblebee used the distraction to chop down with a two handed strike. It split the monster’s head and vaporized the rest. The troll stumbled back, headless. Luke didn’t relax yet.

  His caution was warranted as the troll regrew its head in moments. Every time it used its healing powers, it shrunk a bit. By now it was six feet tall, a few feet shorter than either of them. Bumblebee lunged in with a strike, quickly followed by Luke.

  They worked together to keep the monster off balance and continually healing. As it shrunk, it got faster and faster. Luke and Bumblebee had to work hard to keep it between them and not let it escape. Thrust, parry, kick, stab, punch. The fight wore on, the troll smaller and smaller.

  Luke’s sword cut out. He had exhausted his mana reserves. Bumblebee kept fighting. His gauntlets were tied into the mana core powering his suit of armor, so it had enough power to keep going. Luke held it down while his companion burned it to the ground.

  When it finally stopped moving, both of them stood there gasping for a bit. Luke wanted to rub his wrist and chest, but he couldn’t while wearing his power armor. And he definitely didn’t want to lose the constitution buff he was getting from his class. So he just stood there, each breath a stabbing pain.

  “You gonna be ok?”

  “Yeah, I’ll live,” Luke replied. “What the hell was that? And don’t just say it’s a troll.”

  “Ok, fam. No mentioning the T word,” Bumblebee said seriously. “This particular monster is made up of thousands of little monsters. Like really big cells. When you slice it up, you are only hurting a small percentage of the whole. That’s why fire works. You burn the top layer and the layers below it. I think fire is its only weakness, really.”

  “I threw its hand into the bushes. Do we need to go find that part and kill it too?”

  Bumblebee turned over the ashes with his sword. “I don’t see a core, so yea. It still counts as alive.”

  “Still? Damn.” Luke said and stomped over to the bushes near the road. “It was somewhere around here.”

  Bumblebee cut down the bushes with a flame assisted slash, and when they didn’t find it, widened their search. After a minute of burning, they found the little guy trying to sneak away. A quick stab, and it was dead for good. The monster’s magic coalesced into a small monster core sitting among the ashes. Luke tucked it away with the rest.

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  “Damn, a tier two core? All this, nearly dying, for a tier two monster core?” Luke said and shook his head. The movement made him groan in pain and reach for his chest.

  Nice, a level up. That must have come from when he was pushing his mech hard during the fight. It was doubly nice that the notice about it didn't happen until combat was over.

  “Yeah, it was a weak one. Cormac told me about a medium sized troll he killed, took him two hours. He had to stake out each and every part of the bugger one at a time.”

  “Shit. I guess we are lucky we didn’t run into one of those.”

  “We shouldn’t have run into any. This is part of the Mountain Lord’s estate. He has a responsibility to cull monsters, just like we do. Something like this troll never should have gotten big enough to take down a group of merchants like that.”

  Bumblebee pointed to the four dead people. There were three dwarves and an orc. The orc had a pair of sickles near his hands, and the dwarves all had staves with glowing crystals atop them.

  They hadn’t gone into the wilderness unarmed, but apparently none of them had weapons that dealt fire damage. There were stacks of woven baskets near the bodies, knocked over but mostly untouched. The troll had only been interested in eating the people.

  As they stood there, a group of three orc soldiers crested the hill from the west. They each had a long spear with a glowing red crystal atop it. Luke’s enhanced eyes saw frowns on each of their faces as they walked closer to the two humans. They were wearing brigandine chest armor with leather faulds and greaves, clearly prepared for battle.

  Luke muttered to Bumblebee, “What are the chances those grunts waited until after we dealt with their problem to walk out here?”

  “Pretty high. Look, they all have fire spears. Those assholes knew the troll was out here and were prepared for it.”

  Luke sighed. He wanted to just leave and let them deal with the people they were supposed to protect, but he guessed that the soldiers would want to posture and tell the humans they stole their kill. It would be better to deal with them now than later.

  Time to play nice. He took off his right gauntlet and pulled out his cell phone from his front storage. He made a mental note to set up a cell phone interface that didn’t involve taking off his armor. He turned it on and... nothing. A black screen.

  He pressed the power button a few more times, but it was no use. It was dead. Not out of power, dead dead. Luke cursed himself. He had known that mana killed electronics, but he had still stuffed mana cores in with his cell. Now they had to talk with some angry looking orcs and he had no translator.

  “You don’t happen to speak orcish, do you?” Luke asked quietly.

  “Uhhh. Kinda?”

  “Well, your kinda is going to have to be enough. I haven’t had time to learn the language.”

  The orcs walked right up to them and started angrily talking while pointing with their spears. They gestured towards the burnt bits of troll scattered about and the four bodies. Luke turned towards Bumblebee but he said nothing and shrunk back. Now more irritated, they started yelling, pointing at everything and moving closer.

  “Dude, Bumblebee. Say something.”

  “Uh, Uh,” Bumblebee sputtered and stepped back. Then he squared his shoulders and hesitantly said, “Mi vidas trolon.” The orcs stopped yelling so he continued, “Ni mortigas trolon mortinton.”

  “Mortinta?” the lead orc asked.

  Bumblebee nodded, then caught himself and did jazz hands. “Trolo mortinta.” He turned to Luke and said, “Dude, show them the monster core. The troll’s core.”

  Luke nodded, understanding now why the orcs were angry. They thought the humans had injured the troll but not killed it. They were worried about the tiny hand running away and causing havoc when it grew again. Luke rummaged around in his storage with his bare hand and pulled out the tier two core. He held it up so they could see.

  Bumblebee gestured to it and said, “Trolo mortinta.”

  The three orcs stared at the core for a bit. Luke wondered if they could tell which monster it came from by the differences in the swirling colors underneath the surface. All of the spider cores they had collected looked the same, white with streaks of purple throughout. The rest of the cores they gathered today had been different colors.

  The orcs relaxed and set their weapons down. The lead orc held out his hand and said something too fast to catch. When Luke didn’t respond, he held out his hand again and enunciated, “Doni Kernon.”

  “He wants you to give him the troll core.”

  Luke immediately pulled back the core. “Hell no. We risked our lives for this. Look at what happened to my suit. My ribs are cracked. I’m not giving it up.”

  The orcs said something, but Luke didn’t try to understand. He stepped back and dropped the core into his container.

  Bumblebee stepped between them and held up his hands, “They are say this is their land and the core is their property. They are kinda right. We aren’t supposed to hunt on their lands, we were just supposed to pass through.”

  “It’s their fault the monster was still alive and they want to steal the core from us?”

  The shouting from the lead orc grew louder. Luke suspected they understood English and were offended now.

  “Look, Skywalker. If we don’t give them the core, this will be an incident. The seneschals will get involved, it will be this whole thing. Is a tiny core really worth it to you?”

  “It’s not a tiny core. It’s worth thousands on Earth.”

  Bumblebee tilted his head to the side, which was a funny look from someone in power armor. “No they’re not. Who told you that?”

  A shock of worry jolted through Luke. Was he wrong about how much these monster cores were really worth? He shook his head. “It’s the principle of the thing. They can’t watch us do their work for them and then take our hard earned core.”

  “Is this really a hill you want to die on? Literally?”

  Luke grit his teeth. Bumblebee was right. He was just being obstinate. He had to give the core over. “Fine, I’ll give it to them.”

  He turned and gave the orcs the evil eye, not that they could see it behind his helmet. And then, just to waste more of their time, Luke activated the second half of his Repair Craft skill. He had regained just enough mana since the fight to fix everything. His right gauntlet flew up from the ground and attached itself. The cracks across his chest sealed up in reverse, the impact divot disappearing. His metal chestplate reconstituted itself and sealed back up. The hundreds of little scrapes and dents smoothed back up and Luke was left mostly pristine. There was still mud on his metal boots, he had run out of mana before the skill could finish its job.

  The trio of orcs really didn’t like the display of magic. They jumped back and leveled their swords at him.

  Luke rolled his eyes and said, “It’s fine, don’t be a baby. Here, I’m giving you the stupid core.”

  He fished out the troll’s core, which took longer than expected. It was hard to grab small things when he didn’t have a real sense of touch with his armored fingers. Eventually he got the core out and held it out.

  The lead orc didn’t move to grab it, instead he barked out an order and the three of them spread out, their spears still pointed at him.

  Luke still held out the core, confused. Surely they had seen magic before, so the repair shouldn’t have spooked them. Had he committed some social faux-pas by using magic in the middle of a negotiation? He turned to Bumblebee, but the young black guy was inching his hands towards his swords. How had this turned into a fight when Luke was willing to give them what they wanted?