Luke suspected that whoever translated the name Chaos Bear had never seen a bear. Sure, this monster was fat and furry with four legs. But it also had pointed ears and a long poofy tail. It was a bearcat, really. It was also running directly at him with murder in its eyes.

  He spread his arms, pointing with both hands at different trees. He activated Vortex Door twice in quick succession, one for each hand. The dimensional doors quickly formed and connected to each other.

  With a hop and a roll, Luke went through the closest door and reappeared behind the charging monster. He left the skill active and turned around, knowing that the Chaos Bear could still see him. It looked like he had cut a hole in a tree and was just on the other side.

  The monster juked to the side and pounced. It roared with anger, its enormous claws only catching air. It sniffed around and spun in place, searching for its prey. While its back was still turned, Luke shot off a trio of lightning bolts and a fracture spell. They blazed through the air, landing just as the monster spun.

  Only two of the attacks landed, Luke was still getting his aim down with the new mech. It was times like this that he missed Machine Bond. That skill would have given him perfect aim, but since he gave it up he had to make do with Acuity and Dexterity.

  The Chaos Bear didn’t flinch as the lightning spell sparked and shocked it and the fracture spell started breaking through its thick hide. Instead, it roared and kept spinning around in circles, trying to find Luke.

  He was standing in the shade of one of the huge trees, still visible, but his black Umbral Mantis armor made him fade into the background. He fired a fireball, which screamed across the distance. Just before it was about to impact, the bear’s fur shot out, growing ten feet in an instant. The long fur pierced the fireball spell and sucked the fire into the hairs. None of the heat touched the monster beneath. The monster turned to where the spell had come from and spotted Luke, standing by the tree. It opened its mouth wide and jumped forward.

  Space warped between the two of them, shrinking the hundred feet down to ten. Luke yelped and ducked. He avoided one claw, but the other hit him square in the chest. The impact knocked him back five feet, but didn’t do much more than leave a trio of scratches on the black armor.

  Luke grunted and jumped through the still open portal. He turned to see the Chaos Bear attempting to follow him, but it was too big. It reached a huge arm through the doorway, forcing Luke to roll out of the way. The monster brushed up against the edge of the dimensional door and collapsed the fragile spell. It shattered and space returned to normal in an instant.

  Part of the monster’s arm was forced back through the gateway, but its huge paw stayed on Luke’s side. It had been cut off. Disrupting the skill had mangled and severed the limb as space reasserted itself. The skill had attempted to push the whole arm back, but the monster's strength had kept its arm in place long enough to lose the paw.

  Blood spurted out of the monster’s stub. It roared once more as it held its arm up in disbelief. The spray of blood transformed into a spray of leaves. The monster’s amputated limb had changed into a plant arm and started regrowing.

  Luke fired his huge fireball once more. This time, the Chaos Bear didn’t change magics fast enough and it was engulfed in fire. The flames quickly spread over the monster’s plant body. Its cry of anger turned to one of pain. Luke decided to put it out of its misery and shot out a trio of Phantom Shots, one after another. He had found that most monsters weren’t resistant to the incorporeal magic bullets.

  The monster’s cries cut off as the gray and violet spells phased through the monster and tore out its lifeforce. It slumped to the ground and the swirling fire slowed down. Luke put out the fire with his ice hammer.

  He checked with his magic drone in the sky and no other monsters had appeared. As he walked over to the bear, he was met with a welcome surprise.

  The fight hadn’t been too hard for him, but since he used these skills to take down a high tier monster with them, they leveled up. Luke liked to think that meant the System of the World was impressed with him and wanted to reward him. The SPEAR trainers said the Kalibutan magic system didn’t think or act, it just ran a program. Specialist White would say he was getting the level ups because of the high concentration of mana released when he killed the monster.

  Either way, Vortex Door had crossed a threshold. The skills grew incrementally stronger with every level, but every sixth level was a jump forward. That might mean he could stretch the skill a bit farther now.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  He tested that theory with several scientific experiments. He could separate the doors a bit farther now, close to 150 feet apart now. He couldn’t have more than one set of doors active, sadly. But his earlier practice had finally paid off. With a bit of mental effort, he was able to get one of the doorways to lay flat on the ground.

  He whooped at the success and ran and hopped into the new hole in the ground. As he fell, gravity suddenly shifted and he was sliding sideways across the forest floor, feet first. He laughed and climbed to his feet. This opened up so many more possibilities.

  Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to test them today. He was out of mana. That was his main limitation these days. His skills were powerful, but they burned through mana so quickly. He had been putting his level ups into Acuity so his mana pool would refill faster, but it still wasn’t fast enough for him.

  The ice from his hammer had frozen the corpse of the Chaos Bear by now. He smashed the body into thousands of pieces and sifted through the shards until he found the mana core. It was a big one, tier six. Worth about $120K these days.

  Every mana core was valuable on Earth since WikiRunes got popular. Luke loved seeing the crazy new inventions people came up with. He had to admit though, it was the fashion industry that drove much of the sales. Someone had discovered a trio of illusion runes that made you slightly more beautiful.

  It was like having a filter in real life, better than any creme or face mask. Demand for necklaces with those runes was sky high. A small percentage of people on Earth could afford them, but those men and women that could spend the big bucks accounted for about half of all Monster Jaeger’s sales.

  It wasn’t what Luke had envisioned, when he published the anonymous website, but it was what the people wanted. He tucked the core away and strolled back to Earth. On the way he let the village of Bona Urbo know the Chaos Bear had been taken care of.

  He heard Kruro and Bumblebee talking as he walked through the roll up doors of the company warehouse. In the months since he bought the place, they had made dozens of improvements to the building, better offices and crafting spaces. They kept the design a open floorplan so Luke saw and heard the serious naga talking with the irreverent black guy from the other side of the building.

  “Come on, there’s got to be more to it, Kruro. I wanted to go with him but Bossman said you had to go. Why do you want to head to the capital?” Bumblebee asked.

  “Why don’t you believe I simply want to return home?” Kruro replied in accented English.

  Bumblebee leaned forward, “That’s cap. If you wanted to go home, you would have said that the first time I asked. You would have talked about your family. I don’t even know your mom and dad’s names.”

  “I do not know my progenitor's names either. That isn’t how naga society works. After eggs are laid, they give up the eggs to the nursery. We are raised in a crèche with other children our age. The closest to a parental relationship I have is with my governess. But adults do not visit their governess, it would be strange.”

  “Ok, that’s fire. I wanna know more. But you are trying to change the subject. Why are you heading home? Do you owe people money? Are you part of a smuggling ring? Is your secret dwarven lover there? Tell me!”

  “Bumblebee, quit bothering Kruro,” Luke said loudly.

  Bumblebee turned and laughed. “I’m just being extra. Chill.” He turned to Kruro and asked, “I’m not bothering you, am I? I’m low key trying to have fun with you.”

  Kruro slashed her hand down. “You are not bothering me, little man. You may continue. I know you must practice your ‘rizz’ because you are so terrible at it.”

  “Hey!” Bumblebee said and sputtered.

  Luke laughed along with her and said, “How are you doing, Kruro? Are you ready for the trip?”

  The snake lady ignored the sputtering and said, “Yes, I am packed and ready. Thank you for the opportunity to return home. I promise to be a stellar guide. You won’t regret bringing me along.”

  He waved away the concern. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to earn your place with me. You are a friend.”

  “Still. I appreciate it and I will do my best to help you,” Kruro said. She put down her inscriber and tapped the mech she was working on. “I finished repairs by the way. The Jaegers should be fine in our absence. The hover truck is complete as well. Should I start loading it up with our supplies?”

  “Excellent, thanks. I want to see. Is it out back?”

  “No, it’s parked out front. You must have passed it on your way in.”

  Luke hurried out the warehouse bay doors and around the corner. There it was. His own hover truck, complete with hovering trailer. The cab was roomy, enough to fit six humans, or two humans and a naga. The bed had high walls and a sturdy hitch connecting it to the covered trailer.

  The runework on the truck wasn’t too complex, Luke could have made the whole thing himself. But he was too busy these days. He had bought one online and asked Kruro to improve the design, fixing the sloppy controls the human made vehicle had. She made a few more improvements, adding mana sight to the windshield and reinforcement runes. She also added a collapsible metal shed to the trailer so they could use it as a tent when camping in the Kalibutan wilderness.

  He wanted nothing more than to take it for a spin, but he had an appointment. Luke went back inside and complimented Kruro. He climbed out of his big mech and then unstrapped his smaller red suit of power armor. Fort Carson wouldn’t let him on base wearing magitec armor. He finally got to sit in an attack helicopter. Once he had the vehicle loaded into his skill, he would have a powerful addition to his arsenal.

  Agent Brown hadn’t said which model helicopter he had arranged for today, but Luke hoped it was going to be the Apache. It was a two person attack helicopter with a wide arsenal and thousands of pounds of onboard artillery. It wielded machine guns, rockets, and missiles with a state of the art onboard computer that allowed it pinpoint accuracy.

  Luke wouldn’t mind if he got the Blackhawk instead. It still had some weapons, but was mostly a troop carrier. It had enough lifting power to move around his entire mech suit, making it a mobile attack platform for him to shoot from. Just as long as Agent Brown hadn’t arranged for the Chinook, he would be happy. That helicopter was way too big and slow. He wasn’t even sure if his skill could handle something that big.

  His escort greeted him at the gate and drove him directly to the hanger. As they drove, the escort said, “Our orders mentioned that you needed the bird fully armed, but that you weren’t going to fire the weapons. Is that true? ‘Cus if not, I’ll have to fill out a lot more forms. It’s loaded for live fire now, and you wouldn’t believe the forms I already had to fill out.”

  “Don’t worry. I just have to sit in the cockpit for a bit and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Seems like a waste to load it all up and then unload it all later,” the escort said and parked in front of an open hanger door. “Well, there you go. Your bird is the one in front.”

  “That’s not an Apache. What is it?” Luke asked. It was a military helicopter, but not one he had seen before.