Luke circled around the spear wielding monster. The Orc Troll was much bigger than him, but with the Black Mamba mech suit, they were evenly matched in size. The rent in his helmet showed that the monster was stronger, but Luke was pretty sure he was faster. He thrust his chainsword forward in a probing attack. The Orc Troll quickly reacted, deflecting his strike with his longer spear. Despite the incredible cutting power of Luke’s sword, he didn’t have a hope of breaking the spear. It was an artifact, supernaturally durable like the rest of them.

  An uneasy feeling settled into his stomach. Monsters didn’t spawn with an artifact. Someone must have given the monster the spear. It had the ability to return to its owner’s hand, who knows what other magic it was imbued with. That dwarf attendant that sent him into the canyon had been unusually antagonistic. Did he arm the Orc Troll because he hated humans, or had someone paid him to do it?

  All of these questions would have to be answered later. He had a monster to kill first. Luke lunged in with a stab and pulled back before it attempted a clumsy parry. It roared in anger when it missed and swung the spear around in a wide sweep. Luke leaned back and let the blade slice the air in front of him. An instant after it passed, Luke pounced.

  He stabbed forward, aiming for its right arm. The monster leaned back, but not fast enough. He pierced its left lung, just below the shoulder. Then he activated the chain and the blades chewed through the torso, working its way down.

  The Orc Troll pulled Luke closer and punched his helmet with its half hand. Armor Repair had been slowly working on the damaged helmet, but the monster’s strength was too much. It broke through the right side and clipped part of Luke’s skull. Intense pain blossomed across his head, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. It aggravated his earlier injury and made it bleed even more.

  Luke stumbled back, blood covering his right eye. He leaned to the side to keep the other eye clear. He couldn’t reach his hand up to wipe his forehead because of all the layers of armor.

  The Orc Troll had a sucking wound in his chest, something that would be deadly to most. But it didn’t seem to notice. It lunged forward, stabbing Luke while he was still catching his balance from the stumble. Luke parried, but not enough. The artifact spear pierced into his left hip, fouling the gears and pistons in his mech joint. The blade didn’t touch Luke himself, but the spalling mech parts cut into his hip and made him bleed even more.

  Luke grabbed the spear with his right gauntlet. The Orc Troll tried to pull it back, but Luke held on tight. With his left hand he swung the chainsword across, activating it as it hit skin. The monster ignored the attack like every other one in this fight.

  Two seconds later, the chainsword made it all the way through the Orc Troll’s neck. The monster’s head fell off its body with a look of confusion on its face. The right hand held onto the spear for a few seconds more, but then its grip loosened and the body joined the head on the ground.

  Luke took a step back, out of the blood puddle. He stumbled and fell on his butt with a yelp of pain. That spear strike had hurt him more than he realized. His head was pounding, he was feeling faint. His hip felt wet. Neither the mech nor his flesh could support weight. He dropped his hand to his left hip and tried to pull out a healing potion.

  For the first time since he got the class, his Dexterity failed him. He fumbled with the healing potion and it dropped back into the storage compartment. He closed his eyes and focused. He could do this. He just needed to focus.

  “Let me do that,” Jinx said, her normal snark absent.

  She carefully grabbed the potion bottle in her mouth and put a paw on his chest. He allowed himself to be pushed to the ground. Once he was prone, she sliced off the tip of the potion and poured most of it down his throat. The rest she poured over his head and hip. Healing magic got to work, knitting him up from the inside and out. Pain spiked and then subsided completely.

  “Thanks, Jinx. That was a close one.”

  “I’ll always be there for you Luke,” she said and turned away. “Who else would get me delicious treats and monster cores?”

  “Who indeed? Thanks again. I’m feeling better already. I think I’ll just lay here for a bit though. My mana is tapped out and my mech needs repairing.”

  He closed his eyes and took deep calming breaths while he lay there, waiting for Armor Repair to do its job. Jinx wandered around the area, but didn’t go far. She extracted the monster core and placed it in his compartment while he waited.

  The monster gauntlet was timed, but he could afford a break. He was almost to the end anyway. There would be one or two more monsters at most. The next half hour was a quiet one, punctuated by another skill up notice.

  That had come when his mech suit had fully repaired. It looked like he had scars now, the repaired sections were a darker black than the other parts. He liked it, particularly since he knew that the repaired sections were stronger than they were before. He wanted to have his whole suit of armor fully repaired up to the higher standard. He realized he didn’t have to wait for the armor to be broken from battle, he could smash it up himself and then let his passive skill fix it while he read a book or something.

  The skill up notice was enough to kick himself into motion and he stood back up. His mech was in better than perfect condition, but his body still needed a good night’s rest. He had stopped bleeding right after the healing potion, but his hip still ached and his headache never really went away. He told himself one more monster fight and then he was done for the night, one way or another.

  “Let’s go, Jinx. Time to find out what’s around the corner,” Luke said as he stretched.

  He picked up the artifact spear and felt it bond to him. It felt like a comfortable length right now, but it would be ridiculously long if he wasn’t wearing a fifteen feet tall mech.

  “I already know what’s around the corner,” Jinx padded over to his side and looked him in the eye. “We should go. I don’t want to face that hideous thing.”

  “What? Why? Did you see what it was already?”

  “I didn’t need to. I got close enough to smell it and came right back. It’s a snake.” she said with finality.

  “A snake? Like a titan snake? I guess that could be a dragon, right?”

  “No, not a dragon. A snake. Probably a titan.”

  “So you don’t want to fight against a big snake? Is this a cat thing? I’ve always heard cats are afraid of snakes. Is that a real thing?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be real? Who wants to even see a wiggly thing like that slither across the ground, let alone fight one? Snakes are abhorrent. Please don’t tell me you actually like snakes?”

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  Luke smiled slightly. “No, no. You are right, snakes are the worst. But I fight scary things all the time. I think we can take it.”

  Jinx sniffed and turned away. “Maybe you want to fight it, but I refuse.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll fight it on my own. You can stay behind if you’re scared.”

  “I’m not scared. I'm not. I just don’t want to fight something that disgusting. I have standards.”

  Luke bit his lip to keep from laughing. “Alright. I’ll let you know after it’s dead.”

  He set off down the canyon. It wasn’t too long before he reached the end of the gauntlet. It was a large round section of the canyon, clearly manmade. On the far wall was a pillar with something shiny atop the tip. That would be the glory trophy.

  The ground was littered with large boulders of different sizes. Between them slithered a snake so big, it could only be a titan. It was five feet wide and at least forty long. Its scales were gold colored with a red diamond pattern. A glimpse of the head revealed dragon-like features and solid red eyes.

  For the first time since Luke built it, he finally leaned into the stealth capabilities of his Black Mamba mech. It wasn’t just that it was all black, the fur on the chitin parts would break up his silhouette and served to slightly quiet his movements.

  Up until now, he had been confident that he could handle anything the fourth hardest gauntlet could throw at him. But that was before he ran into a magic resistant monster that had been gifted an artifact.

  Slowly, Luke snuck into the final boss arena. He covered his bone white gauntlet and kept to the shadows of the numerous boulders. He got within two hundred feet and settled in behind a boulder to come up with a plan. Its thick scales were clearly strong enough to shrug off any of his weaker attacks. He would have to skip straight to his strongest attacks as soon as it came within range.

  All of a sudden, the snake reared up like a cobra and turned to face him. His mech was fully in shadows, but it was staring right at him. It hissed angrily and activated a skill with a flash of light. A half dozen outlines of snakes spread out from its body and solidified around it. Now there were six titan snakes, indistinguishable clones that started slithering closer to him while keeping their heads above the many boulders.

  Frustrated that he hadn’t been able to get closer first, Luke stood up and fired off attacks, one after another. Fire, acid, fracture, and dissever magics streaked across the sky.

  They all missed.

  Or seemed to at least. He had spread out his shots and none of them hit their target. When a spell was about to impact a snake, that snake fizzled out and disappeared, like it had been an illusion. His four shots had dispelled four snakes, leaving only two. He switched the dissever beam over to the other two snakes, dispelling another illusion and annoying the real one.

  It ducked low to avoid the beam and slithered closer. Another flash of light and there were six monsters again. Frustratingly, Luke couldn’t tell which was which. Even with the mana vision from his mech helmet, he couldn’t tell which one was the real monster, and which were illusions. He wasn’t even sure they were illusions. He was pretty sure that several of them had moved boulders as they slithered past.

  He would need help nailing this monster down. He sent a tendril of intent into his core and woke up the Greater Machine Soul there. He gave it instructions on the situation as he ran out from cover and started shooting. As he ran, he pushed Apex Machine to form a runic helicopter behind himself. Gray mana rushed out of him and violet wireframes drew runes and edges.

  More shots dispelled illusions and again, the real monster was the last one he shot at. This time the titan didn’t wait for him to figure that out though, it was already attacking by the time he fired his dissever beam. He had to jump out of the way of a cobra-like strike. The snake head shattered the boulder he had been standing in front of. He thanked his boosted Dexterity. Without his buffs, there was no way he would have survived.

  The runic heli took flight then, flying behind the titan whisper quiet. Luke fired off a few more ineffectual fireballs to keep the monster’s attention on him. The monster hissed, as if it was insulted he would use something so weak. A flash of light and another six monsters appeared, much closer this time. Luke turned and fired off shots behind himself and then to his sides. The runic heli fired at the same time, strafing behind the monsters to cut them down efficiently.

  Again, the last monster was the real one. It might be part of the skill that it could choose which body is the real one. Or it had a Schrodinger’s snake thing going on, it was all six and none of them at the same time. It wasn’t until all other snakes had been destroyed that the waveform collapsed and it was in one location again.

  Once the titan was whittled down to one, the runic heli fired off its mana missile. Unlike the comet shot the runic tank used, this was a thin black projectile. It was like a void spear. An instant before it hit, the snake flashed with light and copies surrounded Luke again. The mana missile hit and pulled in everything around it like a black hole. It sucked up an illusory titan along with two boulders and a large section of canyon ground.

  “Dang, that’s powerful. How many more of those do you have?” Luke asked. He didn’t need to talk out loud, but it required less focus than sending a mental message.

  I have two more void missiles, along with six ooze rockets, and four dozen force projectiles.

  Luke narrowed his eyes. The void missile would be the perfect titan killer, but he would need to nail it down first. He fired spell rifles at the copies while he thought about the problem. It had reacted so quickly to the runic heli’s shot. In the short time the magic missile traveled through the air, it identified a major threat and separated into six copies. He couldn’t hope to overcome reflexes that fast.

  He had to try something different.

  While he thought, the snake didn’t stay dormant. It attacked him over and over again, often with several copies at once. Luke targeted the closest snake and fired a shot at that one. It dispelled that copy and he dodged the remaining ones. He was still hit by stone ricochets and close calls. His mech was slowly gathering surface damage. Often his spear was the only thing keeping him from a faceful of fang.

  A terrible idea occurred to him. There was a way to tie up the snake for long enough for his runic heli to kill it. But it would be risky and costly whether it was successful or not. He decided to go for it. The thrill of the fight was making his heart pound and all he wanted right now was victory.

  Instead of jumping away the next time, Luke grabbed the artifact spear with both hands and jumped forward. He slid past the snake’s strike and leapt towards the center of the long monster. He brought the spear down atop the snake’s spine. The spear’s magic started working its way through the thick scales as he pushed as hard as he could. A high pitched screech sounded and red and gold dust flew into the air.

  Before Luke made it even halfway through the scales, the titan wrapped itself around his mech. One loop covered his legs. A second loop covered his torso. The third loop pulled his arms up and covered his head. It wrapped itself tighter and tighter. Metal groaned and chitin cracked. The monster’s head loomed above him.

  He sent a mental order to the runic heli to prepare to fire.

  Then he created a Blink Ball and tossed it. The swirling gray ball arced up and over the snake’s coils and landed behind a nearby boulder. The instant it touched down, Luke was teleported to that spot. Only his inner power armor came with him, leaving the Black Mamba mech to distract the titan.

  The hovering construct fired its void missile directly at the monster’s head from only twenty feet away. The jet black spear zipped across the short distance and impacted the monster. Powerful magics started pulling everything in, including the titan’s entire head. The pinpoint black hole was quickly satiated and cut out, leaving a headless corpse.

  Luke stepped out from behind the boulder and threw his hands up into the air. “Yeah baby! That’s what you get! Don’t mess with humans or it’ll be the last thing you do!”

  He chuckled to himself and climbed up the monster’s coils to get to the mech inside. It was completely shattered and crunched. Everything was broken, even his chainsword. Only the artifact spear was still intact. He sighed. He knew that was a possibility when he came up with this plan, but he had hoped that it would be intact enough that he could put it on. His Armor Repair skill could probably still fix it, but he would have to have it delivered to his apartment instead of wearing it home.

  He grabbed the monster cores from the ruins of his storage compartment. He didn’t want to tempt the delivery people with riches like this. Then he dug into the corpse and pulled out the titan’s core. Tier ten. It was the biggest core he had ever seen. They were so rare that he didn’t even know what they would be worth on Earth. Millions at least.

  With a smile on his face, Luke sauntered over to the pillar with the trophy atop it. The pillar was sheer, but he didn’t doubt his ability to climb it. Before he could start, someone yelled behind him.

  “Don’t you dare, human. You’ve already ruined the gauntlet for the day, I can’t have you stealing the glory too,” the cranky dwarf from earlier yelled. He was hovering down from the center of the canyon, using the same elevator platform as before.