The first member of the party they went to collect was Sasha; above anything else, they would need their healer. The first tower ascent with Annika had proven that.

  They found her in a stone structure that someone had erected, casting the occasional healing spell when someone came in heavily wounded. There were several healers there, and it was obvious right away that her abilities were being underutilized. Sasha wasn’t some nurse in a World War Two reenactment; she was a dynamic and powerful combatant. She’d proven as much several times, including during her battle with the Dryad Guardian. Having her sitting around in a war tent was a waste.

  ”Sasha,” Bo called to her as they landed from their teleport. “Change of plans. We need our babysitter.”

  She turned to face him with a scowl on her face. Her expression immediately changed when she saw Elijah. He was decked out in his new armor, but he could feel that blood still covered his face. The minions of Whir didn’t bleed, so she had to know that it was his blood.

  She moved to join them, but a Master-tier cleric grabbed her arm. “You are under orders to man this healing zone,” he hissed at her.

  Elijah crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, his sword summoned and pressed against the man’s wrist. “Remove your hand, or I will remove it for you.”

  He knew he was quoting a movie, but he couldn’t resist. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d gone too far and actually cut the man’s hand off; part of him wished he hadn’t had enough control to avoid it.

  The man’s eyes flicked up to Elijah’s name tag and sneered at him. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Elijah couldn’t suppress the grin that spread across his face. “I’m the one who killed Arturus and trapped his entire army in a dungeon.”

  “Big talk,” the man snarked. “Especially for an adventurer who just hit Journeyman-tier.”

  Elijah shrugged his shoulders. “I warned you.” He was tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of dying. And tired of people thinking they could boss him and his friends around just because they were higher levelled. That they could put their hands on him and his friends because they thought they were stronger.

  Just as he had done with Bob back in the Heartwood Glade, he separated this cleric’s hand from his body with a single strike of his blade. The man stumbled back, clutching at the stump and screaming bloody murder.

  ”You’re a healer,” Sasha told him, rolling her eyes. “Just fix it.” She raised her hand and threw a healing spell at him before turning her back to both the cleric and Elijah.

  She walked over to Bo and pointed her finger at him. “You are still in trouble for the babysitter comment, but we’ll figure out your punishment after Whir is dead.”

  Elijah set his hand on both of their shoulders and let his teleport carry them away to their next target: Benjamin.

  The Mana Overload was dense when they arrived, much stronger than he had felt since first arriving at the event. Elijah and Bo were fine thanks to the poison they had taken, but Sasha immediately made a pained noise as they arrived. She went to work, burning off mana with several casts of healing spells.

  ”Who the hell brought a healer here?” Elijah heard a familiar voice yell, and he turned to face Bob.

  Bob was with several other Mana Mages, eight of them in total, which honestly shocked him. He’d assumed that the class was so rare that there would only be two or three. They were working in pairs. One mage was casting the beam of concentrated mana directly at the goliath form of Whir, while a second was draining other spellcasters and funneling that mana into the Mana Mage casting the attack.

  They were using mages as batteries.

  Elijah’s blood boiled as he watched Benjamin collapse to the ground from mana drain as one of the funnelers drained him dry. The man didn’t even appear to care; he just called for the next mage in line to step up.

  Elijah could see the haunted and tired expressions on their faces. The mana mages had been doing this to them throughout the entire battle. He was about to step in when he heard a frightening sound.

  Bo was laughing. Loudly and uproariously. The sound made Bob’s face go pale.

  ”Shit, Bo?” Bob asked with wide-eyed fright. His mana beam faltered slightly, but he quickly got it back under control. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  Bo stepped out from behind Elijah and approached Bob. “Oh no, I think it’s exactly what it looks like. Alan. I thought I recognized you in the Heartwood Glade when you attacked us with the other Reapers, but you were too far away to get a good look at.”

  It took a second, but Elijah realized exactly what was happening here. He’d heard the name ‘Alan’ before from Bo. Alan was a member of the balance team at Shardline Midwest who had worked with Bo. He was a developer.

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  ”So this is why you missed all those game nights with the rest of the team, or came into work looking exhausted. You were getting high on your own product, so to speak.”

  Bo walked over to him. He was helpless to defend himself without turning the mana beam on the assembled crowd. Not that Elijah would put it past him, but he was sure that Bob would face Celestial-level repercussions if he did so.

  “This explains why you were so against nerfing the class.”

  Alan shook his head and tried to turn to face Bo, but the Mana Mage at his back kept him turned towards the world boss, though he himself looked disgusted at Bob’s—or Alan’s—actions.

  “Hey Elijah, I think we know who the admin was that helped Arturus break the Dungeon Core in the Reaper lair.”

  “What? No, Bo I—” Bob’s words were cut off by a gurgling sound and his mana beam cutting off completely. When Bo stepped away from Bob Elijah could see that there was a hole in his robes and blood was soaking the cloth.

  “Now you know how I feel. What it feels like to be backstabbed by a friend.” He walked over to Benjamin and helped the mage up, then walked him over to where Elijah and Sasha were standing.

  Elijah was grinning at the justice that Bo had just dealt out, but wiped the smile off his face when he saw the concerned look on Sasha’s face. She wasn’t happy about what she had just observed, even though Bo was grinning like an idiot. “That was a fifteen thousand gold poison I just used on him. Totally worth it, though. He’s out of the fight without access to mana unless he can find someone to cure it for him.”

  “You good, Benjamin?” Elijah asked, helping to steady him as Bo brought him over.

  The young man nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered, his voice sounding exhausted. “I learned everything I needed to know from those guys.” He glared back at the collapsed form of Bob before turning his attention back to Elijah and the others.

  There was an air of tension from Benjamin and Sasha as they huddled around Elijah with Bo. He didn’t see what the problem was, Bo had dealt justice in his own small way to someone who had been unfairly unbalancing the game in favor of the bad guys. Bo’s actions would prevent Bob from continuing to get an unfair advantage by providing more damage to the world boss.

  Elijah’s eyes focused on Whir just before the bats whirled around the four of them and carried them off.

  [World Boss]

  Whir the World Miner

  Threat Level: Celestial | Level: 1000

  HP: 197,992 / 250,000

  They still had a long way to go before defeating it, but if Elijah was right, once all six towers had been dealt with, its health would begin dropping significantly faster, even without the aid of a cheater.

  He used his teleport to lock onto Nicholas and transported the party. They arrived at a choke point. Someone had erected barriers to funnel the minions swarming this area into a killing zone. For once, someone competent actually seemed to be in charge. They had Nicholas at the front, blocking enemies with his massive shield and activating his spells for area denial. His most effective spell was his ‘Entrap’ spell. Heartwood tree roots sprang from the ground and wrapped around the treads of the oncoming minions.

  A woman named Svetlana with the Guardian class came running over to him. “What’s up? The boss sent me over to see what you guys needed.” She pointed back over where she had come from, where someone with the Commander class was issuing orders and coordinating aura buffs.

  ”We need the Heartwood Sovereign, Nicholas. Taking out the towers and we need our team’s tank.” There was no emotion in Elijah’s voice, but he felt the shadows welling up around his arm, ready to summon his sword if this turned into another fight.

  “Sure,” Svetlana replied with a nod, “give me a minute.”

  She rushed back over to the Commander and spoke with him before rushing to Nicholas. They spoke quickly for a couple of seconds before she took his place in the shield wall.

  “If we’re taking out towers, we better not be doing it by blowing them up.” Nicholas hollered to them as he came running over to them. “Just makes more work for the tanks and doesn’t seem to help anything.”

  “No,” Elijah growled. “That was the Celestials being impatient. We’re going to take them the correct way.” He hooked a finger back towards the tower that he’d cleared with Bo. The stream of mana was significantly smaller than the ones that hadn’t been cleared yet.

  He nodded his head. “So what happened with Annika?” he asked, looking between Bo and Elijah.

  ”Later,” Elijah answered. “Stack up. We need to get to the next tower.”

  Sasha and Benjamin each grabbed one of his arms while Bo gripped the back of his chest armor. Nicholas placed his hand on Elijah’s shoulder.

  He tried activating his 'Dragontooth Teleport', but it struggled to connect. It wasn’t that he tried to teleport into the tower; instead, he tried just in front of it like he had earlier, but it was fighting him. He pushed more mana into the spell; he’d force it if he had to. The bats sprang up, but they seemed more sluggish than normal.

  When they deposited him in front of the tower, he stumbled slightly, but his friends surrounding him helped to stabilize him.

  “You good?” Nicholas asked with concern etched across his face.

  Elijah nodded. “I wasn’t expecting how difficult it was for me to teleport all of us.”

  “I know why,” Benjamin told them. “It’s cause of how heavy you are, Nicholas. You need to lose some weight before we do this again.” His serious expression cracked away into a grin.

  Benjamin’s joke broke the tension that Elijah had been feeling since he’d picked up Sasha. He could sense that there were still things Sasha wanted to say to him. Something was boiling beneath the surface of her calm demeanor.

  Did she know about Annika kissing him somehow?

  Minions were ushering forth from the tower, and they had a job to do. Every moment they wasted standing around was lowering their eventual percentage of the reward. Not to mention the struggle to burn off enough mana to compensate for the amount they were gaining from the area effect. Elijah grabbed hold of the poison debuff that had been applied to him. He needed access to his mana now that it was time for battle and cancelled the effect by setting the timer to just a few seconds.

  Nicholas rushed forward with a ‘Dash’ and began working to tangle up the minion and shield his friends from harm. As long as Elijah had his team with him, the enemies didn’t stand a chance.