Nicholas led the charge through the minions that swarmed out of the tower. His area denial and shield spells proved invaluable, especially without the assistance of a Celestial player. This would have been so much simpler if Annika hadn’t proven herself to be untrustworthy.

  Elijah summoned his ‘Dragontooth Bombs’ and sent them towards the back line of the enemies as they swarmed out and the doors shut and sealed themselves.

  “Bo,” he called out to the rogue, pointing at the tower doors. “No time to waste. Same plan as the last one.”

  “Got it, Elijah,” Bo agreed, slipping into the shadows.

  Elijah’s ‘Reality Awareness’ burned at the back of his mind. Activating it, he could see the trail of data coming off of Bo’s hidden form. That was a curious sight, and he briefly wondered if he could do the same for any stealthed creature or player, or if it was only an option because Bo was in his party. That was something he’d have to add to his to-do list to experiment with more if he ever found the time.

  But right now, he had to focus. Nicholas was calling out orders, and as the team’s leader, Elijah needed to listen to him.

  Elijah rushed forward under Nicholas’ command, bolstering the man’s defenses by guarding his flank. The roots slowed the enemies, but they could still overwhelm them if they weren’t careful. His mind rushed to his earlier choice of specialization. He’d specifically chosen the utility path to avoid being on the front lines like this, but Nicholas didn’t know that. And Elijah had said nothing. He’d have to have a conversation with the man later about their respective roles in the party, but that could wait until after this event finished. Right now, his party needed him as much as he needed them.

  A minion attempted a drill charge at Nicholas, but Elijah caught the weapon on his blade and shoved it back. He felt his bat bombs explode in the distance and summoned another set to harass the enemies.

  Two more enemies came rushing at him. He looked to Nicholas for his shield, but the Heartwood Sovereign was currently facing off with his own group. He gritted his teeth and readied himself for more pain.

  Instead, a loud bang met him, making his ears ring and sending the minions flying back. Benjamin slipped under Elijah’s guard and in front of him. He was about to yell at the mage before Benjamin brought his hands together several times in rapid succession. ‘Thunder Claps’ rippled out with every clap, a quick succession of bursts that blasted the enemies and scattered them across the battlefield.

  Elijah looked up and saw that instead of just sending them flying, where they could regroup and either come back at the party or veer off to attack other adventurers, they had been slammed into a shimmering green wall of runes. Sasha had modified her ‘Magical Bunker’ spell and was using it as a backstop. ‘That’s fine,’ Elijah thought as he pulled Benjamin out of the way and slashed down on an enemy that had come around Nicholas’ shield. ‘But it doesn’t stop them from—’

  The shifting of the magical bunker interrupted his thoughts about the minions’ return. The wall tipped over and came crashing down. That shouldn’t be possible. When her spell took too much damage, it shattered into shards; it didn’t crumble like an actual building.

  From behind him he heard Sasha cheering, and he realized that this had been her plan, she’d tilted the wall of magic and when it had fallen over it crushed several of the minions who had either been standing underneath, or Benjamin had pushed into it with his spells.

  He didn’t know if it was from his party growing in level, becoming more adept at the game, or their proximity to the unrestrained mana from the leyline, but his party could modify their spells to great effect. It helped that they weren’t worried about mana economy at the moment; they could channel increased magic into their spells without fear that they would be out of the fight before it really began. Which gave Elijah an idea.

  “Nicholas, shield us,” he called to the big man and pulled Benjamin back behind the Heartwood Sovereign’s shield. He held out his hand and pulled the Elementalist’s Fire Focus out of his inventory.

  “I can’t use that,” Benjamin protested, with wide eyes as he looked at the Master-tier item. “I’m not an Elementalist.”

  “Neither am I,” he pushed the gemstone into the mage’s hand. “But I felt it working when I summoned flames onto my blade earlier today. Just do it, okay?”

  He still didn’t look like he believed Elijah, but took the item anyway.

  “Bo’s standing by the door to the tower. Try your best not to incinerate him. Okay?”

  Benjamin nodded and turned back towards the oncoming enemies. They were much fewer now. He stepped forward in front of Nicholas’ shield and held his hands up. One hand held the focus while the other was empty, palm facing out towards the enemy.

  A massive torrent of flames sprang from his hand. The roots of Nicholas’ ‘Entrap’ spell shriveled as the overbearing heat hit them and the remaining minions disappeared into the firestorm. When the spell finally faded, there was nothing left but scorched rock and shriveled tree roots.

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  Bo reappeared in front of the door, staring back at Benjamin and the others. “Well, shit.”

  The doors opened.

  Reality Awareness flared for a moment before it went quiet, but Elijah didn’t catch what it was trying to tell him.

  “Remind me never to piss you off, Ben—”

  The man’s words were cut off.

  Unlike the last time they’d opened a tower, the doorway wasn’t empty. A minion stood inside and drove its drill deep into Bo’s back, the spinning weapon jutting out of his chest.

  Sasha screamed and threw a healing spell at Bo, but it was too late. The rogue exploded into glittering shards of blue mana.

  Elijah was angry, he summoned an entire swarm of ‘Dragontooth Bombs’ and sent them flying at the entrance. The entire skyscraper that was the tower shuddered as they hit, blasting the monster into smithereens. Even knowing that there was no way the minion could have survived, he didn’t wait for the blast to clear. He summoned another swarm of bats. Over and over.

  Sasha and Benjamin both rushed over to him. He heard them yelling at him, but the words weren’t registering. He was so angry; he’d let his guard down, and it had gotten Bo killed.

  Jamming on his ‘Dragontooth Teleport’, he tried to target Bo, but it failed. He pumped more and more mana into it, demanding it connect, but still it refused. He turned to Benjamin. “It won’t let me teleport to him. Go! Teleport to Klade and bring him back.”

  Benjamin shook his head. “I can’t, Elijah.”

  Elijah sprang to his feet and grabbed Benjamin by the collar of his robes. “Do it! Damn you!” His grip tightened. “He’s dead because I was too slow to act.”

  Nicholas’ firm hands grabbed Elijah and pulled him off of Benjamin. He tried to fight back, but Nicholas was much stronger and bigger than him. “Knock it off, Elijah. Bo’s death isn’t anyone’s fault. We can’t get him back.”

  Elijah was about to argue, but Nicholas’ expression stopped him in his tracks. “Kole told us at the start while you were talking to Annika. World Bosses create a field around the area, allowing no incoming or outgoing adventurers until the boss is defeated, or all the adventurers are.”

  It took a minute for Elijah to calm his breathing and relax before Nicholas would finally let go of him. “Listen, Elijah, we need to talk about this, but we need to do it later. A lot of people are relying on us to take out this tower.”

  Compartmentalization.

  It hadn’t ever been one of Elijah’s strong suits, but it was what he needed to do right now. He had to force himself to focus on the task at hand so that no more of his friends died like Bo had. He looked over at the scorched doorway into the tower and grunted.

  “Alright, lead the way, Nicholas. Just be careful. It’s not going to be any easier from here on out.”

  Nicholas nodded his head and led the party towards the door.

  The fight to the center of the tower was both easier and more difficult than it had been during the first. Without Annika backing him up as rear guard, he had to take that position while Nicholas led the way. Most of the enemies came from the front, but there would still be plenty of enemies for Elijah to deal with. They stacked up before entering the tower. Nicholas first, followed by Sasha, then Benjamin, then Elijah taking the rear. Benjamin was to provide support for Elijah, though part of him felt like the mage was being tasked with watching him. To make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

  There wasn’t a need. He would do his job.

  Nicholas powered through the corridors, which were larger this time around, as if they had grown to accommodate Nicholas’ larger size. That meant that even at the tightest points, Elijah and Benjamin could stand side by side and provide cover for each other.

  Several times, Elijah’s bat bombs barely managed to injure an enemy, but a spell from the mage quickly took them out. Even the amused jokes about the bat resting atop Elijah’s head did little to improve his mood. Not even when Sasha nicknamed it ‘Hat Bat’.

  When they made it to the tower’s center, he explained to the party what they were about to face. The long ascent, the attacks from all sides, and the brutal consequences of even one slip-up.

  To his surprise, Nicholas laughed.

  “This is going to be easy,” he chuckled.

  Elijah cocked an eyebrow at him, thinking that their tank had gone mad.

  “Elijah. The solution to that problem is sitting on top of your head right now.”

  He outlined his plan, and Elijah kicked himself for not thinking of it himself. It was so obviously simple that he should have come up with the plan himself.

  It all relied on a spell that they had used several times in the past. During their second fight with the Acolyte of the Undying Library, the game had glitched and the whole world had seemed to go insane. The bats had swarmed them, and the only thing that had kept them all alive had been Sasha’s magical bunker surrounding them.

  The plan was for Sasha to activate the bunker spell and do her best to keep it up while Elijah activated the lift controls. He was the only one present who could burn off mana without using his hands. He felt uncomfortable leaving the defense solely to Sasha, but Nicholas and Benjamin would be on standby on the off chance that something went wrong.

  He wasn’t happy as he got into position at the control panel and felt that he was being punished for letting Bo get killed. Elijah had ordered the rogue to open the door, even if he couldn’t have known that things had changed from the last tower. It was still his fault.

  The ‘Magical Bunker’ went up around them, and Elijah reached out to take the controls. Minions immediately began spawning from the mana stream and raced towards them.

  For a split second, Elijah feared they would be too strong, that they could break the shield with a single burst of damage. The shield, however, held up. It took four hits from the enemies to break her shield, but she was quick enough that she could cast the next one as the first fell.

  There was a worry nagging at the back of Elijah’s mind that as they rose, minions would continue to swarm out and overwhelm the group with sheer numbers, but there seemed to be a limit to how many could spawn.

  When they reached the top of the tower without issue, Elijah felt like he’d been completely useless, but now it was up to him to constrict the flow of mana again.

  “We’ll need a teleport out of here, Benjamin—back to the plateau would be best—as soon as I fix this tower the Overload is going to get intense in here.”

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