Vivi discussed with Civar regarding the possibility of creating true ascension skills for metal using the enhancement strings. After a lengthy session of theorizing and attempting different combinations, they agreed that ascending metal was most likely possible, but achieving it would be too complex given the timeframe of one day. Going forward, Vivi would draw an ascension skill for Civar, and his team would attempt to reverse engineer how it worked.

  If the walls weren’t blasted open by the behemoth, that was.

  For now, the missiles were ascended with hammer technology. It wasn’t perfect, but Vivi was fairly certain she could, at the very least, harm the behemoth with these missiles.

  With her final hours before the attack, Vivi had one more thing she wanted to try out. She tightened an ether root in her vise, stretched her fingers, and picked up the crochet hook. Lucius initiated the root, controlling it with precision.

  She shaped the veins for a runesword, though she did things a bit differently than usual. Instead of creating a core with the first ether root and planning ahead for the next two ether roots to follow, Vivi took as much space as she could with the first, extending its branches all the way to the sharp edge with thick stalks. She left no room for even a second ether root.

  Grandpa could probably fit another, Vivi thought. Regardless, she kept shaping branches. The goal was to create a one-runed sword that used as much space as possible.

  Generally, shaping single-runed swords like these wasn’t advised. Rune-combinations—a strength and a sharpness rune, for example—were much more powerful compared to a full network of veins filled with just a strength rune. Spreading a strength rune well would make the sword more powerful, of course, but adding a second rune created synergies.

  Still, Vivi wanted to try something. She completed the veins and carved a strength rune on its hilt. She melted a quick crucible of red hardsteel, and dipped the veins in.

  Instead of merely pushing ether through the strength rune like she normally would, she added two pieces of ether roots, creating a small enhancement string. One with an incomplete mass rune, the other with a crush rune. She pushed ether through the mass runes, and the ether root filled up, moving to the crush rune before eventually leading to the strength runes of Vivi’s veins inside the metal.

  Theoretically, she had created a great rune. All three power runes were now shaped into the sword all at once, through a single rune. The veins lit up and began bonding with the metal as it cooled down.

  The question was, would this sword actually be strong? As strong as a three-runed sword with the same combination? Stronger? Or would this merely be a waste of time?

  She pondered that all throughout the blacksmithing process. Completing the sword took her another six and a half hours. She had to occasionally bring out the small enhancement string to fill up the veins with more ether. This will probably be a problem, she thought after the fourth time she needed to refill the veins while hammering the metal.

  Nonetheless, she completed the sword, quenching the blade in water. With the blade completed, she once again brought in her enhancement string and filled it with ether.

  She then summoned Moonlight, holding it in her left hand, with her new test sword on her right. She didn’t know any stances while dual-wielding weapons. The swords pointed at the ground loosely as she closed her eyes, focusing entirely on her sixth sense.

  Now, which sword feels stronger? she thought, while curious foundry-workers watched. Lucius, too, eyed her from her core, tail slowly wagging.

  The answer was quite obvious. Moonlight’s presence was much more clear in her head. Ether flowed within, shaped directly from Vivi’s hand. She still felt connected with the ether inside her main sword. She was still touching the runes that shaped the ether, and she was constantly pushing in more, which strengthened the connection. The strong connection seemed to form just as the ether was shaped active, the moment it hit the final structure within the rune connecting it active.

  On the other hand, her test sword merely felt like an object. The sword was heavy—the mass and crush runes were clearly in effect—and the blade would definitely crush any spirit blades it came in contact with, but Vivi didn’t feel any special connection to it. If she were to push more ether in, hoping to gain a connection, that ether would only be shaped by the strength rune.

  She performed test swings with much the same opinion. Both swords were strong, but Moonlight felt stronger.

  “Maybe we can bring out a surgestone block,” Lucius suggested. “To see which one is stronger.”

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  Both swords would crush surgestone into pieces, Vivi thought. We’d need to truly stress-test the swords to know which one is stronger. We only have time to go with feeling alone, for now.

  Right now, Vivi was fairly certain Moonlight was stronger. Considerably so. However, right now, the enhancement strings only added two different runes. It was theoretically possible to shape all runes in at the same time.

  Vivi decided to do just that. On top of the three power runes, she added the three efficacy runes: sharpness, flow, swiftness. She considered adding a shockwave rune and a strife rune as well, but those two felt unnecessary for the situation. Generally, the miscellaneous runes weren’t as useful for runeswords as the main six.

  The longer enhancement string essentially turned the test sword into a six-runed blade. Holding the sword, she could feel all of the effects. Swiftness attempted to make the sword lighter, while mass did the opposite, both runes strengthening the sword. Flow increased the efficiency of all runes included.

  It was a powerful sword. A swing would hit as hard, if not harder, than Moonlight.

  But as Vivi performed more test swings, the main problem of her test sword showed itself. Vivi couldn’t push more ether into the sword, lest she’d only push in more strength-shaped ether. Every time the sword needed to be refilled, she’d need to bring out the enhancement string, letting go of the grip to reveal the runes beneath. In the middle of a fight, that was simply not feasible.

  With her missiles, adding ether with enhancement strings was optimal, as the missiles would get launched, collide, and that would be it. Runeswords, however, were designed to be mobile. Feeling the flow of ether within the blade was crucial, at least in Vivi’s opinion. Fighting with a lifeless blade would just feel odd.

  Still, Vivi considered the experiment a success. We can definitely use enhancement strings like this for our missiles. Adding sharpness and flow runes will be useful, at least.

  To her right, the foundry workers were creating the last few parts before the upgraded slingshot launcher could be assembled. Everything seemed to be proceeding well.

  Vivi watched nervously. With these two ideas—ascension by hammer, and using enhancement strings to further enhance the missiles—she was probably as close to prepared as she could get.

  Now all she could do was pray that their creations were powerful enough to defeat a level-devouring boss.

  ***

  Coshi crested the hill, and the landscape of the Shivell mountains turned to a hellscape.

  A fog of red ether extruded from the colossal creature, blocking the facets’ light, as if a storm was ongoing—a result of the sheer amount of ether that created its aura. Coshi struggled to even call it a monster. She didn’t feel fear or anticipation at the sight of it. A part of her disappeared from the fact that she would somehow have to deal with this.

  Violent tendrils of solid ether fluttered around the enormous mound. Its gaping mouths were like entrances to a colony. Coshi watched as a dread raven exited from one of the mouths, freshly reanimated. Behemoths were said to reanimate anything dead they devoured, and that seemed to be true.

  “Mother of all ether,” Anthony said, pausing beside her. The mound inched its way toward them. It looked slow, but considering its size, the mound moved at around a demon’s running speed without ether.

  For a while, Coshi and Anthony merely stared at it, both thinking the same thing. How in the name of the abyss would they ever kill something like this?

  “The good news is that it’s not swarmed by fliers,” Anthony said. “The amount of lesser monsters following it is relatively small.”

  “Behemoths aren’t shamans,” Coshi said. “They don’t command. They merely reanimate.”

  “We are lucky no shaman has been reanimated to work in tandem,” Anthony said.

  That wasn’t much of a reassurance, considering the size of the monster they had to deal with. A real behemoth had actually spawned. A level-ending monster.

  When was the last time one of those had spawned? A thousand years? Or two thousand, dating back to the infamous colossus of the dreadbringer—the monster that roamed the seventh level for over two hundred years, until a second storm broke on top of the colossus, breaking it to pieces, finally allowing hunters to clear the lesser parts. Even that supposedly took over ten years.

  Modern hunters were more skilled, of course, but it didn’t help to know that Coshi was one of those supposedly more skilled hunters.

  This monster was on its way to her city. And she was the one tasked with defence.

  She felt a buildup of ether within the behemoth, inside one of its mouths. They both went into stance, preparing for what was to come.

  The attack shot as swiftly as any projectile. A thorn-vine lashed out from the mouth at tremendous speed. Coshi and Anthony jumped in opposite directions, dodging. Moments later, the vine crashed into the hill.

  The stone below was crushed to bits, and the foothold disappeared. Coshi fell a solid ten feet before landing on top of crushed stone, in a cloud of dusted sand.

  Bits of stone stuck into the vine. It quickly retracted, and the monster ate the bits, puking out little golems from its countless mouths. She and Anthony connected again.

  “How can we even taunt this thing?” Coshi asked. “It’ll destroy any taunter we place down.”

  Anthony had no response, an emotionless expression on his face as the tendrils of ether continued slashing wildly around the monster.

  The behemoth continued toward Shivenar, and Coshi doubted there was anything she could do to stop it.

  But she wasn’t alone. Today, Shivenar had weapons.

  Behind her stood a small entourage of demons—the terrified ballistics team, having just witnessed a whole mound get blown open. Coshi filled her legs with ether and ran to them.

  “Load the weapon!” Coshi shouted.

  “They are ready!” the leader, Patryn, said.

  Coshi grabbed the launcher and gave it a quick inspection. “This is the shooting lever, right?”

  “The trigger, yes,” Patryn said. “We’re still too far. The range is no more than two hundred feet.”

  She nodded, grabbed the weapon from the handle, and turned to the behemoth slowly approaching.

  Show me, Vivi, how much destruction your weapons can instill.

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