Coshi charged forward, slingshot launcher in hand.

  Another thorn vine released; she jumped to the side. Carefully, to not shake the missile inside the barrel, as that could apparently destroy the weapon. She dodged, the shockwave of the impact behind her flaring her hair.

  She continued running. The boss was so large it felt as if she was already right beside it, four hundred feet must have been between them.

  A dread raven dove down at her. Coshi unsheathed Darkness Slasher—her ridiculously named and ridiculously powerful runesword—casting a shockwave at the raven. Feathers scattered as the bird disintegrated, dying in an instant.

  Golems blocked her path. With her skill, Ascension of Wind, active, Coshi’s grimace was lit-up like a glaring street-lamp. She ran, slashing with her runesword, knocking the golems down. One by one, she ran past, slashing them cleanly in half.

  A tendril of ether followed. It collided with Coshi’s sword, then rebounded, as if an impenetrable string had attempted to cut her in half.

  Behemoths weren’t merely tank monsters. They were gigantic—bulky enough to survive a whole mountain crashing against them—but they were also destructive and agile in their own way. The closer Coshi got, the more violent the tendrils grew, whipping her with force.

  She gritted her teeth, ducked under one, slashing at another, until she had a free moment with nothing killing her for a second.

  She pointed the barrel of the slingshot launcher up at the behemoth’s body and pulled the trigger.

  A snap blew in the barrel as the missile launched with a shockwave of its own. The next Coshi knew, the behemoth’s black skin buckled inward where her barrel pointed, and a hole appeared, as if fabric had been ripped open.

  Even with ether in her eyes, Coshi couldn’t see the chunk of metal. She pulled the trigger, and the damage was done in a near instant. A tendril whipped at her, now with more force, and she defended.

  Tendrils immediately lashed out from the wound, as if trying to find whatever had just damaged the boss. They continued thrashing for a good five seconds, finding nothing.

  As the tendrils disintegrated, wisps bled from the wound in the behemoth’s skin. At least a hundred wisps every second. An inconsequential amount—the monster didn’t look phased in the slightest. But the wound was severe enough that the boss couldn’t repair it.

  A couple more—a couple hundred more—could cause damage.

  Coshi was about to run back to reload, when something popped out of the behemoth’s mouth. A small glimmering insect, like a metallic cannonball flying with wings with a little stinger up its bottom.

  Curse the damn abyss, Coshi thought, fairly certain that the insect was the missile she’d just shot. The behemoth had reanimated it into a monster.

  The insect seemed slow and clumsy, struggling to keep the weight of the metal in the air. Coshi slashed at it regardless, hitting a shockwave right across its middle. The shockwave collided, and the insect rebounded backward, unphased.

  I can probably ignore those, Coshi thought.

  The tendrils she could not ignore. One of them whipped directly from the side with force. Coshi slashed at it with her sword. The force of impact knocked both targets backward; the tendril whipped backward and Coshi flew twenty feet.

  She landed on her feet, then dashed back to the reloading team.

  “Here’s the plan!” Coshi called. “I run in, I shoot, I slash, and you reload! Keep running away from it. Keep a mile of distance at all times!”

  Coshi handed back the launcher, and another was handed to her, ready to fire. The command would probably be taxing for the non-fighters—constantly running away—but everyone was maxed out. They should manage.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  And the presence of the behemoth should probably keep everyone motivated.

  The dance continued from there. Coshi and Anthony were the only ones who could get close enough to the behemoth without dying. They ran in to shoot, then retreated to reload, while fighting back against tendrils, dodging thorn vines, and killing any monsters the behemoth reanimated.

  Anthony also tried running close enough to attack it with runeswords. And his sword, enhanced with a weapon enhancement string, did cut through, but with each wound came more tendrils, enough that even a fourth elevation hunter with inside-carved runeswords couldn’t overpower them.

  So they continued shooting it with missiles. Ten became a hundred, each hole slowly bleeding the boss down.

  Give us a week, Coshi thought through gritted teeth, and this thing might actually lose some weight!

  The dance must have continued for an exhausting two hours. The reloading team warned them that they were about to run out of missiles. Coshi ordered them to get more, and a man ran back to the city to fetch their remaining missiles.

  It still seemed as if they’d done no progress at all. The problem with colossal monsters wasn’t that they’d kill a strong hunter. Coshi could, of course, make a wrong move and get herself cut down by a single tendril, but a proficient hunter of even the first elevation could probably run from a behemoth. The title of hunter killer went to godslayers—the humanoid sword-wielding monsters that would chase down a hunter to the ends of the abyss.

  Colossal monsters were dangerous because of their near immortality. No matter how much damage the behemoth received, it continued onward. It would make its way from city to city, destroying everything in its path like a slow-moving tsunami.

  Eventually, probably today, it would make its way to the city. And there, Shivenar’s walls would not know how to run away.

  Coshi returned again for reloading, when a new person had arrived in a black and purple dress. Coshi clicked her tongue, seeing her here.

  Vivian Runeblessed stared at the moving mound with her eyes wide, lost for words. An innocent expression, Coshi thought, for a miracle worker such as her. Standing there, under the behemoth’s shadow, Vivi looked like a seventeen year old girl again.

  Poor girl, Coshi thought. She built her home in my city. Now this happens a month later.

  Regardless, Coshi found herself calling the girl’s name. “Vivian!” She ran to her and in a rush of words, asked, “How much longer?”

  “It’s done,” Vivian said. In an instant, determination overruled the shock in her lips.

  A saint, Coshi thought. “Get it ready to shoot!” she ordered, then asked, “How close are we to the city?”

  The question was useless. Coshi knew they were close. She recognized this area. The shape of the hills surrounding the main path from Shivenar to Zhelendor; it was all familiar.

  “Can’t be more than ten miles,” Patryn said. “It’ll reach the city in an hour.”

  Coshi gritted her teeth. The behemoth wasn’t even close to dying. “Vivi, set up the ballistas!”

  Vivian saluted. Coshi was surprised for a moment, having never seen her do that gesture before. Vivian usually preferred to bow.

  “My home is on the line,” Vivian said, her face a mix of terror and determination. “We will shoot it with all we have!”

  ***

  The hammer clashed, shaping the metal against the anvil.

  With each swing, the feeling of something sharp piercing Thomas’s lungs grew worse. The pain was starting to get unbearable. His heart wanted to stop. The profession that used to keep him in shape, the hammer he loved, now threatened to kill him.

  “If you were younger, or if you’d had the ability to shape ether earlier, the chances of recovery would have been high,” his goddamned healer had said with utterly emotionless eyes. Lortel, that demon. Supposedly, she was Vivi’s friend, though Thomas personally didn’t have much nice to say about the woman.

  Lortel had been right, however. There was no recovery from these wounds. The scars inside his body were too severe, thanks to that asshat Andre and his crew. Not that Thomas would have lived much longer regardless. He’d felt old long before Vivi’s fifteenth birthday.

  More ether, he ordered.

  The being complied with a grumble. It was an annoying little critter in Thomas’s opinion. He certainly didn’t understand how Vivi could get along with one of these dumb things. But without its ability to shape ether, Thomas would never have had the strength to complete this sword.

  He ignored the pain and swung. The clump of metal on his anvil was taking the shape of a sword. This new metal was stubborn, though it could be tamed with a steady rhythm and hard swings, and of course, with a steady transfer of wisps through the runes poking out from the exposed hilt.

  The metal was one of the most insane alloys Thomas had worked with. Thirty percent othnite, thirty percent botanic adamantite, and forty percent enirium. Or what the scientists claimed was enirium, at least. Thomas still doubted this was the real deal. Enirium, the metal of legends, could not exist.

  Regardless, the combination in front of him was more than just powerful. It conducted ether like no other, yet it was as durable as adamantite. Othnite strengthened the alloy with void ether, while botanic adamantite conducted ether like no other.

  The alloy was also impossibly stubborn to forge, requiring every bit of strength and endurance Thomas could muster.

  He snorted, then grinned, and swung harder, while the being inside him studied the project with a scowl.

  He didn’t have many days left to live. But if nothing else, the world would see one hell of a sword to remember him by.

  Patreon!