As much as Rory had been ready to move onto construction of the Stellar Forge, that hadn’t meant there still wasn’t some testing required. Most of it was reasonably straightforward. First was a new material he’d come up with as the secondary material of the Orbital Rings of the Stellar Forge. Taking crushed obsidian and the ash of smoked Sol’s Glory, Rory reconstituted it into a solid mass as he pressed it together like a diamond under pressure through the liberal application of a modified runic array, all while exposing it to a liberal application of his newest affinity using Essence Spark. After that, it had been fired inside their forge before finally being retrieved. The resulting material looked like an odd chunk of strangely porous grey coal.

  Stable Coke

  Quality: Common.

  A common-but-potent grade coke devised to marginally increase the stability, durability, and strength of the materials with which it’s alloyed. Depending on the composition of the base material, Stable Coke’s quality may be further enhanced.

  “Not bad,” Rory muttered upon collecting the first batch of his newest catalyst coke. Bloodwood Coke, while superior, was tainted by blood essence. Any materials made with it would be unusable for the Stellar Forge.

  After making a relatively large amount of Stable Coke, Rory began to alloy it with their Pneuma Iron reserves, removing all the impurities through continuous forging, pouring, and remelting, frowning as he did.

  I’m going to need more Pneuma Iron soon… Probably… Eh, eventually.

  Ignoring the dwindling supply of Pneuma Iron, Rory continued. Rather than attempting some overly abstract and magical form of metallurgy, Rory copied the Earth’s method of making steel just with magical materials. Before long, Rory soon had his newest material.

  Stabilized Steel

  Quality: Common.

  Forged and alloyed with Stable Coke and high-quality Pneuma-Enriched Iron, it has improved nearly every base property of Pneuma Iron while adding stability.

  Testing it against Crimson Steel, Rory confirmed that while stronger than Pneuma Iron, Stabilized Steel was still less durable than Crimson Steel, explaining why it was still tagged as a common quality material. That much was acceptable, as it was simply the ‘bulk’ material that only needed to be strong enough in conjunction with the bones of the orbital ring to last until the galvanizing runes did their job.

  Satisfied, Rory had then switched focus, testing his theory of modifying the affinity of the hiveinite. Breaking off a chunk the size of his thumb first, Rory had placed it within their bound circle before adjusting the outer ring of runes so that the entire thing would tweak the overall affinity of the material. It was a process that took quite a few days of slow exposure. It was only possible now that the bounded ring drew its Pneuma from their energy grid rather than requiring Rory to channel it into the ring manually.

  Hiveinite

  Quality: Uncommon

  Isotope Variant: Stable Affinity

  The former nest of an Ash Mite colony that has since been abandoned as the mites reached their larvae stage. Devoid of life, the nest is composed of a surprisingly durable organic mineral highly resistant to erosion. Additionally, due to manipulation of its base affinity, it has since been changed to reflect a stable affinity.

  “Interesting,” Rory had noted as he examined the test specimen. He had been half expecting the hiveinite to become an entirely different material, but apparently, what he’d done to it only constituted an ‘isotope’ variance and not an outright material evolution or change.

  Once Rory had confirmed the affinity manipulation process would work, he plunked the entire abandoned hive within the bound ring.

  Based on how long even a small chunk took, I’d guess the entire source may take a few weeks to convert.

  Knowing that, Rory began working on other parts of the grander project. First, he slowly dug up the area around their forge. With the ground torn up, Rory replaced it with a material akin to ceramic or cement. It was a slightly modified version of what he’d used in his early years on Aelia, a rigid material that sadly wasn’t great at flexing or absorbing strikes, only useful as a building material for things like flooring or walls.

  That alone took two weeks. Once the ground had been torn out and replaced with the new ‘floor,’ Rory began establishing the inscription base’s first parts. Meant to interface as one single, larger mechanism, Rory inscribed eight rings of concentric runes several feet around their current forge. They were inert and useless on their own, only coming to life once he’d built the rest of the Stellar Forge and the accompanying inscriptions. Thankfully, the runic rings only took two days to etch into the flooring.

  Once that was done, Rory checked on the hiveinite; finding it still incomplete, he set on preparing even more Stable Steel. Originally, Rory intended to utilize Pneuma Iron for the matrix of the Stellar Heart. Still, after discovering Stable Steel was just better at seemingly everything, Rory altered his mental blueprint to utilize Stable Steel instead. Once he had even more Stable Steel -ten days of forging- enough for the matrix and the rest of the metal components of the Stellar Forge, Rory began to fashion the matrix that would house the ingredients needed to ignite the star.

  And that took some time. It was extreme precision work, an endless loop of the same few runes on each matrix piece. Even physically constructing the matrix took several weeks of hammering, sanding, etching, and spot-welding.

  Seven weeks later, Rory finally had the completed Stellar Heart matrix made, something he promptly stored for safekeeping. Thankfully, the hiveinite had been fully converted to its isotope variant and thus was also stored alongside the matrix.

  During that time, Rory only saw Apostolos a handful of times. The young man had informed him that he was doing his best to clear what remained of the second floor of the Maw, but almost every room that remained had at least one tier-five monster lurking within. Apostolos had been ‘slain’ on more than one occasion -given he could not utilize blood weave or remain behind the safety of their settlement walls- resulting in his resurrection back in their settlement and the necessity of remaking a Radiant Ember. Rory felt for the young man, but it was a learning experience for him. As long as he had a Radiant Ember, he could bash his head against the tier-five wall that was the more powerful monsters on the second floor, slowly learning until he could slay them with more than a thirty percent success rate.

  But he wasn’t there yet, so Rory let him continue as is.

  With both of their plates full of daunting tasks, Rory focused on himself, confident that Apostolos would eventually succeed with flying colors.

  Instead of bothering himself with assisting Apostolos, Rory continued his work on the Stellar Forge. Thanks to his mind palace, he knew exactly how to build the physical structure of the orbital rings, allowing him to model it without wasting resources. However, Rory was soon confronted with what was likely to be the most protracted process of making the forge.

  That was taking the hiveinite isotope variant—now ground into fine dust—and painstakingly assembling it into the structural scaffolding of the Orbital Rings proper. Because the hiveinite wasn’t a metal that he could melt and shape, he needed first to reduce it into something malleable if he wanted to use it.

  And given it wasn’t malleable at all, the only way to make it malleable was to reduce it to dust first.

  In a way, the entire process reminded him of building a sandcastle. Except in this case, you needed to grind stones into the sand first, and rather than a typical castle, you were building a fusion reactor. Oh, and rather than using water to bond the sand together, you were using molten metal. Molten metal, which seemed to have a proclivity for splashing onto his arms.

  So, really, what’s the difference?

  All in all, building out the scaffolding for the entire Stellar Forge took the better part of a year. Once that was done, he stepped back, examining his work. Unfinished, Rory could not examine the Stellar Forge with his interface. Still, a quick once-over with his eye skill told him everything was ready for the next step.

  Glorified painting.

  Piece by piece, component by component, Rory painted over the structural scaffolds with Stable Steel, channeling Essence Spark as he did. With each layer painted, Rory let the entire thing cool and harden before inscribing countless runes on the layer. Once that was done, Rory would slather on another thin layer, let it solidify, inscribe some runes, and repeat. While faster than the actual construction of the scaffold, it still took another four months to finalize. The once frighteningly fragile-looking scaffolds were now proper metal struts, orbital rings, and the like. All that remained was assembly, installation of his prototype pneuma crushers that would further refine the Pneuma needed to ignite the Stellar Heart, inserting the matrix with the room gem and the solar feathers he’d obtained nearly two years back, and finally turning the entire thing on and praying it wouldn’t explode in a miniature supernova.

  Fun.

  As much as Rory knew it was a possibility, closing in on the end goal, he couldn’t help but feel nervous excitement rush through him.

  One, maybe two months to go?

  Most of that time would be spent making a room gem with the necessary convergence points to satisfy the requirements of the Stellar Heart matrix, as well as building his new prototype pneuma crushers. They differed slightly from the old pneuma crushers they’d installed around their camp years back; now, using gem crafting, Rory believed he could utilize room gems to force already refined Pneuma to grind and crush against itself. With the prior version of pneuma crushers, the Pneuma had become so refined that they could no longer be adequately forced to crush inward. Room gems would circumvent that, and the captured space would not allow the Pneuma to escape, thus causing the Pneuma to enrich further.

  Eventually, Rory intended to modify their original pneuma crushers to utilize the same principle. Still, it wouldn’t be until after the Stellar Forge was completed.

  Spending a month and a half -faster than Rory had initially anticipated- Rory worked on making the required gems. Thankfully, with the advantage of an entire extra tier under his belt, creating gems with the necessary convergence points wasn’t the hell Rory had expected it to be. It was still rough, and he had more than enough gem shards embedded in his face to attest to that, but it was doable.

  A month and a half later, Rory had not just finalized one room gem of five hundred convergence points; he had five gems of six hundred convergence points. Plunking four of the five gems into the in-built pneuma crushers components of the Stellar Forge, all that remained was retrieving the matrix he’d some time back, inserting the room gem and solar feathers, and then assembling the entire thing, like one oversized Lego-fied fusion reactor.

  Thankfully, the remaining steps only took a little over a week.

  Nearly two years since he’d begun working on the entire project, Rory finally stood before the dormant Stellar Forge. The Stellar Heart matrix floated within the mass of orbiting rings and the claw-like cage of bent metal appendages surrounding even those.

  “Is it done?” A voice spoke out as Rory turned to find Apostolos entering the camp, dusting himself off.

  “How was the Maw?”

  “Almost cleared.” Apostolos grinned.

  “Glad to hear.” Rory nodded. The young man had been working hard; his success rate had risen from thirty percent when battling tier-fives to eighty-five. While he hadn’t developed any combat skills, he’d evolved his Essence Spark and became the proud owner of Essence Projection. It was made possible when Rory explained the theory behind the skill, but Rory himself hadn’t gotten the chance to try to push the bounds of Essence Spark. It made Apostolos far more capable at battling what remained of the monsters within the second floor of the Maw, many as strong as level fifty-seven or fifty-eight. He’d even encountered a level fifty-nine, but every attempt at slaying the Spider Patriarch resulted so far in Apostolos respawning within their camp with an exasperated huff.

  “I’ve got three rooms left based on what the map says,” Apostolos said as if reading his mind. “My friend, the Spider Patriarch, a room of Haut Rats, and then a Stone Roc.”

  “Sounds like we’ll get that full clear reward for the second floor soon.”

  “I hope to clear the last three rooms in a month or so,” Apostolos confirmed before changing the subject. “So, the Stellar Forge? It’s almost done?”

  “It is done,” Rory said, shaking his head. “I’ve just got to pull the lever, and it will begin drawing energy from our settlement reserve; that Pneuma will be captured and further enriched by the pneuma crushers mark two, and then it will be pumped inward. The runic arrays will then draw it into the Stellar Heart matrix, which will then begin to use all that gaseous Pneuma to propagate solar affinity energy, which will react with the room gem. Lastly, the solar feathers will cause the entire thing to undergo a chain reaction as the energy fully manifests into physical space and hopefully ignites the Stellar Heart.”

  “Then?”

  “Then the forge is finally operational,” Rory sighed. “Two years of effort. It’s a good thing tier-six takes several decades to cross. Otherwise, two years working on this could have put me severely behind.”

  “Won’t you get Ascension Energy for all of this?” Apostolos questioned as he waved at the dormant Stellar Forge.

  “Hopefully, but you can’t ever say for certain until after the fact,” Rory said.

  “Got it.” Apostolos acknowledged. “So, uhm… What are you waiting for?”

  “Nothing, really,” Rory said with a shrug. “Want to pull the lever?”

  “Me?” Apostolos seemed surprised at the offer.

  “Sure, I mean, it’s just a lever,” Rory said nonchalantly before pointing at a lever attached to the outer cage surrounding the Stellar Forge. “Go for it.”

  Approaching the Stellar Forge, which now dominated where their old forge had been, Apostolos hesitated as if uncertain of himself.

  “Oh c’mon, it’s not that big of a deal.” Rory chided, amused

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “What if it explodes?” Apostolos questioned.

  “Good question,” Rory frowned for a moment, glancing upward. “Well, you’ll be fine with that Radiant Ember unless it destroys your Ember in the explosion… Hmm, I guess in hindsight, if it explodes, we both die.”

  “Cheery,” Apostolos muttered, “Leave it to my master to shrug that off like nothing more than a minor inconvenience.”

  “Come again?” Rory asked, pretending as if he hadn’t heard the young man.

  “Nothing. Let’s get this over with.” Apostolos answered, mustering his courage before yanking the lever downward and quickly retreating to stand beside Rory. At first, nothing happened until several of the rings began to spin faster, and the matrix within the dormant forge began to whirl opposite the spinning rings.

  Faster and faster, they spun until suddenly, what looked like gas slowly shimmered within the forge before the matrix then sucked it up.

  “This is all supposed to happen, right?”

  “I think so,” Rory said with a nod.

  “You think so?”

  “Well, I’ve never tested it.”

  Apostolos grumbled something, but Rory ignored it, transfixed by the Stellar Forge as it came to life. Eventually, the gas within the matrix seemed to ignite as a tremendous light erupted outward, nearly blinding them. Shining brighter and brighter, the matrix collapsed inward, condensing into a single ball of plasma several inches in diameter.

  “D-did it work?” Apostolos asked.

  “Seems like it,” Rory said, a smile widening. The orbital rings began to slow down until they lazily orbited the baby star. Pulling up his interface, Rory tapped several times as the Stellar Forge shimmered briefly, the few rough edges seemingly smoothing out.

  “What did you do?” Apostolos questioned.

  “I redistributed the essence and matter of our old forge and transferred it toward the Stellar Forge. Not a hundred percent efficient, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “But it barely did anything?”

  “A Stellar Forge is a bit more demanding than a regular old forge.”

  Apostolos merely grunted in concert as they both stared at the Stellar Forge. It was strange. It looked like a device plucked straight out of a sci-fi novel or from an alien world, entirely at odds with how bare bones the rest of the world appeared. In a way, it was like building a rocket ship in a world that hadn’t yet even made a basic cart.

  “It’s kind of beautiful, honestly.” Apostolos sighed. “Feels like I’m drawn toward it,”

  “That’s called gravity, but it should be contained if you don’t try to cross the magnetic field.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” Apostolos scratched his nose, clearly perplexed. “It feels… familiar? It was as if I wanted a hamburger, but I got a hot dog. Not the same thing, but still pretty good.”

  Why is it that the main thing he can remember from our old universe is food?

  Ignoring Apostolos’s oddly selective memories, Rory took a moment to consider what the young man said before nodding as if he’d figured something out.

  “I’m guessing your Solar Affinity is resonating.”

  “That can happen?”

  “How would I know?” Rory said with a shrug. “It’s just the only guess I’ve got.”

  “I guess that’s fair,” Apostolos sighed before glancing at his master. “So... what does it do?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What does it actually do?” Apostolos repeated the question.

  “It, uhhh… uhhh. Stellar forges things…?” Rory stumbled over his words; he hadn’t been prepared for the line of questioning.

  “You mean to tell me,” Apostolos grumbled, clearly annoyed, “You spent two years on a project without actually knowing what it does?”

  “It makes a star!” Rory all but shouted, waving his arms. “How could I not?”

  “Master?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Trees and forests.”

  “Yeah, yeah, shut it,” Rory muttered. With a sigh, he activated his eye skill, cognition boosted, and potential vision activated. Inspecting the contained star, it took several seconds to turn over random ideas in his mind before he felt his eye twitch, resonating with the thought.

  “Here, wait for a moment,” Rory said as he jogged to their storage shed. Moments later, he dragged several hundreds of pounds worth of Stable Steel toward the Stellar Forge as if it only weighed a few pounds.

  “What are you going to do with all th- woah!” Apostolos’s eyes bulged as Rory began tossing the bars of Stable Steel at the contained star. Crossing the containment threshold, the bars were sucked into the tiny star, vanishing as the Stellar Heart consumed the material like a small snack.

  Countless hours of forging, not to mention the collection time required to obtain the raw materials needed to make so much Stable Steel, vanished in only a few minutes. Once he’d tossed all the metal he could into the star, Rory took a deep breath and imagined himself pulling at the star. Responding to his will, the star almost seemed to burst as the universe’s tiniest coronal mass ejection occurred, a tiny plasma geyser projected toward the containment field. Still pulling, the plasma was yanked through the field, solidifying moments before a small bar-like deposit of material Rory had never seen before landed gently on his hand.

  “What is that?” Apostolos asked, unable to hide his curiosity.

  “That,” Rory said with a smile, “Is what two years of effort gets us.”

  Stellar Matter

  Quality: Common (.1% Purity)

  One of the fundamental building blocks of creation, Stellar Matter may be used to create other forms of matter or as a catalyst for refining more fantastical materials. Quality is directly tied to the purity of the Stellar Matter, which requires exponentially greater matter, energy, or magical fuel to achieve.

  “Hot damn,” Rory whistled. While it was only graded as a ‘common’ quality, Rory had no illusions of its value, his spasming eye confirming the fact.

  Still, hundreds of pounds of metal only get me less than a pound of Stellar Matter.

  It was a bit disappointing in that regard, he’d need to shovel in a metric shit ton of raw resources to obtain any amount of usable Stellar Matter, but Rory instinctively knew it would be worth it. He’d have to do some tests with the stuff, but he was more than confident it would prove its worth a hundred times over.

  Feeling immensely proud, Rory put his hands on his hips, basking in the glow of success before suddenly doubling over.

  “Master!?” Apostolos suddenly was in his face, checking on him. “What happened!? Are you okay!?”

  “Fine,” Rory muttered, the sudden weight that had slammed down on his beginning to fade. “Just… God damn. That was a lot of Ascension Energy.”

  “Oh, you just got it now?” Apostolos relaxed as Rory slowly stood up.

  “Yeah, and boy, was that a doozy. If I had to say…. Ten, maybe fifteen times as much as when we integrated the energy grid, probably more.”

  Apostolos said nothing, his only response a drawn-out whistle of amazement.

  “Between the degree of precision needed, the raw resources, and the rarity of the skills I needed to even make this thing… Yeah, no wonder it gave so much Ascension Energy for completion.”

  Given Rory had been out of commission when he’d received the energy for killing a tier-six monster, he couldn’t truly compare. Still, Rory felt confident in saying the sudden influx was the most extraordinary windfall of Ascension Energy he’d ever received.

  Curious, Rory opened his interface, checking his progress to A7. Seeing the bar, Rory snorted, shaking his head.

  More than a 10x magnitude in Ascension energy gained compared to his next most considerable windfall …. It accounted for around seven percent of the bar.

  Not seventy.

  Seven.

  “Damn,” Rory laughed. “Logically knew it would be a few decades, but just…Damn, the confirmation couldn’t be clearer.”

  Amused, Rory was ready to call it for the day when something suddenly changed. It was as if the entire world froze for a split second before restarting, the only giveaway being the utter silence.

  “Master?” Apostolos seemed worried, having noticed it as well.

  A cold chill crept down his spine, and Rory knew something terrible was about to happen.

  “Get our weapons and armor, quick.”

  It was good thinking by Rory, but it was too little, too late. A dark blur of color came crashing down from above, directly in front of Apostolos. It was so fast that Rory could barely follow its movements, even with all his cognition investment.

  Which meant Apostolos never had a shot. A claw -or maybe a tail- swept out, and Apostolos vanished in a shower of golden motes of light.

  Oh fuck.

  Whatever the creature was, it had just one-shot Apostolos, with an almost lazy degree of ease.

  Oh, fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

  Straightening out, the monster stood up as Rory got his first good look at the thing. As if matching the sci-fi theme of the day, the beast looked like it could have come from a Ridley Scott movie. Its face was like an amalgamation of a bat and a hyena with an insectoid sort of shape language thrown in for fun. It had a rather intense underbite, revealing rows of oddly blocky teeth ending in serrations rather than sharp points, as if made to grind and saw through material rather than shred flesh. Lanky and covered in black chitinous material like a cousin to a Xenomorph, it had ugly orange pox-like protrusions somewhere between cysts and spurs covering its body. Furthermore, the monster had a pair of scythe-like arms hanging at its sides with another pair of shorter, more recognizable claw-covered arms tucked in toward its chest.

  Chest or thorax? Wait, now’s not the time.

  It stood upon a pair of legs with backward-facing joints, ending in hooves with retractable talons shirking out from the hooves a moment later. Lastly, swinging behind it was a long-segmented tail ending in a cudgel-like mass that would occasionally twitch open, revealing more pockets of the waxy-orange stuff.

  Rory wasn’t sure if he would call it the worst thing he’d ever seen, but it undeniably sent a trilling warning signal blaring through his nerves.

  Which was when the monster turned to face him directly.

  Shit.

  Rory didn’t even have time to breathe as the monster lunged toward him, its giant scythe-like arms sweeping toward his neck. Barely capable of reacting in time, thanks to his high degree of cognition improving his processing speed, Rory was forced purely onto the defense.

  Not good.

  He could try to hold out until Apostolos respawned, but he’d be out of Radiant Embers. Another strike from the monster would kill him for good.

  The issue was he had no weapons or armor whatsoever on him.

  Ducking, weaving, and frantically dodging, Rory avoided the strikes from the monstrosity.

  No doubt about it, it’s tier-six.

  How and why a tier-six had suddenly attacked their camp was beyond Rory. In their years on Aelia, he’d rarely dealt with monsters assaulting their settlement unless it was summoned by a wave or lured in through other means. His claimed territory’s natural ‘barrier’ seemed to drive monsters away.

  What are my options?

  Thinking frantically, Rory rolled under a sudden sweeping strike from the cudgel-like tail of the monster. As it swept overhead, the cudgel opened as pockets of orange wax exploded, the orange goo splattering his walls, which instantly began to dissolve wherever the stuff landed.

  Wonderful.

  He had a few bows in his hovel that had been collecting dust, little more than trophies of prior experimentations with his ability to craft a mighty bow. The issue was that he doubted the monster would give him a chance to grab one, nor did he believe that would help much. The beast was much too fast for him to land a shot cleanly.

  Backpedaling out of the way of another attack, Rory saw as the monster suddenly crouched low, its scythe-like arms flared out to its sides, almost like-

  Like the wings of a jet.

  Rocketing forward precisely like a jet slicing through the air, Rory just managed to roll to the side in time, recognizing what was about to happen with barely enough time to react.

  The good news was Rory wasn’t bisected by the unknown monster.

  The bad news was it shot through the air so fast that it crashed through the opposing wall. His walls, which had so proudly withstood many powerful monsters, even holding up against monsters such as the Gator of the Feathered Depths, were destroyed in a single attack that hadn’t even been specifically meant for them.

  Yeah, that’s tier-six, no doubt about it.

  Taking advantage of the split-second reprieve, Rory sprinted to his hovel, ducking inside and snatching his macahuitl from where he always left it. Armed, Rory dashed back out just in time to see the monster reenter their camp.

  “Right, come at me, you piece of shit!” Rory shouted, trying his best to draw its attention.

  Need to kill it before Apostolos respawns.

  Rory didn’t even consider whether he could kill the monster; all that mattered was that he had to. It had assaulted their home directly, already taken one of Apostolos’s lives, and who knew what else if it was allowed to rampage.

  No, I know exactly what happens. We die.

  Gritting his teeth, Rory took a turn to charge the monster. He was by no means good at fighting, and without blood weave, he didn’t have the overwhelming attribute advantage that allowed him to handle many tier-five monsters far more easily than someone like him should have been capable of.

  But this was his home, and for as many things as he was nonchalant or unbothered by, he couldn’t let the monster destroy everything he’d built up. He’d only accept that when no strength was left in his body.

  Having been on the defensive the entire time, the monster seemed surprised to see Rory take the offensive initiative. Perhaps because its mouth was filled with teeth closer to molars than fangs, it almost seemed to grin at his attempt. Swinging his macahuitl, Rory slammed the weapon against the monster, only for it to rebound harmlessly.

  Fuck.

  Having let Rory take a free shot, the monster snapped its jaws forward, crushing his weapon between its teeth, which seemed tailor-made for destroying items rather than tearing flesh.

  With his trusty old weapon instantly destroyed, Rory was forced on the defensive, doing his absolute best to simply evade. Rory fought for his life for what felt like hours -but couldn’t have been longer than half a minute- until he frowned as the monster stopped, revealing its monstrous faux smile.

  Realization dawning upon him, Rory tentatively reached behind him, his hand grazing his walls. Once his greatest shield, now his encroaching kennel.

  More than the creature’s speed, strength, or acid-like boils, what alarmed Rory the most was the revelation he underwent as his hand pulled away from the wall.

  It’s intelligent.

  It wasn’t a mindless beast rampaging. It had cornered him, biding its time before he had nowhere to retreat or evade.

  It had matched him in the one place he’d always felt strongest, his ability to plan.

  God damn it.

  Checkmate. There was no escape.

  Well… If that’s the case. May as well go for it.

  Closing his eyes as if he were accepting his fate, Rory saw his interface flicker open in the dark instead.

  Warning: Energy override enabled. Proceed?

  Y/N?

  His intent was simple. The camp was his, meaning by rights, anything within he could use.

  Including the rather massive stockpile of enriched Pneuma, more than two years’ worth.

  Going to borrow a page from your book Apostolos.

  Opening his eyes, Rory saw the monster leisurely approaching, having all the time in the world as Rory had apparently surrendered. Seeing Rory suddenly perk up, the strangely intelligent eyes seemed to glimmer with a flicker of surprise and wariness.

  Too late fucker!

  Raising his hand, Rory’s body screamed as what felt like a hundred thunderbolts slammed through him, the conduit for the massive well of Pneuma to be shaped through. The monster was halted as massive crystal chains wrapped around its appendages, the size you’d see on tanker ships.

  The chains weren’t what he was borrowing from Apostolos; Rory just needed to lock down its movements momentarily.

  What was taken from Apostolos was when Rory mimed raising a bow. As he did, the tiny shard of Stellar Matter he’d retrieved earlier floated upward, suspended where an arrow would be if he held a bow.

  Now for the tricky part.

  Rory was far from skilled with Pneuma manipulation, meaning there was no way he could maintain the crystal chains binding the monster and attack at the same time. Therefore, he’d need to drop the chains the moment he switched to release the power within the freeform magic he was preparing.

  As much as Rory wanted to drop a witty one-liner, he wasn’t the humorously clever type. Instead, he simply scowled at the monster, pissed off.

  “Fuck you.”

  Two things happened at once. First, the chains dematerialized instantly, and second, the world went white as Rory released his intent-shaped magic, an arrow of pure concentrated Pneuma tipped with the recently acquired Stellar Matter.

  For once, Rory didn’t black out. Instead, he was slammed through his wall, unable to feel so much as a fingertip so strained was his body by the massive backlash of channeling so much high-energy Pneuma.

  Seconds passed as the avalanche of light faded from his eyes. Blinking his eyes, Rory found himself lying flat on his ass outside his camp, shrapnel and debris everywhere. Trying to pull himself up, Rory could only frown.

  My nervous system was cooked from using too much Pneuma at once.

  He had blissfully skirted a case of Pneuma-wracked, having held a clear image of what he was doing and only held onto the intent and magic for a second or two at the max. Still enough to fry his body but not enough to fry his brain.

  “At least it worked,” Rory groaned. His jaw hurt even muttering a few words; the delightful pain burnout had already faded.

  Happy to have survived, Rory began pondering what the monster was before his mind halted.

  Wait. I didn’t feel any energy from that kill.

  Realizing what that meant, Rory barely managed to pick his head up enough to look through the hole his body had torn through his walls.

  And what he saw sealed his fate.

  Standing up was the monster, now one scythe arm down. It was spewing black ichor but otherwise seemed to have survived.

  It must have barely managed to avoid the worst of the attack when the chains dropped.

  Watching it, there was nothing left Rory could do as the monster began to rumble toward him, its tail swishing in agitation.

  Nothing. I’ve got nothing left.

  Had he had time, he would have retrieved his railgun to deal with the monster, but even then, he wasn’t confident it would have been enough. The damn thing was equal parts fast and tough, and even improved railguns could fire only so fast. The last attack he’d thrown out had been considerably more potent than even a shot from his railgun, and it had survived with only a missing arm.

  The fact was, he’d been defeated. Utterly. Only with unstable blood weave would he have maybe had a shot, but there was also a strong possibility it could have outlasted the timer on any unstable items.

  Well… Guess this is how it ends.

  Laying his head back on the ground, Rory could only stare up into the sky as his last precious few seconds ticked away, the sound of the monster approaching growing louder and louder.

  It was a good run, I guess.

  Like a conquering demon, the sun was blotted out as a dark figure appeared above him. Rather than end him quickly, the monster placed a hoof on his chest, its talons springing out as it drew several painful lines down his chest.

  “Fucker,” Rory growled. “Enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  The monster responded with its ugly, snarl-like smile. Then, it began to lower its remaining scythe arm toward his face; a single orange drop pooled at the tip of the scythe.

  If I have one regret… Well, I don’t think I have any. Maybe asked Susan out in eighth grade?

  His motto had always been to only fret about what was worth fretting. He’d done his best and fought his heart out, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing he could have done would have been enough.

  Rory chose to watch death approach with his eyes wide open.

  The scythe descended slowly toward his face, angling right above his eyebrow. With a wince, Rory felt it slice a line as the orange acid entered the wound, etching it permanently into his flesh, ignoring the fact that ‘permanently’ was likely to only be a few more seconds of life.

  Bracing for whatever was next, Rory prepared himself, only for his eyes to widen in surprise.

  The monster, seemingly content with the single acid-etched mark above his eyebrow, removed its hoof from his chest before vanishing into the tree line.

  Laying there, dumbfounded, Rory finally let out a painful breath, his chest hurting like hell.

  “The hell?” Rory sighed after several moments of catching his breath.

  He had lived.

  Somehow.

  But that raised a question.

  What the fuck was that all about?