“Seriously. That’s three battles won by heart, out of three battles total. It’s like that’s your only move,” Derek said as the group sat around, resting from the battle and their rapid withdrawal from the battleground afterward. “You need to diversify your moves a little bit, man. I’m starting to get bored with it.”

“Thanks for your feedback,” Matt said, deadpan. “We’d like to assure you we take every comment seriously. But… yeah, I’m guessing that will be the last time I get to cheese an entire battle by just blowing it up. They have to be getting wise to it by now. I’m doubting they field very many more hearts without some serious protection in the near future.”

“I don’t understand why they fielded them at all.” Artemis said. “Given that they blow up so easy. It seems like a double-edged sword.”

“I don’t think they actually do blow up easily. Remember the rocks? It took almost a whole mountain to blow up one before. I think without that kind of attack, the only reason they are blowing up is because of me. I have… well, I’m different.”

“Fair enough. Well, if we can’t count on bombs anymore…” Brennan said, knitting his brow.

“I didn’t say that, exactly. They might not be fielding them, sure. But whatever hearts they already have in play are out there somewhere. Remember, the first one I found was in the dead center of a town.” Matt had taken off his chest plate, and was now trying to shake some dust out of his undershirt, which didn’t have any self-cleaning function to keep it right. “I need to create a lot of mayhem for my plan to work, and blowing up demon towns seems like a decent way to go about that.”

Matt was oddly comforted by that weird piece of the puzzle. The group said they had come to help him, and he believed them. Otherwise, he couldn’t think of a scenario where the old man would have joined them. The blacksmith claimed he was out and about because this was the first real change he had seen to the status quo in decades, and Matt believed him.

“I still can’t believe you wouldn’t let me kill that bear,” Artemis griped. “He’s going to tell them what happened and lead them right to us.”

“Believe me, he’s not that competent.” Matt said, smiling. “And tattling on us didn’t work out for him last time. Whatever story they get will be pretty garbled, if not out-and-out misleading. Besides, Lucy would be mad at me if I killed him. She thinks he’s funny.”

“Oh, right.” Artemis said. She gulped, and turned towards Matt’s side. She slightly bent her neck in a kind of bow. “Lucy, I’m very sorry for not believing in you earlier, and treating you like you weren’t here. And for what my people have done for yours. I apologize, formally, for what has happened.”

The effect was ruined slightly by the fact that Artemis wasn’t looking at Lucy, exactly. She was several feet off the mark, which Lucy was trying her hardest to ignore while also stifling laughter.

“Matt, come on,” Lucy said, giggling. “You have to tell her where I’m at. It’s not fair.”

Matt cleared his throat.

“Artemis, Lucy’s not standing there. She’s over there.” Matt pointed not to Lucy, but several more feet away from the right spot.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Lucy.” Artemis said, turning to look at another spot Lucy wasn’t in. “Well, you heard what I said, and I mean it.”

“Matt, you absolute asshole,” Lucy gasped, unable to hold back the laughter anymore.

“Lucy says thank you.” Matt bent down, grabbed his chest plate, and started to strap it back on. “Anyway, he gave us some good information, and I told him I’d let him live if he did that. So it’s a done deal.”

“No offense, boy, but the girl’s right. Ya don’t give away your position unless it’s absolutely necessary. Nothing could be worth that,” the old man said, frowning.

“Oh, this is.” Matt said. “He told me where to find the demon lord.”

—

“I do see a building like the one you described, I think. It looks sort of like… a boring church with no windows.” Artemis was looking off in the direction of a demon town, one so far away Matt could hardly see it.

“That’s the one,” Matt said. “If they have a demon heart, it’s in there. If they don’t, it’s probably still worth burning down.”

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“So the plan is to just bust in there and take it? That’s Ballsy, kid. Even for me,” the old man commented.

“No, that’s too ballsy for me too. There are a lot of demons in those towns, some of them pretty strong. I don’t think we can take all of them, and even if we could, there’s a chance they set off the heart while we fought. I don’t want that.”

“Sounds like you need a distraction,” Artemis said, returning to her fire to check on the soup she was making Matt as thanks for saving them. “Which might work. But how are you going to get in?”

“I’m pretty fast. And I have this cloak. And I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve still. It should be fine. If it isn’t, I’ll just trigger the heart and run.”

“That’s risky,” Brennan cut in. “Are you sure it’s worth it?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But this is the easy part. And if we can’t even do this, I probably don’t have any way home. I don’t see how I have much choice.”

—

It was night, and yet there was still a lot of traffic on the road that connected to the town. Matt was sneaking through as best he could, but he had already had a few close calls where he either had to put a demon down or move fast to keep out of the torchlight. There were only going to be more demons inside the walls, even if they’d only matter after he took the heart.

The plan was to dig as fast as he could to the center of the town, coming up as close to the warehouse as he could or even within the walls if possible. After that, stealth wouldn’t be helpful. It was hard to hide a giant floating demon heart from a whole town of demons, even if he was lucky enough to have the weapon pre-covered and mounted on a wagon like the last one had been.

He picked a spot in the center of a buildup of brush by the side of the road to conceal the opening to the tunnel and went to work. Within a few seconds, he was several feet underground and moving as fast as he could forward through the earth. Lucy was by his side, keeping track of his position for him as well as she could. Her scouting restrictions kept her from going so far as knowing exactly where he was from an above-ground perspective when there was a whole layer of earth between them, but there was no rule against her measuring things he could see, and she was doing her best.

“Lucy, this is too slow,” Matt said, after a minute or so. “They are going to get slaughtered out there.”

“You need to use the mole power?”

“I think so.” Matt called up the description of the power he had got from eating a sliver of meat from one of the moles. The text was ambiguous at best.

Mole Mining

Your ability to travel through the earth is enhanced, giving you some of a mole-demon’s ability to dig and move underground. The exact effects vary based on an individual’s method of moving through the earth to begin with.

Meta-trait Occupied: Movement

Matt had no idea how much this would help, or even if it would. There were senses that he was moving through the earth, and senses in which he wasn’t. He loved his current movement trait, and didn’t really want to give it up, but the others were counting on him. He didn’t really have a choice. So he equipped the trait, waited a moment for it to settle in, then moved to get back to shoveling.

Ding!

Compatible skill found. Temporarily merge your digging skill with Mole Mining?

Y/N

“Oh, fuck yes.”

Skill merged. Dig skill enhanced. At such time as Mole Mining is lost or replaced, the enhancement will be negated.

“It merged with my digging skill. Temporarily, it looks like.”

“Oh, hell yes. Give it a whirl. I have to see this.”

Matt lowered his shovel into the dirt and heaved. Rather than moving the dirt, something he didn’t quite understand happened as the shovel-head moved upwards. The dirt moved away from the shovel like it was repelled by a magnetic force, packing itself further into the walls, ceiling, and floor, and created a cavity just about as big as Matt’s body.

He dug again and again. Every time he did, he immediately cleared another foot or so of tunnel he could move through. It wasn’t just a bit faster. Matt could already dig at exceptional speeds. Now he was moving forward through the dirt at about the pace a normal human could run, or maybe even a little quicker than that.

With one problem down, Lucy immediately went to their next obstacle. “So what’s the plan? I think I can get you inside the building, but things are going to get dicey after that. Are you sure you can move one of those hearts?”

“I’m not, but I can’t imagine they keep the wagons they move them on out in the open. As long as they have one of those, maybe we can figure something out.”

“And then what? Just stealth out of the building while carrying a tactical nuke, and hope nobody notices us?”

As much as he wished they could do that, he doubted the guards would abandon the depot in favor of defending the town. The hearts were too high priority for that. But while the old man very obviously had a deep, interesting and very secret past he didn’t like to talk much about, he was glad to share various out-of-context things he had learned during that time.

“Hit ‘em fast,” he had said. “Ya are scared of them, so ya think they are gonna be ready, are gonna see ya, and jump right into action. But when ya surprise ‘em, there’s always some time before they get movin’. If ya hit them during that time, ya win.”

“No. We can’t be sneaky.” Matt shook his head. “But the old man gave me a plan. I think it will work.”