When I first learned and used the skill Serious Swing, I had less than half the strength attribute now at my disposal. The same was true for most of the statistics I could now control, each of them rising more in seven levels than the previous nineteen put together. Though they couldn’t be touched in quite the same way as skills or my Aspect, the source of this growth, my achievements, burned in my soul constantly fueling the future growth of my core.

As the mana flowed into my increasingly trusted weapon, my memory cast even further back than that first whipping attack in the caverns below the dungeon. I recalled my first Mana Bolts, created while frantic and terrified. Compared to the quality of my magic now, that wispy and impotent energy would be flimsy and useless. As my Power attribute had risen, along with further understanding and aligning with the Aspect of the Dragon attached to my core, my mana had naturally evolved to another level.

That qualitative difference was no more clearly felt than in the energy within the staff. After absorbing as much mana as I could spare, it was currently more dense with my specific flavour of magic than any single Mana Bolt I could hope to produce. Even with my most reckless usages of the Dragonburn skill, which multiplied the amount of mana I could use by around ten, I had never held this level of devastation in my grip at once.

A whisper from within my magical core said it could be stronger, and I smiled. I had a lot of influences acting upon myself, and it was hard to know where my mind stopped and my magic began these days. While the System had brought the magic to me, I knew in my heart that it was my own. Those additional thoughts were just exaggerated expressions of myself.

Mentally diving into the Spirit Well, I was infused with its power. My power. Endless possibility seemed to stretch out from my fingers and I watched as those streams of hope began to converge towards a single ideal. The decision came from both within and without, my conscious thoughts aligning with the river of power already in motion inside my core.

Overcome.

I exhaled a breath through my mouth and slowly inhaled through my nose. The crisp aridity of the desert stung my nostril. The heat of the sand itched at my feet, both through the boots and inside them but I planted them deeper all the same. The wood of the artefact in my hands was soft, it complied with my shifted stance happily. The tip aimed into the ground, I felt the sun’s heat vanish as its attention was stolen, a shadow cast over my head.

My movement was calm, because I had calmed myself. The strike was skillful, because I had focused all of my attention towards making it so. King’s Training was a strange skill, one which reminded me uncomfortably of the System’s first moments on Earth. I swallowed the discomfort in face of the skill’s effectiveness. Like my magic, I accepted the slight lack of control as something personal. When the dungeon engulfed me, I was no fighter. With King’s Training actively influencing me, I was Achilles. Following its direction, I released the floodgates.

All of the mana and Spirit I could bring together at once was sucked into the Jingu Bang. I had fed the staff as consistently as possible, rarely taking my hand away from it since it had accepted me as its wielder. Despite the staggering amount of energy I had given over, the container was vast. Each minute, I recovered over fifty mana. In an hour, that was around three thousand units, and even after more than a week of such a flow the Jingu Bang’s thirst was barely quenched. I was excited for whatever qualitative change the staff might undergo, but as the Spirit I used mobilised the power already contained within, I smiled wide.

This would be more than enough.

The combination of all these elements was a level of devastating which intimidated even me. The Jingu Bang’s malleable length and weight began to morph. The head became immensely heavy and shot into the distance behind me along with my backswing. Ten feet. Twenty. Fifty. Still the staff grew. It took only a fraction of a second as the speed of my movements, even without the full power of Haste, was blinding. Even before the weapon finished extending, I was carrying out the forward motion. Though not the true target of my ire, the scorpions on the ground faced just the starting motions of the most powerful and immediate destruction my intent could create. It decimated them, quite literally. A path was cleared, but I was no longer aiming to escape.

I was aiming for the giant claw plummeting towards the sands. My true target was the descending doom of another sky blocking smash from Reysault. The tip of the Jingu Bang swept upwards and collided with the crimson claw. the world buckled in response. I was privately amazed as the chitinous limb was thrown back, even as something cracked in my arm and my health dipped a little. I hoped it would recover before I had to do such a thing again, but there were more pressing matters.

The colliding forces of the attacks, mine and Reysault’s, created an explosion of pure force, and the resulting damage was catastrophic for the nearby scorpions, as well as the offending ruby-red limb. Merownis avoided the damage by flattening himself as we had planned, but the car-sized scorpions all around us were not so lucky. Their brittle exoskeletons snapped from the sudden pressure from above. I let the weight pass over me easily, more than used to pressure at this point.

Plus, the ground beneath me gave out. Even I would have been buckled if the sand hadn’t started to fall away. This was both good and bad. Good because it would make it harder for Reysault to find us. Plan A was back in business now we had been forced into the tunnels. However, the situation was also bad because it meant she couldn’t see us at all. I had just defended against her attack physically, which would stress her out.

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Which, in turn, meant it was time for her magic to come into play.

“Time to move, right?” Merownis asked over his shoulder, already sprinting away as I followed behind. My arms were screaming, and I had cost myself half of my health just meeting Reysault’s strength for a single blow. Still, the dragon purred in delight within me at the fact it had been an even exchange. I chased after Merownis as the ground began to shake.

While the force behind the simple movements of her body was more than enough to end us, it wasn’t where her main skills lay. A body like that was a deterrent by size, nearly impossible to injure in a serious way, which meant she could focus her System-given advantages elsewhere. A certain level of Strength was likely required just to move the huge form around, but the bulk of her attribute points would be in Command if I had to guess. Just feeding her mana to the other scorpions as she had meant she had an incredible pool of energy to work with.

True to my worries, mana began wailing through the tunnels which we sprinted through, a vibrato keening to accompany the stomping percussion of a thousand angry scorpions storming after us. The sounds also started to echo from the front. I turned, spotting the chasing enemies and a vicious smile grew on my face. Thick, black mana was dancing over their carapaces like liquid shadow. “Gotcha,” I laughed before shouting forward to my companion, “sorry for the panic, Mero. We need to separate one of them.”

I slammed a Mana Shield down on the tunnel entrance we had just run through, a full fifty mana used to power it. “My new skill is called Catalyst. As far as I can tell, it lets me turn one thing into something else.” In the cavern, Merownis met the oncoming attackers and killed all but one of the scorpions. As he did so, I sealed the rest of the room. As I sensed Reysault’s mana attempting to pull away, I shot forward and drove my hand through the brain of the scorpion. “I’m not sure what it will work on or won’t,” I grunted. The action made me want to gag. “Except for one thing.” I dodged an automatic response by the stinger as I clenched my fist and grasped the scorpion queen’s black magic.

“It definitely works on mana.”

I consciously dredged up every negative feeling the System, this place and all of the shit situations combined had created in me, turning the Spirit Well black with anger and violence. For a single moment, none of those feelings were mine. They were part of the magic I infused, and I was free of them. It was just me, the magic and the calm before the storm. Taking a breath, I released the wave of Spirit and reclaimed the emotions with a rip of my fist from the skull of the scorpion. In my sticky grasp, the tether of mana wriggled like an uncomfortable eel. With a snarl, I activated Catalyst and all of that venomous intent burned through the connection. Then, to finish the dangerous concoction, I let the dragon do the rest.

Dragonburn.

The chain reaction was much more fierce than I expected. Before the energy had made its way back to the source, the screaming started. Within the tunnels, it was only the Mana Shield which still held firm which protected us from the deafening screeches of the scorpions. It did little to stop the headache caused when Reysault herself began to howl. As the pitch reached ear-bleeding levels, the bubble burst.

Whistle. Pop. Squelch. Sizzle. Whistle, pop, squelch, sizzle. Whistle pop squelch sizzle. Whistlepopsquelchsizzle.

Hard to say which was worse, the sound of the magic rebounding within and around the scorpion’s shells was nightmarish in its own way. The look Merownis was giving me was like this was my fault, and while it wasn’t a bad thing, I felt bad for the obvious pain the enemies were in. “New skill,” I shrugged, not willing to let the wailing of an enemy army get me down. Even if they did sound like it really hurt.

The slight tremor which preceded the leg driven into our cavern was all the warning we got, and luck played more than a little role in our safety as we barrelled, Haste-infused, through more and more tunnels. Behind us, the scorpion queen was ravaging the barrows with abandon.

“Fight’s not over then?” Merownis asked rhetorically. He had been invaluable in the quick action required to strike at Reysault so fiercely and was panting heavily for the effort.

“Maybe for you,” I sighed, retrieving my mana regeneration from him. He played up looking hurt before falling onto his rear against a wall. “I need to capitalise now though. Don’t stay down here, there could easily be a collapse once we start fighting again.”

“You’ve got a plan?” The Sundercat seemed resigned, more than suspicious. I had to wonder at the expression. Was I really that exhausting?

“Oh yeah, I’ve got a plan.”

“A good one?”

“I think so,” I shrugged. The Jingu Bang seemed to think so, too, shaking with excitement in my hand.

“Then good luck, partner.” My eyes widened, and a ferocious tingle scratched up my spine. Merownis had activated Battle Bond himself, reverting the standard connection. Within my mana, a new wind rose, carrying with it the roar of a tiger and the ferocity of a people cast to the System. Merownis’ magic.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” I admitted, looking at my hands as I tasted the new mana and found it delicious. Merownis’ mana was able to slip into certain skills easier than my own did, which surprised me. Then again, he was an agile predator, so Haste, Stealth, and Tracking all coming naturally to his energy made a kind of sense. “Now it’s definitely a good plan.”

“Then go,” Merownis nodded, “the forest was getting crowded anyway.” Without another word, I took off. I had recovered most of my mana over our flight from the battlefield, and then the rest during our conversation. The first strike between the second claimant and myself had been mine. As had the second. I doubted the Scorpion Queen was feeling great after I turned her mana into poison. Rolling my shoulders, I hopped out of a crack in the ceiling and saw my enemy once more. It was time to see if I could truly overcome this place.

Starting with her.