I could already see the difference in experience that Cuby had mentioned as we fought our way up the mountain, occasionally falling back as the density of demons grew too much. Monsters like the cultists or the corrupted animals, who had 1500 to 2000 HP, had been giving me almost 3% of my total experience bar, before. Now they gave me half as much only two levels later.

Which was, admittedly, still very good experience. Cuby was going to hit level 14 and get a Sword Saint Iconic, soon.

I tried a few castings of Invert Hostilities. Like all my spells, my stats were starting to swing it into absurd proportions—the 4 second cast time was now 2.6 and the 3 second effect time was now 5.5. This was reduced by resistance, of course—but the demons had poor Psychic Resistance.

The result was almost 10 seconds of inverted hostilities on any of the demons we’d fought if I bothered to supercharge the spell, and this made me start to realize just why Unnatural Terror was so effective.

But none of the demons would turn the tables by fighting for us. The cultists threw out hexes and curses and did minimal damage, the brutes did a little more but were otherwise unremarkable. The wyverns were a much better target—they would grab a cultist and fly away with it, then return moments later with the cultist still in their talons, the spell having worn off before they got a chance to drop their prey. The morthoths were the strangest targets of all—as soon as they were inverted, they would try to give Cuby and I rage-fueled orders through their own form of thought speech: fleeting, intense impressions that went kill, burn, faster, hurt them, faster.

Ultimately, Invert Hostilities against the demons was mostly just a backup Unnatural Terror—one that took a demon out of the equation for a while if we needed it, and was a better spell for the spirefiends than my fear. But as none of the demons did a lot of damage compared to each other’s Hit Point totals, I found I wasn’t using it often.

But Invert Hostilities had been the least of my level. I was a Hierarch now, and unlike my Mage Class passive, which outright stated that it granted its extra slots only when I leveled “in this class”, Hierarch Class was doubling up from my chosen boon just like all my other abilities—the 0.2 seconds of spells per level were actually 0.4, and so I could invest 6.4 seconds of spells in myself and Cuby.

I had given her a Supercharged Hardlight Construct, 5.2 seconds, because in my mind it meshed well with her other defenses. And then I’d given her a Hardlight Tether, 1 second, because it was the only other spell that would fit.

I also had a Supercharged Moment of Solace on her—now 5.6 seconds of damage immunity. So far we hadn’t ever felt like we needed it. Most of the time, it was me who tanked incoming monsters—my absurd Divine Resistance and slightly higher Defense Rating made me even tougher than Cuby with her Saint’s Purity. Attacks missed me almost half the time, and those that hit did very little.

We had fallen into a comfortable groove as we fought our way up the mountain, the carved stone stairways increasing in frequency as the route grew steeper. The levels of the monsters increased to 11 and 12, and the spirefiends who arrived were more often the larger patriarchs with their area-effect flames, but their AIs were all still easily understood and exploited. Cuby was almost level 14 by the time the demons finally pulled a retreat.

It came suddenly. One moment we were retreating to the bottom of a stairway to better manage a dozen brutes and a morthoth, and the next we were watching them turn, mid-descent, to scramble back up the stairs.

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We chased, pulling the fleeing demons away from their pack one by one with Unnatural Terror before killing them and then leaping and gliding forward to catch the rest—until the pack had moved out of sight and we stood little chance of catching it.

“Think they’re pulling them back for an all-out assault?” I asked.

Cuby considered this for a moment. “Yes.”

“Think we should get off the road?”

“Yup!”

We were essentially in a small gorge that wound through the upper slopes of the mountain, jagged rock rising to either side of us. The trees had essentially disappeared for lack of soil, a lone, cliffside cedar providing the only occasional exception. Fortunately, I could cast a Hardlight Tether on the rocks that were small enough around to bear the end, which made even some of the highest sheer faces much easier to scale once combined with my Mighty Leap. Very soon we had climbed to the point where the jutting cliffs and crags were wreathed in fog—the base of the great cloud. Snow fell softly around us, and we could barely see the narrow road below when we perched on a gravel-strewn ledge.

And then we heard a clear, high voice, a man’s voice, call out and echo across the slopes of the mountain:

“This has gone on long enough!”

I felt a thrill of anticipation, mingled with fear. “That’s a boss,” I whispered.

“How do you know?” Cuby whispered back.

“Because he just said, ‘this has gone on long enough,’” I said. “Just trust me; that’s a boss.”

“What do we do?” Cuby asked.

I shrugged. “I’d say fight the boss—but I’m worried about other monsters. This guy is probably going to come for us with an army, and while the footsoldiers can’t make it up here, the spirefiends with riders certainly can.”

“Do you even think he can reach us up here?” Cuby asked. “And if he can—will we have a better chance than now?”

Unease gripped me as I realized she was right. The best we could improve our circumstances was to find another way to farm more XP, but that wouldn’t be happening here now that the boss had recalled all their troops. Perhaps other entrances, or more groups of forces, existed—but we’d have to spend valuable time looking for them, and with no guarantee we’d find them. Worse, even if we did find them, how much difference would they make—a level, ideally?

“Let’s see if anything comes charging down that road,” I said. “I doubt that he’ll be able to—”

My heightened hearing tipped me off to the appearance of the boss before anything—I heard a hissing, sizzling noise, like oil striking a hot pan, and turned to see a dark shape, a horse and its rider: they dove at us out of the cloud, swooping by at a startling speed as they swung a weapon and loosed two reddish bolts of power, one at each of us.

Cuby sprang into the air, spinning over her bolt as she evaded it, but I let mine strike me rather than crack my Moment of Mastery, needing to see what we were dealing with: it dealt 311 damage, leaving my Mana Shield intact and enervating me, leaving me stunned for several seconds. It was the same ability that the devils we’d encountered had—but much, much stronger, and flung at both of us at once.

Before he disappeared back into the cloud, I tagged him:

High Priest Axxoni – Level 15 Boss – Traitor to Mirrakatetz

And the quest pane in my ui started flashing as I got a system message:

Quest Unlocked: Traitor’s Fall

I accepted the quest without reading it, my eyes still on the sky. Conditions were not ideal—but when were they ever?

It was boss fight time.