If it was anyone else the wulvers frozen with a mind-invading magic howl, the wulvers would’ve torn through the pair of Outsiders and finished their genocide of the dire wolf pack. But Zarian was here, and he had a decent solution to the mind-paralyzing problem.

Adrenaline Jolt.

He boosted the Level 0 skill with his aura traits and brushed off the mind-invading paralysis. Then he sent a red line of arcane adrenaline into Bianca, but not too much.

She had her own version of the Level 0 skill. Zarian’s Fractured Mind kept track of that to avoid the lethargy backlash, especially while in the heat of battle.

Freed from the mind-invading paralysis, Bianca prepared another large, searing flash blast. She didn’t even wait to see if Zarian would feed her aura – she’d assumed correctly.

Zarian bridged the gap between their auras, sending her some of his for her to purify and consume. She needed time to charge up though, and the wulvers on the wings moved to pounce, sniffing out the humans while still blinded.

Zarian beat them back with blunt bolts of darkness. He had the high ground and easy vision.

He spread his Parasite Cloak wide, as well, darkening the shadow it produced while the late-afternoon suns beamed against his back.

Bianca’s light shone bright even with Zarian’s darkness behind her. She kept collecting motes of sunlight from above or produced her own from her aura.

After the wulvers shook off the delaying dark bolts, they looked up and faced Bianca’s searing flash torrent again. This one hit with even more oomph.

Bianca screamed as she pushed her palms forward, using her all. Zarian smelled the air burning as a torrent of light, which was nearly as intense as a laser beam, caught more of the wulvers.

Bianca fried them a little deeper this time. Their fur burned off completely. Their flesh burst as boiling blood spilled from open wounds. Little trees, roots, vines, and stone-clinging moss burned and smoldered with them on the hillside.

Bianca wasn’t strictly all flash and glam anymore. She was pushing herself to be the reckoning of light and goodness as the wulvers suffered a pain like no other.

Zarian smiled darkly, finding the justice of his single do-gooder fitting. The monsters wanted to torture others, so they got to feel the same treatment.

“I’m going to try again!” Bianca shouted.

“Let me make it a little easier. They look like they might run.” Zarian raised one hand and lit it on fire with black and gray flames.

Now here was the fun part:

Prior to earning Fractured Mind and Basic Aura Manipulation, Zarian merged Black Fire with Straight Darkness +1 purely off of effort alone, especially with his darkness skill being in the beta section.

Yes, the new traits had been baking inside of him already, but they were incomplete at the time. So he didn’t truly have their full benefits against the Gnoll Force Monk last night.

He had to muscle his way past some hard coded limits of the System to achieve victory over the monk.

That wasn’t a problem anymore because of aura manipulation and his mindset.

Zarian had a way easier time casting and controlling his newest spell, Black Fire. He made it rain dozens and dozens of black bolts and lit them on fire with black and gray flames.

He struck each wulver. The flames spread rapidly to consume their limited vitality. They had little left after all the damage Bianca had lay upon them, with more on the way.

Zarian was sure that if he used Bloody Lifesteal, the wulvers would die without vitality to regenerate their bodies and life energy to secure their souls. It was tempting to try. He held back, however, and watched Bianca push herself to further heights.

“Holy shit.” Zarian’s blackened eyes widened at Bianca’s growing range of power as she showed off her crazy side. Amused, Zarian smiled sharply. “Go, go, Bianca.”

The former rum promoter, now Light Bringer Child, intensified her next salvo of Searing Flash Array. The light she absorbed from the suns raced into both hands. Her aura was lit with so much power as she charged up that it affected the physical world.

Her blond hair wavered up and around her head. Her skin glowed with a bright golden white light. More golden white light beamed from her eyes and her mouth. She let out a soft hum that rose in volume, crescendoing into a full-on scream of righteous wrath.

“I WILL SAVE THE CUTE PUPPIES!” Bianca screamed, thrusting her hands forward, pouring everything out at two overlapping angles.

The laser-like flash beams eradicated the flesh from the bones of the wulvers. It was like watching a group of monsters meeting their end to a nuclear blast, but more magical. Their scorched bones fell back down the hillock of forts, clattering as they went.

Unfortunately, she missed a few who had run away already, but her kill count was pretty nice.

Zarian chuckled as he extended a finger and aimed it like a gun. He manipulated his darkness to gather at the tip as he sighted one of the fleeing targets.

“Bang.”

He turned a wulver’s head into bloody mist and bone bits spraying over the base of the hillock. Its body tumbled and flopped like a sack of muscled meat.

“Bang.”

He hit one straight through the back and created a hole so comically big he could stick his head through it. Flesh, rib fragments, and parts of its spine, heart, and lungs splattered the stones underneath as it fell dead.

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“Huh, I forgot to ask. Is shooting them while they run away evil to you?” Zarian asked, lining up his next shot.

Bianca was sitting on a piece of stone, shivering, covered in sweat, looking down at her burnt hands. She glanced up and thought about the question seriously.

“They are evil, and I’ve witnessed them conduct evil, so I don’t feel the need to extend mercy to them. Keep going, por favor.” Please.

Zarian hit the second-to-last in the base of its back and bisected it from the sheer force of the shot. The wulver’s upper body spiraled through the air like it was more of a dummy than a real living and breathing creature.

“That last one is running fast. Going to be a hard shot.” He said squinted.

Zarian prepared a single javelin of dense darkness, raising it above his head with a palm under its shaft. He focused his Fractured Mind, slicked with tranquility, intensified with adrenaline, and casually threw the big javelin forward once its density peaked.

He missed the wulver.

That was fine. The javelin struck a nearby hill of blocky stones and blasted it apart with so much meteoric force he sent heavy stone fragments flying in all directions.

Normally, the wulvers had high enough vitality that they could survive the crushing strike of a flying stone block. But after suffering under Bianca’s searing flash torrents and having the rest of its vitality eaten up by the Black Fire spell, the last wulver became a pulp of minced flesh and broken bones under the flying debris.

Zarian was powerful enough where he didn’t need to always hit directly to make an impact.

Zarian wondered what led to his spectral spiders gaining a level. He looked back and saw the spiders interacting with the dire wolf pack by patching up their wounds with webbing.

They sealed the bleeding and used branches and twigs to set broken bones straight. They used silly dances to entertain the puppies looking out from their hiding holes and arched windows.

“You all are the most helpful spiders I’ve seen.” Zarian shook his head in disbelief. “How are we looking, Bianca?”

“I’ve gained four levels personally, and I now have Searing Flash Array +1,” Bianca said, with a peaceful smile on her face. “I can intensify the light for increased damage, especially when I gather from other light sources.”

Zarian weakened the darkness under his hood so Bianca could see his proud smile. Then the System appeared to add its input.

“What does your alignment say about that?” Zarian gestured toward the shared quest.

“It’s troubling.” Bianca frowned. “I don’t know if I can kill the wulver puppies if they have them.”

“You won’t have to.”

“Zarian,” Bianca whined softly. “That’s so dark and bleak.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

Bianca fixed him with a hard look. Before she mustered up whatever she wanted to say, a dire wolf padded carefully around Zarian and toward Bianca.

The wolf kept its head low, sniffing, looking left and right carefully, before closing the distance on Bianca all the way. Then the wolf licked over Bianca’s wounded hands.

Zarian waited for the magic to happen. Gradually, Bianca’s hands healed under the soft licks before Zarian said, “That’s their healer. It’s returning the favor for our help.”

“I’ll do it,” Bianca declared.

“The quest?”

“The everything.”

“You sure?”

“Being good, Zarian, doesn’t mean being nice in the face of true evil. And I don’t want to hide behind you when I can do the work, right? So … I’ll do it.”

“Gonna kill babies, huh? That’s hardcore, Bianca.”

“You said I’m braver than some Marines. I want to live up to that, papi.”

Zarian froze.

Bianca’s eyes shot wide open.

After an awkward silence, Bianca broke into a fit of giggles and waved it all off. “Let’s keep that between us? I know how people can take that weirdly.”

“It’s fine. We’re from Florida. You can be you if that feels natural. In fact, we should all probably learn Spanish. Since this world and possibly the other worlds in the Star System might have English as a common language, we could use Spanish when we’re around strangers and want to keep stuff within the party.”

Bianca brightened from hearing that. After all, Spanish speakers, or anyone with their own language, always appreciated when you spoke the same back or made the attempt, at least. Zarian knew that from growing up in the streets of Miami.

The Dire Wolf Pack Healer finished fixing up Bianca’s hands. Zarian used the meat of a crispy wulver to feed his own ravenous hunger while Para ate her fill of the remaining burnt corpses. Bianca reserved her appetite for something less humanoid they would hunt later.

They waited on the spectral spiders to frolic and dance around with the pups before he sent them on a recon mission to find the wulvers’ main den. Then they bid the dire wolves a farewell before Zarian scooped up Bianca into his arms.

They lifted off on twin jets of darkness. Para spread the cloak wide into wings once they reached a good enough altitude.

“We’ll use the wolf pack as a meetup point with the spectral spiders every hour or so. Either they’ll find the wulvers or we will. From there, we’re going to work on some close quarters fighting,” Zarian explained.

“I hope we find them soon before sunset.”

“We’ll attack in the morning if that happens.”

Bianca looked into his darkened face with surprise. “But you’ll be stronger in the dark.”

“Again, this outing isn’t entirely about me. This is about you. You should be significantly stronger when we see the others.”

Bianca nodded before asking, “Did you get new levels?”

“Other than one for the spectral spiders, no.”

“But you did a lot of work!”

“It wasn’t hard enough for me, and I’m higher in levels. I talked with Hannah about this before, and she agrees with me. I think level ups happen based on a couple of factors. Difficulty. Nuance. Facing challenges higher than you. Or significant differences in level and power. Just like growing vitality, I don’t think levels are a static sub-system within the Star System.”

“How do you know?”

“Think of the soldiers. They’re trained for wall defending. They’ve lived in the Star System far longer than us even if they’re younger. We’re surpassing their levels in months when they took years to get where they are. And you know why?”

Bianca pursed her lips to think. “They’re not Outsiders?”

Zarian’s Fractured Mind sputtered a little. Despite his organized scatter-brain thinking, he’d missed that factor.

Being Outsiders came with hidden benefits from the System such as not getting corrupted by Shadowfell Tears. They could have an experience boost, too, but Zarian doubted that.

“I think it has more to do with us being more aggressive while they’re more passive. We’re facing tougher challenges while they face challenges more appropriate to their levels or lower. But you might have a point that us being Outsiders could give us an experience boost.”

“Hm, maybe, maybe not! But do you think I’ll be so strong I’ll … be scary?” Bianca giggled as if she couldn’t imagine anyone would fear her growing power.

Zarian crackled like a villain, and Bianca looked at him nervously, unable to perceive the depraved depths of his Fractured Mind. It couldn’t be helped. Making Bianca so scary that people would run away screaming from her was too amusing.