Yanily’s Dragon Breath arrived first, smashing into the Arborean Uniclops from point-blank range, then washed outward, scouring the ground clean. At the same time his blast tore at the surroundings, a sheet of black under his feet dropped him to safety as his sponsor’s breath arrived. Barely the blink of an eye passed between the two attacks, and while this one lacked the same edge as Yanily’s blast, it more than made up for it in blanketing intensity.

Thanks to the additional forty-five percent damage, it covered the area in an expanding dome of destruction threatening to sweep everything away.

Until the sun came crashing down on it, bowing the top of dome inward under its power. Lingering energy from the dual Dragon’s Breath attacks merged with the plasma of the sun as it reached the ground, shaking the earth in a rumble that rattled the valley.

Within the fiery apocalypse, the giant could do nothing but vanish into oblivion, its body breaking down into its most base parts. Then, even those were incinerated, leaving less than ash to mark the creature had ever been there.

To call the combination attack overkill would be an understatement. So much energy remained in the second after the Wild-Boss ceased to exist, it almost seemed like a waste.

One Hiral wouldn’t let pass by.

His Runes of Time Dilation and Contraction whirled to life as he transformed his Ring of Amin Thett into its Crown of Amin Thett form. Crystal horns forming on his head, Hiral turned his attention to the third and final of the Wild-Boss targets. With its health already at sixty percent thanks to Drahn and Politet exploiting its one weakness – and now with all its invulnerabilities removed – it wasn’t long for the world. The three parties were going all out, and it was clearly more than the Arborean Uniclops could handle.

Hiral could let the fight continue, taking its natural course to conclusion. But, then he wouldn’t get the chance to test something, and the ocean of unclaimed energy was too perfect to pass up.

A smile crossing his lips even in paused time, Hiral activated Hundred Handed+ at the same time he seared the Rune of Energy into the space between the horns in front of his eyes. A braid of Attraction and Absorption reached out to the fiery death brought about by Yanily and Seena, and the remaining energy leapt at the chance to be used, rushing to join Hiral’s rune.

Once more, color bled from the area as Hiral’s Annihilation of Amin Thett spun to life. Like a whirlpool, the ball of power pulled on the energy Hiral fed it, twisting around and around even in paused time. Streamers of red plasma and yellow lightning turned black as they got further compressed in the space between the horns.

While Hiral didn’t have a full charge in his Crown, he had enough to get the process started, and he fueled the rest of it through a combination of his runes mixed with Empower+ and Follow-Up Blow. Not that he was finished there. The eight hands of Hundred Handed+ reached around – above and below – to cup the growing ball of energy. Fingers spread, even the spectral limbs started to unravel at the building Annihilation until Hiral pushed the power of one of his runes into each of the eight hands.

Since he’d gotten the upgraded ability, he’d been imagining the things he could do with it. Sure, he could weave different runic combinations in his own hands – and that was powerful – but he’d always wondered what kind of power levels he could reach if he could dedicate a hand to each rune.

It was time to find out.

Runes of Separation, Impact, Increase, Compression, Expansion, Unsealing, Sealing, and Breaking formed in the palms of his Hundred Handed+, fueling the powerful attack. That still wasn’t enough – even with the Edicts joining in – and Hiral brought his own hands up to come in from the sides of the whirling energy. Pain lanced at his fingers as flesh simply dissolved, but it wasn’t anything that would stop him, and Runic Regeneration+ took care of the damage as fast as it occurred.

There, he added in his Runes of Dreaming and Piercing.

The runes and Edicts may’ve existed longer than Hiral could fathom, static constants that governed the rule of the universe. Somehow – in that moment – that wasn’t enough for Hiral. He could feel their call. Their desire.

Growth. Advancement. Innovation.

They were static, but did that mean he had to be?

No. He’d never settled for now being enough before. Loan had said he was stubborn – the man hadn’t been wrong – and that had allowed Hiral to constantly push forward. To advance. Here, he would bring the runes with him.

Taking full hold of Dreaming, Hiral used the new Rune of Piercing and his own will to punch through what was – along with all the related constraints – and into what could be.

In that space between his horns – within the sphere of wrath – something new seemed to be birthed. Energy continued to get pulled in. Transformed. Almost… removed? No, it still existed, but it was like it was overlaid with something else. Something that shook the world around Hiral as even the runic Connections holding reality in place began to fray.

In a circle around him, the grass dissolved as it fell apart, the debris of it rising into the air even as it continued to break down. The ground came next, dirt and stone evaporating in a widening radius. Whatever Hiral was doing, he was pulling something out of the solids – even the air – around him. It was… it was the solar energy holding things together. Wait, even that wasn’t right. The solar energy didn’t hold things together, but it did power the runic script that seemed to govern the laws of the world.

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Hiral was tearing those concepts of how the world worked out with the solar energy, and overlaying them with his own need. His own concept. He was – in the space immediately around him – rewriting those laws. Absolutely, bending them to his will and need.

In this case, his need to end his target.

Nothing would stop this attack. It took a tremendous amount of power and focus, but it was a culmination of everything he’d learned to this point. The next step on his own path.

Even with ten hands ‘holding’ the Annihilation in place, the compressed ball pulsed like it wanted to escape. To rage and destroy. Well – conveniently – Hiral had the perfect target for it to do just that.

The staff-wielding Arborean Uniclops stood directly ahead of him in frozen time, and Hiral’s attack was finally ready. In fact, trying to hold it back any longer would result in… unfortunate consequences, with the power building even beyond his control.

“Go,” Hiral whispered to himself as he released his time runes – and the Annihilation of Amin Thett.

A bar of crackling black formed directly in front of Hiral’s horns, ten-feet wide and completely devoid of sound. No, much like the attack from Vorinal that had nearly killed Hiral, this attack consumed everything in front of it, sound included.

It was a silent death that connected Hiral to the Wild-Boss’s chest, then continued beyond. Across the entire length of the valley, the black line stretched, and then it was gone. There was no terrible roar or spectacular crash. No explosion marked the termination point of his attack. There was simply nothing left where the beam passed.

Reality warped along the line, like he’d cut into that space where the PIMP stretched its connections, but even that was missing as Hiral held the space within his own concept. The void hung open like a blur stretched through the air. At that distance, though, it became too much for him within a single heartbeat, and he was forced to release his hold. Slowly, edges sparking with energy, the space began to fill in, threads of something like Connection weaving within the vacuum to drag the severed sections back together.

But, it was probably only Hiral who could see that – feel that – with every other eye in the valley on the Wild-Boss. The one with the ten-foot-wide hole clear through the center of its chest. That wasn’t all, though. Its entire body had taken on an ashen hue, like its life and solar energy had been Separated from whatever connected it to this world.

Thanks to the power of Seena’s attack and Hiral’s runic combination, that was exactly what he’d been aiming for. And, boy, had it worked.

Almost too well, really, and he dropped straight down to a seated position on the ground. His whole body felt wrung dry from the combination of abilities, and a quick check of his solar energy showed him down under ten percent. He’d dumped a lot of solar energy – empowered by his runes, abilities, domain, and Eloquently Enraged+ – into that attack.

“That… uh…” Yanily said, stepping over beside Hiral. Still in his half-draconic, Aspect form, the spearman scratched at his chin. “Did you kill it?”

“I sure hope so,” Hiral said, noting the body still stood exactly where it had. Unmoving. “Didn’t I?”

“Only one way to be sure,” Seena said, clawing across with a Growing Cinder+. Five slashes of flame appeared across the face of the Wild-Boss, and the whole ashen giant exploded into a cloud of dust that fell to the ground in a circle thirty feet wide. Not even the gentle wind held the gray grains, and the instant the last one touched down, a notification window appeared in front of Hiral’s eyes.

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – The Power of Teamwork

You’ve defeated a guardian – and your first challenge – inside the Cradle of Tomorrow. Now, continue your campaign as you race to unlock the secrets within this forgotten place.

Please access a Raid Interface to unlock class-specific reward.

Race? There was no way that word choice was coincidental. There really was somebody else on the other side of the valley. Was it Vorinal?

Hiral’s eyes instinctively looked out and across the valley from where he sat, but the thick haze still obscured much of what he could see. Aside from the break in the trees – many of them flattened by Yanily’s earlier attack – he could only see a few hundred feet before the top of the fog bank hid what lay underneath. There was the occasional massively tall tree that stood towering above the rest, as well as what looked like the roofs of brass buildings, and a few other lumps in the mist that meant it had to be hiding something at that location. Even stranger, as Hiral watched, the space seemed to stretch, like it had been compressed before, and was now expanding to fill its natural size.

Reaching out with his runic senses and Cycling, the feeling of it reminded him somewhat of a dungeon, but it definitely wasn’t the same. Like it had used a similar idea, but gone in a different direction. This was still the real world in this valley, but Tomorrow had altered it on a fundamental scale. Far more than the PIMP had when it’d turned Fallen Reach into a dungeon.

The scale of the power was… mind boggling.

“Hey, Hiral,” Seena interrupted. “You okay?”

“Hrm?” Hiral asked, pulling himself back to the present. “Yeah. Just looking at that race comment. That has to be Vorinal, right?”

“Probably,” Seena said. “What do you think about the guide part?”

“Guide… part?” Hiral asked, going back to the notification. “I don’t see anything about a guide.”

“Did you open the second notification?” Seena asked him, the rest of the party likewise gathering around. To his side, Bash simply dropped backwards to splay on the ground, his hammers next to him.

“Bash… tired…” the little Troblin said, the bands across his body fully fading.

And, he wasn’t the only one sitting down, with everybody who’d used their powerful cooldowns likewise finding a place to take a short breather.

Before Hiral let Eloquently Enraged+ go – and dealt with the side-effects – he closed the achievement window to find the second one Seena has mentioned.

Dynamic Quest

Three Eyes Aren’t Better Than One

Arborean Uniclops Defeated: 3/3

Arborean Uniclops Treasure Obtained: 0/3

Guide Obtained: 0/1

“A Wild-Boss quest?” Hiral asked, reading through the notification and putting the pieces together. “Three pieces of loot? Their eyes?”

“Yuck, I sure hope not,” Seena said.

“Probably these,” Right said flatly, the two doubles approaching the others. In Right’s hand, he held an axe with a haft of twisted wood, and a blade that looked like a piece of shale – the axe-clops’s weapon. In his other hand, he held the stone hammer.

Left carried the final weapon – the staff – though none of the three weapons were gigantic. If anything, they seemed perfectly sized for normal people.

And, as soon as the doubles brought attention to the weapons, the notification window updated.

Dynamic Quest Update

Three Eyes Aren’t Better Than One

Arborean Uniclops Defeated: 3/3

Arborean Uniclops Treasure Obtained: 3/3

Guide Obtained: 0/1

“Ooooh,” Yanily said as he let his Aspect fade. “We get loot?”

“Looks that way,” Hiral said. “Still doesn’t explain who or what this guide would be.”

“Ah, that would be me,” a new voice said, and everybody turned to the side to find Alesandio, The Arborean Triclops of Tomorrow standing there like nothing had even happened.