Alchemy is easy. You are in a quiet space with no distractions, and all you need is precision and delicate mana control. Savage Stalker is hard. You are in the middle of a fight with a dozen things happening, and you have to time your aura spike with the spear strike, Mighty Oak, Pierce and use Quick Sharp to move while thinking ahead to the next three steps. This is with an unpredictable opponent who is trying to kill you.

I backed away from the horse-lizard thing, guiding it carefully when Ardisia fell from the branched above, and I cast Hunters Tether underneath and dropped my spear. I grabbed my second axe and went full-on into the Savage part of my Savage Stalker. I only had a few moments before the Horsard broke from the tethers, so I made the most of it. Ardisia was more precise, with her thorns striking at sensitive places like eyes and genitalia. The monsters don’t breed, so sensitive genitalia doesn’t make a lot of sense. It works on iron and bronze monsters.

Sibs came up behind it, having finished her one and sliced the rear legs. Being bronze rank, she was not suffering under the damage reduction I was. The poison in my spear meant the tethers lasted longer than they would have otherwise, and I counted that to be a successful brew.

After losing my leg, I was better at trusting my familiars more. They had started to shine and level. I think Kai will go to bronze after our destruction of the ant nest we just completed. The Queen was also bronze-rank, and I lost a Kai, but I trust they know what they are doing. It used to take five days to breed another Kai. Now, with a bronze-rank Garden, it is down to three.

Ardisia is probably going up to iron nine as well once I get a chance to meditate. I was holding her back, keeping her absorbed.

“Shiiiiiiiiiit,” came a pained cry from Harry, and I smelled new magic. I spun and saw the Behemoth Burrower emerge from the ground underneath where Harry had been. I smoothed my turn, extending my arm into a throw, and the axe spun and lodged in the soft part behind the mouth. Throwing weapons was the ranged aspect of Savage Stalker. Before this, I had only thrown Javelins and the occasional spear. Throwing knives and axes was a whole different thing, and I was very pleased it landed the blade first and was close to where I was aiming.

I scooped up my fallen spear and applied a different poison as I approached the giant mole thing. I tossed Harry a potion. It was from my first successful batch of bronze-rank general healing potions. Only the recipes for the general healing potions were available to us, and only the lessor formulas. Potions like the Bone and flesh ones I purchased were closely guarded secrets.

I could only make the bronze rank one as I had the troll blood. The ingredients were expensive. I had been taking advantage of the high price of ingredients when I sold my herps, but now I was on the other side of the transaction, consuming ingredients and quintessence at a huge rate. I didn’t have bronze-rank mana for the bronze-rank potions, so I had to make a deal with a classmate. Unfortunately, I only had a limited amount of Troll blood, and his mana was a renewable resource. I will be there soon.

The Behemoth Burrower was a half mole, half earthworm and … “Shiiiiiit,” I dived sideways, finally being successful at combining Hunter Step and Quicksharp with my claws in the correct movement to avoid the earth spikes.

Harry had pinned it in place with his own Ice Spikes, and I threw a Hunter's Tether at it to help. The problem with Savage Stalker is the mana and Stamina cost at Iron Rank. The quick, consistent and repeated use of skills can quickly run me out of mana if I am not careful. I can see the technique coming to its own at bronze rank and higher when the mana pool is larger with bronze rank recovery rates.

I used Hunter Step to step across the pointed top of the Earth spikes, as the lightness of the step was new bronze. If I had the mana to spare, I could use it to walk on water and to run up a vertical cliff. I rarely had the mana to spare at iron rank.

* Hunter’s Step {Foot stone} Bronze 1

* Iron Rank: Move swiftly, lightly and quietly through the terrain. Muffles movement noise. Cost low mana/sec.

* Bronze Rank: Reduces mana cost, increases dimension steps and increases muffling. Enables moving across the water and unstable areas without disturbing the terrain at a mana/sec cost. Vertical surfaces may be used as steps for mana/sec cost.

I leapt off the last spike and launched myself at the Behemoth, coming down on its back spear first. The most dangerous thing about the burrower is its claws. They are for ripping through rock, and at the moment, they are ripping through Harry's Ice armour as fast as he can generate it.

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My Spear strikes at the spine, but the fur, tough skin and bone stop me from getting into the spine, and that was with Pierce. The behemoth bucked, and I felt like I was a long way from the ground. The spear was tipped with my new acid poison to try to help it penetrate deeper. I think that mix was not really successful. It was eating away at the blade of the spear, making it require constant sharpening as well.

I was hanging on to the spear with one hand as we went vertical, and I was grabbing small shields from my Hunters Pack as fast as I could and slamming them against the spine of the Beh Burrower. The sticky Resin mix meant they stayed where I put them, and an acrid stench started to gather as this acid/resin mix ate through fur and skin and started on the bones underneath.

I suspected the BB was going to go right over and try to crush me, so I let go of the spear and ran up its back toward the head, using Hunter's Step. As I ran, I slammed an acid pie into one of its eyes and another onto its nose. It had very weak eyes, but I figured it would hurt. The nose was the damage dealer, and its smell was phenomenal. This was like blinding a hawk. Almost. Almost because It probably also had some sort of earth sense. Harry should be fighting that.

I launched myself off the head, trusting my teammates to catch me. Harry was busy ripping into the Behemoth's underbelly with his Ice Sword, so he wasn’t going to. I was probably four stories high and would survive a fall like this, but not without injury.

I rotated to get my feet under me and timed Hunter Step to soften the landing when I felt my speed slow. I started floating gently, and then I dropped the last few meters. Sibs had used her Feather Fall ability on me from her Empower Confluence. She was getting good at only using it long enough to reduce the momentum and then let me fall. This saved her mana and meant I was not a softly floating target.

I turned and sprinted back to the Behemoth. It had decided Harry was a bigger threat and was coming down on him instead of going right over to where I would have been. Harry had made a mess of its underbelly, so that was a fair assessment. I saw two Kai’s disappear into the belly of the beast via the damage Harry had made. Kai likes eating large monsters from the inside out. This is an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord.

Sibs had used a Swift skill to get on the behemoth's back and was making use of the weak points my acid had made. She was Bronze rank with the Might and Empower essences, and her spear thrusts were going deep, and it was losing control of some parts of its body as she moved higher. She missed a thrust and hit the fur rather than the acid-weakened area, and her spear bounced off the bone. Industrial Alchemy for the win here.

All of us were tired as the ants had been followed immediately by the Horsards and then this Behemoth. That probably accounted for Harry not getting out from underneath in time, and he disappeared from my sight. That’s not good. Harry is a pretty solid build, and ice armour and earth reinforcements mean he is not squishy like me.

I could see frost creeping out from under the monster, so he was using his skills. I knew his Desolate essence had some powerful debuffs he would be using. After all, the behemoth won't be going anywhere now, and he is not being attacked, only squashed.

Sibs had its attention, so I dove in with my claws. I want to get Rend over the line to Bronze, so this was a good exercise for me. I chose a spot where Harry went under as I figured he would need to be dug out rather than wait and be in the middle of a massive amount of rainbow smoke.

As I got past the fur and skin, I went deeper and started hitting dried-out and desiccated flesh. This was one of Harry’s Skills. It died just as I grabbed Harry's hand to haul him out from underneath it.

“Thanks,” he said, “That thing was heavy.”

Kai chewed a hole out of the flesh and darted out into the bush. “Kai didn’t appreciate the desiccated flesh,” I said.

“The poor starved animal,” Harry responded, “You should take better care of him.”

“Riiiight,” I said sarcastically. “You didn’t tell me the main attack move of an Arctic Warrior is lying down on the job.”

“It is a well-kept secret.”

“I think you are overusing it.”

I am not sure there was any one finishing blow to killing the behemoth. I think it was just wearing it down. Kai knows how to eat his way to vital organs and brain, but that is less effective in the bronze rank and not effective at all in the silver rank.

This was a looters' paradise for me. I had no idea what a Lizard Hoof was for, so I got a simple scaled vest and some coins. When I showed the vest to Sibs, she bought it from me and looked very pleased. A tailor can easily adjust the sizing. Yes, I gave it to her cheap.

The Behemoth Burrower gave me the option of claw stiletto knives, but I preferred a spade and pickaxe with bonuses to dig through earth and rocks. The meat and fur were also good. I chose a part of the meat as jerky, but Reaping Magic only gave me a basic flavour. To add some taste, I had to make it myself.

“Are you two idiots finished gossiping?” Sibs said as she approached. “We need to get to the gate.”

“There is a fine example of an uplifting leadership speech,” Harry said.