Edge didn’t realize that he could run any faster. But apparently, he could.

He charged, heading straight for the beast standing beside the boulder. As the world around him became a liquid blur of color and motion, everything that he knew about his assailants came back to him in the blink of an eye.

He had studied and drilled, memorizing the profiles of hundreds of beasts. The long training that Edge had undergone before purchasing his puppet paid for itself in that moment.

Although the name came from Greek mythology, nymphs were beasts that were native to Ord, not Earth animals that had adapted to life on a magical world. Their bodies were made of living wood and were generally humanoid in appearance, about the size of a ten-year-old child. They had delicate features and big brown eyes.

They looked harmless enough from a distance, but nymphs were carnivorous creatures with razor sharp teeth. Relentless predators that claimed a few tourists’ lives every year. They were tough and decently fast. They weren’t the best fighters up close, although their arms ended in spikes that they could use like swords.

All of that was bad enough. But what made nymphs truly dangerous, like most creatures on Ord, were the skills at their disposal.

How the rest of this fight proceeded, including whether Edge lived or died, would come down to which and how many skills the nymphs had. Given their size, they were early stage-one, which meant that they only had one or two skills they could use.

He already knew that the one behind him had burrow. It must be rank-one, or I would never have sensed it coming so easily. With at least one of their skill slots filled by a movement-based power, Edge could be facing up to three combat skills.

Unfortunately, while he was aware of several possibilities, he didn’t know what was coming.

Beasts didn’t always develop the same skillset, unless they were closely related. But he could make an educated guess. Given the way that the nymphs had positioned him, they didn’t have anything with long range. Otherwise, they would simply have sniped him, instead of driving him into an ambush.

That observation let him eliminate quite a few options. Others were far more likely given the tactics he’d seen. That still left him with at least a half dozen possibilities to contend with. To figure out the rest, he took a closer look at the creature in front of him.

Something in the nymph’s posture told Edge that it was waiting for him to stop before using its skill. That it was holding back until the moment he turned away. It was enough to give him a hunch about what skill it was going to use. He decided to trust his instincts and bet everything that he had.

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He charged straight for the creature blocking his path, forcing it to spring its trap early instead of waiting for an ideal moment to strike. The instant the beast realized that Edge wasn’t going to stop or turn to the side, he felt something slithering near his boots.

In that moment, he knew what was happening. His guess had been right, and he threw his body out of the way. It’s using entangle after all.

He leapt just in time to avoid the vine lashing through the space where his ankle had been a heartbeat before. He dove as he tucked in one shoulder, then hit the ground and rolled. When he came back around, he sprang again, dodging a second grasping tendril with mere inches to spare.

The nymph hissed and reared back, surprised that Edge had forced his way through. He hadn’t had time to unstrap his claw-sword from his pack, which left him with only one way to attack. It was time for elemental blade to shine.

Before the beast could get out of the way, Edge was upon it. His iceblade had just finished forming. With his upgraded stats, the blade was now a foot long, the wreath of mist around it glowing faintly blue. He took aim and stabbed it straight into the nymph’s face, optimism rising as the skill struck true.

He expected the subzero sword to kill the creature. Or at least deal some serious damage, like it had every time before. Although nymphs were made of wood, they were beasts, not plants. They needed their heads just as much as he did.

But instead of falling down, the creature opened its mouth and screamed. Then it lunged, jabbing a wooden spike into his chest. Edge leapt back in time with the blow, taking a deep scratch along his ribcage instead of having his stomach punctured.

Something’s not right. His iceblade hadn’t done nearly as much damage as it should. While it was possible that the nymph had some manner of defensive skill that he wasn’t aware of, he suspected that the answer was simpler.

Beasts that hunted other skill-using beasts often specialized in disruption. The attribute that weakened the skills of others. People on the feed always said that disruption was hard to understand until you could use it yourself.

Edge only knew two things about it. The first was that it created a field that extended a few inches past the boundary of the body. The second was that creatures native to Ord tended to have more disruption than those originating from Earth.

The moment that he felt it for himself, he realized that the nymph’s disruption was interfering with elemental blade’s ability to manifest. It’s weakening my iceblade at the point of impact, preventing the magic from entering its body and freezing the tissue inside.

This was a serious problem. His strongest weapon wouldn’t do much damage, and he’d wasted some mana to deal a superficial injury. Not to mention, given the beast behind him a chance to catch up.

It was a bad situation by any accounting. One that was growing worse by the second. But Edge wasn’t going down without a fight. It just meant that if he wanted to live, he was going to have to improvise. That rare skill should finish digesting sometime soon. Hopefully I can take them out without it. But if not, I need to buy as much time as I can.

On the bright side, although the iceblade’s output was reduced, it wasn’t completely negated. The nymph in front of him was momentarily distracted by the painful, rime-encrusted wound, preventing it gathering the concentration it needed to use its skills.

But the beast burrowing through the ground was another matter entirely.