The day had finally come. For the fourth time in the past five days, they had witnessed golden flares streak through the borderland sky. But this time, things were different. Kradir had taken out the flare-gun and sent out signals. The message was obvious.

We’ve seen you. We’re close. Stay open for the next eight hours.

The moment they received another flare, this one in acknowledgement of theirs, they knew it was time to get muddy. Lukas, in particular, was very excited to see how extraction was really done.

Mori had slid out a silvery dagger from one of her deceptively deep pockets and ran it across her palm. She didn’t so much as flinch, so Lukas wondered just how common it was for their species to do so. He himself was no stranger to seeing blood — whether his own or his victims—but actively using it for something so mechanical felt a little surreal.

Once enough blood had oozed out, Mori murmured something under her breath and began drawing sigils on the ground using her blood as ink. No, not sigils, runes. Every single mark shone as concentrated mana swirled around her own body, caressing her like a lover. Lukas ignored Kradir’s chanting in the background as Mori kept drawing one rune after another, until she had crafted two concentric runic circles on the ground, both of them glowing with eldritch energies. Svartalfars were creatures of the earth, so there was no doubt whatever terramancy they were about to perform, it would be spectacular. Finally, Mori stepped back, and Kradir’s chanting went up a note higher.

Then it happened.

Kradir finished his chant, and thrust both hands upward with a growl, and the ground within the circles erupted, revealing four gigantic earthen arms, their palms held open against the sky. The constructs stood head and shoulders above them, easily fifteen feet in height, and something tiny, yet powerful and dense, formed in the center of each palm.

Concentric rings of mana manifested around the four arms, oddly reminding Lukas of the fractals he was wearing. The mana particles coalesced, forming the rune circles Mori had drawn on the ground, and began spinning around each arm with surprising velocity.

It was like magic.

Everything he had seen the svartalfar pair do was fascinating. Despite his disposition, Kradir was a skilled sensor. He had seen him predict the topology of the area in vivid detail with extreme precision. His skill probably allowed him to do that at a much larger radius. In the same vein, Mori’s ability to divide her focus into multiple parallel mind streams and devote them all to gaining information at the same time was equally fascinating. Lukas had a similar skill from the thoggua — Seismic sensing, but it was crude and operable on a far smaller scale. And now, he was witnessing them perform an industrial metallurgical operation through terramancy alone. The way they were churning out the ore out of the crust was endlessly fascinating. Between their ability to terraport and the subtler aspects of terramancy that Hreidmar specialized in, it was painting a neat picture. Lukas could imagine a prototype that held all the above skills with it, ready to be called upon, crafted to serve the whims of its creator. An existence that was both a formula for future proliferation, and a useful skill-set in his arsenal. All he needed was a quick Siphon—

Lukas blinked.

Then blinked again.

Had he… was he really considering murdering the svartalfar duo in cold blood? People he had promised to protect? People that had traveled with him, had shared a fire over, had conversations into the dead of the night? And for what? For skills?

Damn it, Lukas. What’s wrong with you?

This… this had never been an issue before. That part of himself — the Anomaly, it had its own needs. It had often reared its head against Inanna back in the anomaly, but ever since he had become Prime Host, it had stayed low, deferring to his judgment.

Or maybe he simply hadn’t gotten into a situation that attracted its attention.

Damn it. He needed to learn to recognize that influence before someone got hurt.

“Svartalfar blood is an extremely potent medium,” said Tanya, standing next to him.“She’s magnifying the golem’s efficiency using her own blood and power.”

Lukas looked at her.

She snorted. “It was obvious seeing your face. I know how you think.”

Lukas’s lips twitched into the distant echo of a smile. She was wrong in her assessment‌ but he saw no need to correct her. As it was, things had been strained between them since that conversation about her past. Tanya held herself aloof most of the time, but he was glad to see it didn’t come at the cost of her professionalism. Regardless of her personal feelings, she still behaved normally with him. At least in casual conversation.

“By how much?” he asked, switching to Maluscian. There was utterly no need for the svartalfars to know what they were talking about.

“Around… four times?” Tanya guessed, effortlessly switching to Maluscian as well. “It varies. Kradir’s chanting is basically a pact with the world, sacrificing lifeblood for a temporary gain in power.” She snorted. “A lot of Asukans have tried to mimic this, only to end up dying.”

He arched an eyebrow.

“Our blood is… how do I put it? Less potent? Magically dilute compared to svartalfars, or any of the Old-world creatures?”

“I see,” he said, glancing at the duo. “I imagine svartalfar blood must be a pretty precious commodity then.”

Tanya froze at that. “Why… would you say that?”

What was he supposed to say? Common sense? “Asukans can’t mana craft without kami, and even having one comes at the cost of soul capacity. If you could just spill some svartalfar blood and cast a spell for, you know, quick and dirty manacrafting, I imagine it’d turn out pretty useful. I mean, they’re terramancers, so I imagine it’d be in demand in….” He frowned. “Uh, do you have a black market in the Empire? Places where you can deal with contraband?”

“The taverns usually,” Tanya said, lips pressed, “or all of Maluscion.”

Lukas smirked at her description. “Yeah, those. I’d imagine svartalfar blood being sold under the table at high prices.”

“You’re… dangerously well-informed about Asukan malpractices.”

He sensed the wariness in her tone.

“Don’t know about Asukan, but it’s a thing where I’m from. The illegal sale thing, I mean.”

That didn’t seem to pacify her at all.

“I guess that makes sense now,” Lukas declared, cupping his chin. “About the warnings. If they die, we won’t be allowed to get back. They don’t trust Asukans to not spill svartalfar blood and sell it elsewhere.”

“Right.”

Lukas barked out a laugh. “Idiots.”

Tanya arched her brows. “Them?”

“No, the Asukans,” He replied, lowering his voice down to a whisper. “If I wanted to get a constant supply of svartalfar blood, I’d have just kidnapped several of their species, forced them to breed and created a colony of them. Maybe even experiment on their blood to see what makes them so potent and try to replicate a synthetic variant, or even try breeding them with Asukans to see if a hybrid—”

He paused, realizing that Tanya had gone white, like she had seen a ghost. Her facial muscles were all strained, and her hands were shaking. If he didn't know better, it'd be like she was preparing to strike him down.

"... what?"

Tanya did not answer.

"Tanya?"

She smoothed her face into a non-expression. “Nothing.”

He narrowed his eyes. "No. It’s definitely something.”

She vehemently shook her head. "Nothing, really. Just wondering about what you said. Forceful breeding. Synthetic variants. Experimental bloodlines.... Is that common where you're from?"

"Yes." Then he thought about how that sounded. "I mean, not that I was involved in that or anything. In my world, synthetic breeding allowed humanity to prosper. Especially through agriculture. Our guys created modified plant species through experimental breeding, and increased crop production. Same for meat, fish and anything edible, really. Diseases were fought by studying the genetic structure of the pathogen and crafting synthetic vaccines that would teach our body how to fight them."

Her frown deepened. “You did not level up, so you altered your own tissues to make yourselves better?”

That was a little too simplistic, but sure, he could go with that.

“Kind of. Yes.”

“I see…” she said, and looked away.

Lukas snorted and looked back at the ongoing extraction. The area within the runic circles was shining like mercury, frothing and spitting out small chunks of a lustrous, silvery metal into the air, which floated upwards into a bubble of pure energy, almost like it was magnetically attracted to it. Maybe it was, for all he knew. Maybe this was the magical equivalent of ore refining, with the frothing surface acting like an actual refinery unit, and liberating the real ore out into the bubble above.

“Ah,” muttered Tanya, “I really hate this part.”

Lukas glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

“Just watch.”

The bubble of pure energy began to spin, creating a sine wave of power, directing the lustrous, pure metal upwards, a tornado of earth mana that was reaching out to embrace the world beneath the crust. He watched as Kradir brought his hands down in a slashing gesture, and unleashed the torrent of energy into the crust itself. Lukas didn’t need to be a sensor to feel the energy traveling beneath the ground, and a feeling of wrongness permeated his person.

A second later, Lukas knew why.

For a single second, gravity vanished from beneath his feet, and the land for miles all around them, jerking everything on the surface, Lukas included. And then, that enormous power returned with a vengeance, imploding into itself like a nuclear blast, throwing several giant chunks of what could only be lochil metal out through the ground.

Lukas looked at Tanya in shock, and then back at the ores.

“Yeah,” he said, “I see now.”

Tanya snorted. “You don’t. But you will. Right about now.”

She might as well be a conductor waving a baton, directing the scene. For the air was suddenly split right then with battle cries of several dozen monsters— giants, each of them easily twice his height, carrying large clubs of burning rock resting on their shoulders, more ifrits, janje, and feline things that looked too large and too terrifying to be a cat. He heard the wild ululations of more ifrits, the strangled moan of the giants and the chittering screech of those cat-like things, as they all leapt forward at their fastest pace to find and destroy the enemy.

Them.

“Yeah,” he grimaced, looking at Tanya with a sour expression. “I see what you meant.”

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‘Told you,” she quipped.

…

…

…

MUSPEL

Bipedal, lifeforce-producing organisms with innate fire mana-forges. Characterized by extreme physical strength and lack of rationality.

Okay. Maybe he had erred slightly in his assessment. This wasn’t Christian Hell. This was Muspelheim, or at least, a faithful impersonation of it. And these giants were muspels, fire-breathing, club-wielding monstrosities known for their unmatched capacity for destruction. In fact, Surtr, the mythological figure doomed to become the End of the Aesir in Ragnarok was a muspel himself.

And he had several dozen of those rushing towards him.

Joy.

The giants— muspel— saw them and almost instantly, slowed down, legs spread wide like a surfer, and slamming its club into the ground and dragging it behind like some berserk plow, rending the stone with an enormous roar of breaking granite as it used the weapon to slow its enormous momentum.

The ground shook under the violence of their very presence.

“Muspels!” Tanya spat, gritting her teeth. “Hate them.” She turned to him. “We’ve got to leave. As quickly as we can.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “Anything you want to tell me?”

“Muspels stay in herds. If there’s a muspel in front of you, it means there’s an entire herd around. I’ll distract them, and we leave. If even one of them dies, the entire herd will be here in no time.” Her face twitched. “Trust me. You don’t want that.”

Lukas glanced back at the svartalfar pair, who were busy collecting the gathered metal and packing them into their deceptively large bags. The giant mana circle was still active, with Mori still sitting in its heart.

“Can’t leave without them, can we now?”

A look of frustration crossed Tanya’s face. She had already conjured her wind blades, ready to lash out at a moment’s notice. Not very useful, he observed. Those monsters right there were flexing muscles the size of tree trunks and moved with a technique perfect to use the full force of its unthinkably powerful body. Just one punch was equivalent to getting hit by a speeding truck in the face.

Aeromancer or no, there was only so much you could take before hitting the bucket.

“Don’t die, don’t kill, and stall until they give the nod. That’s about it, right?”

Tanya hesitated, but nodded.

“Fine,” He said, stretching his hands. “It’d be nice to test raw strength against one of those guys.”

“Lukas,” she snapped, before softening her tone. “Just… be careful, okay?”

He grinned at her, inwardly wondering how impressive he’d look wile standing on a hill of muspel corpses. Really, Inanna’s curse could be such a pain in the ass. Silently, he analyzed his opponents.

GARM

Quadrupedal, lifeforce-producing organisms with innate fire mana-forges. Weak in strength, but impressive agility and regeneration.

IFRIT

Soul Architecture shows 100% similarity to IFRIT from Monster Prototype Array

“Alright. Same rules as before. Stay up in the air, keep the darlings safe and bombard anything that gets close. Oh, and try not to kill me.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “Try not to get in my way, yes?”

One of the muspels raised its club in rising fury, the weapon bursting into flame. The creature roared, flexed its muscles, and flung the club, easily several quintals of hard, burning rock, whirling towards him.

Lukas wasn’t stupid enough to stop it. It was just too much energy, too much momentum. Sure he could use kinetomancy to alter its motion, but it’d be like using a medieval shield to block a descending war maul. Possible, but if you did, you’d soon wish you hadn’t. No, a few pounds of pressure to the right place, at the right time, would be far more effective.

He chose a third option.

Lukas sidestepped just in time to let the club miss him by degrees, and then grabbed hold of its momentum. With practiced ease, he yanked it around, pulling it out of its trajectory into a wide swing, as if held back by invisible chains. There was an explosion of shattering rock as the muspel’s weapon crashed into it with all the might of a freight train, hurling the giant by several hundred feet, knocking it into the ground.

“Oops! Did that hurt?”

The muspel, for its part, tumbled calmly, pushing himself out of the impromptu rock coffin the blow had gotten it, and stood up. It shook his head like a dog, flexed its arms and legs to check if they were in functioning order, and then turned towards him. Then in a voice so deep that he could barely understand the word, it rumbled, “Seidmadr!”

Language Identified — Eusmian

Replicating…

It’s voice felt like someone had taken a rusty metal rod and dragged it across the floor. But what the hell? Turns out even that wasn’t beyond the pendant’s ability to recognize and translate. Talk about hax.

“Tiny,” Lukas greeted back.

The newly-christened Tiny furrowed its temples, snorting out flames from its mouth. A dark, ugly scar marred its face from the bottom of its left eye, all the way down to its chin. Neon-yellow nerves criss-crossed over its lava-kissed skin, with hands and legs ending in nails sharp enough to serve as daggers. A heavy mantle of fur over a long cloak gave its lean torso some kind of protection as it glared at him.

“This land is ours! Your kind is not welcome here.”

“Yeah, that club kind of made that clear.” He said, and instantly cursed himself. He didn’t need to look at Tanya to feel her penetrating gaze. Talking to svartalfars in the old tongue was one thing, but muspel? No way she’d dismiss that.

Me and my big mouth.

Lukas watched at the svartalfars from the corner of his left eye. The duo were diligently collecting the metal, but it’d still take some time before they were done. He turned back at the muspel and drew himself up to his fullest height, which meant he was eye to lower quadriceps with it.

Then he spoke.

“The svartalfars are extracting metals there,” He said, gesturing with his thumb, “they hired us to protect them. You know what that means?”

“That you’ll die protecting them.”

“Well…” Lukas nodded, “that was the contract.”

Tiny lifted its hand. Another muspel threw his own mountain-wrecking fiery club at him. Something told him that the others wouldn’t be interfering with this fight. His know-how on Norse culture told him about the rules of combat of the Old Norse. Unless he was wrong, the muspel had found him worthy of conversation, and would fight him to the death to decide who was superior.

“So much for a club,” he murmured, clenching his fists. Not out of panic, but preparation. His eyes dilated. Alert. Focussed. No more reservations. No more holding back for the sake of holding back. This battle was his to win now and he’d guide it to whatever conclusion he deemed fit. Lifeforce surged, and fire arose as well, both in amounts far greater than he normally brought out. Ordinarily, he’d have deployed them as kinetic bursts or bullets but now, they covered his wrists, coiling, slithering, begging to be unleashed.

Lukas nodded at the muspel.

Tiny nodded back.

Then it roared and came at him, club whirling.

Lukas dashed in its direction, clashing with the muspel midway. He grabbed the motion around the club and yanked it just before the creature could smash him with it. The club missed out of the giant’s hands, only to be pulled back into the creature’s hands, but it gave Lukas enough window to hammer a kinetic blow on its left ear. Tiny faltered and lost its balance, but managed to belch hot, crimson flames in Lukas’s direction, which he deflected with a wave of his hand. He could see the flash of surprise in the giant’s eyes, before it spun in mid-air, with a grace that defied all logic and smashed a tree trunk-sized muscular leg at his abdomen.

His world went white, as Lukas was flung a good thirty feet back across the ground and wound up slamming against a boulder. If not for Blob instantly covering his upper extremities like a protective sheath, he’d have gotten some serious head-injury from the hit. Lifeforce burned hot within him, while his body sent weird tingly sensations to let him know what was going on.

Lukas stood up, shook his head in an attempt to get the damned bells to stop ringing, and looked around blearily. The ground shook as he did.

Oh right, Tiny.

“Good hit,” The creature said, laughing for once.

“What do you know?” Lukas grinned back, blood pooling around his jaw. “You too.”

He had been wrong in his estimation. Usually, creatures the size of this muspel came without power steering. There was simply too much mass building too much momentum for them to be quick to alter course, kind of like walking on slippery ice. But that was based on Earth-physics, not this borderland. The creature before him had slipped past his attacks with a grace that defied all rules. He was reasonably sure that a combination of lifeforce-enhanced speed and Shatterpoint Intuition was enough to overcome the muspel’s agility, but he couldn’t do that without losing power behind his attacks. Whereas all the muspel needed was one hit and he’d be jelly.

Thump!

The creature’s foot slammed down on the granite-floor, crushing it into splinters, as it launched forward at him. In less than a second, it had crossed the entire distance and in a fraction of one his weapon swung down and—

“HOLD!” Lukas roared defiantly, and snapped the motion out of Tiny’s entire body, freezing it mid-course. The muspel reacted, not in shock, but with scorching, crimson flames, aimed for his freaking face. Lukas hastily pulled a force-shield to prevent himself from getting scorched, but that cost him his focus. Next thing he knew, Tiny was rushing at him, hammering on his force-shield with one arm, not even once trying to go around the shield even though it’d be ridiculously easy to do so. The impact of the unstoppable force and the unmovable object was deafening as the resulting shockwave made cracks on the ground in all directions.

Lukas had no choice. He had to bring this to an end if he wanted to get out of this.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ve had enough of you.”

Tiny howled and dashed at him again, but Lukas took a step and all but vanished, suddenly accelerating himself and pushing himself to one side, crouching and sweeping his arm out at shin height to it, catching its enormous leg in the crook of his elbow and arresting his momentum a second time.

A force-blast to the face did the rest. Tiny dropped to the floor, its face a violent mix of goo and purple blood. Both its eyes had exploded on contact, the attack tearing through its brain and exploding out of its skull from behind.

Siphoned Monster Prototype MUSPEL

Yeah. Add it to my Schema.

This would be useful. That kind of strength, speed and agility would come a long way in improving himself as a physical warrior. No doubt this creature boasted of multiple Level-3’s. It’d be interesting to see the differences between that and—

MONSTER PROTOTYPE — MUSPEL

SKILLS

LEVEL

Fire Creation

2

Fire Manipulation

1

Temperature Manipulation

2

Lifeforce Manipulation (Body Augmentation)

2

Momentum Manipulation (Force Transference)

2

—Level-2?

Lukas blinked.

This was a Level-2? How was that freaking possible? Granted, he had made quick work of the creature, but that was less because of his own strength and more by his unpredictability. From altering the motion of his club to negating his own motion, followed by instantaneous self-acceleration and finally, kinetic blasts. It had taken him showcasing four of his techniques just to catch this fellow off-guard and end it for good.

If Level-2 skilled creatures were on this level, then just what kind of monstrosities held Level-3?

Still. It was useful, especially the Body Augmentation part. One of the benefits of upgraded Scan and Analyze functions was that they showed the particular portions that the skills affected. Between augmenting his body and Force Transference, he could get some really creative solutions in battle, especially when combined with Shatterpoint Intuition. More importantly, he had killed the muspel in a one-on-one battle. So why was Tanya looking at him like he had done something incredibly stupid?

Oh. Right. He had kinda sorta killed it.

Despite her telling him not to.

“They’ll come for you now,” He heard Mori’s dispassionate mutter. Whirling around, he found her standing right behind him. At least they were done collecting the metal.

You’re done?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Kradir, bland as always. “But they won’t allow us out. You killed them. They will not stop until they’ve killed us.”

“I told you,” said Tanya, looking positively ill. “I. Told. You. Whatever you do. Don’t kill.”

“It was crossing the line,” he shrugged. “Had to end matters.”

“Yeah… end it you did,” she said, panic vivid in her eyes. “Lukas… this wasn’t cleverness. This was suicide.”

“Surely it can’t be that bad…” His words were muffled in a howling roar among the muspel crowd. The ifrits drowned that with their wild ululations, and scratched the ground with their clawed limbs. And in response, came a hundred different roars, screeches and howls from every direction — the natives all gathering to face a common enemy.

Lukas glanced at Tanya and found her already fluttering above the ground, mana-charged wind spinning around her. Two tiny spheres of pure energy were already forming in her palms. She gave him a dark look.

“Okay, yeah,” he said after a moment of embarrassed silence. “I had to ask.”