“You an ugly bastard, aintcha?”

Hank hopped backward and immediately Dodge Rolled to the side after taking his first few shots. At this point the Skill, his second-highest sitting at 694, practically teleported him when he activated it, rather than moving him through the mundane realm of limbs and physics. One moment he planted his feet on the ground and the next he was a meter to the side, straightening and leveling his repeater for another slew of shots.

His image rose and expanded to fill the wide sky. In the Badlands, under that remorseless sky, Hank was at his most powerful. The monster in front of him was beyond him normally, but now he hoped to bridge that gap.

Eight bullets smashed and sparked off of the reinforced armor of the monster that heaved itself out of the ground. Its wide mouth opened, its few ivory teeth blunt but as large as end tables. Then came the lava, regurgitated and steaming as it splashed out toward Hank. Finally, its image spread out from its open maw like mustard gas, caustic and sizzling.

Another dodge brought Hank sideways out of the path of the lava. He trusted his stats, but that didn’t mean he was fool enough to try and wade through lava to fight against a foe. An individual who attempted that could very reasonably be called unhinged.

Besides, this was not simply lava. Along with the superheated, molten stone and metal came an image of the planet’s core, a place of impossible heats and pressures. Hank hadn’t tested his theory, but he suspected that the lava was also impossibly dense and heavy. Underneath the cooling flows of rock, he suspected the ground was cracking and buckling as it tried to support it.

The air between them sparked, half heatwaves and half a conflict between their two very different images.

As the monster pivoted, Hank continued to fire his repeater. His Mana flowed down to empower each shot, although he didn’t have much hope of landing a significant blow like this. He aimed and hit the exact location he wanted, even while firing almost five bullets a second. The sparks drew a grid pattern across the thing’s armor, methodically testing for weaknesses in the ravine-like cracks that ran through the armor.

Tsk, might be stone, but the seamstress made these stitches mighty fine.

The wild image of adventure and bravery intensified around his body. The sky pressed down on his enemies. The longer the fight lasted, the more the tension seeped into his nerves and drained from his body. With the grace of a liquid cat, Hank aimed and fired one last repeater bullet.

The small, reinforced hunk of metal, crafted by Hank’s own hand and covered with small Mana Engravings to enhance its power, punctured the left eyeball of the giant worm. It roared and forced itself out of the ground, revealing that its wormlike head followed a long neck to connect to the body of a stumpy centipede.

From its narrow eyes, it was clear the monster believed it could easily overpower him if it could just catch him.

“Why you gotta be so loud? Shit, if I had my horse…” Hank spat to the side. The temperature in the area increased by a good ten degrees, just as it revealed its true form; Hank could see the glow of molten lava peeking out between the cracked armor plates along its body. And then the monster’s image erupted out of the entire surface rather than just the mouth, bringing with it another abrupt uptick in heat.

Hank’s gaze sharpened as he activated Golden Irises of the Unbowed Sheriff. The whole of the monster’s body came within his senses, including the tight mass of power that sat within the beast’s chest, right at the position of a heart. If he wanted to pierce through and damage that… He stowed his repeater away and pulled out the revolver.

After his image provided a dramatic tumbleweed rolling across his path, Hank Howard took a step forward and prepared to kill the monster.

He ignored the fact that as soon as its role was done, the tumbleweed lit up like a torch and disintegrated.

The ground shuddered as the heavy monster galloped forward with all the abrupt shifts and twists of a roller coaster. Hank ghosted sideways as he began to sweat. But that didn’t affect his concentration. He aimed. He released a breath. He pulled the trigger and poured all the image he could muster through the barrel of the gun.

The heart is more vulnerable… but let’s teach it a little bit of fear first, ya?

A gleaming lance of power erupted from the revolver, spiking right through the leaking eyeball of the lava centipede. The projectile dug its way forward in the direction of the monster’s brain— still, Hank didn’t have many expectations. He could already feel the Mana Engravings he had so carefully made flare and fail, melting due to the high heat inside of the bastard’s body.

With his shirt growing slick with sweat, Hank bounded out over another belch of lava and landed on the worm’s head. His boots began to smoke as he took aim at the ruined eyehole. If one bullet ain’t enough, try more. Frontier’s Dreaded Tripletap.

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Hank only had six bullets in his revolver, with one already fired, but he happily used half of his total amount all at once. The worm’s image exploded in response to the threat, driving the temperature higher. The ground around its body turned liquid, so the revealed limbs sank back beneath the surface.

Grimacing, Hank leapt backward. From the flickering in the other's image, he had inflicted damage. However…

The worm raised its head and bleached out lava that bloomed in the air like an incendiary fountain. Chunks of stone and metal crashed into the ground around him. Hank narrowed his eyes, measuring the opportunity. The other’s image, after a few seconds of wavering from the damage, now began to accumulate. More and more heat radiated out of its body; the monster seemed intent to turn itself into a molten core, sinking down into the ground and taking Hank with it.

Gonna need the rifle, Hank thought rather sourly. He reached up and pulled the weapon from the sheath across his back. He produced a long bullet and slid it into the rifle. He had made his newest weapon single shot, purposefully eschewing more ammo in order to pack as much power and concentrated image as he could into the bullet.

He regarded the growing image in front of him. He dropped to one knee, ignoring the way his pants began to smoke from the contact with a ground now veined with lava. More chunks crashed around him as the temperature rose. He closed his eye and sighted down the rifle. He fixated on that bundle of energy contained within the monster’s chest.

Releasing a breath, he pulled the trigger. His image drilled into the opposing manifestation of Aether, ignoring all the heat and aiming to pierce through to the monster’s heart. Wind whorled around the bullet as it gathered up momentum and punched right through the heat distortions dancing around the monster’s body. Its flesh provided even less protection. Yet Hank narrowed his eyes as he observed the blow he had landed.

That caustic, strange heat image began to take large bites out of any object foolish enough to cross its boundaries. The temperature hid exactly where the boundary was, but the fight had given Hank more concrete instincts in that regard.

The monster screamed and stomped as the bullet tore forward, obviously in pain. Yet the image did its vicious work; the bullet melted before it could sink too deeply. Without a concrete object to grip onto, Hank's image couldn’t withstand the pressure of the opponent’s and swiftly faded. And unlike the revolver, he couldn’t simply make up with more bullets.

“Shit,” Hank wiped sweat from his forehead and considered his options. Already, the worm’s flesh began to heal. The ground around it became increasingly molten and it looked at Hank with one bloodshot eye and another ruined flesh crater. Right now, only the core image and its deconstruction aspect would be able to really hurt Hank. But that would change if the temperature began to grow.

“Need some help?”

Hank glanced sideways at Randidly Ghosthound, who stood arms akimbo and considered the writhing form of the lava worm. The other man remained extremely powerful and unassuming, just snapping into existence along the edge of the battlefield. Hank grimaced and shook his head to the other man’s offer. “‘Preciate the kindness, but I want ta take this ‘un on myself. Easier if my horse were here ta kick the attitude out of ‘im, but I’ll manage.”

Besides, part of Hank’s entire motivation for the fight was to improve himself. If he simply relied on Randidly, he wouldn’t be able to advance at all.

And Hank’s nose could smell the need to be stronger in the air. He didn’t have much time.

But already, the Ghosthound shook his head emphatically. “Not that sort of help. Honestly… well, it might hurt more than help. But it will give you another chance to fight against this enemy, without its image being so…” Randidly gestured at the air and the bubbling ground. “I think my Fatepiece should be Leveled enough to offer it to an ally… but I’m warning you that the results could be strange.”

“I could live with strange,” Hank said after a few seconds. If the Ghosthound had seemed more sure, he might have still denied him just out of principle. But the expression of uncertainty on his face made Hank shrug inwardly. And the man very obviously wanted to try out his Fatepiece, whether or not it would actually help.

Hank felt the strangest touch, a tug at his image as though someone had tied a thin thread around the core of his body. He blinked, the sensation not what he had expected at all. But he acquiesced to the tug. He allowed himself to be pulled along. Beneath the ground, the monster rumbled out a sound of confusion.

To Hank’s shock, he felt the creature agree to whatever this was as well.

Even more shocking was Hank’s body beginning to move without his input, but he relaxed as he realized that he simply reversed his movements over the last several seconds… or rather several minutes. The ground firmed up as the heat departed. Hank’s rifle bullet reformed inside of the worm’s body and then quickly retreated back to his gun. He pirouetted and leapt back on top of the foe, sucked in several revolver shots to heal its eye, and then leaped away.

By the time the reversal ceased, Hank had already pulled back all of the testing repeater shots with which he had started off the battle. One last, overwhelming Dodge Roll pulled Hank a little bit closer to the eruption point of the monster. The air felt positively cool and refreshing against his skin as the strange power wielded by the Ghosthound ceased, and the battle between the two could start over.

This time, I’ll take the shot at that heart before- Hank stepped forward with aggressive intentions, but the worm reacted just as quickly. Instead of rearing up and roaring at him as it had done previously, the worm shot him a single glance and then burrowed into the ground. Mid-draw of his rifle, Hank paused.

“You varmint. Did you jus’ run?” Hank spluttered out the words.

But as soon as he spoke, he felt the change in the ground. The worm had left the surface but hadn’t gone far. The ground began to radiate an uncomfortable amount of heat. The stone and metal began to shift colors as it deformed and melted. Once more, the burning image of the worm began to dominate the environment.

Underneath it, the dangerous chemical fire aspect brewed itself into a more potent force.

Rather than stay on the surface where Hank had previously hurt the thing, it went underground and now attempted to simply melt rock around him until he died. His lips curling, Hank glanced over at Randidly. “Yea, next time, I’ll be fine without your help.”