The boys found themselves in a completely blank white landscape as far as the eye could see.

“This isn’t how the mirage chamber normally loads?” Teddy remarked.

“Lucy was saying the load she’s made for us takes a while to set up so she made a mini load to mess around in first.”

“She made a playable loading screen? Sweet!”

“All right boys it’s almost there, the scheme is similar to what we played in Vitesse as a four, the difference is there is a barely achievable cap… if you work together, but I’ll remind you this is a last man standing match so only one of you gets to walk out as the victor. Both understand?”

“Aye”

“Yup”

“So in the words of your favourite operator, what do you need? Besides a miracle?”

James got the reference and smiled.

“Guns, lots of guns.”

It started off as dots on the horizon, rapidly approaching the pair in the blank landscape. It was quickly on them and Teddy had to step forward towards James to stop from being swept aside from the rows of weapons that were coming towards them. Before they knew it they were in the middle of racks of weapons that stretched as far as the eye could see.

“Sorry boys, no guns obviously but try some of these for fun.”

The boys perused the shelves, they played with different weapons for fun before putting them back, from wide bladed spears with long tassels designed to distract an opponent to seeing if they could throw multiple throwing stars in one hand at the same time.

They ended up with Teddy taking a few handfuls of throwing stars and placing them in his inventory, they each took a half dozen throwing spears and stuck them point down into the construct floor.

“Ok it’s about to load, you’ll have training dummies first to loosen you up then the monsters start, starting bottom of the food chain iron and working your way up to… just checking the notes… oh. Well the other end should be fun. Enjoy!”

The pristine white landscape with the infinite rows of weapon shelving blurred and darkened, when it came back into focus they were in a woodland setting, the sun was high above them and they were ankle deep in water.

“Eurgh” Teddy said, opening a small rift to take out a couple of water quintessence gems to feed to his boots and stepped on top of the water.

“It’s only a little water bro.” James said, standing perfectly at ease in the water.

“But it shouldn’t happen anymore! My Winged Feet Swift power got to bronze, that means water-walking which means I should never have wet socks again.”

“If you have prophet-like water walking powers why are you still using the blue boots?”

Teddy tapped the toes of his boots together self consciously.

“Because I like them, and it’s a mana cost to water-walk without them.”

They had agreed to make it fair that Teddy would play with an assumed handicap, James had five more powers to get to bronze rank and so for Teddy’s last five powers to cross the threshold he wasn’t allowed to use the bronze rank effect. This also would allay any suspicions of any keen eyed observers who noticed an iron ranker with a full suite of bronze-rank abilities.

Looking around they were standing in a small pool of water being fed from a twenty foot waterfall from a small cliff behind them. On top of the rock the forest continued behind. Around the pool was a rocky clear area before being surrounded by trees.

“Looks a good as place as any to make a stand I guess.” James said.

They stacked the spears they had brought with them into the middle of the pool. Stuck point down into the silty bottom ready to be grabbed and thrown. They hadn’t needed them really as they both had stock in their respective inventories but felt a shame to not take anything from the impressive armouries.

“Did you hear we missed out on another manifestation in the city while we were away?” James said while they were stretching, making conversation.

“No? Any good?”

“Pretty rare one, fungus that comes off food, it’s a lesser/iron rank, appeared in a tavern kitchen and rapidly spread, harmless on food but makes you very sick if you eat it and it multiplies rapidly.”

A whirling training dummy appeared between the trees.

“Oh yeah? Suppose that’s one way for the health inspectorate to come down hard on you.” Teddy said keeping an eye on the dummy.

“Well apparently they only manifest if the place is dirty as a back alley anyway, so doubly so.”

More training dummies had appeared all around the clearing. They looked like martial arts dummies with crooked limbs on rotating sections around the centre. They rushed and swayed on four legs that looked like spider legs from each corner.

“Well we tried most places and we now only go to the Schooner, they’re definitely in no danger of being shut down for hygiene.”

[Lets take this out the water, it’ll only serve to mask their movement with those short legs.] Teddy said on the interface.

[Agreed.]

As James left the water a snake glided off his shoulder having slithered out of his neck line of his armour he wore. Looking back Teddy could see that James had subtly been seeding the water with snakes from his Snake Sorcerer power all the time they had been standing there.

They spoke on the interface while chatting casually out loud. The team had all agreed that they would use the interface for tactical chat to put people off kilter and not give anything away to observers.

Teddy stood on the rock and cracked his neck. The dummies all suddenly flew at the two boys, their unsettling gait made them wobble side to side while their layers of whirling segments spun rapidly.

The three that came at Teddy were met by arm and leg blocks from the dark clad man. His armour panels built into the forearms and shins of his light armour clacking against the spinning wood, he blocked some and dodged others, as they kept it up he was blocking more and more, speeding up as he accumulated instances of Rapid from his Swift essence ability By a Thousand Cuts. When he felt he had enough he moved from blocking to striking; using knuckles, knees and elbows he pummelled the wood. It started with small dents that became big dents with enough hits, then chunks of wood started splintering out of them and he dismantled the three of them with ease.

James went for a different kind of warm up, the first one that came to him he bodily grabbed, using his enhanced agility from his Scurry power from the Rat essence to duck around the flailing limbs without shifting his feet. He used his massive strength to pick up the dummy and used it to smash apart the second, treating it like a flailing mace. He dropped the parts to the ground and faced the third. He channeled mana into the Scurry power to extend the duration and went through a few forms against the dummy, flowing and bending like a willow to deflect the blows. He had felt the moment that the Scurry power had naturally ran out and he pushed through it, using the bronze rank benefit to the power he was faster and he could push through the natural duration using an ongoing moderate mana cost to keep his agility higher. He cut the flow and took a few blows from the dummy while he got used to blocking at normal speed, he barely felt the hits, his Standing Kodak power negated a large portion of incoming damage and he had Koda absorbed absorbing another small amount of incoming damage, between the two effects he was sitting comfortable. He tried to re-start the Scurry power and found that he couldn’t once he had let go, he was happy to find the limitations of his new power. With a quick thrust he splintered one of the dummy’s arms with a knife hand and grabbed the body, he lifted it up and brought it down with both hands onto his knee breaking it in two.

“Hulk smash!” Teddy called from the other side of the pond, flexing both arms inwards.

James flipped him off and looked to see what was coming next, the dummies were the warm up so now the monsters were going to start.

Stone Chewer Rats came swarming out of the woods nearest James. He released Koda to the centre of the pack and threw a moderate powered wing sweep at the left side. Teddy was already moving, he double jumped over the water, his two bronze rank shadow lantern familiars appearing and shooting bolts of darkness at the right hand side while Teddy threw shards of darkness. He used the iron rank variant, they both knew that these little monsters were no threat to them but had the chance to soak up a lot of their mana in magical attacks. They settled into a rhythm of killing the rats ‘manually’ as James put it, they had a sense of urgency as they knew the next monster wave would start on time rather than when they were finished with the first batch.

The second batch of monsters started to appear came from the far side of the pool, slightly out of place; a pack of sand dogs skulked out of the trees towards them.

[There can’t be many rats left, I’ll tie these up while you and Koda mop up.] Teddy looked over at James while he put the message on the interface and James nodded without even looking his way, reaping through rats with preying-mantis style arms.

Teddy pulled an old trick on the lead alpha dog, just before he jumped over he opened a rift and dipped through and flicked it on the ear. The dog snarled and snapped at the gesture, closing its mouth on the rift and cutting its own head in half. Teddy left the lanterns to rain darkness down on the rats and fell amongst the dogs on his own. Even though they used pack tactics to try and isolate Teddy he was too fast, when they surrounded him and one would try and feint at him to drive him into the other side of the circle and the waiting pack he would dash in and wound the dog to take them out of the fight. Their magical bodies cost him mana to cut through with his dimension blade so he used a blade that he had forged himself. It was in the collection of skill books he had bought from Vitesse, he had selected as many books on armour and weapons and general artifice as he could find. His early experiments were abysmal and not even able to be used as butter knives. He had now worked hard to reliably produce general iron rank weapons, he was going to work with Lucy to imbue them with magical effects but they hadn’t got around to it yet. His favourite he had kept for himself, a blade that curved forward, too long to be a dagger but too short to be a sword, it tapered to a wicked point at the tip then had a large bulge, thinning out to form a skinny waist before the handle that was a chunky rectangle that covered the hand, it had a five inch spike out the rear of the grip. He slashed for tendons and muscles, separating the jaw muscles with pinpoint precision strikes and savage twists. When he had isolated and disarmed enough of the dogs he set about finishing them when he wasn’t under pressure.

James was keeping half an eye out on Teddy on the far side. He didn’t begrudge him taking on the more interesting enemy while he was cleaning up rats, he knew they couldn’t have them underfoot causing problems while they took on the bigger and badder monsters. The problem was they just wouldn’t stop coming. He wanted to get over and help Teddy with the sand dogs which posed a higher danger than the stone chewer rats which were at the worst a nuisance individually and only posed a threat en masse. As fast as he and Koda could dispose of them the faster they came.

James’ predicament became a problem when he smelt the new monster enter the edges of the clearing. Tall and rangy the margols sniffed their way forward.

[Teddy, problem. Rats keep coming and now we have margols.]

[How many?]

[No idea, seems like a few, how many dogs left are there?]

[I’m pretty sure more keep coming.]

[You thinking what I’m thinking?]

[Yeh she’s shafted us with never ending enemies.]

James saw as four margols sniffed forward and could hear more approaching through the trees.

[I’m going to leave Koda here and jump over. You ok with the sand dogs?]

[I’m fine, they keep coming but they’re not hard, just taking it easy on them, let me know if you need a hand with the margols.]

James took two bounding leaps before he smashed a fist down on the lead margol, he caved in the creature’s head and it dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Before the pack could react James had smashed another in the neck with his tail that appeared from behind him, a giant thick rats tail that caused the margol’s neck to bow and snap with the force. The third margol got punched in the throat and it was as if he had a spiked knuckle duster, a disproportionate amount of tearing and blood appeared curtesy of the boost from his bear claw engraving on his vambrace. It was obvious that the margol was out the fight and was going to bleed out. The fourth and fifth monsters jumped at him, long sickle claws coming straight for him. He took one on the vambrace and tucked the others arms under his own arm, he was face to face to the monster. It snarled and he could count the teeth, watched the saliva drip off the fangs. He smiled, showing his teeth from under the big beard and the margol snapped its mouth shut in confusion. James smashed his forehead into the jaw and the teeth rattled to the floor. As he was holding on it couldn’t recoil and he smashed it with his forehead twice more. When he let go it dropped to the floor out the fight. The claw of the other margol he had caught on the vambrace had slid and stuck in the gap between the forearm and the back-plate for the hand, James wasn’t worried as he knew the armour was tougher than what the monster could throw it it, he kept the monster stuck there while he dealt with the other. When he had his undivided attention he twisted his arm and the monster roared in pain as the claw snapped off. He used a judo-like throw to put the monster on its back and kept hold of the arm, holding it out straight while snapping a kick to the monsters neck, he had dislocated its arm at the shoulder which turned out to be the least of its problems with a broken neck.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

So far they were fighting on three sides of the pool, Koda was roaring and covered in gore as he was still ripping rats apart. Teddy was on the opposite side looking calm as he danced around the sand dogs. James was going toe to toe and claw to claw with the margols. The boys were a little confused as they thought they were going to be fighting waves of monsters, as in sequential, not cumulative. A slight edge of panic settled in when they heard a massive splash behind them.

They heard Koda roar in pain and James turned, a margol in a headlock as he did. Both James and Teddy saw the notification that they had an instance of Family blessing with a count of one in the interface.

Ability: [Ursa Family] (Bear)

Special ability (Retributive buff)

Base cost: moderate mana

Cooldown: 5min

Current rank: Bronze 0 (00%)

Effect (iron): Attacks against an ally cause an instance of [Fortitude].

Effect (bronze): Attacks against an ally cause an instance of [Family Blessing]

[Fortitude]: Becomes stronger with each instance.

[Family blessing]: Everyone under the influence of [Ursa Family] receives an instance of [Family blessing] when one individual is successfully attacked. Instances of [Family blessing] are consumed to absorb damage from any source. Additional instances have a cumulative effect. For each instance consumed, gain an instance of [Family bounty].

[Family bounty] (heal-over-time, holy, stacking): Heal over time. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.

They saw what caused him to roar in pain. A large seal-like creature was half in, half out the water. It was a seal with an elongated neck that reached out. It had a whipping tail with a wicked barbed spike on the end. It had latched on to one of Koda’s feet but was regretting it as the big bear was smashing both paws down repeatedly on its head and neck. Two more splashed over the edge of the waterfall into the pool.

Both boys looked at each other and laughed at how ridiculous the situation was, James still had the margol in a headlock and Teddy literally had a sand dog by the tail.

They were both largely unconcerned. Koda had dispatched the big seal by breaking its neck and was hunting rats again. The two monsters that had splashed down had found an unwelcome surprise waiting for them in the water. As the monsters screeched in pain they could see little patches of rainbow oiliness on the water as the snakes hiding in the water bit the monsters and evaporated, here and there they could see snakes that had latched on. James had learnt through experience of using the snakes that if they went up in a puff of smoke they had hurt the target but if they latched on they were pumping poison in. The monsters were already starting to look woozy from the amount of snakes latched on.

[I don’t think we need to be too worried about them, try and keep the pool topped off with your little slithery friends if you can spare the time and mana.]

Again James nodded without having to turn to Teddy. He could handle the margols and Koda could easily handle the rats with capacity to beat down any of the seal-like creatures that tried to escape the snake pool. Teddy kept an eye out as he disemboweled a sand dog, the next wave would be coming and he wasn’t sure where from, they were being thoroughly attacked from all sides now so he was expecting the unexpected.

They heard the next enemy before they saw it. A low buzzing that grew in volume from the side of the rats. As it got closer they could see the huge insects coming towards them in a swarm. They had triangular heads and triangular segments to their bodies, they had four stick legs that all pointed forwards as they flew and seemed to be one body segment too short for a normal insect, four large see-through wings beat faster than the eye could follow.

“Oh buzz off!” James said out loud at the same time as writing on the interface.

[I can’t remember what they’re called but they sting like a bitch, it hurts but the worst thing is they cause a mild hallucination and can induce an uncontrollable rage for a short while.]

[Got it, going to try an area poison to counter them.]

Teddy kicked a sand dog off his blade and gave himself some space to cast a spell on the area the bugs were coming from.

“Sickness from beyond the tall gates, plague from the dark dimensions, come forth on the winds of the cosmos and smite my enemies.”

“Dude that sounds dark.”

“Yeah I know, I don’t get to choose it, someone would have to be a little silly to think that Dark and Dimension essences were going to have a fun mix though.”

Teddy felt the spell take effect on the bug swarm and was buoyed by the trickle of health, stamina and mana now that his Poison of the Void power was at bronze rank. With his mana being topped off he quickly threw out a second area affect spell on the swarm.

“Feel the edges of your own reality.”

He had to be careful as this was one of the powers they had agreed would be capped to iron rank, a keen observer may be suspicious because he couldn’t help that it was incredibly potent and had excellent range without even using the full bronze effect, the bugs all started zooming into each other, the ground or splatting into trees. When used on humans they felt as though they had just gone through a particularly rough portal. Dimensional Instability made the target nauseas and lose balance, it didn’t directly do harm but pretty much rendered most targets combat ineffective. The bronze rank power that Teddy wasn’t allowed to use in this instance also caused trace transcendent damage.

[Can you imagine the glow of transcendent damage if that many bugs wandered into that at bronze rank?] Teddy said.

[I really wish we could see it but you need a limit, for me and for that crowd we saw on the way in. There’s no way they aren’t watching right now.]

[Yeh I know, just would be good to see, we’ll just have to find an opportunity to see it for reals.]

They were interrupted from their silent chat by the sound of screeching from above. Three large monsters were diving at each of the defenders.

Teddy dodged his with ease, getting a good look at it as it swung past in the bottom of its arc. It had a large flat head shaped mostly like an arrowhead, it had a long neck that was attached to a thickly muscled body. Four large wings sprouted from its body, the two at the front were larger and also had claw tipped arms in the middle, the two at the rear trailed strands that glistened with something wet and sticky. Bizarrely the creature had another set of eyes on its body that were just under its shoulders facing downwards. It’s only pair of legs were thickly muscled and had long sharp claws on them, the long tail whipped past him narrowly. The entire creature had a mottled red and brown pattern on its leathery skin and its yellow eyes on both head and body were thinly slitted and mean looking.

When James looked up and saw what was coming for him he froze for a moment, it was the creature that had attacked him on his way back from summoning the healer in Greenstone to the desert. He had a flashback to the hopelessness and despair that he felt before he noticed that although it was rapidly filling his vision the creature was much smaller. He got over his moment of panic that threatened to consume him and activated his Peregrine Dive power, he appeared above the monster diving for him and crashed into its back, he had transformed both his feet into eagles talons and the talons savagely ripped into the thin membranes of the monsters wings. He rode the monster into the ground, through the margol that had been about to attack him. The speed of the monsters dive, compounded by the strike and weight of James crumpled the margol into the ground and the flying monster was crumpled in the process, James didn’t let up and ripped it over and over with his talons. While they had been falling James used a loophole to protect Koda from the monster aiming at him, he recalled his familiar which caused him to go insubstantial and travel towards James before he ‘cancelled’ the recall and Koda was clear of the dive, the monster swooping off.

“Nice.” Teddy said when he saw one of the flying monsters on the floor. “Pass me a spear for them.”

He was talking about one of the spears they had left stacked in the middle of the pool. By now they had mostly fallen over and floated to the edges, Teddy could just as easily gone forward and picked one up but James had a trick. He stepped towards the pool and picked up a spear with his right hand, he casually tossed it to Teddy who caught it and tracked the two flying monsters until they were near each other, as he prepared to throw he could just about see the tell-tale crackle of electricity around the head of the spear. When they were at the closest point of their circling he let the spear fly. His Fly Like an Arrow power from the Swift essence allowed him to throw items twice as fast and twice as far as any other essence user his rank should be able to. The monsters had no chance to dodge and the nearest was hit square in the chest with the spear killing it outright, the force of the throw went through the chest and out the far side through one of the chest eye sockets. The spear was imbued with power from James vambrace giving it the lightning damage and it burned it from the inside out and chained to the other monster, causing it to spasm and the muscles to contract and fall out of the air. The height that it fell caused it significant injury but wasn’t enough to kill the tough monster. It landed nearest Teddy.

The boys reckoned that the monster crossed the threshold and was a weak bronze rank monster and they didn’t die just from a fall. It stood tall on its back legs propping itself up with its short claws on its front wings, it could look eye to eye with Teddy on the ground. One wing was bent up and it wouldn’t be flying anytime soon. Teddy stowed his short sword in a dimension rift at his waist and seemed to draw his Dimension Blade even though it naturally simply appeared in his hand.

“Is there any need for the flourish?”

“No, none at all.” Teddy replied with a grin.

He quickly dispatched a few of the sand dogs with extreme ease to give himself the time to turn to the grounded monster. It was ungainly on the ground but that didn’t mean it was helpless. It hissed at Teddy and a long tongue shot out to strike at him. He stepped to the side and struck through the tongue in an overhead two handed strike. Three foot of tongue hit the floor and the monster screeched.

“Well you’re not getting that back.”

“How wude!” James called, seeing the fight from his side of the pool.

“Really? Jar Jar references?”

The monster lunged forward snapping at Teddy’s face, he stepped back through a rift and the monsters face bounced off it smoking from the damage. Teddy dropped from the destination rift above the monster and struck blade down into the monsters back. He had used the attack many times on different monsters but this was the first time he had been so unpleasantly surprised. The back of the monster erupted in spikes which dug into the inside of Teddy’s thighs as he fell in a straddle position on the monster.

James winced as he saw what happened to Teddy. [Shit, I guess thats to protect itself from other airbourne predators, I’ll have to remember that one. Did it… you know… get your…?]

[No dude, I did not get stabbed in the balls, mind on your own fight.]

The monster was pretty much done for after that attack and Teddy just swiped at its head increasing the damage already there to cut most of its head off.

He looked back to see that Koda had the rats sorted and James was keeping the margols at bay, he drew his steel sword to jump back in on the sand dogs when he heard the keening from above again.

[Eyes up at all times I guess, there’s going to be more of those things.]

Although less in number than all the other creatures the airbourne monsters added a layer of complexity to the fight. Teddy had to sheathe his sword and switch to dimension blade in order to keep up with the sand dogs pressing and the monsters above.

They were waiting for their next monster to appear and saw the margols bunch up to avoid what was coming.

Two giant man-like beasts strode out of the forest on pairs of thick muscled legs with cloven hooves. One was black and the other dark brown. They wore rough homespun canvas trousers over shaggy haired legs that had backwards knees. They had belts of braided hair and bare torsos that were thick with muscle and hair. They carried thick ugly swords in their massive hands that appeared to be made of bone. A wide flat blade that split into a T shape at the end of the five foot long blade. What made them so shocking was their heads, they were bulls that appeared too big for their bodies and had massive pointed horns. The visage was made complete with a gold ring through one of their noses and the other had a gold ring through its ear.

[Are those gods damned minotaurs?!] Teddy asked.

[Hang on a sec, I’ll go ask.]

James strode over and ducked the first massive swing from the lead Minotaur, for such a large beast it wasn’t slow but neither was James. He carried on to the second who had his sword raised above his head in a double handed blow, James gave him a solid uppercut underneath his massive chin. The monster stumbled backwards and tripped over a root, rolling onto the ground. He turned just in time to catch the next swing from the first Minotaur on his vambrace, executing a perfect Uchi Uke karate block, a basic block from opposite hip across the body that he had learnt from when he was a kid doing karate in sports halls. The same block was taught in martial skill at the academy and it had become muscle memory for him. He immediately followed through with a punch to the monsters hip, twisting his own hips into it without moving his feet to give it maximum strength. His Standing Kodak at bronze massively increased his strength and the rest of his Bear essence powers all at bronze were tied to his Power attribute meaning that he was stronger than he had ever been in his life. There was a satisfying crunch from the bone in the monsters hip and it bellowed loudly, spit and snot flying from its snout.

Seeing that James had the fight well in hand with equally matched opponents Teddy ramped up his destruction of the lesser monsters, he dashed between the sand dogs and the margols, his blade easily sliced through both creatures, leaving mortal wounds in a flicker of movement past them on the way to the next. Speeding up cost him mana but it was a trickle and he could easily manage.

James had dispatched one of the minotaurs by crushing its ribs with repeated blows, a third Minotaur carrying a huge bone hammer was walking out the forest towards the fight as well.

[Looks like these are going to keep coming as well.] James put on the interface.

[I think we’ve almost reached saturation to be honest, this is manageable but its now just a waiting game until we get tired.]

“Well when you need a break let me know, I’m sure they feel the same, I have some scones in my inventory with a layer of jam then cream. If we ask nicely I’m sure they’ll let us have a little poolside picnic.”

Teddy took the time to zoom in front of James as a Minotaur was bellowing and running towards them, bone hammer raised over its shoulder. He stood with his back to the monster and faced James with his arms folded.

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit dude.”

He then stepped forward into a rift as the Minotaur swung its hammer, cutting its own weapon in half on the rift left in the air. Teddy stepped out amongst the sand dogs.

“And its cream THEN jam, harder to spread thick cream on jam.” He then got back to work.

The boys settled into a macabre rhythm, Koda was pasted in gore and it flung from his fur as he whirled along the entire edge of the pool. James was hand to sword with the minotaurs, sometimes transforming his left arm into a preying mantis style blade to go blade to blade with them, he kept topping up the pool with snakes to occupy the seal-like monsters. Teddy blurred between sand dogs and the margols, occasionally topping up his spells to occupy the flying insects on Koda’s side, his lantern familiars constantly firing at the nuisance monsters. He used his short range teleport rifts to get up high and take on the flying monsters whilst damaging anything that came into contact with them.

They were now both burning through their mana at a steady rate, comfortable but waiting for the next surprise.

They weren’t disappointed.

The pool between all of them exploded.