He kept walking and there were very few bats that he killed before they landed a blow. Most were still getting at least ten strikes in before he got lucky and killed them. That might have been the start of a skill, or just the natural result of him learning how to fight the bats. Tom suspected it was the latter. After all, he had been fighting them for a long enough time to gain an intuitive understanding of their movement patterns. It was easy to learn that if they were attacking his shoulder with each swoop, then, if he spun, they would do a hard turn rather than flying higher. Therefore, if he lashed out at chest height, he was likely to score a hit. The accumulation of all those little tricks and growing experience sped up the speed of eliminating the creatures.

A wall ran into him.

It targeted his knee, and he staggered backwards and fell clutching it.

“Idiot! Go slower,” he cursed at himself, knowing that he wasn’t going to listen. The collision was bad because he hadn’t run into anything for twenty minutes, which meant that he had started stretching out more. Less frequent, but higher intensity injuries were the natural result of his success.

It didn’t matter. Worrying about stuff like that wasn’t helping him train. He got up and hobbled forward.

Each step sent a jolt of agony through him. But the injury was to a bone, and he couldn’t fix it. Short of using his healing potion, there was nothing to be done until he got out of here.

Mentally, he turned around to trace his way back toward the exit.

Every step hurt, but he kept going, occasionally waving his knives when he seemed to be alone, continuously when he knew one bat was nearby. All of his mastered spells were getting a workout, including Body Restore, which was the result of the merge of Blood Replenishment and Muscle Restore. While in practise he was only using the Blood Replenishment component of the more advanced spell, it was a more efficient version. He could hardly wait until he got Touch Heal and saw the efficiency improve back to the level that he was used to.

Another bat attacked. It landed multiple bites on him before he sliced its wing off and then finished it where it was crawling on the ground. The accumulation of injuries, however, pushed him over the edge. His mana ran dry. Annoyed, he took an antidote potion and then kept going.

There was nothing specific, but Tom froze, suddenly worried. Something was very wrong. His skin was crawling, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

He focused, and everything screamed doom at him. It was like he was an acorn on a blacksmith’s forge with the hammer descending, or a bicycle sandwiched in a collision between two semi-trailers, or, more scarily, being caught between the hands of GODs and being torn apart.

It was bad.

Terrible.

Inevitable.

His limbs locked, there were no signals to encourage him to move - just that unstoppable dread. Instinctively, he disconnected Dampen Senses, but he knew it was too little and that it was too late.

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It was here.

A force slammed into his back, far heavier than any bat attack he had experienced before.

He tumbled forward, battle instincts taking over. Dropping Dampen Senses was not the trump card he had hoped for it to be. Somehow, the cave he was in was pitch-black. There was none of the slight glowing moss that he was used to seeing. The sound from his tumble echoed back. It informed him that he was in a massive pitch black underground cathedral. This was not somewhere he had been before.

His brain chugged on and linked the clues, particularly the force the creature had struck him with. None of the possibilities were good. Without any further hesitation, mana flowed into the necklace resting against his throat.

It activated. An emergency flare was sent out that would bring help, but Tom knew that it would take time for Dimitri to get here. Time that he didn’t have. Adrenaline flooded into him, and he recognised the metaphorical precipice he stood next to. The risk of imminent death. Tom knew he hadn’t given himself a choice, but he hated the risk he was taking.

It was still out there.

He rolled desperately to the side.

There was a whoosh of wind from a nearby wingbeat. The downdraft was strong enough to ruffle the hair on his head. Just like he thought, it was big. He tried to follow where it was going.

There was a ding, but Tom didn’t care about it - he had other issues to deal with. The clarity of his senses let him partially track the creature. He could kind of feel where it was, but nothing definitive. It was just his brain linking sound, vibrations, and the swirling of the wind to track where it was.

The lair had developed a boss monster. He was no longer fighting the small bats whose only real danger was their venom. This beast was significantly more powerful.

Tom knew his lore. He understood what was happening.

His subconscious screamed a warning, and he fell again and kissed the stone floor. He sensed it fly over his head, then he sprang back to his feet. It would adapt, and dodging by throwing himself to the ground would not work for long.

What am I facing? He asked himself. The base bat was a swarm creature, and that knowledge let him estimate the strength and likely makeup of this opponent. It would be a different species, but still venomous to keep the theme, he realised in dismay. That meant he wouldn’t be able to rely on the targeted antidote.

There was a clattering of noise to his right. Instinctively, he glanced toward it and then realised it was just some stone falling. He tensed as his honed instincts screamed at him. For a moment, he had been distracted and hadn’t been tracking the primary threat, and the beast had seized that opportunity to dive at him. It was almost on top of him now. He flinched sideways to avoid the bulk of the strike, but one of its talons dug across his shoulder blade. There was searing pain, and he felt the slight tug as a claw caught on bone before the bone gave way.

It was too powerful. That cut was not a lethal one, but it was significant enough that back on Earth he would have been worried about it healing cleanly even with modern medicine. The implications of the encounter to the overall battle were worse still. That had been a glancing blow, and yet it had done so much damage.

Tom didn’t have a choice. He spent all of his remaining fate with the sole purpose of helping him to survive until Dimitri got here. As it spread out, the majority was burnt away, countering the existing fate that had been invisibly hanging around him.

Alarm bells rang inside him.

The monster had used offensive fate. No wonder it had gotten the drop on him. If he had attempted to ration his own fate, then what?

Shit, he thought. He did not want to think about that. He would have been killed in the next couple of passes. Monsters that could use that much offensive fate were far deadlier than their rank would otherwise suggest.

But then another thought occurred to him. If it had already sent that much fate against him, then it had to be specialised in that attribute. Which, in a perverse kind of way, helped rather than hindered him. If it had resources directed toward fate, then it would have less in other attributes, and the human bloodline being fate-focused had let him overwhelm the attack and effectively neuter its most powerful resource.

He had a chance.

Luck was going to be in his favour instead of the creature’s, and it was the monster that relied on luck to make its kills.