The leadership of Opportunity the II returned to the camp. The crew was in a panic. People’s votes were split between running into the forest and making for the ship, even though the Captain hadn’t refused them.

Malysseus called upon his wind essence again, repeating the same spell he had used moments ago. He spread it throughout the crew and some of the more vital supplies this time. The sailors yelled out in surprise as the wind magic picked them up into the air. Everyone except Malysseus was carried by the spell, which dropped them on the boat.

And except Kewari.

The infuriating, beautiful woman stood next to him, smiling. There was nothing impetuous in her smile. Malysseus could see the conviction written on her face. And the warmth. And the love.

“Together, then?” Malysseus asked.

“Together,” Kewari confirmed.

“How did you resist the spell?”

“You think I’ve watched you all this time without thinking about how to counter your magic?”

Malysseus chuckled. He lit another cigar, pulling smoke from it. This time, he was not doing it for pleasure. There was another reason he smoked cigars.

Kewari coughed lightly next to him as Malysseus pushed a haze of smoke through the camp. After all, the cyclopses only had one eye. Their eyes were unlikely to pierce smoke. He was rather sick of them bursting from the trees to fall on him in surprise. This time, Malysseus had plenty of Mana to hold onto his advantages. Next to him, Kewari took his hand so they would not lose track of each other.

He pulled it to his lips, kissing her hand gently.

The cyclops burst from the tree line. Malysseus heard grunts of confusion as the creature blundered out of the forest. Malysseus, Kewari, and everyone on the boat could feel the shaking as the cyclops swung its hands around. The bulk of the creature shook the ground as it desperately swung its meaty hands back and forth. The crew could not see this—because of the smoke—but they could feel it.

The cyclops was able to accomplish some of what it wanted. It cleared the immediate smoke around it, bringing some small wooden buildings into sight. It didn’t, however, find what it sought. It couldn’t see the people through the rest of the smoke.

Opening its jaw, the cyclops bellowed into the smoke, trying to push it away with the force of wind expelled from its lungs. The smoke was thick and reinforced with magic, so the creature ultimately failed. Instead, its bellows were cut off by bolts of lightning that struck it in its open mouth. The creature was stunned.

***

Humans are terrible. Especially the humans who use the powers of the Abyss. The appalling power of magic. Urasica, as his mother had named him, did not appreciate the dreaded thing called magic. She had instilled in him the deep history of cyclops and magic.

Cyclopses were once humans too. Every cyclops was told this by their parents. It was cursed magic that turned them. A true curse. Every cyclops knew of the curse, but none knew how to break it. They remembered, as a people, that curses could always be broken. But they gave up as a people.

It was better to live as you were. It was better to hunt the magic. After all, who would know better than human Abyss-wielders? Urasica would talk to the Abyss-wielder. But first, he would need to move his muscles again. It was hard. The movements required much effort. The human had dared shoot lightning Abyss into his face.

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Urasica would eat the human. With his face.

***

“How long is he going to be stuck?” Kewari asked, seeing that the cyclops was already starting to move.

“How should I know?” Malysseus asked. He cast magic, pulling gemstone ropes from the earth. Rope after rope soared through the air, pulling taut over the cyclops’ frozen form. “It’s a cyclops. But it just got lightning directly into its body. It could recover in another minute. It could be an hour.”

“Just kill it,” Kewari said, eyeing the creature with deep suspicion. She took a few steps back, trying to be further from the beast in case it started swinging. “It’s already trapped.”

“I don’t want to take any risks with this thing recovering enough to dodge out of the way,” Malysseus said. “Kewari… does this one look bigger than the last one?”

“I don’t know; it looks big.”

“Yeah, but this one looks huge gigantic. Not regular gigantic. I think we should-”

The cyclops roared as it broke free of its crystal chains. The chains did not hold the cyclops nearly so well as the last set of chains. The empowered, charged by the staff, crystal chains were utterly destroyed. It ripped through them at once, but that wasn’t the worst part.

From seemingly nowhere, Malysseus watched as the creature summoned a long, obsidian blade from nowhere. The edge was wicked sharp, shiny enough to catch the light, and looked at least four Malysseuses in length. His eyes bulged as he grabbed Kewari, pushing them out of the way with the wind.

The black obsidian blade slammed into the ground with surprising speed. This creature was quite capable of using its bulk correctly. It was fast and obviously strong, so Malysseus could only hope it had similar weaknesses.

Malysseus navigated to the side of the cyclops, continuing to use the wind. It did not turn easily, so he relied on that fact. He could pepper the creature with attacks from safe spots. When the creature started to turn, he would be able to escape on the winds.

The plan did not work out as expected. Carrying the long obsidian sword, the cyclops was more than capable of using it. Shifting its grip, the monster stabbed the blade downward as Malysseus summoned a crystal spear into its side. The crystal spear didn’t pierce as much as it had on his previous enemy.

The obsidian blade whistled through the air as it made for Malysseus and Kewari. Malysseus tried to dodge them, but the attack was much quicker than he had anticipated. He wasn’t hit head-on. The blow landed on his arm, battering the whole thing off.

Malysseus would have been in shock if he weren’t afraid of dying momentarily. The wind surged as he carried Kewari far enough away for them to have moments to speak. They landed on the beach, a football field away from the cyclops, as it charged for them.

“Can you heal it?” Malysseus asked, unable to staunch the wound without releasing his staff.

“No,” Kewari said. “I’ll stop the bleeding, but regrowing limbs takes days.”

“Stop the bleeding,” Malysseus said, raising his staff. He summoned several curtains of Arcane magic, power flooding from the giant reservoir of the staff. He was being quite loose in his spending of magic. Measuring the power left based on his own Mana pools, the weapon still contained thirteen Mana pools of magic.

The cyclops sliced through each of the Arcane barriers with ease. They collapsed under the blade’s force. It swept the blade back and forth through the air as it cut through the obstacles one by one. It was suspicious—like the sword was constructed to cut through magic.

Surging Mana, he gathered a complete Mana pool’s worth of energy into an Arcane spell. Instead of a single large blast, he summoned hundreds of tiny balls of Arcane magic in the air around the cyclops. With a single thought, he sent all the blasts into the creature. The cyclops howled in pain.

The blow only made the monster pause for a moment. It continued sweeping through the remaining few Arcane barriers as Malysseus focused on another plan. He could try and blast through the cyclops’ skin by utilizing the storm of Arcane bullets over and over. The creature was singed, clearly damaged by the attack, but currently undaunted.

Before Malysseus could resign himself to the plan, he experienced what it means to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good news was that Kewari completed her healing, stopping his bleeding before the cyclops could slash the final pair of Arcane barriers. Both of the cyclops were ugly. The bad, on the other hand...

A second, smaller cyclops appeared from the forest. This new cyclops was the size of the first cyclops the crew encountered. The one Malysseus killed. It was only next to the second cyclops that it became apparent how much larger the first one was.

The second cyclops was twice the size of the first and third cyclopses. And it had a friend.