+ Reid +

Reid dropped the ropes pulling the bone chests with his pair of captive spiders, and brought Bonewall to the front just in time to have one of the incoming beasts slam headfirst into it. He heard the spider's head pop itself on his shield, and flung the body to the side as he swung Requiem down in an overhead strike.

You have defeated Elite Volitant Orb Weaver - lvl 37 You have defeated Elite Volitant Orb Weaver - lvl 43

His mace slid into a simple holder ring on his bone belt, and he plucked a Marrowbomb from his tasset that was quickly fueled and thrown. The shrapnel variant exploded against a tree and pelted the spiders hiding there with shards of bone that instantly killed each. Others may not agree with him on the subject, but Reid saw the elites as far too weak. Yes, they did seem to get higher in level as he worked his way up the mountain towards the domain lord - but the enemies were still in F grade, and he was more than halfway to the summit. The only thing this mountain had going for it so far is that it was large. Extremely large.

The thing was easily four times as tall as any he'd seen in the tutorial, though the gradual nature of the slope made it less precarious to climb. The foliage here was still as thick as it had been down near the beach, and one of the main reasons Reid even knew he was getting close to the top was because of the Cartographer's Bangle. The mapmaking equipment was a core part to his routine. Climb. Fight weak spiders. Tent himself and his two captured arachnids for a few hours sleep to get himself fully rested. Map the area to check his progress. Feed pieces of the dead spiders to his captured ones (yes, of course they were cannibalistic, and yes he was doing it to save his own meat stores for himself). Feed himself. Climb again.

It was during one of his morning mapping sessions that Reid finally encountered a spider in E grade. It was much like the rest, just oversized and ugly, though this one had glowing green dots and rings on the upper sections of its legs. A quick identify revealed the creatures had a new skill - Caustic Fangs. The level 58's attacks were still pitiful, though.

Fangs failed to even scratch his armor or his shield, and the bright green caustic substance that shot from its fangs did nothing to harm the surface of his bone equipment. The caustic venom actually served as a half decent cleaner, and melted away some of the gunk he'd accumulated from other spiders recently. That slight cleaning was foiled when Reid slammed the thing with Bonewall, and it exploded in a shower. Reid was very much looking forward to being done with spiders.

That night, Reid decided to do something he hadn't in a long while - climb above the treetops. He did a mixture of climbing and crafting to get himself up above the cover of the dense foliage, and was rewarded with a unique sight.

Below him, the mountain stretched away and down in a massive slope. The beach - and waves beyond - were clearly visible from his position. The water stretched on and around what land he could see, which supported his peninsula idea. The light of two moons gave the whole scene a lovely, quiet quality, and Reid let himself exist in the moment.

Until realization came.

There had been a trio of moons before. He knew that. Reid peered up into the sky, and squinted.

A few tumbling sections of jagged material were visible where the third moon should have been. And, now that he was focusing on them, he noticed quick flashes of light racing towards the lunar bodies.

His mouth fell slack as he continued to stare.

Why the hell would someone blow up the moons?

/-__+ Talcinor Debrine Jr. +__-\

His back slammed against a rough, cracked wall. Around the corner, an ignorant invader was crouched near the edge of the sidewalk.

The city had never been his - not really - but Talcinor hated seeing things like this. The invaders had systematically worked to destroy pieces of their heritage, along with the people that had made it. He was a fool for ever accepting their aid. Things had seemed so right and favorable. The awakening came, and then Belar arrived to do what the ruling class failed to accomplish - keep people safe and help them grow. Things passed by in idyllic bliss. He convinced his older siblings, then his parents to join him in the Belar camp. They called it Hope Station 4, and for years, it lived up to the name.

A single, awful day burned away Talcinor's notions of who Belar were and what they had come to do. The corporation took away his safety, and his surety, and his family that day. But their actions unlocked something else.

Rebellion. Violence. Anger.

Talcinor learned to stay quiet and shadowed. He began to use his magics in new and sometimes frightening ways. He continued with it when it scared him, and when it scarred him. He managed to save a few fellow Vuxarinans, and grew a small band to continue resisting, at a larger scale. The same tricks he used against the beasts worked on the aliens, too. He and his group found and fought higher leveled enemies where they could - out of desperation at first, and intentionally thereafter. The higher levels made them enticing targets as their group grew steadily to the next grade, then evolved to F themselves.

With their new grade and power, his group moved from the wilderness where the camp had been, back towards the city. To the capital.

He was the 6th son of a pair of hardworking, underappreciated parents. They were far from rich, and most of the city was foreign, even to him. But a member of the people he'd saved offered a promise of safety deep within the rich districts, and Talcinor eventually bought into the notion. He'd gotten over the fact that they all followed his lead fairly quickly. Age didn't matter as much as power and ability, after all.

And he had been graced with two synergistic skills.

Talcinor bared his teeth in effort, back scraping against the wall as around the corner, long silver needles slid through the narrow gaps in the invader's power armor, and stabbed into his skin. It took an immense level of control to hit accurately enough to get the needles through the gaps, and a great deal of quick power to get them to stab in deep enough to make the next step effective. Trial and error, followed by experience, had honed his skills.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He flicked his fingers to let his control over the silver needles go, then flexed them again as a stream of lightning erupted out of his hands, and shot forward. It danced wild through the air until it came close enough to the needles - and the silver did the rest.

Lightning caught on the highly-conductive metal, then raced down the needle's lengths to burrow its way through the bodies of the men wearing power armor. The armor was insulated from the ground - which gave the energy nowhere to disperse from. The electricity burned and cooked the invader from the inside, and Talcinor received the dinging notification of another successful kill. It was his eighth of the night, and he was going to try to go for ten.

He let a smile cross his face. They were edging closer to the destination offered to them by the mason, and if the stories were true, that meant even more people to rally to the cause.

Aliens had come for Vuxarina when its people were new to the awakened cosmos.

They'd come like cowards, with tricks and treachery to ensure Vuxarina would not properly fight back.

Those tricks had even worked on him.

But they would all pay. Talcinor would use the tools of the system and throw off the yoke of any alien. Vuxarina belonged to the Vuxarinans, and he would make sure they responded to the planetary sucker-punch with all the force they could manage.

He was going to tip the scales so they could win this fight - one dead alien at a time.

His gaze turned upwards, and the smile dropped off his face at the terrible reminder of the invader's spiteful ways. An entire moon, reduced to rubble.

A commotion caught his attention and brought it back to the ground. There was something that felt like a small quake. Screaming. The whine of crystal powered engines. He ran in the direction of the noise.

The night was young, and he was going for ten.

)+\( Hugo )/+(

Naive.

It had been naive of him to imagine he was some infallible warrior king. Such hubris had been the downfall of many a monarch, and it turned out he was simply no different from the rest.

Dirt lanced up and tried to spear him through the leg, but he managed a half-roll, half-fall to get himself out of the way. He let out a low curse at his shortcomings.

The hammerhead worms, until this point, were manageable. The regular ones died before they ever made it to the walls - after the first. The elites had been difficult to hunt down, but simple enough to kill. They drained him, and he needed time to absorb their souls to replenish himself after each fight, but nothing truly changed about his style of combat. He stayed away from his foes and their magic, while his own crushed them from afar.

The guardian he now fought was a departure from that norm.

Hugo's soul was a tool and weapon. It was reinforced and purpose-altered to stretch and flex and move in just the right ways to slip into and surround enemies. It was enough, each time, to take down one or more enemies. He had plod his way through the dim, near-imperceptible tunnels the worms made in the underground - with one of their darkvision focused scouts to ensure he kept his way. The two of them continued until Hugo finally started to sense the worm's soul coming into his range, and they had hidden as best they could around a bend in the oval-shaped tunnel.

As soon as his soul touched that of the beast, Hugo knew things were different this time. He failed to wrap the beast with thin threads - and it felt the intrusion. The beast panicked, and bucked as if it were trying to shake off a rider from its back. The massive motion actually managed to make Hugo lose his grip - and his footing. Like a true, physical backlash in response to the violent motion. That was when he should have run. But he was naive, and he continued.

Needles formed and blades materialized as he poked and cut into the soul of the beast, just as he had done with Belar's forces in the early days of understanding his powers within the tutorial space. He knew it was less effective, but if he could not wrap the beast, he could still damage it. The attacks enraged the beast further, and its wild rampaging started to move. It moved towards them, circled slightly, then shot away. That was when Hugo should have stood still. But he was naive, and so he followed the beast.

The scout helped guide them both forward, through a complex maze of tunnels and low, wide open sections dug out from the dirt. They move on - and up. Each time they caught up, Hugo would attack, and the beast would run again.

They eventually came to a larger section of interconnected tubes, and things went sideways. The worm, visible now, was too far for Hugo to hit. It flung shards of rock and dirt their way, and the scout had his calf mangled before they could take cover.

So Hugo was stuck, unable to flee properly, unwilling to leave the man behind, and unprepared to kill the beast.

The fight became a desperate struggle. Hugo had to advance to put the beast within range. It raged against his powers and retaliated with its own. The set of bone armor Hugo wore blunted most of the damage and the projectiles. Where it did not cover, he took small cuts and scrapes. Both he and the beast did their best to whittle one another down and into submission. He became even more grateful for Nyx's direction as the fight dragged. Without the reinforcement, he would have long lost against his foe.

Things first began to turn when he tore at a particularly slow spinning portion of the beast. It reared back with a ground-shaking roar, then bucked wild against the sides and top of the space. Debris fell away in layers, and cracks spidered out from the ceiling. Great sections of dirt and rock shook themselves loose, and plummeted to the floor of the space. The apartment-sized sections cracked and broke apart like simple clods of dirt with each impact - on the floor, and on the beast. It roiled once more at the impacts, and smashed into the ceiling again with a great crash.

Stone and concrete, wood and metal contorted and collapsed into the new hole in the cavern ceiling. Houses, and sidewalk. A street, and another foundation that twisted and broke as the ground caved in. Hugo watched pieces of his city fall, a product of his own folly. His own hubris.

The worm probed the new opening, and stilled for a moment before it moved to extricate itself from their battleground.

Hugo would not have it. He could not. Not after everything he had put into this fight. The worm was not going to get away.

He lashed out with his magic and his soul, wires hooked into the injured but brightly-burning soul of the hammerhead worm guardian. As he struggled to hold it still, Hugo saw beyond the simple hole in the ceiling and the writhing body of his enemy. He witnessed a truth only known through reports.

One of their lunar triplets, broken. Stolen for reasons unknown, with another yet under attack.

Belar was not content with the misery and pillaging they already enacted. Those vermin wanted more. They were low, and his frustration and anger swelled within him as Hugo slipped towards his emotions. They flared, and he felt them reinforce his tired power. The sensation - of his hatred and distain invigorating his soul magic - was narcotic. Supreme.

Dangerous.

Hugo forced himself to edge back from his anger, even as he used his power to tear more of the worm's soul apart and stop its ascent. He breathed away anger, and only then realized it had been trying to change the very currents of his soul.

Nyx's words and warnings revolved in his head.

He was Naive, but he would not become some story told to frighten children.

He was weak, but he would grow strong enough to stop beast and Belar both.

Hugo breathed out the last bit of swelled anger, and felt conviction take its place.

He was responsible for keeping safe a planet that had lost much, and would lose more.

His gaze flicked to the moons. Some things lost could never be repaired.

But he would not lose himself in response.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.