We ended up clearing three more: a second and third D-Ranked portal, then two blue-light E-Ranks. Jeff got increasingly frantic as we went, and it was only at the end, when a yellow, C-Ranked portal loomed in the wetlands next to a walkway and we had to call for backup, that he explained why. "I'm so close to the C-Rank breakthrough that I can taste it. I need that rank-up. I need it bad."

Jeff was too beat-up for more low-rank portals, though, and we all had injuries that needed rest—although both his and mine were healing more quickly than the others'. He had Recovery, and my merged skill increased my naturally-quick delver's healing.

That meant I was pretty much healthy by the time Ellen dropped me off at my place. Even better, Jessie wasn't home yet. That gave me plenty of time for the final merge. And even better than that, all the portal-clearing had moved the three skills I needed to E-06 or higher—and I had a D-Rank core from our second clear of the night. I was ready.

I sat down, summoned Cheddar, and cracked the core. It puddled up, but before I let myself start adding skills, there was one very important step to take. Right now, Cheddar himself was barely worth summoning; he'd landed a few good blows in the D-Rank portals, but for the most part, he simply wasn't strong enough to take on the kind of threats I wanted to be fighting. My build was almost all the way together, and I needed to be in D and C-Rank portals as much as possible.

An unenhanced, E-Rank familiar focused on battle simply wasn't going to cut it.

I sent a mental image of the melted core. Then I sent one of Cheddar bathing in it. Then a wave of positivity and happiness—and strength. I needed my familiar involved in the Stormsteel Core's alteration process.

Cheddar got the message. The silver-white winged serpent threw himself into the core without a moment's hesitation. He vanished, and I got to work.

This merge was going to be a lot like my first—the Stormsteel Core's skill merge. People may have done this before, but we'd found no documented cases of monster familiars, and even though the specific combination of skills I was using had been used, including Cheddar and the Stormsteel Core in the equation was likely to send it on a completely different path.

So, I needed to be ready for that.

Familiar Bond was the base layer. I added the skill—a surprisingly clay-like one that combined with the green verdigris of the D-Ranked core to form something that looked a bit like the Kintsugi-repaired pottery I'd seen in some museums. Copper veins linked the earthware structure together in a long, coiled shape that was vaguely reminiscent of Cheddar.

I saw where this was going. I even had a feeling I knew what the Stormsteel Core's alteration would be. And I was ready for it. Ready for the fight.

I poured myself into shaping and forming the clay-and-copper serpent's body until it looked almost exactly correct—until the copper veins were in the pattern of Cheddar's scales and his body was as thin and noodle-like as I could make it. He had no wings—not yet—and no head. But he was coming along nicely.

For the wings, I added Spatial Sheathe. It didn't form the wings, though—not exactly. Instead, a cloud of void formed around the clay Cheddar in roughly the correct spot, roiling and churning like nothing I'd ever seen before. I'd heard of some powerful void mages, and even considered that path as a generic build. But I'd never seen anything like this. I forced my will into it, clamping down and squeezing.

And bit by bit, the wings slowly formed.

They didn't look right, though—and as I created them, the copper threads on clay Cheddar's body darkened until they were more brown than shining metal, with hints of gray in them. He took on an ominous aura. He was something dangerous. Something to be tamed yet again—but this time, I wouldn't have books to guide me.

This time, I was doing it on my own.

The last part I needed was Cheddar's diamond-shaped, semi-draconic head. It was an anchor point for the entire structure. A keystone. The skill merge needed all three parts: a base layer, a roiling storm, and a keystone. Without them all, it would collapse.

I added Dimensional Anchor. It took the form of a solid point of pure light, in contrast to the dark wings, browning metal, and ever-expanding grayness of the once-brown clay. As I placed the point of light where Cheddar's head should be, the bright white point expanded. Then it touched the metal.

The air grew coppery and charged.. I tasted metal on my tongue—and electricity. The Stormsteel Core was about to activate. But I fought against it this time. Cheddar wasn't done yet. He wasn't correct. If I completed the skill merge in this state, he wouldn't be everything I needed him to be.

I resisted. The Stormsteel Core pushed. And as we fought, my Stamina plummeted, and the light burned away at the copper scales, replacing the tarnished, brown metal with bright lines of lightning.

When the light hit Cheddar's tail, I gave in, gasping for air.

The Stormsteel Core awakens. Prepare yourselves.

Huh. That was different.

I stood in a valley between two towering gray cliffs. Burnt, dead trees surrounded me, and blackened fields. The Stormsteel rapier was in my hand, and the breastplate was strapped to my chest.

Stamina: 250/250, Mana: 300/300

My resources were full, and I had both my Scripts running—the speed one, and the deflection one. I reached behind me; three lightning trap Bindings stuck out of my back pocket. I was more prepared than I'd ever been.

And I'd need every scrap of that preparation.

Facing me was Cheddar. A forty-foot-tall Cheddar made from clay and gold and burning bright light. He looked wrong. I'd expected a flying serpent of thunder and storm. Instead, he glowed the same shade as the sun and almost as brightly, casting wild shadows in every direction as he moved toward the storm overhead.

Something had gone wrong. Not just altered from the Stormsteel Core, but wrong. This wasn't the familiar I'd wanted—it wasn't the one I'd built toward.

This was Ellen's merged skill, not mine.

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But I didn't have a choice anymore. This was what I had.

I readied myself. If they wanted me to fight Cheddar, I'd show him a fight—forty feet tall and several tons heavier than me or not. I couldn't wrestle him like I had in my bathroom, but I could still beat him.

I wasn't ready for him to slam into the ground next to me, dozens of cloud-shaped elementals crawling across his scales and ripping at the sunlight-gold veins between them. He screeched in pain. No, in agony and desperation.

And I realized this challenge wasn't about defeating Cheddar at all. It was about bonding with him all over again.

The elementals were killing him—choking out his sunlight—and I had to save him if I wanted this skill merge to work. I threw myself onto his back, sword flashing, and he took off. We zoomed back into the clouds. Wind and rain whipped at my face and clothes. I ignored the weather. Instead, I focused on the first elemental.

That had to be the priority.

I launched myself into a two-handed lunge, putting every ounce of power I had into the blow. My sword punched through the monster. Lightning arced from my blade into it, and it dissipated. But there was another after that—and two more near Cheddar's bright white wings. I sliced into the closest one, then hacked away at it until it, too, vanished.

Then I summoned up a handful of Ariette's Zephyrs and threw two at the closest elemental. It hit, and I consumed the Lightning Charge from my initial fighting for Lightning Strikes Twice. The echoed impact destroyed another elemental, and the fourth died to the remaining three Zephyrs.

But I'd gotten the remaining elementals' attention. They swarmed after me, dozens of them, coming from all over Cheddar's body. More and more of them, until they were almost overwhelming.

I waited. I wasn't interested in killing them one by one. Instead, I backed up toward Cheddar's head as wind and rain pelted my neck and shoulders, drawing the elementals into a chase and defending myself with Mistwalk Form's blocks and parries.

They closed in anyway. There were too many of them to retreat from.

And that was fine.

I switched to a two-handed grip and launched into a single, sweeping attack. The Wind Charge from my spellcasting stance went into Howling Gale, and the monsters fell apart as dozens of wind swords echoed and cleaved across them. Almost all of them vanished. Two survived. But not for long.

Then I had a moment to breathe, a Lightning Charge and a Rainfall one, and a Cheddar who was very, very obviously still in agony beneath my feet.

That meant this wasn't over. Not yet. There was something else. Something worse than the little elementals. And I needed to find out what—and then stop it from hurting my new best friend.

I stood at the apex of Cheddar's body, right at the nape of his neck where it met his glowing, white head. If the problem wasn't here…it had to be further down. Probably by his thrashing, flailing tail.

I broke into a sprint, looking for the threat. Something was still killing him, and until I found out what…I wasn't safe here, and neither was he—or the skill merge. But his body was clear. There wasn't a single elemental on him.

Which meant…I looked up.

Yep. There it was, a hulking black cloud elemental, arms extended like two tornadoes. They didn't touch Cheddar's body, but I could feel the Mana ripping out of his body and into the elemental's as it channeled a spell. Cheddar screeched again and started dropping from the air. His wings buckled, and a blast of white-hot light surged from his mouth. It punched a hole in the clouds overhead, but missed the elemental. Then Cheddar was falling.

I consumed the Rainfall Charge as I shifted into my Cyclone stance, conjured a single Zephyr, and flung it at the gigantic elemental. It impacted, and I used Saltspray.

As the Zephyr made contact, it bored an almost insignificant hole into the elemental. But it reacted like a tidal wave of force had hit it; its two arms lifted into the air, and Cheddar screeched again—this time in relief—as my counterspell effect landed and cut off the channeled cast.

My sword hovered in front of me, and I summoned a full handful of Zephyrs, ready to take the fight to the elemental. But a mental image appeared in my mind—this time, from Cheddar instead of from me. Light surged as the vision of Cheddar hammered the monster with a ridiculous sunlight breath weapon.

Clouds parted. Sunbeams lit up the sky in pinwheels of light. And Cheddar turned his vengeful, yellow-white gaze toward the elemental.

Skill Merged: Sunbeam Bond

The Stormsteel Core has altered this skill from Lightfeather Bond

The influence of another delver's Mana has altered this skill from Stormwing Bond.

Only a madman would seek out a bond with a monster. But only a genius or fool would attempt to parley that bond into not only a merged skill and an alteration to the monster itself, but someone else's alteration. Are you a fool, a madman, a genius, or a combination of the three? That remains to be seen—as do the consequences of your actions. Sunbeam Bond allows you to take a specific monster as a familiar.

Stormsteel Effects: 1. Your Lightfeather Serpent familiar has been altered into a Sunbeam Serpent, with new abilities and strengths.

Upgrade Effects: 1. Each rank increases the Mana, Stamina, and Health of your familiar 2. Each rank allows for additional stored objects in your interdimensional storage. 3. Each rank increases your Mana pool.

Cheddar had changed.

Where before, he'd been bright, now he was a silver color that reflected the Phoenix sun until it was all but blinding if I so much as cracked a shade. His scales were lined with the color of sunlight breaking through the storm, and his wings were the shade and texture of wispy cirrus clouds in the early morning.

He hadn't grown, thank god. If he'd become the forty-foot-tall monster I'd ridden during the merge, it would have destroyed the whole apartment—he'd been close to two hundred feet long.

And, also thank god, he was exhausted. He was asleep from the moment the merge ended; I set him on my bed and closed the door. The poor little guy had been through a lot today, and he needed his rest.

Kade: Be ready. When you merge your familiar skill, my Mana's going to mess with the merge.

Kade: You'll probably have a storm trial of some type. Cheddar went all light-themed. You're getting a storm-themed Pepperoni.

Ellen: Okay. Understood. I'll be ready.

There wasn't anything else to do about it. Ellen's Mana had altered the merge. The Cheddar I had was the Cheddar I was stuck with—and it wasn't like he wouldn't be wildly powerful. In fact, his sun-based powers might even complement my build better than the original. I could only hope the same would be true for Ellen. But I couldn't help her at all past the warning I'd just sent her.

Everything else was in her hands.

Besides, I had work to do.

I pulled up my status.

User: Kade Noelstra E-Rank Stamina: 36/250, Mana: 64/350

Skills: 1. Stormsteel Core (D-02, Unique, Merged) 2. Thunderbolt Forms (E-08, Altered, Merged) 3. Mistwalk Forms (E-05, Altered, Merged) 4. Cyclone Forms (E-01, Altered, Merged) 5. Sunbeam Bond (E-01, Altered, Merged) Open Skill Slots: 2

Path: Stormsteel Path Laws: First Law of Stormsteel

All five merges were complete. Now, all that remained was to figure out my final two unmerged skills and start the process of ranking both my seven skills and myself on the climb to S-Rank.

Stormsteel Core, Thunderbolt Forms, and Mistwalk Forms could all feasibly hit S-Rank with enough work. Cyclone Forms would cap out at A-Rank, while Sunbeam Bond would be the weakest of my five merges at B-Rank. Whatever I decided on for my sixth and seventh skills would hit the unmerged cap of C-Rank and go no further—and there wasn't any point in trying for a sixth merge, since it wouldn't be able to push past C-Rank, either.

I'd be relying on my first three skills to carry the build to S-Rank, and the hard parts would be breaching the C-Rank bottleneck and then the S-Rank tribulation. But, for the first time, I felt ready to start leveling and ranking up my skills in earnest.

And not only that, but I felt something else.

I felt strong. Really strong.

Sure, I couldn't stand up to Deborah Callahan, the Roadrunner A-Ranker who had it out for me for some reason. And I definitely couldn't even be in the same city block as an all-out Light of Dawn or Falcon's Eye; the S-Rankers could all accidentally kill me no matter how hard they tried to avoid it at their full strength.

But I was ready to move up. Ready for C-Rank portals—or at least, close. The foundation was in place. Now all that was left was building the tower and reaching for the strength I needed to fulfill my promises to Dad. I'd keep Jessie safe.

And I'd make him proud.

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