Ellen screamed.

No. Ellen didn't scream. I'd learned a lot about her from this portal clear, and one of the things I'd learned was that she didn't scream.

Not even when a five-hundred-pound rock snake was trying to squeeze her to death and she couldn't cast a spell because it had her arms pinned.

But she was definitely yelling a lot in between gasping for air.

I slashed across the snake's stony scales for the dozenth time. Jeff had his hands full with another snake and a Golemite, so it was all on me. This time, the lightning that surged through the snake marked a weak spot, and I stabbed into it. A moment later, it exploded, throwing Ellen across the cave.

Jeff had his opponents under control, so I sprinted over and offered the shadow mage a hand. "You okay?"

"I'm gonna have bruised ribs for a week! I'll look like shit in my workout outfit." Ellen took the hand and let me pull her to her feet, gasping a little as her strained ribs hitched.

"Check your rear better next time," I said.

She rolled her eyes, face red, and breathed deeply, wincing.

We'd been fighting for a good half-hour, blitzing down big enemies together and then letting Jeff handle anything easy. With his armor—not to mention his full set of skills—he was all but invincible in an E-Rank portal. Ellen and I were just along to provide damage and speed up his progress. The fight we'd just been in was the last before a massive barrier made from solid, jet-black obsidian.

If that wasn't the boss's chamber, I didn't know what was.

Jeff finished off his fight against the two monsters and sheathed his increasingly dull sword. He cracked his knuckles, then stretched his shoulders until they popped under his armor. "Well, Kade, you guessed right. How do you do it?"

"It was a fifty/fifty chance," I replied, shrugging.

That wasn't entirely true. The left-hand tunnel had looked different. Brighter. It seemed designed to look more enticing to a group looking for a quick boss kill, and that felt like bait. This wasn't a trap portal, but that didn't mean it had to play by the rules. So, if that was bait, the right-hand side was the real thing. That had been my theory, anyway, and I was glad to see it had worked out correctly.

I pulled up my status to see how we'd done.

User: Kade Noelstra E-Rank Stamina: 89/160, Mana: 75/200 (Stamina +10)

Skills: 1. Stormsteel Core (E-04 to E-07, Unique, Merged) 2. Dodge (E-08 to E-09) 3. Light Blade Mastery (E-07 to E-08) 4. Parry (E-03 to E-05) 5. Footwork (E-02 to E-05) 6. Vital Lunge (E-01 to E-04, Active) 7. Riposte (E-01 to E-03)

I'd grown a lot. My skills were getting close; by the time we killed the portal boss, I'd be ready to start finding D-Rank portals and my next core. As it stood, I needed a little more work on most of the necessary skills, and Dodge was pushing into the danger zone.

"You two ready, or do you need a minute?" Jeff asked. He looked at Ellen, who was still rubbing her rib on the right side of her chest. "You got pretty banged up there."

"I need to invest in some gear. That'll help," Ellen said. She winced. "But yeah, I'm good."

"Let's see what we're dealing with," I said. And I touched the barrier.

It shattered instantly. As impossibly sharp fragments of obsidian rained down on us, Jeff used a skill I hadn't seen before, raising his shield with both hands bracing it, and a shining, gray-blue barrier made from hexagonal panels flashed overhead. It only lasted for a moment, but even in that second, I watched his aura flicker and fade. "Split-Second Shield," he said, grunting with the effort of maintaining the skill. "Get in there!"

I charged through the shattered wall of volcanic glass, Ellen right behind me. This was it. The boss. And judging by the size of this portal world, there wouldn't be any tricks.

The Split-Second Shield faded behind us as Jeff let it go, and the three of us waited for the boss to make its appearance.

We didn't have to wait long.

Magmatic Octopod: E-Rank

It was massive. Easily the biggest portal monster I'd encountered in the year I'd been delving—and one of the biggest I'd ever seen. Jagged stone growths covered eight tentacles as thick as my leg, and mostly-cooled lava leaked from between them. A single eye the size of a truck tire peered at us from above a stone-beaked maw; the thing's body dragged behind it, leaving molten rock streaked behind it.

It lifted up on its eight limbs and crawled toward us.

"This thing's E-Rank?" Ellen yelled.

"Yep! It's big, but that's it. Don't expect anything special!" Jeff shouted.

"Look for opportunities. Try to break its limbs, and avoid getting caught," I said more quietly. The battle trance took me a moment later, and as Jeff used his taunt skill, I circled. Hunting. Looking for weaknesses.

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A tentacle ripped up off the ground, then crashed onto the stone next to Jeff. He blocked, activating his counterattacking skill and hacking away with his shortsword. Ellen pivoted left. The shadows bent around her, hiding her from the boss. That was good. Her best bet was to keep a low profile until she could maximize her Mana use.

But I needed blood. Or magma.

As the boss slammed tentacle after tentacle into Jeff's shield, I found an opportunity. Wind swirled behind me as I sprinted forward, sword back and ready. The boss spun slowly; each crushing blow pivoted it slightly to the right. A tentacle went up. Then it crashed down.

And I dashed in. My rapier cut across the boss's massive limb, leaving a wound—an actual wound that bled blood—in the volcanic-looking flesh below the stones. I glanced over my shoulder; its Health was already working to seal the injury, and it hadn't cauterized like most monsters did. But I'd hurt it.

The tentacle flailed at me. I parried, blocking the blow even as it shook my arms to the shoulders. It wasn't as bad as the Shadow Ogre had been. I whirled and stabbed, putting my Stamina into the blow in an attempt to damage the stone-covered arm.

The monster roared in pain. A second tentacle rocketed toward me. This one was covered in cuts; Jeff had been hard at work. All I could do was block frantically for a few seconds and look for openings to retreat or attack.

Then Ellen cast her first spell.

Squares of light and shadow appeared across the boss's body. Everywhere the light touched, wounds healed and flesh stitched itself back together, but the shadowy shapes dug into the Octopod's flesh, excising chunks that vanished into thin air. The spell lasted almost four seconds. By the time it was over, the shadowy zones had dug almost three inches deep, and molten blood ran freely from dozens of wounds.

The monster's Health was already patching all the injuries—but slowly. I had a window. The Stormsteel rapier snapped back, then forward in a Vital Lunge as my Stamina dropped below half. It ripped into a half-healed wound; blood erupted outward, splashing against my clothes and face. It felt scalding.

I didn't pull the blade back. Instead, I sawed back and forth, opening the wound as the Octopod flailed and smashed the ground all around it. The wounded tentacle lifted free of my blade.

It hovered mid-air.

A horrific ripping sound filled the air as flesh, stone, and skin tore apart. For a second, the arm hung from a slap of skin and a straining, bulging muscle the color of lava. Then that, too, ripped, and half of the arm tumbled to the ground.

"Nice one!" Jeff said. I looked his way. He wasn't even breaking a sweat yet, and I'd used way too many resources to get my single win. "Get the one next to it!"

I nodded. "On it!" Then I dove back into the mass of thrashing, crushing tentacles.

My sword flashed. Lightning crackled across the monster's skin. But the wounds I'd taken advantage of had healed enough that I couldn't repeat the same trick until Ellen found another window. She was looking for an opening. She had to be.

A tentacle slammed across my back. The blow threw me off balance, and another wrapped around my waist. It burned—not the death burn of real lava, but the heat of Phoenix asphalt on bare skin. I hissed in pain and gritted my teeth. One arm was pinned, but not my sword arm. As the Octopod jerked me off my feet and slammed me into the ground, I stabbed and hacked at it.

It let me go, and I crashed into the ground one more time. Burns covered my waist from hip to rib; the monster's tentacles weren't magma, but they hurt.

As I pushed myself to my feet, the battle trance reasserted itself over my pain.

I'd been stupid. My fencing instructor and step-dad would have both pointed it out; the first would have been patient, while the second would have made me say it. Either way, I hadn't respected my opponent—hadn't maintained my distance—and I'd paid for it.

Another shadow spell ripped across the boss. This one looked more like tiny strings of darkness. They wrapped around a tentacle, squeezing and cutting like garrote wires. Then, they expanded. Flesh and stone sloughed off, and the tentacle Ellen targeted buckled in a dozen places. But the core of it held together, and even though we'd hammered the boss's Health, there was still enough to heal anything less than a severed limb.

And Jeff had finally started to look tired. It wasn't much. His blocks were a little slow, his counterattacks biting a bit less.

We were running out of juice, and I didn't have the skills to push harder.

Ellen readied her last spell.

The tank Kade had called in was still in good shape. How good, she had no idea, but Kade himself had taken a beating when the boss grabbed him. And Ellen was on her last legs.

Stamina: 87/110, Mana: 32/200

She had just enough in her mana pool for one more spell—a thirty-mana one. Orb of Darkness. It wasn't going to be enough, though—not unless she got a window to hit the right target, and she had no way to make that window happen.

After that…she had a dagger and a lot of Stamina. But unlike the tank—she kept forgetting his name, Jake or Jason or something like that—she didn't have the gear or skills to fight in melee. Not against a boss. No, her best bet was to wait, and try to match the boss's rotation. The tentacle that Kade had destroyed dragged behind it. The wound hadn't healed yet, and even if it did, it'd remain a stump.

If they could open up another gap, she could probably hit the monster's eye with the Orb of Darkness, and that'd be enough to swing the battle in—

A tentacle slammed into Ellen, and she yelled as it wrapped around her arm and yanked her toward the boss's stony maw.

Carter stared at the cavern incredulously. "What the fuck do you mean, it's empty?"

They'd mopped up the rock snakes and basalt swordsmen just fine. It turned out he'd been right to stack his group with sustained damage-dealers and endurance monsters, just like Deborah had told him to. Even though none of them had his potential, Carter had been happy with their performance so far. They were all good people. Especially Lizzie. She didn't put up with any crap—not from him, and not from anyone else. All business, all the time.

His team should have been unbeatable in a race like this.

But the left-hand path was a bust.

Beyond the obsidian wall he'd cracked with a single shot was nothing but stone, air, and darkness. It didn't even smell right; Carter had been 'blessed' with a sensitive nose, and all bosses had the distinct smell of a core. That's what he'd followed—the smell of the E-Rank boss core that should have been his.

Why hadn't it been here?

If he'd gotten it, his next step would have been leading a six-man team into a D-Rank portal—or maybe Deborah would have gifted him the first core he needed. His skills were ready. He'd followed the build faithfully.

But he'd failed. He'd guessed wrong, or the portal had deceived him.

No. Not the portal. That other team. Somehow, they'd tricked him, and even now, they were fighting the boss. Probably killing the boss. But that mage—the D-Ranked sonic mage who'd probably caused that explosion earlier—wasn't a healer, and the tank and kid with no weapons would be beat to hell after a boss fight.

Carter smiled. Then he turned and started running down the tunnel. They'd fought for half an hour, but it shouldn't take more than ten minutes to get back to the portal entrance, then ten more to reach that team of nobodies. They'd have beaten—or, if Carter was lucky, died to—the boss by the time he and his team got there, but he was sure they'd listen to reason. After all, Carter had numbers on his side, and he'd control the exit.

Most people would see how the deck was stacked.

He hoped these guys would, too.

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