I was correct.

Things did not get any easier as we approached the besieged city's walls.

If it weren't for Cheddar and Pepperoni, flying high above us, they would have gotten a lot harder. The trenches weren't a trap. But they were a maze of bridges, crisscrossing ditches, and fortified bunkers that all looked like something out of the twentieth and early twenty-first-century wars, not like a medieval battlefield.

But the pair of winged serpents circled overhead, sending emotions and images down through Ellen's bond, and mine.

"Jeff, go left. There's a pack of something to the right."

"We want to get out of the trench and travel fifty yards toward the city."

"Right. Definitely right."

We made good progress, and Alex's arm had almost scabbed over by the time we ran into our next problem—a wide spot in the trenches that we couldn't bypass. It housed a trio of still-functioning siege engines, all catapults made from hewn tree trunks, rusted pins and nails, and leather bindings. As we watched, one fired, sending a flaming rock hundreds of feet into the air. It came down on the city with a thud I could feel in my feet. Then the next one fired.

A dozen orcs worked the weapon—all E-Rank, thankfully. The bigger problem was the Blood Orc Siegemaster. She—and judging from her swollen, battle-scarred breasts, the orc was female—wore scraps of plate armor that covered her shoulders, neck, and arms. A heavy helmet protected her head, and a long-bladed spear with a torn battle flag hung from one hand. She waved the flag in the air, and the second catapult fired.

The ground shook again a few seconds later, and four of the smaller orcs broke away from the second catapult, carrying a metal device between them. They set it down and pushed a boulder from a gigantic pile of rocks strewn against the side of the trench, then began dragging it toward the catapult.

"How are we handling this?" Jeff asked.

"Ellen and I will deal with the smaller ones. They should go down in two moves. Howling Gale first, then Shadow Box," I said. "You four focus on taking out the Siegemaster. We'll join you when we're done."

We ran through the rest of the plan, and I took a deep breath. The beginning would be all on me.

Truthfully, the siegemaster posed the real threat; none of the E-Ranked Blood Orcs even had weapons. But we needed them all dead. At C-Rank, a survivor could decide that the best way to kill us—which the portal wanted them to do—would be to get help. So, as much as my battle trance begged me to square up against the armored spearwoman, that wasn't my role.

I just had to avoid one hit. Then I'd be golden.

I stepped out from behind the trench wall and waved. "Hello there!"

The orc screamed back at the top of her lungs, spear aimed at my chest. I smacked her in the face with an Ariette's Zephyr. It didn't accomplish much—a spurt of blood from her temporarily broken nose—but it definitely got her attention. She rushed me, and I shifted into Mistwalk Form's stance, then duck-parried the spear. It whipped at my face so fast I couldn't dodge again, and had to use Cloudwalk to take the hit. Instead of cracking ribs, it merely bruised them, and the blade left a painful cut that would have been devastating.

Then Jeff's taunt skill went off, and he slammed his short sword into the monster's gut as I stepped away—right into the middle of the swarm of E-Ranked orcs.

My blade flashed out. It cut across one orc's throat, and he screamed. So did the others as I used Howling Gale. Wind blades slashed into every orc, including the Siegemaster. Then Ellen's Shadow Box crashed down on them all. She lifted it almost instantly, but that was enough; within seconds, dead orcs littered the battleground.

Except…something was wrong.

A feeling of unease filled me. It took a moment to recognize that it was coming from Cheddar. "Something's coming," I said. "Something bad."

"Can you—" Jeff's shield rang like a gong. The Siegemaster was hitting it hard enough to leave dents behind. "—head it off?"

Stamina: 193/250, Mana: 174/350

"On it. I'll buy you time. Take care of this fast!" I sprinted across the now-still siege pit. But before I got halfway, something gripped my ankle. Something bony, but strong as a shackle. I tried to pull away, but failed as the dead orc's skeleton sloughed off its flesh and blood covered the pit's floor.

"Necromancer!" Ellen yelled.

I slashed at the skeleton's wrist with a two-handed hacking motion, like I was beheading a chicken. At this range, there wasn't room for grace and finesse, only violence. One slice. Two. Three. The wrist gave, and the skeletal hand's grip loosened.

I whirled. Three more skeletons, all closing ranks in front of me. And behind them…

Blood Orc Revitalist: C-Rank

"Jeff, problem!" I yelled.

Jeff grunted. "I know. Ellen, help him!"

"No! I can take it! Just hurry up!"

The Revitalist was three skeletons away, but as he resurrected a fourth, that might as well have been miles. He wore robes and hunched over a walking staff with a spiked tip, and a gray-black beard poured from his hood like water.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The last time I'd been in this situation, it had been the C-Ranked Hobgoblin Summoner in the trap dungeon, and I'd been trying to defend the party. This time, the party was fine—I was the one in danger. But this time, I had the skills to handle myself.

I stayed in the high-damage Thunderbolt Forms, attacking the closest skeleton even as the other three closed the gap. The single Lightning Charge rotated around my sword. The blade cut through bone, and the skeleton collapsed. Then it started to rise again. By the time I'd downed the next one, the first was almost upright, glowing white eyes locked on me. I backstepped. Slashed. Cut down another as the second rose.

Something had to change. I couldn't do this forever, and this was worse than the shadow goblins. The Blood Orc Revitalist was up to something; it had started to cast a spell.

If I couldn't kill the skeletons fast enough with my sword, I'd just have to rely on my Mana.

I cast Thunder Wave. Two heartbeats passed, and part of a third, as electricity surged. The lightning hit all four skeletons, plus two more that were heading toward the rest of the party. They caught fire, their very bones burning as electricity ripped through their marrow. And in just a single second, the way forward was clear.

The Revitalist reacted quickly. His spell faltered. His staff flashed up to protect his face even as I threw myself into a lunge. Then he whipped it around, gripping it by the head like a gnarled, wooden sword. We traded blows, him coming away with a cut across his chest and me limping after him with a bruised hip.

I hadn't expected it to be easy, but I also hadn't expected to be outmatched in melee by a necromancer.

One Ariette's Zephyr. A stance-shift. I fired the spell into the orc's face, then echoed it with Lightning Strikes Twice. As the attack hit, his staff-sword slammed down on my shoulder. I tried to roll with the impact. Instead, it threw me across the battlefield and into the far side of the trench. When I got my bearings, I shifted to a defensive stance. The next blow came in, and I parried, then countered with a thrust to the orc's stomach.

The next time the orc hit me, I couldn't react in time, and it knocked me to the ground. The sword-staff came up, the Revitalist ready to crush my skull. A flying noodle of fury and lightning slammed into him, and his weapon buried itself in the ground; Cheddar flapped his wings in the orc's face, and light flashed, then went dark.

I used the second's distraction to get up. The Revitalist tried to rip Cheddar apart with his clawed hand and the sword-staff.

Instead, I unsummoned him, then resummoned him. He appeared around the Stormsteel sword, unspiraled from it, and launched himself back into the air with a hiss.

And the fight continued.

A skeleton rushed from behind me, and I used Gustrunner to sprint behind the Revitalist. As I did, I felt a familiar tugging in my mind, like I was on the cusp of learning something, and I could just…let it happen, or I could fight to learn it later.

I got my bearings. Five skeletons were up and coming toward me, and one orc necromancer was trying to crush me with a sword-staff. The team had just finished killing the Siegemaster, though. I didn't have to risk learning a new Law mid-combat. Not here. I could wait and save it for later.

The sword-staff slammed down. I parried it, side-stepped quickly, and shifted to a two-handed grip. Then I quickly sliced across the monster, used Howling Gale to annihilate the skeletons a second—or third, depending on your perspective—time, and backed off.

I'd done my job, and as the team finished crushing the only skeleton that had survived me and engaged the C-Ranked necromancer, I was happy to start nursing my bruised ribs and hip back to health and sit the rest of the fight out.

The trenches stretched on and on—and they were packed with orcs. Most of them were packs of D-Ranked Novices, or one or two C-Ranked Hellions or Siegemasters. It felt like we'd fought under the relentless sun all day when we finally found ourselves killing another Hellion below the walls.

My sword scorched through the naked orc's back and out of his chest, leaving a burned hole that started to heal the moment I withdrew it.

"Duck!" Kurt yelled.

I ducked. A crossbow bolt seemed to grow from the orc's back a moment later. Then a ball of shadow slammed into it, and it stumbled. Jeff shield-rushed it, crushing it against the trench wall, and the rest of us sliced into it while he held it there, arm pinned. It died roaring.

"Good job, team. How are we for resources?" Jeff asked.

"I'm out," Ellen said. "No Mana, thirty percent Stamina."

Yasmin nodded. "I've been pretty much out for the last half-hour. There's no rebuff here."

I checked my own resources, then reported in. "Stamina's at 63, Mana's at 47. I can do one more fight. An easy one. That's it. And I need to push Mistwalk Forms to D-Rank."

"I could also use a stop," Jeff admitted sheepishly, "But I didn't want to make it all about me. I'm ready to push to C-Rank."

"Like, not a skill, but you?" Ellen asked. When Jeff nodded, she smiled. "That's great! Let's set up somewhere defensible and get it done!"

The trouble was, there wasn't anywhere defensible. Everything outside the city's walls was a maze of trenches, catapults, and fires. We couldn't tell where a group of orcs might be; even Cheddar and Pepperoni had been rendered ineffective by the city's smoke.

There was only one option, and it was inside the city itself.

"I'll take point," I said. "If I see anything, I'll let you guys know. We're looking for a house, preferably one that's not on fire, and that's only got one entrance. Somewhere defensible."

A single orc—one of the D-Ranked ones—stood just past the gate. Our team hit him so hard he never even turned around before he died: Shadow Box (pulled from Pepperoni's reserve), a crossbow bolt the size of a small tree, a trio of Ariette's Zephyrs, and both Jeff and Alex's blades made short work of the monster.

And then…

There was nothing.

No orcs. No defenders. Just the blowing wind, a few burning half-timber buildings, and empty streets.

In a way, that was somehow worse than the chaos outside the city's walls. The orcs had made sense. They were portal monsters—and yes, they'd had significant power compared to anything we'd fought before, but they were still…just monsters. This city, though…it felt like it had been alive once. Either that, or the portal world had created market stalls with weird fruits, cart tracks worn in the cobble streets, and laundry hanging from lines across the roadways.

It all felt lived in, but empty at the same time. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but Ellen could. She leaned in. "It's like it's a copy of something, not just a place the portal created."

"Yeah." We'd have to look into that later, but it tracked with what we knew about portal worlds and their archetypes. They almost felt like jigsaw puzzle parts, sections of another world cut and placed here, or sectioned off from their surroundings.

It took a while to find a building that would work and that wasn't on fire. Most of the lower city either had burned or was burning, and what hadn't been burnt had been broken, shattered, and looted. But eventually, I found the perfect place—a single entrance, an upstairs with a balcony to escape from if we needed it, and solid stone walls on the first floor—and we settled in for an hour's rest. That was all anyone was willing to take; the portal could break any time, and we had to balance our strength with the consequences of a C-Rank portal breaking in the middle of Peoria.

"Who wants to go first?" Jeff asked. "You or me, Kade?"

"Uh, I actually also need to rank up a skill," Yasmin said.

"Anyone else?"

"Me," Ellen said. "I pushed my first merge to the cusp of D back there. Pretty exciting!"

"Okay," Jeff said, "we'll go two at a time. Ellen, Kade, you're up first. Get it done quickly so you can keep watch. I have no idea what the C-Rank breakthrough's going to be like."

I snorted. "Don't your Law lessons happen instantly?"

"Yes, but I only got one. The Law of Ironheart, for my Unique skill. Everything else ranked up naturally. Get to work, Kade."

I sat on the building's cold stone floor and let the Law take over. It was time to push Thunderbolt Forms to D-Rank.

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.