I stared up at the Thunder God as I slowly got my bearings in his portal world. This close, with the massive, lightning-and-cloud dragon staring at me, it felt a lot less wise to call him—

"Eugene, huh?" he rumbled. "I accept your offer of a name in the spirit it's given. My title's old and boring. Eugene is much better."

The eyeroll crossed my face before I could stop it.

"None of that, now. You have a problem, and you're looking for a solution, right? Well, kid, it's time you get an idea of what the Stormsteel Path really is." The dragon crashed down toward me, body shifting into the Stormsteel-clad fighter with a spear. Then he sat on the ground. "You haven't learned a single Law in the three and a half weeks since we last met in your D-Rank trial. Embarrassing."

I kept myself from lashing out at Eugene, but it was a lot harder now that he was human-sized. I had to remember that his power level dwarfed anything on Earth—and that he was a portal monster, with all of a portal monster's instincts. "That's only half true. I've got—"

"Yes, yes, you earned the cores for Wind, Lightning, and Sunlight. But you haven't used them yet. Why not?"

"Because the people in power won't let me keep them. They're too dangerous to our world. And because by the time I was ready to use them, they'd already been taken away."

The God of Thunder snorted. Clouds and sparks erupted from his nose, and his aura pushed down on me. I braced myself and pushed back as the snort turned into a short bark of laughter. "Kade Noelstra, you're on my Path. If you stick with it, your so-called Governing Council won't be able to stop you from doing whatever you want. Now, you took cores from Thunder-King Yalagn, Khalir the Windlord, and—interesting, I hadn't realized the Blood-Drained Light was still alive. I hope he doesn't mind that we backed out on what I promised him. He was only mildly associated with the Stormsteel Path, but he counts."

He held out a hand, and all three cores appeared, orbiting his wrist. "You can have these."

"Thank you," I said, staring at the cores I needed. They were so close. I wanted to reach out and claim them. But I doubted I'd get them for free. That'd be too easy, and even if I'd already earned them, the God of Thunder would probably make me work for them again. "Yalagan said—"

"I know what Yalagan said." Eugene snapped his fingers, and the cores disappeared into his armor. "You can have them after we're done fighting and talking."

I nodded. I wanted an answer to Yalagan, but if Eugene didn't want to tell me, I'd have to figure out the hobgoblin another way. "I figured as much. You have the last two cores I need for my five Laws, don't you?"

"Rain and the second Stormsteel Law, yes. Come take them from me, kid."

I pushed myself to my feet. Tallas's Dueling Sword appeared in my hand, and the Stormsteel armor formed over my chest and arm—a maelstrom confined by gunmetal gray bands. I dropped into a familiar two-handed stance and got ready to fight.

"Clumsy," Eugene said. He watched the dueling sword cross past his eye in slow motion. It hadn't been a clumsy attack. Against a D-Ranked opponent, it would have been lethal, a thrust to the eye socket that'd fry the brain. In the time it took even a portal monster to recover from such an injury, Kade Noelstra would have overwhelmed the creature's Health and killed it.

But Eugene wasn't a D-Ranked opponent. He was the God of Thunder. And even though the kid was good for his rank, he hadn't hit once in the thirty minutes they'd been sparring. So far, Eugene hadn't even made a serious counterattack, either. He'd feinted, and he'd made it clear when Kade was open, but that was it.

The God of Thunder didn't need to win. It was antithetical to Kade's needs—he had to defend himself if he wanted that Rain core—but Eugene hadn't cared. He'd wanted to get the kid frustrated. And he was. But despite the rage inside, and the mental fog that the God of Thunder could feel blocking out everything but his opponent and the two weapons, Kade hadn't lost control.

He was close, though. Very close.

It was time to start training in earnest.

Kade's blade cut toward his chest. A feint—but a good one. Eugene shifted his spear's shaft and caught it, deflecting it perfectly. "Obvious. Prepare yourself."

Then the spear punched into Kade's shoulder like lightning.

The blow knocked him to the side. He rolled with it—as Eugene expected. But he didn't expect the shimmering blade of wind in the kid's off-hand, and he definitely didn't expect him to throw it point-blank. It bounced off his Stormsteel armor harmlessly.

The God of Thunder snorted. "Good."

"Good? That's my first hit," Kade said between ragged-sounding breaths.

"It is. You're faster and stronger than you were when you fought Tallas. But you're not better than you were. You're not C-Rank yet."

"I'm clearing C-Rank portals and more than pulling my weight—"

"That's not what I said," Eugene interrupted. "You're not even close to C-Rank by the standards of the Stormsteel Path. You've figured out the Law of the Stormcore. You're fighting well, good control, solid patience. But I could have killed you a hundred times. You're not flowing smoothly from attack to defense."

"So teach me!" Kade shouted.

"So learn. Quit trying to kill me and learn from what you're seeing."

Learn from what I was seeing?

We'd been fighting for half an hour. And in that half-hour, I hadn't so much as landed a blow—not counting the Razor I'd gotten through less than a minute ago. I was seeing openings. But I couldn't exploit them. The God of Thunder was too fast.

I dropped into my defensive stance as Eugene's grip on his spear shifted. "Good," he said again.

I didn't respond. Instead, I focused on the speartip and its far end. Those were the threats. Not anything else.

The point slipped through the air toward my chest. I parried it, and instead of impaling me, it sliced across the Stormsteel breastplate's side. Then, almost before I could react, the God of Thunder spun the weapon's shaft. It bounced off my skull and drove me into the ground. "Still slow."

"You're cheating. I can't beat an SS-Plus-Ranked monster," I said.

"But you were willing to fight me when we first met. And you're not fighting an SS-Plus-Ranked monster. I'm keeping myself to B-Rank right now, and I'm holding back. You had a quarter-second where you could have landed a blow to my right arm just after your parry."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"I can't riposte that quickly."

"You can. You just aren't. Stop holding back. Again."

He attacked. I parried. But this time, when I blocked and his spear whipped across my armor, he froze. "Here. Look."

And I saw it.

A window. It was millisecond-tight. An E-Ranker wouldn't have been able to make the parry, and as a D-Ranker, I couldn't move fast enough for the riposte. I just couldn't. But Eugene was right. I could see it. "I'm not fast enough."

"No, you aren't. But the problem isn't your speed. The problem is with your parry—and with your guard. You're relying on Mistwalk Forms to do most of the work, and that's fine, but the way you're parrying isn't aggressive enough. It's a fencer's parry. You're a killer. The Stormsteel Path isn't a defensive one. It's about violence and energy." Eugene stared at me, a brow made of lightning raising slightly. Then he nodded. "Let's go through this one more time, but slower."

Wind rose around him, a tornado of force that pushed against me. No matter which way I moved, the wind was there, blocking my every effort. It felt like running in water. The spear moved toward my chest, and I blocked it again.

"Higher. With more force."

It came in for another stab. This time, I slapped it away.

"More!"

When the spear came in, I poured every bit of strength I had into the parry. Muscles tore, and Stamina rushed in to mitigate the pain. This time, the speartip whipped past my ear, shoved wide. And this time, I ducked and thrust at the same time. The dueling blade stopped an inch from the God of Thunder's chest. He smiled, a predator's smile. "You see it now. Good."

Then the spear shaft slammed into the side of my head.

We'd dueled for hours. Sweat dripped from every pore in my body. Wiping it out of my eyes was pointless; there was as much on my arms as my face. My muscles burned from putting my strength into parrying and counterattacking, and my eyes were almost buggy from focusing for so long without a respite.

And after my first Thunder Wave, the God of Thunder had forbidden me from switching forms or casting. All I had was Mistwalk Forms. Not even its abilities, either. The lightning dragon was trying to teach me something specific about it.

But I saw everything now. All of Eugene's tells. All his tendencies. The split-second openings, the obvious baits, and the attacks that could be countered. Every time his spear flashed toward me, I had a parry ready—and not the barely-enough, just-the-right-amount parries Dad had taught me. These were violent. Lightning arced between our weapons every time they clashed.

The dueling sword flashed across the suddenly-open gap between the God of Thunder's spear-butt and his side. It caught in his armor, sparking as the Stormsteel tried to shred the electrical blade.

And Eugene froze.

I waited. One beat. Two. Three.

Then, he spoke. "Perfect."

"That was perfect?" I asked.

"For a C-Ranker? Yes. Did you feel the wind that time?"

I paused. No. No, I hadn't. There'd been no resistance. No slowing—for either of us. "The second law of the Clouded Eye has something to do with flow. If the first is that Protection begets deception, the second must involve the relationship between deception and aggression. The Stormsteel Path is a violent one, and you wouldn't have incorporated the rain if it didn't have potential for violence."

"Perfect, kid. You've got it figured out." The God of Thunder's spear disappeared, and my three cores reappeared around his hand—along with an orb of water that seemed to slosh against invisible sides. "Rain and steel, rain and steel. One down, one to go."

"Are we fighting for the other one?" I asked, bracing myself for more.

The God of Thunder shook his head. I relaxed. There was a place for the aggressive, violent style of combat Eugene was teaching me, but he was right. For a D-Ranker—or even a C—I was as close to perfect as I could get. And my muscles burned, even with all the Stamina I'd been pouring into them. I'd been fighting like this was a playground brawl, not a duel.

And as effective as it was, it was directly at odds with what Dad had taught me. Control. Precision. Efficiency. None of those mattered as much as pure, explosive power. Not to the God of Thunder, and not to the Stormsteel Path. That was at odds with the First Law of the Sirocco and the First Law of the Godray—the Laws about patience and control. I didn't understand how what Eugene was trying to teach me could contradict what I already knew.

"No, we're going to talk instead."

Eugene sat back down. He snapped his fingers, and the four cores I'd earned so far started orbiting high above him. I joined him on the ground, letting the Stormsteel armor and dueling sword disappear for the first time in…a long time.

My system's status opened again, and the God of Thunder perused it. The burning, internal pain coursed through me, and I gritted my teeth and stared at him as he pored over it. Then he nodded. "We are going to talk about Paragons and cultists, and how power works in my world. Not this trap I'm stuck in. The Stormsteel Path."

"Understood," I choked out through clenched teeth.

Eugene stared for a moment, then let my core go. I sucked in a breath of relief. "Sorry. Sometimes I forget my own strength. I told you before that I'm the master of the Stormsteel Path, kid. And that I'm a god. Worshippers, cults, the works. And, like I said before, the realm I've created, the Path I've mastered, and power. The Stormsteel Path has power in spades.

"But I'm not the only one on the Stormsteel Path. You killed Khalir and Yalagan. They were both Paragons connected to my Path."

"What is a Paragon?" I asked. "I know what the Governing Council thinks they are—massively powerful monsters that exemplify a specific Law, but—"

Eugene laughed. "Every word you just said is true. That's amazing."

"Then…what is there to talk about here?"

"Every word you just said is meaningless, too. Paragons like myself are massively powerful monsters—but so were Khalir and Yalagan. And the Blood-Drained Light, too, if only slightly. The ones you encountered at C-Rank were the weakest things that could be considered Paragons of a Law. Hardly worthy at all if you and your friends could kill them. No great loss to my cult."

I waited quietly. The same trick that worked on Jessie sometimes, and that I'd learned from Dad, worked on Eugene, too. "Right. What's the point here? Hmmm. How to phrase this? Ah, yes. Every Paragon you killed was on a Path. And every one of those Paths intersected with the Stormsteel Path at C-Rank. They're all striving for strength and power, just like you.

"So, when you choose to take the next step on the Stormsteel Path and learn your second consolidated Law, you'll be making yourself a target. Stormsteel Laws are part of fewer Paths than the raw elemental ones you've been learning, but the monsters who follow them are stronger and more…motivated…than anything you've seen."

I stayed quiet.

"Are you frightened, Kade Noelstra?" Eugene asked, and behind the man's grin, the dragon's maw yawned ominously.

"No."

"Good kid. Fear has a place on the Stormsteel Path, but not. Among. My. Pupils." The God of Thunder's eyes flashed as he said that, and I stared him down. The fifth core—a match of the Stormsteel Core inside of my—appeared, hovering with the others.

"What do they all want?" I asked.

"The Paragons? The same thing you want, even if you don't know it yet. To overthrow me and ascend past my limits."

"Then we'll be enemies?"

"Eventually." Eugene shrugged dismissively. "I'll tell you more about that after you're C-Rank. You'll be ready to hear it then.

"Now, you've got two problems with your build. Neither will stop you from hitting C-Rank right now. First, your unmerged skills aren't caught up. I blame myself; Energy Font didn't work because I forbade you from casting spells. Same thing with Brendan's Hymnal. And you're still slightly behind on Sunbeam Bond, but I have a solution for that. Summon your familiar."

I did. Cheddar appeared in the air beside me, hissing and glaring at the God of Thunder, who laughed. "That thing has spirit. I'm looking forward to fighting it until it hits D-10."

"And the second issue?"

"You didn't even try to merge Energy Font and Brendan's Hymnal."

"There was no point. It's not a mergeable pair."

"And how do you know? Did you try it? You were a risk-taker. That's what got you on my Path. But at the end of your skill selection, you stopped taking them. I find that boring. After you're done learning these Laws and consolidating them, you are going to merge those skills as soon as you find the right time to do it. You'll need an open slot for what's coming."

For what was coming? I didn't bother asking, even though Eugene clearly wanted me to. If he'd wanted to share, he would have—and I had other goals. "So, I'm ready?" I asked.

The five cores—Wind, Rain, Lightning, Sun, and Stormsteel—fell from the sky and hovered, stacked on top of each other with an inch or so of air in between each of them, above my hand.

"Yes."

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