The dust cloud grew quickly. One minute, we could only see it through the pair of binoculars when Ellen passed them around. The next, it was close enough to see with my naked eye. And just a couple of minutes after that, the half-dozen boxy, black vehicles bristling with weapons, spikes, and thin, dust-brown figures.

I readied the dueling blade and waited as they crossed the last mile to us. Around me, the team had fallen into a formation, with Jeff and Raul blocking the direct path to our backliners. Ellen had taken the binoculars back. "Something's wrong here," she said. Then she went quiet. Her brow furrowed as she stared at the oncoming, people-clad vehicles.

"They're definitely aiming for the convoy, though, right?" Jeff growled.

"Yes. But they don't have—"

The first car dipped into an arroyo, then rocketed up its near bank, launching ten feet into the air and slamming into the dirt a hundred feet in front of me. Its oversized shocks creaked ominously, and a few clinging passengers hit the dusty ground around it as its engine revved silently.

None of them had ranks.

The armored car surged forward as two more catapulted out of the ravine behind it. Behind them, a massive, round-ish shape moved slowly forward in the dust cloud they'd kicked up, and half-naked, sun-baked men and women poured off the cars. I stared at them. Every one of them was rankless. Every one of them had a weapon in their hand.

"City-dwellers!" one of the nomads screamed.

I lit up Tallas's Dueling Blade. Electricity poured across the portal metal blade as I dropped into a Mistwalk stance, ready to defend myself. Behind me, Ellen muttered frantically into the radio, and the radio shot static-filled instructions back to her.

There were probably twenty of them. Howling, screaming, and ready to attack. We could beat them for sure. Even with the six cars and the…school bus? Even with the school bus in the slowly collapsing dust cloud, we could beat them, and the B-Rankers coming up behind us would only seal the deal.

I waited. Ellen had the most effective toolkit with them bunched up. I'd let her kick off the fighting.

Instead, she cleared her throat. "The Governing Council of Phoenix…the Governing Council of Phoenix requests a parley with the Monster Eaters' leaders."

"Monster Eaters?" Jeff whispered loudly into the suddenly still air.

Ellen shrugged. "Derrick said it'd work. "He also said B-Omega's getting called off to deal with a portal. We're on our own, but he thinks this'll work."

The Monster Eaters had gone quiet. The screaming and howling had cut off completely. Then one man in a set of mismatched E-Rank armor pushed through the crowd. He didn't have a rank, either, but as I looked at him, I realized that his gear wasn't the only portal metal equipment. Almost every person staring at us from across the desert had at least something that would hurt monsters.

They also had a dozen guns between them.

Phoenix hadn't outlawed guns. They were all over the city. But they were almost useless against monsters—the impact would knock them around, but even an E-Rank goblin's skin wouldn't give to a shot. And an E-Rank archer could get more power out of a quick shot than most guns could muster at any range that mattered.

The city government's police force still carried, but even though there were an estimated million firearms in the city, they weren't common on the streets anymore.

They might not be able to hurt a monster, but they'd punch holes in us just fine.

"Ellen, you're sure about this?" I asked.

"My name is Yarrow," the man in the armor said. "Who's the GC's representative?"

"That would be me," Angelo Lawrence said from behind us. He walked right up to the armored man and stuck out a hand, battle robes trailing slightly through the cracked ground. "It is good to meet you, Yarrow. We are aware that this shipment is off-schedule, and we were hoping to run into you, but we thought it would be closer to the New Mexico border."

"No, we've moved. The shit coming out of White Sands is pushing us west. It shifted after the portal surge," Yarrow said. Then he nodded. "You're going to take us to your convoy, right?"

"That is correct," Angelo said. He let go of the Monster Eater's hand, winced slightly, and nodded. "I will lead. You follow. And, Kade? You and your team continue covering the northeast front."

I watched the conversation, eyes wide. Angelo was playing a game. Or maybe not a game. But something was up, because his massive, S-Rank aura was completely, totally suppressed.

"What is a Monster Eater?" Yasmin hissed the second the Light of Dawn and his guests left and the dust cloud settled.

I wanted to know, too. I'd never learned anything about people outside of Phoenix and the satellite towns to the west—and Tucson, but with the Iron Falcons in charge there, no one knew exactly what was going on inside of its borders. The Monster Eaters felt like a fever dream. I'd expected portal monster attacks, not howling bands of marauding—

"Nomads," Jeff said. "They've got to be. There's nowhere safe for them to stop, and they don't have the firepower to carve anything permanent out of the deserted wastes, so keeping on the move is their best bet."

"But do they really eat them?" Yasmin asked.

Sophia stared at the receding dust cloud, then at the one that represented our convoy. Then she nodded slowly. "Why not? I mean, a goblin's probably not good eating, but some of the other monsters might be fine."

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"Gross," Ellen said. "I'm not eating monsters. No way."

"Why not?" I teased. "Too wriggly?"

"Yes."

We got the signal to move and started our next leapfrog. Fifteen minutes in, we hit a patch of wet, swampy dirt, the yellow-brown sand churned into a pool of mud by the Monster Eaters' wheels. I stepped into it and sank to my ankles. "We go around."

"Agreed," Jeff said.

As we worked our way around the mud puddle, it started to boil and fizz. I resummoned my dueling blade. A second later, three thrashing tentacles erupted from the pool. I parried one, ducked the second, and watched as the mauled, shredded third one missed me by feet.

Swamp Squid: C-Rank

The monster shook itself through the mud as long, fragile-looking flippers pushed it forward. It looked nothing like a squid, but its tentacles thrashed the ground and wrapped around the closest cactus, dragging the spiked plant into the mud pool.

"Call it in?" Yasmin asked.

Ellen cast Shadow Boxing, and the monster screamed. Then a second pool appeared to our left, and a third filled the space behind us. "Yeah. Calling it in," Ellen said.

I smiled. We'd walked into the trap perfectly. And, rather than being cautious, we now had three C-Rank monsters all to ourselves. B-Epsilon couldn't possibly get here in time, no matter how fast Ellen was on the radio.

It was time to test out my new Charge skills.

I blocked another thrashing tentacle, then waited two heartbeats. Two more reached in my direction. I waited. The first one had almost touched my skin when both of the orbiting Rainfall Charges vanished. So did I. My body became a misty outline, and first one, then the other tendril reached through me and out my other side. The Swamp Squid pulled its arms back, and Mistform ended.

The monster looked almost confused about the lack of blood covering its tentacles.

I wasn't confused at all, though. I shifted my grip up to make room for my second hand and launched a barrage of strikes. A cut to the already-ruined arm. Another to the tip of the first one. Two stabs to the monster's body. It dodged or deflected a shocking number; by the time I'd gotten my second Lightning Charge, its arms were covered in skin-deep electrical burns. None of them were deep enough to hurt it, unlike the two blows I'd sneaked in.

Both Lightning Charges disappeared. Thunderblade activated; the portal-metal core of the dueling sword seemed to vanish as the weapon's electricity redoubled. When I swung it, the air seemed to collapse into a void behind it—a void that propelled the blade forward almost fast enough to rip it from my grip.

A cut appeared on the Swamp Squid's arm. It was thin. Almost delicate.

Then the pressure void behind the sword's stroke hit the monster, and the cut disappeared in an explosion of gore as the tentacle imploded from the impact, then exploded from hitting itself. Two more slices ripped across the monster, with similar results.

Total time elapsed: Less time than it had taken me to blink.

Thunderblade was fast. I had a feeling it wouldn't do as well against armor or tough enemies, but the Swamp Squid had been little more than flesh and skin, without even bones to shatter with my blows.

I spent the next two seconds landing blow after blow on the monster until it finally died.

Then I whirled, looking for another enemy.

Both of the remaining C-Rank monsters were dying. Neither was dead, but by the time I got there, cast two spells, and then cast a third for Windfall, it'd just be a waste. So instead, I unsummoned the dueling blade and watched as Ellen cast a pair of Orb of Darknesses simultaneously. "Quit playing with it and just kill it," I said.

"Oh, shut up."

I'd wanted to see what Windfall could do, and to summon the new and improved Cheddar. He needed his exercise. Technically, he didn't. Time didn't exist inside of the dimensional space I stored him in. But it made Jessie feel better to know he was getting some time outside.

And the Swamp Squids had been the first reasonable monsters we'd come across where it wouldn't be suspicious that we hadn't called in a B-Rank team to obliterate them.

Ah well. There would almost certainly be more on the way. We had three days and a few hours to learn our new C-Rank limits—and I couldn't push too quickly, anyway. Just that fight had sent my core into a slight wobble. I took a minute as we regrouped to still it.

"Control, this is Ellen Traynor. Cancel that B-Rank team," Ellen said. "We took care of the problem. If we see the portal they came out of, we'll let you know."

"Copy that," Derrick said.

When our patrol ended and we returned to the convoy, something was very different.

At least fifteen of the overbuilt, overarmored black dune buggies were parked outside the circled wall of flatbed semi trucks. A hundred people—a handful of children, but mostly adults—weaved in between the trucks. And a single truck and trailer from our convoy sat parked next to the school bus.

But more impressive was the oversized load trailer and double tractor idling in the distance. The Monster Eaters had built a mobile fortress on top of it. Its walls dwarfed everything Phoenix had sent.

I hadn't even made it inside before Sarah Cullman—the Spark of Life—waved us over to where she'd set up a tiny medical tent. "In here," she said quietly.

We followed her in.

She stared at us for a second. Then she whispered, "Did you talk to any of the Monster Eaters?"

"No?" Sophia asked hesitantly.

"Just their leader, and only what Derrick told us to say," Ellen added.

"Good. There are some ground rules you need to understand, and Angelo's asking me to make sure you understand them. I'm also supposed to apologize. You were supposed to get briefed on them tonight. They've never crossed west of Globe before."

"What are the rules?" Raul asked.

"Okay. They don't have delvers. No system-awakened people at all. I don't know why. I haven't asked. That's why Angelo's acting like he's just a guy. You need to do the same thing. Yarrow and his people know we're all delvers. They're not stupid. But we keep up the fiction around them. It's a matter of politeness."

"Got it," Ellen said. "I can do politeness."

"Second, they're in charge here. We're visiting, and while we've got phenomenal cosmic power, our goal is not to use it. If we have to fight on top of the convoy, Angelo's useless, and Terrel's only slightly better than a B-Ranker. They both need space to work, and if they go all-out, they'll wreck the convoy. The Monster Eaters know how to move in the desert."

"Anything else?" Jeff asked.

"Yes. Tonight, they're cooking. And you're going to eat what they cook."

"Monsters?" Yasmin asked. Her nose wrinkled.

"Yep. Monsters." Sarah didn't look any happier, but she nodded. "Get cleaned up. You're all filthy."

I looked down at myself. I was covered in dust-caked gore from the windstorm that had hit for a half-hour just before the day ended. Some of the blood was red from my own body, but most of it was green, blue, or even a black so dark my skin had burned beneath it when the sun hit it.

We'd been fighting on and off all day, and when we hadn't been fighting, we'd been moving in the desert.

A half-hour later, we were mostly clean, and the air was thick with the smell of something. It didn't smell like meat, though. That was weird; I'd expected the monster eaters to cook and eat nothing but monster meat.

This smelled more like popcorn.

I wandered toward the center of the trailer-lined circle, but before I got there, a massive arm grabbed my shoulder. A second reached out and wrapped around Ellen's, and Yarrow pulled us both in.

My first thought was to resist. I was massively stronger than the big man, even though I was smaller, and I could have beaten him instantly without using a skill. But that lasted only a second before I remembered the first rule and let him yank me in for a bear hug. I found myself smashed against Ellen, who squirmed and wriggled until she got free. I wasn't so lucky.

When he finally let me go, Yarrow clapped me across the shoulder. "Tonight, you dine with us."

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