‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Glyph spoke into chat, ‘but I might be able to assist if you would still like to use [Resonant Bolt]. It would take no real effort for me to calculate how many targets you should aim to hit before the final target with the Skill for optimal yield.’

  While we were still only begrudgingly taking him along, Glyph had actually proven quite useful in the past few days, mostly in calculating the optimal path of travel, but also in figuring out how we might maximize our leveling progress. As the Party interface was well documented in the Labyrinth of Lore, he was able to let us know more about how it worked. Though the System eventually caught wise and threatened to boot him from Genovia if he didn’t wait for us to ask specific questions before telling us things about the interface.

  When it came to the situation at hand, the most relevant bit he revealed to us is that XP is split perfectly evenly to all members of a party, regardless of how much work is done by each individual member. I remember throwing my hands up in disgust at the removal of the interface at that, complaining about how supportive party members were rarely the same level as their more offensive companions because, without the Party interface only damage percentages and last hits counted for anything when XP was concerned. That was the wisdom gleaned from tens of thousands of years of testing since the Party interface was sealed.

  Mindy and Glyph exchanged a look before she sighed. ‘If you can follow Glyph’s advice, I have no more rejections.’ She and the young [Voxel] had really hit it off the past few days, spending hours each night talking about different kinds of barriers and other protective objects at length.

  With that settled, we flew on for another thirty minutes until the [Rushrats] slowed to a stop around an oddly pointy hill. It was still dirt instead of stone, but it definitely had something off about it.

  Ylsa let us in on what we were looking at. ‘That’s what my clan calls a Devil’s Thumb. Seeing it here reminds me of the one back home, the one that coughed up that thirty foot tall [Earth Colossus]. Took half the clan to put it back down with Grandma gone. This one... this one’s got a feel to it. Like something’s inside, something big, something angry.’

  No sooner did she finish her sentence than the strangely pointy hill exploded, sending gobbets of dirt flying high and far enough to slam into the [Cloud Carpet]’s underside, but not hard enough to do any lasting damage to it. Unsurprisingly, the [Rushrats] appeared to have dealt with the explosion even better than we had by all digging down the moment something felt off, meaning only half a dozen of them died, according to our tracker, as the monster within was revealed.

  [Rushrat Broodmaster - Rank B Calamity

  Level: 75

  Vulnerabilities: Water

  Immunities: Poison]

  [A towering monstrosity, the Rushrat Broodmaster stands a full forty feet tall, its chitinous exoskeleton a grotesque patchwork of scars and deformities. Its eyes, once small and beady, have grown into enormous, multifaceted orbs that gleam with an unnatural intelligence. Jagged fangs, longer than a man’s arm, drip with a viscous, acidic venom.

  This monstrous creature is the ultimate expression of Rushrat evolution, a titan born from the darkest depths of the hills they call home. Once a mere Broodmother, it consumed its entire brood in a desperate bid for power, absorbing their essence and mutating into this horrific form. Now, it commands not just a horde, but a veritable army of Rushrats, their minds bound to its own, a terrifying display of predatory dominance.]

  “Oh, shit.” I muttered under my breath as I pushed the [Essence Reading] window out to the Party before messaging them once more. ‘Looks like they weren’t going to kill something, they were going to join this thing’s army.’

  Glyph floated from my shoulder in front of my face to look me in the eye. ‘I recommend you commence with [Resonant Bolt] immediately.’ He looked over my shoulder at Mindy. ‘Please wet the creature thoroughly however you can, though I’d suggest a non-damaging Skill to avoid angering the creature before Artie can slay it and the horde in one fell sweep. A creature this powerful let loose in this area would be able to gain enough momentum, both physically and with adding more hordes of [Rushrats] to its army, that it would be able to destroy many of the cities I’ve been told exist on Genovia, let alone the backwater burgs here on this continent…Sunhome and Ironhold excluded of course.’

  He added the last bit when I glared at him, but that didn’t make him wrong. I looked around at everyone to make sure we were all in agreement. Seeing everyone nodding to me, I looked back at Glyph. ‘How many should I aim for to make sure the [Rushrat Broodmaster] dies, but we don’t accidentally kill anyone else?’

  Runes and numbers flickered across his vision, during which time the [Rushrat Broodmaster] began to scream as it tore into the food its new servants brought it like it hadn’t eaten in years. The noise was deafening, even from our position more than a thousand feet away, and Volta quickly threw up a barrier of wind around us that cut off exterior sound in an impressive application of [Wind Control] as we waited for Glyph to finish calculating.

  Nearly a minute later, Glyph exhaled hard, obviously tired from whatever ability he’d used. ‘The answer is thirty-seven plus the [Rushrat Broodmother] next to the [Rushrat Broodmaster] while holding your staff.’ He sagged against my shoulder, whatever he usually used to hold himself up spent in his previous effort. ‘Four point nine million simulations later and that’s the only way you both kill the [Broodmaster] and don’t kill anyone innocent.’

  “Five million simulations! What Skill are you using?!” I blurted out before collecting myself enough to message. ‘Why not target the [Broodmaster] directly? That seems like the obvious choice.’

  Mindy answered for him as Glyph greedily sucked down an Uncommon [Mana Potion] like it contained the [Elixir of Life]. ‘If I’m correct, that was his [Grand Plan] Unique Skill. It costs more Mana for each variable entered, but can be used to plan out any number of events in real time for you while time nearly stops for everyone around you. It’s a bit like your [Flash Focus], just on a far larger scale and with a significantly larger cooldown. If anyone but a [Voxel] uses [Grand Plan], the cooldown is their level in days, but for [Voxels] that number is cut down to that many hours instead.’

  I patted the young [Voxel] on the head gently, which he usually would have avoided. ‘Good work then, but I’m still not sure why I shouldn’t target the [Broodmaster directly. Can you please explain that?’

  ‘That’s simple,’ he floated a bit wobbly into the air before me once more, ‘if you do that, we all die. I ran nearly two million simulations before realizing it was some sort of Monster Skill that reversed a Skill targeting it directly. I’m ninety-eight point seven six percent sure it’s [Bestial Reflection], but I can’t be certain. Regardless, if the main target is next to the [Broodmaster] it can’t use its Skill to kill all of us.’

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  He slowly spun around and observed the scene below us before spinning back far faster. ‘You need to do this now, or my simulation will no longer be valid as the creature appears to be eating its new servants and has already leveled up twice doing so.’ He floated next to my head and laid his frigid hand on my neck. ‘I’ll send you the image of what you need to do and you provide enough power to pull it off, between one hundred and fifty and one hundred and seventy-eight Mana. Deal?’

  ‘Yup.’

  I took Jaegan’s staff and leveled it at the horde below and pushed one hundred and seventy points of Mana into it, a little more than double what I used last time.

  “[Resonant Bolt].” I spoke slowly and my eyes widened as an eighteen inch wide beam of lightning sprang forth from the field of energy on the tip of the staff directly toward the gathered horde below. What I’d thought would be a simple process of ‘sit and watch the pretty explosion’ was immediately proven wrong as the spell ripped through half a dozen [Rushrats] before I was able to snag control of it.

  No, I have to get it closer to the center or it’s not going to kill the [Broodmaster]!

  Panicked, I activated [Flash Focus] and the world slowed down enough that it might as well have been stopped, minus my [Resonant Bolt] that was just about to hit another [Rushrat] in the outer layer. [Elemental Mastery] came to the rescue as I seized manual control of the runaway Skill with mental control akin to a Sunhome eel wrangler I saw a few times as a child.

  The power of the [Resonant Bolt] strained against me and I was astounded at how different it felt than the first time I’d used it. That time it had basically done exactly what I wanted, hit a few targets to gain power and then land on the boss in the middle to wreck them. Now? I was made aware how miraculous it was that I hadn’t accidentally destroyed myself and my allies that day in the Tower as I foolishly unleashed this horrifying power.

  While the power was unruly, it wasn’t intelligent. However, it was hellbent on destroying the horde it was among per my intent while using the Skill. All I had to do was hang on and push it past the vast majority of the horde toward thirty-one more [Rushrats] in a vortex pattern around the absolute beast in the center. Each time the energy shot through another [Rushrat] it gained even more speed and around the twenty-third I felt my control slipping.

  I’m not going to be able to stop it. I should just push it into the [Broodmother] near the center, hopefully it’ll be enough energy that we’ll be able to kill the [Broodmaster]...

  Before I could do that, I felt a cool sensation in the back of my head as I heard not one, but two voices enter my mind.

  ‘Looks like you could use some help, m’boy.’ Jaegan’s voice was like a soothing balm, as just hearing him helped me refocus. ‘Let me take the next few, while you talk to Glyph. I think I’ve got the pattern down.’

  ‘Thank you, Jaegan.’ Glyph sounded exactly the same as the last time he’d entered [Flash Focus] with me. ‘I have to commend you, my simulations showed you lacking control until around the seventeenth [Rushrat] in nearly all instances, but you caught hold just six in. Bravo, I think some mortals would say.’

  Mentally gritting my teeth, I snarled back at him. ‘Fantastic, so you thought I’d be a brute. What else is new? Are you just going to hang out in my head or are you going to help Jaegan and I?’

  ‘A brute? No. Someone who does not understand the power they wield because they spent their entire life running from it? Yes.’ He stated matter of factly, like it was something as obvious as the sky being blue or the sun rising in the east.

  To this day I swear I heard Jaegans snicker as he speared the twenty-fifth target.

  ‘Now’s not the time for slinging insults, you glorified librarian.’ I snapped back and I felt him recoil mentally. ‘How are you going to help here? Because each target is more difficult and even with Jaegan and I, we’re going to fail to make it all the way to thirty-seven targets.’

  ‘We shall be speaking about your librarian comment later,’ his tone dripped with ice, ‘but I just finished applying a buff to you that should make this process possible for someone of your limited mental flexibility. It is called [Process Optimization] and the cost to maintain it is far higher than this world is prepared for, so it will only be active for the next two seconds.’

  Part of me wanted to quip back at him, but in the end my logical side prevailed and I decided to ignore him in favor of taking advantage of his so-called buff.

  Reaching out, I went to take the reins of the [Resonant Bolt] back from Jaegan, but I felt his presence linger alongside my own.

  ‘We’ll do this one together.’ His voice felt like a warm hug and we quickly settled into a pattern.

  I would provide the brunt of the mental force required to control the Skill, but he would fine tune the targeting. It reminded me a little bit of how Dad explained the dwarven sniper teams worked. One dwarf would load and fire the arbalest while the other would call out where to shoot and how to adjust for wind and other environmental effects. In the end, just like the sniper teams, it worked for us and we soon made it to the thirty-seventh [Rushrat].

  Now, at that point I was beat. The mental fortitude required to contain so much power was, frankly, absurd. That, topped off with the strain of using [Flash Focus] had blood running down my chin from my nose.

  How was I ever supposed to use this when I was in the middle of combat? The answer was obvious, I wasn’t. This was a Siege Skill and I needed to treat it as such, only using it when I had the time to prepare for its use.

  With a final Herculean surge of effort, I let the bolt dead end right where I’d originally aimed, straight into the [Rushrat Broodmother] closest to the [Rushrat Broodmaster]. Canceling [Flash Focus], I watched as the world lit up in a flash of blue lightning before a wave of sound crashed into the wind wall Volta had deployed before passing just a bit of it on to us.

  Blinking away tears from the force of the blast slamming into my eyes, I gaped at what I saw below us. Gone was the horde of [Rushrats] and their evolved cousins, they’d been obliterated along with a quarter mile radius sphere of dirt and stone to create a perfect hemispherical bowl in the middle of the hills.

  The only thing remaining was the nine foot long black skull of the [Rushrat Hordemaster] and it only stayed around long enough for me to spot it before disappearing and reappearing in our Party Loot. I wanted to pull it out, but knew it would likely drag the [Cloud Carpet] out of the sky, so I refrained and instead just checked it out with [Essence Reading] through the listing in the Party Interface.

  [Skull of the Hordemaster - Legendary Material

  Durability - N/A

  Description - A monstrous skull, nine feet long from snout to the back of its massive jaws. Its chitinous plates, thick as iron and scoured to an eerie sheen, are a deep, obsidian black. Each plate is intricately carved with arcane symbols, their meaning long lost to time. The skull is incredibly heavy, likely weighing several hundred pounds, and exudes an aura of raw power, even in death. The uses for this material will only be visible to a master craftsman, though nearly all crafts could find a use for this powerful material.]

  “Wow…that’s kind of awesome.” I sent the description to the rest of my party. “I guess it’s good we’re headed to Ironhold, they’re the biggest group of crafters on the continent so there must be someone there who can use this for something.”

  My eyes widened and I grinned as I considered how much it might be worth. So many platinum coins…

  Before I could make any concrete plans, Gabby snapped her finger near my ear. “Hey! I’d know the look of a dwarf’s [Gold Madness] anywhere, knock it off.” She shook her head when I looked at her as innocently as possible. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before. Trust me, Ironhold is still the right place to take this, but you have to let me come with you to get it looked at, OK? I’ve got a few contacts in the city who might be able to help if your clan can’t or won’t do the same.”

  Slumping down as my new dream of bathing in platinum coins slipped away, I begrudgingly shifted the carpet to aim west and got it going again.

  “Killjoy.”