Thick mist surrounded the clearing below as Mel and her allies stayed high up in the trees while the large creature prowled beneath them, looking for the threat.

  For the past day or two, they studied and stalked the plateau beast while hunting the lionals. It was clear from even a casual observance that the two were related. The tarikan was clearly an evolved or heightened creature, but it was not entirely dissimilar to its lesser cousin, the lional.

  By hunting them, they increased their knowledge of the plateau beast.

  [Tarikan (High Copper Rank—Plateau Beast)]

  Mel had been intentionally using [Hidden Mist] around the tarikan whenever she got the chance. The first time she used it, the beast had thrashed around looking for the culprit.

  Even now, more than a day later, it was still wary, though getting used to the fact that the mist was there. It was a bit like getting an animal used to a situation by repeated exposure.

  It seemed like it might be too much when Gwen crushed a diamond dusted moon in her fist. [Moonlight’s Embrace] scattered rays of soft light through the area, blending beautifully with [Hidden Mist].

  The silvery energy steamed off Mel’s [Sanguine Coat], empowering her.

  They would need every advantage they could get if the three of them were going to win against the plateau beast. Even with all their training and grinding on the lional monsters on the plateau, Mel was unsettled by the disparity she felt between herself and the tarikan.

  Like its lional cousins, it had a striking blue hide. Instead of just a pair of bison-like horns, the tarikan had several curling savage horns on its head and protruding from the elbows on its forelimbs. A mane of pure white flowed down its back and gave the beast a truly majestic appearance.

  Unlike the sobekile, which looked like something that crawled out of her nightmares of the Shiverglades, this beast looked suitably impressive.

  I’m pretty sure it could swat the sobekile like a bug too, Mel thought to herself. The deeper they ventured away from the starting position, the stronger all monsters became.

  Including, it seemed, plateau beasts.

  If I were a smart and mildly safe woman, I would have taken us back to the earlier plateaus to kill the plateau beasts there instead.

  She could still faintly feel their threads twanging, attenuated by the distance.

  Mel grinned to herself. They were slowly setting up the battlefield, forcing the tarikan to get used to the mist so it didn’t get suspicious, and subtly shaping the area around its lair when it was asleep.

  It was a long process and they wouldn’t be done for a few days still, but it would be worth it. Not only would Mel’s blessing upgrade, making the next plateau beast easier to deal with she hoped, they all wanted to see what sort of rewards there were for killing a plateau beast.

  To Mel’s knowledge, nobody had done it before. Most people steered clear of them.

  There was another element at play here as well. [Blessing of the Hunt’s] imprint allowed Mel to ignore a portion of the rank disparity between herself and the creature she was hunting.

  She wasn’t sure that would apply between High Copper and Copper. Chances are it would, but there was no betting on it.

  Worse, the blessing only applied to herself. Thomas and Gwen wouldn’t have such an advantage.

  However, as Mel understood it, transforming into a werewolf imparted a heightened state of power, so there was at least that to count on. If the full moon felt like showing up.

  Thomas was a force of nature himself, provided he could get a clear shot in and wasn’t drawing the ire of the monster in question. If he spent most of his time defending himself, he wasn’t spending that time outputting devastating damage.

  Even after all she’d seen of Thomas’ aspect skills, she still had the impression that he was holding back. That there was something even more powerful that he was either afraid of or nervous to use.

  “I think that’s good for now,” Mel whispered to Thomas on the branch beside her. The Mage nodded and started to get up, when they both noticed the tarikan’s shift in temperament.

  The beast reared up and scented the air, turning this way and that slowly, as if it had just found its prey.

  Thomas and Mel shared a confused look, but they didn’t dare speak or move in case the tarikan had sensed them somehow.

  How? We were so careful!

  “Mel?!” called a familiar voice into the fog.

  Break me, really? Now?

  Thomas looked at Mel.

  “It’s Heath,” Mel said, keeping her voice low.

  “Mel!” Heath shouted. Through the mist, they could see him cupping his hands to his mouth. “Mel, it’s me, Heath!”

  “He’s going to die,” Thomas whispered, like he was stating a fact.

  The tarikan would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss Heath walking right into his territory . Only the obscuring [Hidden Mist] stopped Heath from dying immediately.

  Mel saw the flash of Gwen’s silver eyes in another tree, closer to the tarikan. She cursed herself for not bringing up Heath sooner. When he hadn’t shown up after nearly a week from the time she used the [Signal Coin], Mel figured he was gone for good.

  Gwen didn’t know Heath. She wasn’t likely to bother defending him. Wanting to avoid accidentally murdering innocent people as a werewolf and defending rando’s from monsters were two very different things.

  They had agreed to wait a day or two to finish preparing the battleground, but there was no way that the tarikan would let its guard down again. Even if they managed to save Heath, it would know something was up.

  The tarikan was smarter than a normal animal. Plateau beasts had almost human-level intelligence. More than once they had seen it wound one animal, drag it out to a clearing, and bait out another predator like one of those giant bears, only to eat both meals.

  “We have to help him,” Mel said. “Give the signal. We’ll just have to adjust.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “We could let him die,” Thomas suggested. “Just thinking out loud.”

  Mel had to admit that letting Heath die would have been the most advantageous tactic. If he was killed by the plateau beast, it would think the threat that it couldn’t identify was over. Its guard would drop. When they came for it, the creature would be vulnerable.

  That [Boss Rash] title would go to real good use.

  Damn my conscience!

  Her eyes shifted to heat vision, a faint emerald sparkle in her eyes accompanying the transition. Mel placed [Omen Mark] on the tarikan, drawing its attention away from the juicy morsel shouting her name. [Bane of Tartarus] flew from her hand as she dropped from the tree.

  “Heath, shut the hell up, you’re in danger!” Mel shouted as she extended the awareness of both the mark and the mist to Heath.

  Heath wasted no time. His trust in Mel was touching. There was no way he had enough time to assess the threats around him, but he immediately put his hands to his hips and pulled out two black daggers. They were flying through the air like black ravens of death before Mel’s final word was out of her lips.

  Aspect Skill: [Fanning Ravens]

  A streaking lance of brilliant sunlight slammed into the tarikan as it exited Mel’s [Bane of Tartarus].

  Aspect Skill: [Sunspear]

  That had been their agreed-upon signal when they were meant to start the fight.

  Despite the assault on the creature, the ravens attacking the tarikan allowed it to focus its ire on a single creature. Even with Mel’s Grade 9 agility and [Windstorm], she couldn’t reach Heath in time before the tarikan was on him.

  She reached out, unsure of what she was doing, trying somehow to protect him. Something within her stretched until it nearly snapped, but it caught on something. It was like she had just stretched a rubber band between herself and Heath.

  He noticed the tarikan bearing down on him and tried to roll to the side, but the monster still took a raking swipe with those manhole-cover-sized paws. Mel knew how strong the tarikan was, and though Heath had grown in strength, he was no match for the creature.

  An actinic light, like a welding spark, flashed where the tarikan’s claws should have ripped his insides out. Instead, they gouged heavily into his shadowy armor and batted him aside. A grievous injury, but he had survived.

  What the hell?

  Gwen lunged from the trees, the spectral fur of [Primal Mantle] fluttering wildly. The spirit-like beast overlaid like a helmet snarled with her.

  The tarikan was just as confused as Mel. It paused for a moment, just a fraction of a second, as it pondered what had just happened. Mel could see its nascent intelligence trying to work out why the misty clearing wasn’t filled with Heath’s shredded guts.

  That fraction of a second was all the opening that Gwen needed.

  With four sets of claws outstretched, the Brawler crashed into the tarikan with the force of a hurtling comet.

  Aspect Skill: [Falling Meteor]

  Gravity aspect erupted in a spray of rocks, quaking the ground beneath the tarikan’s massive paws.

  She viciously carved into the tarikan’s wounded backside, repeatedly unleashing the raking strikes of [Primal Rend].

  [Omen Mark] triggers an additional stack of [Primal Magic Weakness] (2).

  …

  [Omen Mark] triggers an additional stack of [Primal Magic Weakness] (4).

  Seeing that Gwen had the monster’s attention, Mel slowed down enough to use her [Fanged Flask], flicking open the mythril snake head and pouring the emerald liquid over her twinblade. Over the last several days, she had fallen in love with the thing. It was one of two reasons she was trying to do alchemy, so she might gain the knowledge to be able to enhance the flask.

  With [Twinfang Sting], she could inflict two types of afflictions at once. The same kind of afflictions that Hush could do when he bit somebody: burn and poison.

  With the tarikan still reeling from Gwen’s attacks, Mel slashed out with her twinblade. Sprays of Blood infused damage added to the mounting wounds on the plateau beast. [Twinfang Sting] applied poison, then burn, each affliction stacking as Mel repeatedly struck the monster.

  Using [Windstorm] and her enhanced agility, Mel attacked as fast as she ever had in her entire life. Her twinblade blurred as she twisted and ducked a swatting paw. She parried aside a thrusting horn from its foreleg and stabbed into its blue hide.

  The frosty mane of fur was too thick and defensive for her to get a critical hit in, but there were still plenty of weak points for her to exploit with her mounting speed. Her [Smoke Dash Bangles] made her strikes impossibly fast. She had to temper herself just to keep in control of her blurring arms.

  You inflict an additional stack of [Twinfang Sting] (7).

  You inflict an additional stack of [Frostbite Toxin] (2).

  [Omen Mark] triggers an additional stack of [Bleed] (2).

  …

  You inflict an additional stack of [Twinfang Sting] (11).

  You inflict an additional stack of [Frostbite Toxin] (6).

  [Omen Mark] triggers an additional stack of [Bleed] (6).

  By the time Thomas slammed a [Thunderbolt] into the tarikan, the creature was weighed down with nearly two dozen combined stacks of afflictions from Mel alone.

  Mel backed off, summoned a sphere of darkness, and used [Bane of Tartarus] once more. The Omen sphere fell upon it as it twisted around, snapping at the chain that whipped out under its jaw and slammed it shut.

  Grinning with savage glee, Gwen wrestled with restraining the plateau beast.

  Breathing hard, sweat stinging her eyes, Mel watched as the curse flames of Omen burned away the tarikan’s glorious white mane. It staggered around, its tail whipping like a mooring line that just snapped under tension.

  Mel winced as the tail cracked into Gwen’s back. Another pale flash of light accompanied the attack, then a spray of blood. Gwen cried out but didn’t let go of her chain. She kept pulling back and back, dragging the plateau beast’s head up to look at the sky.

  At first, Mel thought she was trying to break its neck, but even Gwen realized she didn’t possess that kind of strength.

  Then Mel understood what she was doing. While Thomas kept it off-balance by making the unstable ground beneath its paws shatter and break, spraying blood and fractured claws across the area, Mel rushed forward with [Windstorm].

  At the last minute, she switched to [Firestorm] to enhance her strength and leapt for all she was worth. Twisting in mid-air, Mel snapped every muscle in sequence, slashing with her Blood affinity twinblade, right at its exposed jugular.

  It was like hitting a pressurized water main. A steaming spray of blood erupted from the wound, ripping it open. Mel used her [Sanguine Coat] to soak up the blood, patching up its durability and protecting Mel at the same time.

  Shockingly, the tarikan snarled in defiance of the obvious deathblow. Its muscles tensed and Mel could see what was about to happen. Fight or flight warred within for the fraction of a second it took her to decide what to do.

  She twisted around, lunged forward, and planted her twinblade into the hard clay soil as the tarikan snapped its powerful neck muscles down. The chain went slack for the briefest moment, and Gwen went flying from its back.

  At the same time, Mel’s grip on her twinblade was ripped free as she was slammed into the ground with all the weight of a falling bus.

  The tarikan let out a pitiful gurgle and slumped to the side, less than a foot of Mel’s twinblade sticking out of the wound beneath its lower jaw. The top of the blade stuck out like a budding blue horn from the crown of its head.

  Dazed and disoriented, Mel slowly pulled herself to her feet. When she looked at the weapon, she cursed. “That’s going to be a bitch to get out.”