Conrad’s shouted advice proved much wiser than his hasty pn to fly them to safety.

  Hector found his boots completely shredded from his brief flight. Xian warriors with a propensity for flight went barefoot for a reason. He let them crash nd fifty feet from their original position. Conrad nded in a lunge and didn’t even stand before he was shooting once more. From this angle, he finally got a clear shot that put the giant ant out of its misery.

  There were no snakes in proximity to their current location. The buffalo once more had to shed momentum before turning to face them. Unfortunately, his brief flight had drawn a lot of attention from every direction. A wasp the size of a Clydesdale horse dove at them from above. A hippo jumped free of a nearby crater to run at them. An irate badger scrambled from another side. Further out, sounds of movement in the darkness indicated that more threats would soon arrive.

  “Cosmic energy is noisy, Hector! Never fly in here again!”

  “That would have been wonderful advice before we entered the dungeon!”

  “I didn’t think a level four Xian could fly!”

  Hector’s energy reserves were down to sixty percent. Flying had been a dumb move all around. Remembering that Conrad’s armor made it hard for him to handle overhead threats, Hector prioritized the wasp. It was moving fast and he didn’t have the greatest aim yet, so instead of trying to kill the beast, he shed his cable through one wing. That sent the wasp spinning off course to crash further away.

  Conrad tossed a grenade at the hippo. The dumb beast chomped down on the explosive and had its jaw blown off in consequence. Hector alternated strikes with two cables on the approaching badger. It took the abuse like a pro, never giving any indication that it had been hurt. Finally, Hector scooped under the badger and tossed it through the air into the distance.

  “Help with the hippo!”

  Hector turned in time to see the hippo getting close. He took out both of its beady eyes and then dodged out of its path. Conrad did the same in the opposite direct, letting the hippo charge forward blindly. It trampled an approaching viper, unintentionally killing an ally.

  While that happened, Conrad started on his next target. The downed wasp was skittering forward on its legs, the one remaining wing held back out of the way. Several shots of the rifle sufficed to end its life. Hector then resumed his snake bashing.

  Since head shots weren’t working with the vipers, he switched his tactic. Domains didn’t lend themselves to making pointy surfaces easily because sharp angles in a form would gush cosmic energy like a massive leak. The Xian who summoned weapons used their externality for that purpose, much like some Arahant did – though the Xian article tended to be vastly more durable. But just because Hector didn’t have the option of forming a bde didn’t mean he was strictly limited to just cables – he just had to avoid sharp edges.

  Hector formed a boulder, deftly twisting the composing threads of cosmic energy to minimize energy leakage, and rolled it over the vipers. Vertebrate shattered and organs turned to mush. The snakes finally died in mass from one of his attacks.

  Then he spied the newest problem. The buffalo and hippo were attacking at the same time. He didn’t know how the blind hippo even managed to find them, nor did he have time to ponder that enigma at the moment. Fortunately, he had Conrad to rely on for tactical advice.

  “Run to lead them towards the rift! I want to line up shots from the side profile!”

  Not the advice he wanted to hear, but Hector had no better idea. Plus, he was quite good at running now. He sprinted forward, doing his best not to trip over the poorly lit, uneven ground. From over his shoulder, he heard the sound of incendiary rounds from Conrad’s pistol. Then came the thuds of a beast crashing and rolling with its great momentum.

  Hector spun about, saw the hippo almost on him, and leaped to one side. The hippo snapped its face in his direction, apparently not realizing its missing jaw transformed the bite attempt into a boop from its nose. The nose boop of a hippo was nothing to dismiss. It spiked Hector into the ground hard enough that he bounced.

  Adrenaline had him standing again before his rattled brain fully realized he had been down. Hector saw the hippo rush forward once more even as a grenade not far away ended the life of the downed buffalo. He stared down the approaching beast and shoved a cable of force deep into an empty eye socket. The hippo shook its head mightily, preventing Hector from scrambling its brain the way he’d hoped to.

  A hawk came out of nowhere and collided with Hector, talons shredding clothes. Hector fred his aura and seized the bird with both hands. In a wild rage, he tore a wing off. Then he threw the thrashing beast to the ground and exploded its head with a cable.

  Conrad tackled him aside just before the hippo could trample him. Incendiary rounds bounced off the hippo’s steely hide, causing the Jinn cyborg to curse under his breath. “How are your energy reserves?”

  “Forty percent,” Hector answered.

  “Then we’re done here. The nearest door is in that direction. I know you’re probably faster, but unless I fall to the enemy you should keep to my pace.”

  They ran then. Conrad set a pace that would earn records back on Earth and Hector effortlessly matched it. Occasionally beasts would arrive in their path and they would deal with them. Most were unmemorable, but there was a crocodile that proved challenging. Hector held its mouth shut after Conrad threw his final grenade inside, which put an end to a menace whose scales blocked all other attempts to harm it. The hippo pursued at first but they lost it after just ten minutes.

  Their path to escape looked no different than any other patch of wall. Hector only knew what it was because the hourly release of delvers into the dungeon had happened recently. A few parties were still nearby, slowly creeping through the ndscape. Conrad unerringly took them into the mouth of the cave entrance and after reaching the bottom of the snted ground, they were able to see up the incline towards safety.

  Turrets tracked their movement as they went to the moving sidewalk, whose direction now went away from the dungeon. Hector slumped down to his knees as he came down from the intense experience. Conrad tore off his goggles and face mask, ughed like a maniac, and ruffled Hector’s hair like he was a favorite pet.

  “You did good, Hector!”

  Even though he remembered every one of his blunders, Hector found himself grinning. He’d survived the dungeon. At the moment, his reserves were down to just twenty percent remaining. It wasn’t a great margin of error. In the future, he should definitely be more cautious. For now, though… he’d done it. He’d proven himself against monsters more impressive than rats.

  Shortly before he’d met his Arahant friends and briefly had a career as a reality television star, Hector took a car ride with a man named Greg and argued about the retive power of a Xian. The fact that a random acquaintance hadn’t believed in the combat potential of a Xian had rankled bad. That ego wound lingered in the background as he spent so much time among powerful Arahant and Jinn, seeing them constantly dispy amazing abilities.

  He’d seriously started to doubt the illustrious position of the Xian in the multiverse. Even remembering the Lord General surviving a point bnk antimatter explosion hadn’t reassured him. The big concern had been that the Xian status as peak warriors was exaggerated. Yet today, he had gone into the dungeon under-leveled retive to other delvers and shown his true strengths.

  Their ride on the moving sidewalk ended at a transportation hub. Hector lurched back to his feet and they walked to the circumnavigating train. While there, a notification informed Hector that twenty thousand credits were added to his account. That got his current bance almost back above a hundred thousand credits. He’d at least recovered the funds he transferred to Zelda and Rodrick for their living expenses.

  They left the circumnavigating train at their transfer location and rode the train back towards their start point. This required them to sit through the entire circur loop. As convenient as it was having their capsule hotel be the st stop on the ride in, that meant they had to visit every other one on the way back around. They sat near the doors and the train’s occupants changed over from people heading home to delvers on their way into the dungeon.

  Their euphoria from victory faded away into exhaustion during the long ride. When they finally reached the hotel, Hector found Rodrick pacing around the lobby.

  “Hector!” His friend looked him over critically. “You’re not missing any body parts?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.” He looked down at this shredded combat fatigues. He would need to throw them out.

  “And how was the dungeon?”

  “In a word? Exciting.”

  “How many did you kill?”

  “I didn’t have time to count, Rod.”

  Conrad gave a zy salute. “You must be the swordsman friend I’ve heard about. I’m Conrad.”

  “The special forces soldier. Why are you on Union Central?”

  “The proper terminology is cyborg special operator. I deployed to Promise City from North Dungeon three years ago to support the city during a rough patch. My recall order is inactive so long as I meet my quota of delves. Quite frankly, Promise City needs me a lot more than North Base.”

  Rodrick studied the man’s armor. “You certainly look like you invested in high end equipment.”

  “They say that a Jinn can be no better than his gear. I have the gear, the training, and the physical boosts to do quite a bit. As a veteran of the Coalition Army, I expect you will acquit yourself well inside the dungeon. Sadly, many of the locals aren’t suitable for the task.”

  The compliment caused Rodrick’s suspicion to soften. He automatically switched conversational modes. “I was part of a joint ritual to destroy a world with just one antimatter bomb.”

  Hector almost spped his own face. Rodrick could not meet a single person without bringing up the most epic moment of his life.

  “Did you have Alfar assistance to bind the ritual to Jinn empowered tech?”

  “No, we used Hector’s cosmic energy.”

  Conrad rapidly gnced between them. “Such is possible?”

  “The Sage of Confgration said cosmic energy is almost as good as using a Yazata.”

  The mention of the multiverse’s version of angels caused Conrad’s interest to expire abruptly. “I need to return my gear to storage. It was a pleasure meeting you, Arahant. Excellent work, Hector.”

  Rodrick watched the Jinn go, then punched Hector in the shoulder. “I want to hear everything.”

  “First you have to promise that you won’t share the details with Zelda.”

  “Oh, my. This is going to be good.” Rodrick rubbed his hands together. “Lips sealed.”

  “We went in deeper and fought next to a rift. It was wild. Has anyone told you that it is utterly dark in the dungeon? I’m going to figure out a better light situation for next time.”

  They grabbed a meal at the first floor restaurant while they discussed events. Rodrick was appropriately excited about the story, but mentioned he was gd he didn’t know ahead of time that Hector would take so many risks. They agreed that it would be smart to be a little more cautious in the future.

  “It sounds like all your improvements since fighting the squid monsters showed their value.” Rodrick sighed as he stared at the table between them. “I won’t have more than a quarter of my energy capacity by the time we need to delve.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be full by then.”