I twisted mid-air just as a blue bolt of energy sizzled past my ear. The Cerulians had targeted me, their robed forms floating above the battlefield like vengeful ghosts. Their hands moved in complex patterns, weaving spells from glowing mana threads.

  Gravity suddenly quadrupled. I plummeted toward the platform, the Cerulian's spell trying to flatten me into pancake. The stone cracked under the impact of my landing, a crater forming around my feet.

  Pain lanced through my legs, temporarily overwhelming even the Battle Brew's numbing effects. I gritted my teeth against a scream.

  [DAMAGE DETECTED]

  [LEGS: STRESS FRACTURES (MULTIPLE)]

  [RECOMMENDATION: DON'T DO THAT AGAIN, GENIUS]

  [BATTLE BREW COMPENSATING...]

  The pain vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a warm numbness that crawled up from my toes. I knew I'd pay for it later, but right now, I had monks to murder.

  I sprinted toward the spell-caster, each step leaving smoking footprints and small craters in the stone. The Cerulian's eyes widened beneath its hood, glowing with ethereal light. It tried to float backward, hands already weaving another spell.

  Too slow.

  I leapt, grabbed its ankle, and whipped it around like a blue nunchuck before slamming it into an approaching Gravethrall. Both went down in a tangle of stone limbs and azure robes. I didn't wait to see if they'd get up. I landed on them with both feet, the impact turning stone and alien flesh into a paste that splattered across twenty feet of platform.

  “ORDER UP!” I shouted. “ONE BLUE PLATE SPECIAL, HOLD THE MERCY!”

  God, I hate myself sometimes.

  A squad of Earth soldiers rushed past me, weapons blazing, their armor enhanced with glowing blue lines of System integration. Level 5s, maybe 6s at most. Brave, but outmatched. One of them fired a plasma rifle at an approaching troll, but the shot barely cracked its stone hide.

  The troll roared and swung its club in a wide arc. Three soldiers went flying, their bodies bouncing off the cavern wall with sickening thuds. The fourth ducked, but the backswing caught him in the ribs, the sound of breaking bones audible even over the chaos of battle.

  I was moving before I even realized it, cutting between two more trolls and grabbing the fallen soldier before a stone foot could crush his skull. His eyes went wide as I scooped him up—a kid, barely twenty, blood trickling from his mouth.

  “Thanks, man,” he gasped, eyes unfocused. “Thought I was—”

  “Stay with me, soldier,” I said, sprinting toward the triage station our medics had set up behind a barricade. “What's your name?”

  “Billy,” he wheezed, each breath a wet rattle in his chest.

  “Well, Billy, I expect you to live through this so I can collect on the tip you're gonna owe me.” I deposited him with the medics, who immediately went to work on his crushed ribs. “You hear me? Big fat tip. Five star review. That's an order.”

  I clapped his shoulder gently and turned back to the battle, knowing in my gut this was a promise neither of us might be able to keep.

  A Gravethrall twice the size of the others stepped through a newly opened portal. A chieftain, based on the elaborate stone carvings covering its body. It roared, and the sound was physical–a concussive blast that sent three more soldiers flying like dolls tossed by an angry child.

  “Pull back!” Riley commanded over the comms. “Defensive formation Beta!”

  The soldiers retreated in practiced coordination, laying down cover fire. The chieftain ignored the bullets pinging off its stone hide and lifted a massive hammer that pulsed with sickly green energy. With each pulse, I felt the Core below us shudder, as if in pain.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Whatever that hammer was, it wasn't just a weapon. It was a threat to the Core itself.

  I sprinted toward it, the world around me moving in slow-motion thanks to my enhanced speed. The Gravethrall swung its hammer down in a devastating arc, aiming for a cluster of soldiers who hadn't retreated fast enough–

  –only to freeze mid-swing, the weapon suspended in the air as if time itself had stopped.

  Pe?a stood twenty feet away, both hands extended, his face contorted with effort. Blood trickled from his nose, staining his teeth as he snarled with concentration. He'd created a powerful gravity well around the hammer, trapping it in place.

  “Can't... hold it... long...” he grunted, sweat beading on his forehead. A vein bulged in his temple, throbbing dangerously. “Do something!”

  I didn't waste the opportunity. I sprinted up the Gravethrall's arm like it was a runway, my apron fluttering behind me like a superhero cape.

  [STRENGTH BOOST: PEAKING]

  [REMEMBER: AIM FOR THE JOINTS]

  [TRY NOT TO DIE. PAPERWORK IS A NIGHTMARE.]

  [PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL: DECLINING RAPIDLY]

  [LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT MODE ENGAGED]

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” I muttered to the System.

  I planted my feet on the Gravethrall’s shoulder as its crude stone face twisted—maybe in surprise, maybe in confusion.

  Didn’t matter.

  “STEEP IN THESE BEANS!” I roared, launching upward.

  My fist cocked back and slammed straight into the seam where stone met stone at the creature’s thick neck.

  The moment my fist connected, so did the hammer—a compact car’s worth of hurt slamming straight into my chest.

  Pain exploded through me. Blood sprayed from my mouth midair.

  My arm went numb from knuckles to shoulder, but I didn’t fall.

  For a beat, nothing moved.

  Then—

  With a sound like a quarry collapsing, cracks spiderwebbed across the Gravethrall’s neck.

  Its head listed sideways, then tore free and smashed into the platform hard enough to send a shockwave rippling through the battlefield.

  The body swayed, hammer still caught mid-swing in Pe?a’s gravity well, before it gave up and crashed down in a heap of broken stone.

  I pushed off, launched myself backward, boots skidding across the blood-slick platform, still breathing.

  Barely.

  But breathing.

  I watched as an impossible flood of trolls and monks poured into the cavern, a living tide of stone and robes that just kept coming.

  Fuck.

  I landed beside Riley just as she carved a Cerulian clean in half, her blades sliding through its midsection like it was made of warm blue butter.

  ”Show-off,” she muttered, but there was a flicker of a smile before her face hardened again.

  ”We're still outnumbered ten to one,” she said. “And bad news—southern perimeter’s gone dark. They’re coming in from behind.”

  A shadow fell over us.

  Four Gravethralls barreled in, bigger than the grunts, smaller than the chieftain, but just as eager to break something.

  Their stone clubs swung down in brutal arcs.

  I spun—fast but still too slow. The first club smashed into my shoulder, a wet, sick crack bursting through my body. Bone, stone, something important—couldn't tell.

  Pain detonated down my arm.

  A second club whistled past my head, so close I felt the wind claw at my hair.

  Riley sliced through one of their legs, kneeling it. I managed to kick another, throwing it back.

  A third club caught me dead-center in the chest.

  The world inverted.

  I flew backward, slammed through a stone pillar, and skid across the platform like a skipped rock.

  My HUD flared angry red:

  [DAMAGE CRITICAL]

  [RIBS: FRACTURED (6)]

  [INTERNAL BLEEDING: MODERATE]

  [BATTLE BREW: ATTEMPTING COMPENSATION, FAILED]

  [STATUS: BAD DAY OFFICIALLY UPGRADED TO “FUBAR”]

  [PROBABILITY OF BUYING THE FARM: 78.2%]

  [LAST WORDS? NO? COOL.]

  I coughed blood and grinned through the sharp, metallic bite of it.

  Tried to stand.

  My body voted no. Overwhelming majority. I tried to activate my Final Blend but I couldn't move my arms.

  Out of the corner of my eye, two Gravethralls blindsided Riley, slamming into her from the flank. She went down hard, swallowed up by a stampede of stone feet.

  Three more Gravethralls peeled off and lumbered toward me, stone faces blank but somehow oozing smug satisfaction—like they already knew how this ended.

  “Todd,” I rasped into my earpiece, blood bubbling between my lips. “Little help here?”

  Nothing.

  No crackle, no snarky comeback.

  Where the hell was he?

  The monstrous Gravethrall loomed over me, club raised for the killing blow.

  I closed my eyes, breath slowing.

  So this was it.

  Not even a week out of my coma, and already about to punch my ticket.

  Sorry, Earth. I tried.

  The world should’ve gone black.

  Instead, the world exploded in a roar so raw and violent it ripped across the cavern, stunning the battle into a frozen, breathless pause.

  My eyes snapped open just in time to see a blur of green muscle and spikes plow into the Gravethralls.

  The collision shredded them, stone chips raining down like confetti.

  A howl ripped through the dust, gravel and rage ground into something almost like words—raw, enraged, and unmistakably female.

  Goblin female.

  Giant, pissed-off, female goblin.

  Big Green!

  “No!!!” she screamed.

  Nineteen feet of furious, quill-armored goblin rage—built like a tank that had grown up napping in barbed wire.

  One Gravethrall swung a club at her. Nothing.

  He swung again.

  She caught it one-handed, ripped it free, and smashed the troll’s skull into powder.

  She made quick work of the remaining trolls around us. Then she stomped forward and stopped, looming over me, breathing hard, eyes wild.

  I honestly wasn’t sure if she was about to help me up... or stomp me into paste.

  Or maybe something worse.

  Much, much worse.