They rushed forward as fast as they could. Ray had called forth his wings with Aetheric Trace, the spiky feathers glinting with glimmers of deep blue energy. He thought he would have become too fast, but the others were keeping pace. Gritty’s legs were basically a blur and if Marcus ever started lagging behind, he simply leaped forward a few dozen feet to catch up.

  “Slow down,” Gritty warned.

  She must have sensed the tremors, which Ray hadn’t since he was airborne. But her warning came in good time. The walls began shaking again, the cliffs around them shifting like glaciers fast-forwarded a thousand times.

  All the petrified vines were restructuring their path. The cliffs’ motion made rocks avalanche around them, and they had to take care to avoid getting crushed.

  “Anyone else get the feeling we’re being guided to along a specific path?” Marcus said after leaping close again. “Like we’re being herded to a trap?”

  “We can still pick the way we want to go if we’re fast enough,” Ray said. He scowled. “We just don’t know if that’s the right path.”

  Gritty looked up. The cliffs were closing up around them, and it started at the top, closing up on top to shut off their view of the sky. “You can’t fly that high, can you, wingman?”

  “No…” Ray considered for a second. Even if the cliffs closed together, they didn’t form an even, fully closed ceiling. There were small gaps between the crushed, uneven rocks. “But I think I know a way we can figure out the right way forward. Why didn’t I think of this already…?”

  Shaking his head, Ray summoned up the Socuring Eyeball with Resurrect Recollect. He already had one active, intent on setting it to follow whoever went on to leave the others behind if they encountered any more Depthless Gargoyles.

  But that was its purpose. He needed a second to act as actual surveillance. So, Ray sent this one shooting straight up.

  Unfortunately, the dungeon wasn’t cooperative about it. Vines burst out of the walls and shot at the flying eyeball, lashing at it like stony whips. The little construct was good at evading them, its size and speed helping it to evade most whacks by a wide margin. But once it had gone far enough, the density of the vines combined with the falling rocks made dodging difficult.

  It was no surprise when Ray’s little construct was struck down.

  “Well, that didn’t work,” Gritty said.

  Ray tutted. “Not yet.” He cast Resurrect recollect again, calling up the little eyeball with wings once more. “I was hoping I wouldn’t need to do this…”

  The only reason he was regretting it was because of the Mana cost. But there wasn’t much he could do about it. At least both Gritty and Marcus had offered up a bunch of their empty crystals and shards that Ray could slowly fill with Aeon Mana to recharge himself later.

  He pushed in more Aeon Mana. It worked just as he had hoped. The power behind Ray’s new variant of Mana recreated the rest of the creature that the eyeball had first been taken from. Basically, another Windbane.

  The spectral wyvern roared, sending a challenge straight up at the storm of petrified vines crisscrossing the sky away from its reach. Then it leaped into the air.

  “You really weren’t kidding when you said you could summon a whole ass monster, did you?” Gritty said.

  Ray grinned. “I don’t even know the full extent of what I can do yet. But it’s not really summoning. It’s more like… making the summon remember what it used to be.”

  “Same difference.”

  Before Ray could educate Gritty on the finer points of difference between actual summoning and Ray’s little trick that allowed him to essentially get far more powerful constructs without as much cost, the eyeball reached the vines. But this time, it wasn’t just a crazy ocular orb with wings. This time, as Gritty had said, it was a whole ass Windbane.

  The spectral wyvern yawned its jaws wide and gushed out a furious geyser of deep blue fire. Its targets stood no chance. The vines shattered apart, falling down like tiny little flaming meteors.

  More of them shot in, pulling off the closing canyon walls to take up the space left by their fallen brethren. But that was where the Windbane’s mass came into play. It smashed into the weakened barrier of vines, half of which were burning or broken, and crashed through like a freight train crushing a shack.

  With a bit more effort and a few more belches of crushing fire, the eyeball—and the spectral Windbane surrounding it—burst free into the open sky.

  “I can see!” Ray said. He paused, closing his actual eyes and the first Scouring Eyeball to fully take in everything his second construct was showing him. There was a lot. “I—I think I got it. Let’s go.”

  “We only have one way to go now,” Marcus said. “It took too long.”

  “For now. Now that we’ve got an eye where we need it, we’ll be faster at the next junction.”

  Gitty nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They hurried through the small and only gap available to them. It was a tight squeeze. The walls were closing in, the vines pulling the cliffsides together. Good thing they were fast.

  The dungeon tried other methods of stopping their traversal apart from just the walls closing in. Rockfall was a constant worry. Ray and the others had to stay alert for an avalanche landsliding on them, using whatever combination of skills they had at the top of their heads to prevent themselves from being crushed.

  Worse than that, there were other monsters chasing them. They were similar to the Depthless Gargoyles, all made of stone and combined from the different corpses caught in the petrified vines.

  Thankfully, they were much smaller and weaker. Ray and the others evaded most by simply outpacing them, though Gritty did occasionally have to take out some that got way too close.

  “Another one of the big ones up ahead,” Ray said. “A Depthless Gargoyle.”

  “How far are we from the centre?” Marcus asked.

  “Uh…”

  “You can’t even see it? No way it’s that far.”

  Ray frowned. He wished he could focus only on the sight from the eyeball flying high above them. “There’s something blocking my sight. Some kind of purple energy barrier.”

  “Crap.”

  They didn’t get any time to think about it since they arrived at the next chamberlike zone. The spot where the Depthless Gargoyle was emerging from the wall, its body fusing with all the petrified corpses imprisoned in the stone vines.

  “Remember the plan,” Ray yelled out.

  Marcus and Gritty nodded. They hadn’t stopped when they had reached the open area. Ray slowed down, but his companions continued hurrying onwards, his first Scouring Eyeball construct keeping up with them.

  Ray didn’t waste a single second, calling up a flying Windbane skull to attack the Depthless Gargoyle. “Hey ugly!” He waved his arms exaggeratedly, spreading his wings wide to make himself look like a bigger threat. “That’s right! Look this way. I’m the real threat. Come and get your ass kicked.”

  He was pretty sure the dumb, half-statue of a monster wasn’t exactly comprehending his taunts. But the acting did work to hold its attention. Especially because it was his spell crackling over its stony skin. It didn’t get the opportunity to even look at Gritty and Marcus.

  With a roar, the monster lurched at Ray and his construct. He had checked. It was the exact same as the last one his team had taken down. Same abilities, same Tier, the works.

  Ray and the flying Windbane maw split apart, temporarily confusing the monster. Then it roared again and went after the immediate danger—the construct that was laving it with deep blue flames.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  With a grin, Ray summoned another construct. It wouldn’t be enough to kill the monster, of course. A part of him really wanted to take that thing on with all he had. He wanted to find its weaknesses, to prove that he had the combination of firepower and ingenuity to leave it dead without a ton of effort, even if the first one had taken too long.

  But no. That wasn’t his goal. He wasn’t here to kill every monster he was facing.

  Ray was here to win this Tier 35 dungeon before the other teams could.

  Gritty: You’re not going to like this, wingman…

  Ray had to fly away before the Stone Storm skill from his enemy caught him. Only then could he focus on the chat.

  Ray: What’s wrong?

  The idea had been that as soon as they reached relative safety, the very first message Ray was supposed to receive was an alert to teleport immediately. The fact that it wasn’t that was concerning.

  Marcus: We got company. The bad kind.

  Ray: Can you evade them? Sneak past or something?

  Marcus: I wish. It’s the bird team. And they’re bad. Oh—oh shit, I think they spotted us.

  There was no further message after that, at least for a while, and Ray had to admit that it was pretty worrying they had completely ceased communicating. They didn’t even reply to his messages.

  He was so distracted with worry that Team Albatross had attacked Gritty and Marcus that he almost missed the humongous form of the Depthless Gargoyle roaring again. A storm of petrified vines unleashed a ravenous fury, one that Ray had to be very careful about avoiding. A combination of Mottling Aeonguard and the spectral Duskshell construct kept him safe.

  Marcus: Alright, so—

  Ray: Fuck, don’t leave me hanging like that! You guys okay?

  Marcus: Gritty is fighting one of them as we speak and she’s more or less getting her ass kicked. I wanted to help, but we figured at least one of us needs to not get bogged down.

  Ray: Are they all there? All three of them?

  Marcus: Far as I can see, yeah. They were fighting a couple of Depthless Gargoyles when we came in on them.

  A couple? Ray recalled how his whole team had to pitch in to kill just one of the stony monsters. How strong were Team Albatross to take on multiple at once?

  Ray: Alright, then I’m coming over.

  Marcus: What? What are you going to do?

  Ray: Back Gritty up. But you guys had the right idea. Keep going, Marcus. We’ll catch up. Don’t stop, got it?

  Marcus: Fuck, alright.

  They cut their conversation off at just the right moment. The Gargoyle had finished dealing with the other constructs. Its ire was focused entirely on Ray now.

  For his part, Ray sent one of his Aeonguard orbs smacking into the monster before taking off.

  “Yeah, that’s right!” he yelled over its raging roar. “Come get me if you can!”

  The monster was fast. Ray didn’t actually have to slow down to make sure it kept up. He flew as fast as Soaring Wings could carry him, the Gargoyle making the whole dungeon shudder and shake as it charged along behind him.

  Occasionally, it would fling a powerful ability at him, like Stone Storm or Titan’s Reach. Thankfully, Ray was fast enough to evade the worst of the attacks. The bits he couldn’t evade were stopped by a quick summoning of Impenetrable Shell.

  It was in that fashion, trailed by a Gargoyle and several smaller versions that had chased his team earlier, along with a storm of petrified vines, that Ray arrived at his destination.

  He was surprised he had actually made it. With how the vines were pulling everything apart and rearranging the entire dungeon like a bored housewife on crack, it almost felt like a stroke of luck that he had reached the exact location he had targeted.

  The spot where Gritty and Marcus had met Team Albatross.

  Thankfully, they were still fighting. Gritty hadn’t yet been squished to bloody paste by far stronger opponents.

  That was mostly because the opposing team was busy handling multiple of the same kind of brute that was chasing Ray. Marcus had been spot on about that. The Galiant and the man were fending off three Depthless Gargoyles, while Gritty was dealing with the Sylvan.

  Until Ray arrived to upend the balance, of course.

  He had already crafted a draconic maw around his hand with Aetheric Trace, and sending a flaming laser towards Gritty’s location forced the combatants apart. Ray’s main goal had been to get his spell near them, so he could then use Temporal Passage to appear next to Gritty.

  “A surprise addition!” the Sylvan said. He frowned as he recognized Ray. “Ah, it’s you. I’m glad you finally arrived. I had honestly been waiting to face you.”

  Ray was spared the need to answer as his pursuer arrived into the fray as well. The Depthless Gargoyle was still shrieking and roaring as he hurtled towards where all the fighting was going on.

  The Sylvan as he turned to face the Gargoyle with an annoyed expression, which gave Ray an opportunity to address Gritty. “You good?”

  Her laugh was a little stuttered. “I’ve gone through a whole lot worse, wingman.”

  She was wounded, blood streaming down the side of her face and where she had been pierced by one of the Sylvan’s hornlike growths near her waist. Nevertheless, she didn’t act wounded. Ray wasn’t sure how much that was bravado and how much the wounds really were not much more than superficial.

  But ultimately, Gritty was right. She had gone through worse. She’d live. So Ray could focus more on beating their opponent more than on helping his teammate.

  When Ray turned back to the Sylvan, he had already dealt with the Gargoyle. It was both surprising and concerning with how fast he had been able to disable the monster. A forest of hornlike growths had emerged to constrict the Gargoyle, actually holding it in place. Even with the help of the petrified vines, it couldn’t fully free itself as the growths regenerated too fast.

  “Don’t tell me you’re the Floor Lord’s henchman,” Ray said.

  The Sylvan faced Ray with a smirk. “Your uncouth words only draw your death closer, upstart human.”

  “Well, that answers that.”

  Ray was faster on the draw than the Sylvan. He had a feeling his enemy had at least a few more levels on him, but at least he was quicker.

  Aetheric Trace drew the draconic head around Ray’s hand, which he immediately fired. The flaming blast shot out fast enough to singe the Sylvan even after he dodged rapidly. But the wounds didn’t leave much of a mark. As the Sylvan slowed down to retaliate, tiny hornlike projections grew out of the burns, replacing the charred skin and meat with glowing power.

  Power that the Sylvan used to attack Ray with blinding speed and ferocity. His whole body shone golden white, before barrelling forward like he had been fired from a cannon.

  Ray sad seen it coming. Something like that, at least. That was why he had the Impenetrable Shell construct right in front of him just in time.

  It cracked but held, stopping the Sylvan in his tracks.

  Ray: We don’t need to beat this guy here and now.

  Gritty: I know. Marcus already ran off.

  Though they were chatting, both their attention was on mainly their opponent. As the Sylvan had smashed to a stop against Ray’s construct, Gritty had slipped in her own move. Blood coated the floor under the Impenetrable Shell, and when the Sylvan had tried to move away, he found his motion greatly impeded.

  Gritty flashed in with a furious yell, a spear of bloodied bone emerging from her hand to lance into their attacker. Ray was following up too, the Windbane head around his hand brimming with deep blue fire.

  But before Gritty’s attack could land, they were blocked by an interference.

  At the very last moment before they unleashed their combined abilities, Ray checked himself and grabbed Gritty with his free arm before drawing them both back. Just in time, as a storm of red energy arcs sliced through where they had been a second ago.

  “Ah, shoot,” the man said. The human who was a part of Team Albatross. “How’d you know I was aiming for you?”

  It was hard to recognize the guy. Well, it would have been, had his teammates not been so recognizable. The Galiant and the Sylvan were far too distinct and familiar from all the previous times Ray had seen them. Which, by the process of elimination, left the figure garbed in dark, smoky armour and holding a thick, scarlet sword as the one who had to be the human.

  Ray had no intention of revealing his tricks, but he silently thanked the Scouring Eyeball floating far above them providing him a bid’s eye view of everything.

  “Real sneaky,” he said instead. “Using your pal as a distraction to take us out from a distance.”

  Marcus: You guys still alive?

  Gritty: You there?

  Marcus: Yeah, pretty much. Coast is clear.

  Ray waited for the right opportunity. As much as he was tempted to teleport with Gritty in tow right that instant, he wondered if he could debilitate his opponents before he left.

  The Gargoyle had almost liberated itself from the Sylvan’s binds. Strong as the Growth Mana projections were, they couldn’t last forever, and the monster was nearly free again. Even though both the Sylvan and the human were facing Ray and Gritty, he knew all their attention was at least partly on the Depthless Gargoyle.

  On how fast things could take a turn for the worse.

  “You know,” Ray said to the armour-clad human. “I never got why you decided to team up with a bunch of randoms. Also, I don’t think I ever caught your name.”

  “Name’s Pierce,” he said. His eyes flashed inside his helm. “And—”

  With a roar, the Depthless Gargoyle freed itself. Of the others, one had already fallen, while two more were being held by the Galiant. Now, with their numbers replenished, the Sylvan and the human—Pierce—couldn’t ignore the monsters any longer.

  The attention shifted away. Now was their chance. Ray grabbed Gritty’s arm and used Temporal Passage. Just as they both disappeared, Ray caught sight of Pierce using a powerful ability. An explosion of blistering red arcs emerged from his sword, sparkles of scarlet energy falling on everything everywhere, including Ray and Gritty a millisecond before they vanished.

  Ray staggered in place when Temporal Passage ended.

  “You good?” Gritty asked, echoing his earlier question.

  He nodded mutely. As he consumed another crystal, he looked around. The remains of a Depthless Gargoyle lay nearby in another chamber. Had Marcus killed it? More importantly, he caught sight of the purple haze he had seen when first entering the dungeon.

  They were close to the main dungeon boss room.

  Aeon Mana flooded Ray, taking away the fatigued feeling from using up all his Mana.

  “You guys made it!” Marcus said. “Although, what’s all that covering you…?”

  Ray blinked. He looked down at himself. Those red motes from whatever skill Pierce had used clung to his robes and skin. Shit, were they in his hair and beard too? Annoying. Also, concerning.

  “We should get this off, it’s from—”

  Crimson light burst to life around them. Ray twisted around, heart jumping in his chest as a jagged portal opened, revealing Pierce stepping through, still clad in his dark armour. The portal appeared to bleed out of the sword.

  Marcus swore, stepping back. “The hell did you guys bring with you?”

  Ray bit down on his own curse. The red sparkles. That skill from Pierce had to have been on purpose. It had led him straight to Ray’s team.

  Before anyone could speak, before panic could take root, Ray yelled out first, “You know the drill! Go.”

  With a curse, Gritty jerked away. Marcus followed a fraction of a second later.

  Pierce’s eyes followed the duo, but he didn’t move. Because his opponent hadn’t moved. He eventually focused on Ray, then smiled. “You asked why I’m allied with randoms, as you called them? Well, let me put it this way. Those randoms want the same thing that I do, so we’re working together.”

  “And what’s that?” Ray asked.

  “Tower Nodes.”

  here!