Instinct honed from countless fights was the only thing that saved me as my mind kept looping, wondering why in the name of everything holy the goddamned Trial Guardian was here, on floor five, of all places.

  Luckily, my body had a mind of its own, grabbing Richard and running the instant that massive dragon opened its mouth. Think later. Act now.

  Dragons opening mouths usually meant one of two things—either they were about to chomp you, or they were going to fire magic. Both bad enough to ruin your day.

  Aerion, always quick on the uptake, followed suit, grabbing Rogar and Philip and bounding the other way.

  We just barely managed to avoid getting scorched, proving in an instant that, despite outranking the monster, it was still very much capable of ending us.

  “Richard! I dunno how much you can do against that thing, but do it!”

  “Already on it! I’m giving it everything I’ve got. Can’t tell if it’s doing much of anything, though.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Just keep up the pressure.”

  I looked around the cavern we were in. It was big, but the dragon clearly hadn’t been intended for this space. The ceiling was riddled with pointy stalactites, and it wasn’t nearly big enough for the massive beast to fly.

  In fact, it could barely even spread its wings.

  That was good. The advantage favored us.

  Unfortunately, pretty much everything else didn’t.

  The angry dragon belched out another blasts of black fire, scorching the walls of the cavern. The blast ricocheted off the walls like a laser on a mirror, burning several other spots before finally dying out.

  My mind shifted into overdrive as I ran through a litany of possible attack plans.

  As it was, my suit’s ability and my Grace allowed me to move faster than the dragon could. I doubted I’d be in any real danger, even if the thing turned and blew fire on me straight on. The thing telegraphed each attack by opening its mouth for a couple of seconds. Plenty of time to get away.

  Aerion had yet to activate [Reave], probably because the moment she did, she’d likely drop Rogar and Philip, deeming them dead weight.

  Which they kinda were. If we wanted any hope of beating this thing, she’d have to drop them off somewhere.

  Problem was there was no safe place here for them. Nowhere was out of range of the dragon’s breath. We just had to hope we distracted it enough to leave them alone… And defeat it before it found them.

  As it was, Aerion was barely managing to avoid the attacks. Much longer, and she’d get hit.

  I needed a plan, and I needed it now.

  “Aerion!” I shouted. “Drop off those guys at the other end. I’ll distract the dragon.”

  Aerion shouted something in response that I couldn’t quite understand, but I figured she got the message.

  Summoning my inventory, I concentrated on the hot magma rocks I’d gathered… and unleashed a barrage.

  A hailstorm of superheated pebbles pounded against the dragon’s head… And to my surprise, many actually penetrated, forming tiny cracks in its obsidian armor. I doubted the heat did much against an enemy made of obsidian, but their speed certainly did. Many more missed, though, as the dragon whipped its head to face me.

  That volley had cost me two hundred pebbles. I had about eight hundred more where that came from. Four shots.

  I fired again, but because the thing’s snout was pointed at me, only about a third hit.

  Again, I could see them penetrating and doing damage… Just not enough. It was like firing grains of sand at a person. Sure, they might punch right through, but you needed a lot of them to make a meaningful hole.

  I had, however, succeeded in making the dragon mad as hell.

  Which was good, because it gave Aerion the window she needed to drop her cargo.

  Bad because the dragon was now charging its breath attack at me.

  I blurred away, activating [Snap]. As I suspected, the dragon couldn’t actually whip its head around fast enough to follow me.

  That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that if I moved around too much, I’d lead the dragon’s breath directly to where Rogar and Philip were now cowering.

  I couldn’t just lead the dragon around in a circle. I’d have to double back at some point.

  And that meant placing myself directly into its field of fire.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. Even if I might’ve survived a blast like that, the Brit piggybacking on me certainly wouldn’t.

  Luckily, my amazing partner came to my rescue.

  Aerion had activated [Reave] at some point and jumped onto the dragon’s back, where she was hacking away at its Obsidian scale in an almost perfect reenactment of our first fight. Unlike that time, though, she was having some luck with it.

  The dragon canceled its attack and writhed, trying to fling her off.

  That was my chance. I stopped running, planted my feet, took aim… And fired a single [Steel Dart]. This was one of the four with the [Ouch!] and [Burst!] abilities. The former expanded the entry wound. The latter made the dart blow up.

  These babies were one-time use, but I was figuring one was all I would need.

  I was both right and wrong.

  The writhing dragon turned at the last moment, making my attack aimed for its head miss and hit its wing instead.

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  Everything in a yard-long radius of said wing promptly exploded in a shower of Obsidian shards.

  While the attack hadn’t destroyed the whole wing, if the dragon did try to fly with that damage, it would certainly notice the missing chunk.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t flying, and the wing functioned just fine as a fly swatter, even with a chunk gouged out.

  My attack caused the dragon to turn its attention back to me, which meant it was time to run again.

  Only, our orientations had shifted over the course of the battle. And now I was far too close to Rogar and Philip’s hiding position for comfort.

  Spinning on a dime, I activated [Snap] and bolted to their location, barely even stopping before scooping them up.

  I turned again, and bolted away.

  I was almost quick enough. Almost.

  The Obsidian Dragon’s black flame scoured the cavern floor, and while I avoided the primary blast, I wasn’t lucky enough to miss the ricochet. I pivoted on my heel in the fraction of a second I had before it hit me.

  I avoided. The blacksmith under my left arm did not.

  Rogar screamed in pain as the black flame melted through his armor.

  “Fuck! Richard, Philip. I’m putting you guys down. Get your canteens ready and throw that Sanctuary water on Rogar wherever his armor’s melted.

  I didn’t wait to hear their reply before dumping them. I didn’t wait to see how they were getting along before bolting away, firing another volley of superheated pebbles at the dragon.

  Aerion had the damage potential. I had the mobility and some damage potential, but getting my shots to hit had proven tricky. How many more darts did I want to waste on this thing? We still had the real Trial Guardian to kill, afterall. I wanted to keep at least a few in reserve.

  Think, Greg. Think. What other attacks… Oh. Oh.

  My lips curled up into a nasty grin. There was that. That attack used no ammo. That attack combined both of our advantages.

  Yes. That was the way to go. Only question was... how the fuck was I supposed to communicate with Aerion when she was reaving?

  A plan came to mind. A stupid plan, perhaps, but one that might just work… assuming I didn’t get myself killed in the process.

  I ran to a corner of the room and dumped the forge in my inventory on the ground.

  “Yo, Aerion!” I hollered. A mostly useless gesture, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

  Incredibly, Aerion actually stopped whaling on the dragon’s back to look in my general direction.

  “I have a plan! Come down here!”

  Aerion glared at me for a moment… Before resuming smashing the dragon’s back with Aurora.

  “Welp,” I muttered. “Guess we’ll do this the hard way.”

  With the dragon flailing so much, climbing the thing was a lot harder than it looked. It took me two attempts to get on the thing, and another two after it threw me off.

  I had to give Aerion some serious credit for nailing it with a single attempt. Even with her super strength, it couldn’t have been easy. I almost felt like the strength was almost a secondary benefit—her single-minded, relentless focus while under the effects of [Reave] was a superpower on its own. That was something you usually only saw in the most elite soldiers back on Earth.

  One scale after another, I climbed my way up the dragon’s back. Thankfully, with both of us climbing the thing, it no longer felt the need to use its flame breath.

  Instead, it spent its time careening all over the place, smashing against the cavern walls in a desperate bid to rip us off. Being made of Obsidian, it actually damaged itself in the process, much like the Troll we’d fought earlier. Not enough to matter, though. My HUD told me it was still near full health, even after the damage to its wing.

  “Aerion!” I shouted again, coming up next to her. “Aerion, listen to me. I need you to attack when—Ah, fuck it.”

  Aerion wasn’t listening. As usual, she knelt on the dragon’s back, ruining her poor Aurora by smashing it into its thick Obsidian armor.

  Deciding enough was enough, I activated [Snap], my leg blurring faster than Aerion could react. With my super speed, I kicked the weapon out of her hand, sending it flying into the distance. Aerion watched the weapon disappear before spinning to me in anger.

  Before she could do anything, I threw her Light of the Fearless.

  She grabbed it out of the air, activating its twin abilities almost instantly.

  Then she grabbed the blade with both hands and drew the blade close to her body, looking like she was about to thrust it into the dragon hide.

  I didn’t let her.

  Praying this would work, I touched her shoulder… And sucked her into my inventory.

  The consent message I’d been dreading didn’t pop up. As I’d hoped, the System recognized Aerion’s consent was a persistent thing, and so she disappeared without issue.

  I pumped my fist. Operation Elf Cannon was a go.

  Rising to my feet, I ran the remainder of the dragon’s back, gripping its scales to keep my balance when it thrashed… all the way up to its head. Every step I took felt easier and easier, until its motions didn’t bother me at all.

  I reached the top of its head and jumped, hurling myself into a backflip as I did. I’d never done a backflip in my life. And yet, the motion came naturally.

  Twisting in midair like an aerialist, I extended my arm as I fell, upside down. Taking aim, I fired a single [Steel Dart] at the dragon’s snout.

  The dart impacted and exploded almost before I’d even finished thinking about attacking, disintegrating the front third of the dragon’s face. And crucially, its array of razor-sharp Obsidian teeth, leaving a perfectly round opening.

  An Aerion-sized opening.

  Eat this, motherfucker…

  Still falling, I took aim and fired.

  Yep. I fired Aerion. Right into the dragon’s gaping hole. Right as I landed on the ground far below, giving me a clear view of the spectacle that was about to unfold.

  Aerion’s unstoppable momentum smashed apart what remained of the dragon’s teeth.

  An impressive attack on its own, but that was only the beginning. A much deadlier weapon had just appeared, and its name was Aerion.

  I’d never seen anything quite like it.

  Aerion didn’t penetrate the roof of its mouth. She didn’t slice it.

  No, she exploded through, each slash of Light of the Fearless shredding a different part of its skull, sending a thousand tiny shards flying in every direction.

  Without its armor to protect it from the inside, Aerion’s slashes, augmented by [Reave] and my sword, absolutely devastated the dragon.

  In the end, there was nothing left. The damned dragon’s whole head was just… gone, leaving only a neck attached to a corpse. The dragon’s body froze for a second, before crashing heavily onto the ground, shattering into a million pieces.

  Pretty similar to last time, now that I thought about it. Except this time, we hadn’t needed a hundred sonic explosives. We didn’t need ammo. We’d relied on our own power, and that meant we could replicate the feat anytime, anywhere.

  Aerion, of course, fell with it.

  Jumping high, I caught her in my arms before she hit. With her ridiculously light weight, it was like catching a feather. With the only foe in the area vanquished, [Reave]'s effects allowing Aerion to come back to her senses. Gone were the days when she'd constantly pass out. Her higher Essence pool and our general skill at killing enemies fast both mitigated that weakness. She really was a sight to behold.

  I grinned at her, and she grinned right back. “Anyone ever tell you you make one hell of a bullet?”

  Aerion’s grin melted, replaced by a pout.

  Oh, shit.