“An instant-kill move?” Muradin asked, disbelief cutting through the tavern’s raucous noise.

  “Yes,” I said flatly. “Its tail strike hits like Mordok’s slamming axe. Don’t even think about blocking it.”

  Muradin grimaced and lifted his mug as if testing its weight, then set it down untouched.

  I slid a sheet of paper across the table, torn straight from the library ledger.

  “And that’s not even the worst part,” I said, tapping a line and pushing it toward Darwyn.

  He read it once. Then again, slower.

  “When it’s on the verge of death,” he said, “the monster burrows underground and escapes. If that happens, the party is forced to wait until the Tower of Ascension closes.”

  Elena went pale before he finished. Her fingers rose to her mouth, nails catching between her teeth.

  “That’s exactly why we’re talking about it now,” Orin said quickly, leaning forward. “We know it’s coming. We plan for it.”

  Elena nodded a little too fast, then went right back to chewing her nails.

  ***

  Back in the chamber, after several more brutal tail strikes, each one flirting with disaster, the King Kobold finally began to slow.

  Its movements lost their snap. Its tail dragged a fraction longer between swings. Each breath scraped out harsher than the last.

  It was close.

  “We finish this now,” Muradin growled.

  “Wait.”

  Orin’s voice cut clean through the tension.

  We turned. She stood apart from us, staff raised, its head wrapped in a slow spiral of blue light. The energy didn’t burn. It didn’t lash out.

  It pressed inward, against Mana itself.

  The space around the King Kobold thickened, like water turning to gel. For a fleeting instant, I felt tremendous energy coming from its body.

  “Orin,” Darwyn snapped. “What are you doing?”

  The light washed over the monster and sank into its frame.

  This wasn’t in the plan.

  Nothing happened, and Orin didn’t look uncertain.

  “Finish it.”

  The way she said it, calm and absolute, made my stomach drop.

  Orin didn’t gamble. If she was forcing our hand now, it meant she’d already seen something we hadn’t.

  [Quickdraw cast]

  Muradin’s gear shifted in a blink. Shield and hammer dissolved into light, replaced by Mordok’s twin Battleaxes, heavy enough to bite the floor as they landed in his grip.

  I proceeded.

  [Inner Beast cast]

  Raw power flooded Muradin’s frame. His breath hitched. Veins stood out along his arms as he raised both axes overhead.

  For a split second, the King Kobold moved.

  Its claws dug into the ground, stone cracking as it tried to burrow.

  [Thunderstrike Slam cast]

  The axes came down.

  The impact erased sound.

  Shockwaves tore through the chamber, splitting stone and hurling water outward in a screaming ring. The King Kobold let out one last, broken roar as the strike crushed through bone, muscle, and resistance alike.

  Its body spasmed.

  Then went still.

  We stood there, ears ringing, staring at the corpse as if expecting it to move again.

  “We…” Muradin exhaled. “We stopped it.”

  Nobody answered.

  Because something else was happening.

  ***

  Thunderstrike Slam.

  An ultimate skill bound to Mordok’s Battleaxe, devastating but burdened with an absurdly long cooldown. We’d saved it for the one moment that mattered.

  As the axes struck home, a brilliant shimmer erupted from the King Kobold’s corpse, flooding the chamber in blinding light.

  Mana Stones began to materialize.

  One.

  Then another.

  Then several more, clinking softly as they struck stone.

  I frowned.

  The reward for a King Kobold was always generous, but this was excessive. Nearly double what it should have been.

  Darwyn was the first to speak.

  “Uh… not that I’m complaining,” he said slowly, eyes sweeping the chamber, “but why the hell are there so many?”

  I turned toward Orin. The pieces were already lining up in my head.

  “This,” I said carefully, “is because of Mana Surge. Isn’t it?”

  Her eyes lit up instantly.

  “Ooooh, you figured it out already?” she said, beaming. “You’re sharper than I thought!”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I let out a long breath. “You planned this from the start.”

  She tilted her head, giggling. “I told you, you’d be impressed by my hidden trick.”

  Muradin chuckled. “Oh, come on. You two sound insufferable. Get a room.”

  I shot him a glare. Orin turned bright red.

  Elena, ever silent, watched the exchange with the faintest hint of a smirk.

  “Okay, hold on,” Darwyn said, raising a hand. “Back up. I still don’t get it. How did this even work?”

  Orin twirled her staff once before resting it against her shoulder.

  “Mana Surge,” she said simply.

  She met his stare, her tone sobering.

  “It’s a Mana recovery spell. Long cooldown. Mediocre effect. Most people ignore it. But it has a hidden interaction. If you cast it on an enemy right before they die…”

  She gestured to the glowing stones.

  “Their Mana Stone drop rate spikes.”

  “How did you even know Mana Surge would do that?” I asked.

  “When monsters are about to die,” Orin continued, voice softer now, “their Mana changes. It… loosens. Like it’s slipping out of a cracked container.”

  She gestured vaguely in the air, fingers curling.

  “I can feel it. Just a little. Some of it materialized. The rest slipped away.”

  “So you tested it,” I said.

  She nodded. “Mana Surge pulls Mana back into circulation. I thought… if I cast it just before that was happening…”

  She spread her hands, smiling sheepishly.

  “It worked.”

  Darwyn stared. “That’s… actually brilliant.”

  Muradin whistled. “You’ve been holding out on us.”

  Darwyn grinned. “If you weren’t already taken, I’d kiss you.”

  Muradin snorted. “Careful. Erynd looks like he’d rip your face off.”

  “Shut up!” Orin snapped, swatting both of them with her staff.

  I watched her.

  A genius.

  Twelve years.

  Twelve years of playing Dreadspire. Of learning every mechanic, every exploit, every hidden interaction I thought the game had to offer.

  And here she was, a newborn druid, revealing something I had never once discovered.

  That wasn’t a trick you learned. That was something you noticed.

  I looked at the Mana Stones again. Then back at Orin.

  So that was it.

  That was how she’d walked out of her first exploration with more Mana Stones than any beginner had a right to possess.

  ***

  With the battle over, we immediately got to work, gathering the Mana Stones and any loot left behind.

  Unfortunately, luck wasn’t entirely on our side.

  “No rare drops?” Darwyn muttered, sifting through the scattered remains.

  I sighed, shaking my head. “Nope. No Soul Fragment either.”

  “Tch.” The sound escaped before I could stop it. A King Kobold Soul Fragment would’ve been worth months of progress, but drops like that were never guaranteed.

  “Well, you win some, you lose some,” Orin said with a shrug. “At least we got a ton of Mana Stones.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, tucking the glowing blue crystals away. “Could’ve been worse.”

  After a short rest, we finally turned our attention to the tunnel that had formed where the King Kobold fell.

  It climbed sharply upward, a narrow shaft of rough stone vanishing into darkness. A cold draft breathed down from above, carrying the faint scrape of stone on stone. A thick rope hung along one wall, worn and frayed in places, but anchored well enough to trust.

  Muradin squinted at it. Then groaned. “Wait… don’t tell me we have to climb this thing.”

  “Looks like it,” Darwyn said, rolling his shoulders as if already preparing for the pain.

  Muradin rubbed his arms. “No shortcut? No teleportation rune? Nothing?”

  I smirked. “You’re welcome to stay down here if you prefer.”

  Muradin shot me a glare. “Darn it.”

  And so, we began the climb.

  The walls were uneven and slick with condensation, forcing us to move slowly. Every pull sent a dull burn through my arms, my muscles protesting with each meter gained. More than once, I felt the rope jolt as someone nearly lost their grip.

  “Orin, move your foot. You’re stepping on my hand!”

  “Oops! Sorry!”

  “Muradin, stop shaking the frickin’ rope!”

  “I’m not shaking it,” he snapped. “That’s just my arms giving up.”

  By the time we hauled ourselves over the edge, my hands were numb and my legs trembling. We emerged near the secret wall Muradin had smashed open earlier, the familiar stone floor never looking so welcoming.

  The moment my boots hit solid ground, I leaned hard against the wall, chest heaving.

  “I hate this dungeon,” Muradin muttered, dropping down beside me.

  Darwyn followed suit, flopping onto his back. “Agreed.”

  Elena said nothing, as usual. She simply sat down, brushing dust from her armor, her quiet nod saying more than words.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the ache settle into every bone. It was clear we weren’t pushing any farther tonight.

  “We camp here,” I said at last.

  No one argued.

  Without another word, we began setting up for the night. Movements slow, bodies battered but unbroken.

  Tomorrow, we’d move forward.

  But for now, with the Tower pressing silently around us and exhaustion weighing heavier than fear, we rested.

  ***

  "Ah, good as new!" Muradin declared proudly, inspecting his freshly repaired shield and armor. After a long rest, he’d wasted no time hammering out dents and reinforcing battered plates, each strike ringing sharply through the tunnel.

  A short distance away, Darwyn was guiding Elena through the basics of pathfinding and enemy detection.

  “See this mark?” he said, pointing to a shallow groove along the stone wall. “Claw scratch. Kobolds, most likely. If you pay attention to things like this, you can tell which routes are still active, and which ones are traps waiting to happen.”

  Elena nodded, crouching to study it more closely.

  Meanwhile, Orin and I checked our remaining supplies.

  “We’re still good on healing potions,” I muttered, counting the vials in my hand. Then I frowned. “But we’re running low on Electroflasks. Is this really all we have left?”

  Orin glanced at the empty space beside my pack and grinned. “Relax. Leave it to me.”

  [Materialization cast]

  Thin blue lines shimmered into existence, weaving together in midair. One by one, the missing ingredients formed and dropped softly into Orin’s waiting hands. The glow faded almost immediately.

  I blinked. “That’s why you brought so many materials earlier.”

  She puffed out her chest. “Impressive, right? I can recreate any basic material I’ve studied before.”

  I smirked, but the feeling didn’t quite settle. “Then why do you still insist on gathering materials with me all the time?”

  “E—!” Orin froze. Her face flushed bright pink. “I-it’s just more efficient if we collect things together! That’s all!” she said, far too quickly.

  The explanation didn’t add up.

  I let it go anyway.

  Once preparations were complete, we pushed deeper into the underground tunnels. This time, Elena took the lead, carefully guiding us through mapped routes while Darwyn stayed just behind her, quietly correcting the occasional misstep.

  Along the way, we gathered monster drops for our active quests.

  Then we felt it.

  Not hostility, but presence.

  Hovering near a branching tunnel was a dense, formless mass of Mana, slowly folding in on itself like a breath held too long.

  The Great Spirit of Deepnest Tunnel.

  The stone beneath it was worn smoother than the surrounding rock. Mana flowed oddly there, bending inward before vanishing into the wall.

  It didn’t move.

  Didn’t react.

  Didn’t even acknowledge us.

  No one spoke as we passed it.

  I glanced back once, just long enough to notice the Mana flow hadn’t changed.

  Not long after, we stumbled upon a hidden chamber glowing faintly with pale green light.

  Endura Shrooms.

  Extremely rare. And only three of them.

  Orin and Elena stared as I, Darwyn, and Muradin each plucked one and swallowed it whole. Warmth spread through my limbs almost instantly, exhaustion peeling away layer by layer.

  [Endura Shroom consumed. +2 Vitality, +1 HP Regeneration, +2 Stamina]

  “Well,” I said, flexing my fingers as strength flowed back into them, “the strong take what they can.”

  Elena crossed her arms, scowling. “The strong should also share, you know.”

  Muradin laughed, clapping her lightly on the shoulder. “Survival of the fittest, lass.”

  Orin pouted, then sighed. “Fine. But if you idiots get sick from eating weird mushrooms, don’t come crying to me.”

  Laughter echoed softly through the chamber as we moved on, pressing deeper into the tunnels, unaware of what we’d just walked past, and what might be watching us still.

  [Soul Capacity: 1

  Vitality: 33 --> 35

  Physical Resistance: 6

  Magic Resistance: 9

  Fire Resistance: 5

  Ice Resistance: 5

  Wind Resistance: 5

  Earth Resistance: 5

  HP Regen: 2 --> 3

  Stamina: 3 --> 5

  Strength: 64

  Agility: 18

  Flexibility: 6

  Movement Speed: 5

  Wisdom: 52

  Wind Magic Penetration: 13

  Mana Regen: 14

  Luck: -11

  Willpower: 134]

  [Spells: Rejuvenation, Galestride, Inner Beast, Tempest Shield, Wind Cutter

  Passives: Refined Enlightenment, Ooborosk’s Mantle]