Ashinaro stared in confusion at Zanas as he ineffectually beat at a Copper Beast.

  Not many monsters were near Arkalis, but eventually he’d spotted a sandeater not far from the road. Sandeaters were smallish Beasts about the size of a man’s torso with four limbs better suited for digging than moving around with. They had hard shells protecting their bodies, but were prone to cracking at even the slightest impact from an empowered weapon.

  Zanas could fit Ashinaro’s backpack in his scepter, but complained about being cramped. Ashinaro wanted to test out how much more he could fit, but didn’t want to go around the city looking for things not bolted down, so the plan—which Zanas had been both excited and disgusted by—had been to head out and hunt monsters and see how many corpses could fit.

  Things were not going to plan.

  “Did you drink one of Akaris’s potions?” Mixing a skittering spirit and berserk surge potion might cause something like this, though if he hadn’t been affected by the arnaphen poison, it seemed unlikely he’d be affected by anything.

  “I didn’t have time! Should I try one now?”

  “I don’t think that will help.”

  “Well this isn’t working!” Zanas cried in desperation, frantically beating the Beast about the head to no effect. “You must have done something when you lost my arms and legs.”

  “You have your arms and legs.”

  “Well, now I do, but”—the sandeater lunged but Zanas bonelessly dodged—“I didn’t before.”

  “How would that affect your ability to harm them?”

  Zanas swatted at the monster again. It connected, but harmed the Beast not at all. “I don’t know! I’m not the one who lost them.”

  “Try biting it. Or let it knock your head off. See if that does anything.” That was after all how Zanas had taken out the mirewalker.

  Though Zanas didn’t look at him, he could feel the mental glare.

  It was strange. He’d done damage to a Gold Beast—not to mention the shade, who was a Champion—and yet this Copper seemed utterly unaffected by his attacks, even with the scepter.

  Ashinaro joined the battle, slamming his staff down on the monster to see if maybe it was just unusually resilient.

  The sandeater split in half and died.

  Zanas panted. “Whew, that was a marvelous display of dashing heroics, if I do say so myself. You don’t have to thank me.” Zanas’s mask flipped to the frowning side. “You really should though. You don’t want to be rude to your parasite.”

  “You weren’t the one who killed it, I was.”

  “You say that, but I weakened it for you.”

  “Are you still weakened from the damage the priest did to you?”

  “How am I supposed to know? It’s not like I’ve got a little man inside me to ask. Or a big one. Or anyone at all.”

  They fought a few more monsters in case the sandeater was immune to Zanas’s attacks for some reason, and Ashinaro even had him try using his fossilized staff in case the scepter was the cause, but they were all the same. Zanas did no damage to them.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Zanas complained, floating in his insubstantial form as they roamed the wilds near Arkalis in search of more monsters. “I feel fine. You must have infected my scepter.”

  “My staff didn’t work either, remember? Or your teeth.”

  Zanas’s mask flipped to the frowning side.

  Desperate, he’d tried biting the third monster they’d fought, but it did the same amount of damage as the staff or his scepter or fists or feet. Which was to say none.

  They’d only fought weak Copper Beasts, but even those were too much for Zanas.

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t physically affect the monsters. He could. He just couldn’t do any real damage to them.

  Ashinaro thought Zanas felt, not weaker, but something like drained or empty.

  He just hoped it was temporary like with the mirewalker, and not some effect of that light that had exploded from Vershik and washed through them.

  At least he could store items inside the scepter. There were limits, unfortunately, and he could only fit a small monster corpse inside. Living monsters he couldn’t store at all.

  Ashinaro had a corpse in there he was going to attempt to sell, but likely wouldn’t get much for it.

  It was nice not to have to carry anything himself. His pack with all his belongings as well as his staff and coin pouch fit within the scepter. The only item he kept on himself was the storm sash for the speed boost since keeping an item that wasn’t a weapon linked while not wearing it was difficult.

  “I think I need more sleep. Quick, go to sleep so I can steal more of your power.”

  “You don’t have to fight. I’m doing well enough on my own anyway.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “I’m not so sure I like this adventure anymore.”

  The ropethorn thrashed about as Ashinaro’s flesh golem beat it with his staff and Zanas’s scepter.

  Despite his Staff Mastery boon, it was still awkward using two weapons, especially with the golem.

  He was more effective than with just his staff alone, but there was something odd about the scepter—other than the fact that it housed a living skeleton and was capable of storing items much larger than itself.

  It didn’t seem to do any greater damage to monsters than his staff did. If anything, it was maybe slightly less. But he felt enhanced in some way when he used it.

  Well, he hadn’t realized he’d been ‘wearing’ the mask, so perhaps the scepter had some effect that he was unaware of.

  Zanas hadn’t mentioned it, but then again, he hadn’t mentioned what the mask had been able to do until showing it off.

  “I can’t know what you don’t know, can I?” Zanas huffed. He was standing beside the fleshless Ashinaro, watching his golem battle the ropethorn.

  “You can read my mind.”

  “Well yes, but only what you’re thinking. It’s not like I can go digging around in your memories. And even if I could, why would I want to? The past is boring.”

  Ashinaro disagreed. There were many interesting things that had occurred in the past he’d like to know about. Like whatever was contained within Unar’s journal, and who Unar was, and the purpose of his tower and why Zanas had been locked away in it.

  “This is taking forever,” Zanas complained.

  “It’s been a few breaths,” he said absently. He didn’t doubt he’d easily be able to defeat the ropethorn, but he did need to concentrate if he wanted his flesh golem to do more than just stand there.

  The monster was a Gold Beast, many-limbed, the width of his thigh and about as long as he was tall.

  It was the first ropethorn he’d fought, but would be his fifth kill of the morning.

  It was agile and strong, yet his flesh golem had taken no damage thanks to his new curse.

  [Joy’s Curse]

  causes the target to weep blood, impeding vision until finally succumbing to exsanguination.

  The ropethorn was weeping blood, despite not having any eyes from which to weep.

  It was a strange sight, having blood just leak from antennae that shouldn’t be able to possess blood, but it did seem to be effective.

  It could clearly still see, but was so greatly hindered by the curse that his golem easily avoided its attacks.

  Now, he could tell the monster was flagging, nearly dead.

  In a desperate last-ditch effort, the ropethorn lunged, wrapping around the golem before it could evade.

  It had sharp legs coated in hair-thin barbs which easily pierced his armor and caused lots of minor damage. With his golem’s enhanced regeneration, they healed so swiftly it pushed the barbs out, but even with the red core instilled in Flesh’s Frenzy reducing blood loss, the regeneration was quickly causing blood to pool at Ashinaro’s feet.

  So he activated Whirling Rush’s secondary effect and was yanked back into his flesh.

  [Whirling Rush (Flawless)]

  Amalgamated with [Flesh’s Frenzy].

  Fly forward while exhaling breath, causing any wielded empowered weapons to spin about you. While in flight, any damage you take is absorbed by your weapons.

  Alternately, while [Flesh’s Frenzy] is active, draw yourself toward your golem, creating a cloud of blood which blinds and weakens enemies. Any damage taken while in flight is transferred to your golem.

  The damage from the bleeding ropethorn constricting around him quickly overwhelmed his battleform’s ability to heal, but now it was tightly bound to him, which was exactly what he wanted.

  He activated the relic’s primary effect and launched forward, dragging the monster with him as his staff and scepter beat at it repeatedly without his intervention, all the damage the monster would have done to him redirected to his weapons.

  “I can feel that!” Zanas shouted. “You better not break my house.”

  The monster released him and tried to flee, but Ashinaro grabbed its body, not letting it go as the weapons continued to beat at it. He wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer, as he was almost out of breath.

  A moment later, it exploded from the onslaught.

  He inhaled, canceling the effect, and landed on his feet.

  He was getting better at that. In his second battle of the morning—after discovering Zanas’s ineffectiveness—he’d run out of breath midflight and landed on his face. Feet was a big improvement.

  Overall, he was pleased with his progress. Before today, he hadn’t had a proper battle with all his new abilities. They made it significantly easier to kill monsters.

  He’d especially underestimated how useful his Epitome Veil relic was when hunting monsters as compared to one-off encounters. Not only did it work on his golem, it usually lasted long enough so that he could ambush the next monster.

  It was highly effective. Not being able to see what was attacking them made it hard for the monsters to fight back.

  At least monsters that relied on sight, which the ropethorn hadn’t.

  Still, he’d dispatched it with relative ease. Maybe he could handle a Copper Fiend.

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Zanas said, strolling over to look at what remained of the ropethorn.

  Ashinaro looked down at his bleeding body. The wounds were already closing, but his Renewal trait was nowhere near as swift as his golem’s regeneration and would take a bit to heal fully, and Epitome Veil wouldn’t last quite that long.

  That gave him an idea, and he activated Flesh’s Frenzy, holding his breath.

  His flesh peeled free, then stood in front of him. As he watched, all the tiny wounds sealed shut.

  He took a breath and his flesh returned.

  He was a bit weakened from the blood loss, and he could feel pain where the barbs had penetrated the scales into his muscles before Whirling Rush had redirected the damage to his weapons, but he was otherwise healed. He’d still need time to recover, though. He could use Flesh’s Frenzy again, but felt like he’d be courting passing out.

  Even with the red core he’d instilled, he wasn’t entirely sure the method was more efficient than letting his battleform heal naturally. A blue core might help, and after the three-day run here, he was ready to instill another.

  But he wasn’t going to do it out here.

  While his body was healed, his armor was in much worse shape. His sash at least repaired itself, pulling from the battleform link, but the rest of his armor wasn’t empowered. It was still intact, mostly, so he wasn’t going to bother replacing it yet—especially since he’d need something adaptable for a drakken battleform—but he might have to start removing it before battle. With Zanas’s mask, he didn’t even really need to wear armor, as it was little protection against anything but the weakest of Beasts. At least until he could spare the coin for empowered armor.

  “And you said humans didn’t run around naked,” Zanas scoffed.

  Ashinaro looked over the scattered remains of the ropethorn for its core.

  Eventually he located it in one of the Beast’s many legs. Which was an odd spot for a core.

  He peered into it with his beyondsight, waiting to see if the essence within would coalesce.

  Twenty breaths passed and the essence stilled, then died.

  A hollow core. Useless except for decoration.

  “At least it doesn’t stink like monsters,” Zanas said.

  He picked it up anyway. Some people collected interesting cores as trophies, as you could still tell what monster they came from.

  He wasn’t a collector himself, but needed all the money he could get.

  “Maybe we should head back,” Zanas suggested. “The sun’s coming up and I want to see what clothing they have on offer.”

  The sky was light now, the sun peeking over the horizon. He needed to see about a place to stay, and a ticket out of here.

  “What’s with you and clothes? You’re a skeleton.”

  “I feel like the answer is obvious in the question.”