Cade kept walking through the swamp, feet squelching with every step as the thick muck sucked at his boots. The multicolored clearing wasn’t close—not even remotely. He estimated a couple of hours to get there, assuming he didn’t run into anything dangerous along the way.

  He scanned the trees around him and flicked his eyes over one of the twisted trunks, willing his [Identify] skill towards the tree.

  Spinecap Alder — A gnarled wetland tree with black bark and internal toxin sacs. Wood is highly durable but toxic to ingest or burn.

  He moved on, weaving between thick roots and splashing through ankle-deep water. The next tree he passed was broader, with thick, leathery leaves and a crown so heavy it sagged under its own weight.

  Droopwillow Sentinel — A broadleaf swamp tree known for its resilient root system and mildly acidic sap.

  Then a bush caught his eye. It was thick, its wide, glossy leaves surrounding thorny red berries.

  Barbspike Briar — Thorny wetland shrub with mildly narcotic berries. Berries can be consumed to dull pain, but risk hallucinations and nausea.

  Cade narrowed his eyes as he read over the description. These berries might be useful but he didn’t want to risk hallucinating when anything could attack him out here.

  He continued moving, testing the [Identify] skill on every strange plant he passed. There was no ping or audible click when the skill activated—no sensation of any kind. No mana cost or stamina drain. The System just somehow fed him knowledge and the more he used the skill, the more he wanted to figure out how it worked.

  As he neared a particularly thick patch of reeds, something moved.

  Cade froze. The rustling grew louder. A second later, something burst from the underbrush in a blur of shiny, segmented legs and glossy chitin.

  It was a centipede. And not a small one. It was over a meter long and nearly half a meter wide. Dozens of legs clicked as it scrambled toward him, mandibles wide and twitching.

  Cade quickly willed his [Identify] even as the insect charged at him.

  Marsh-Keel Centipede — Level 5

  A predatory swamp crawler known for its speed and aggression. Its venom is mild but highly effective against smaller prey.

  Cade stepped back and lifted his axe but the centipede was already lunging. Its movement was fast as it no doubt hoped to finish this with one quick bite.

  But Cade was faster.

  He spun to the side, his body reacting to the lunging centipede, and brought the axe down in a wide arc. The blade, embedded with the obsidian flake, sliced clean through the centipede’s midsection with almost no resistance.

  The creature’s upper and lower halves flopped to the mud.

  Cade took a step back as the head section kept moving.

  “Come on—”

  The still-living upper half wriggled toward him, twitching and clawing through the muck. Its mouthparts snapped open and shut as it dragged itself forward in an attempt to bite at Cade’s ankles.

  Cade, grimacing, lifted the axe and drove the spike end through its head. Thankfully it went limp right after the spike hit home.

  You have defeated Marsh-Keel Centipede — Level 5.

  You have gained experience.

  Cade stepped back, breathing a bit ragged. “That was disgusting.”

  He raised the axe slowly, turning it in his grip. The obsidian flake shimmered faintly, unmarred, not a single chip.

  There was no question—the flake of obsidian had cut through the centipede as easily as it cut through his hand. The chitin gave no resistance at all. It had sliced like the creature was made of paper. When he’d followed up with the spike to finish the job, there had been more pushback as he felt the chitin buckle and break under the impact, but he felt no such impediment when he struck with the obsidian edge.

  His voice came out low, almost a whisper.

  “That shouldn’t have been that easy.”

  He shook the insect’s blood off of his axe and ran his thumb along the flat of the metal—careful to avoid the flake’s edge—and swallowed hard before he kept moving.

  That one centipede wasn’t the last. Over the next hour, three more of the massive insects came for him, crawling from under roots and behind moss-covered boulders. The biggest was nearly 1.5 meters long and tougher than the rest, but none of them caught him off guard again and his axe made defeating them quite easy.

  By the time the last one collapsed, Cade heard the System’s chime.

  Ding!

  You have defeated Marsh-Keel Centipede — Level 6.

  You have gained additional experience for killing a creature above your level.

  Race: Human [G] has reached Level 6.

  +1 to all stats.

  “Nice,” Cade said, rolling his shoulders as he looked up ahead. After walking for hours and fighting a few centipedes, he had finally made it to the edge of the multicolored clearing.

  Through the trunks, the vibrant colors he’d seen earlier bloomed into view—red, blue, white, yellow. They were giant flowers.

  He slowed his pace, moving cautiously as the last of the trees gave way.

  Cade crouched low in the underbrush just at the edge of the clearing.

  From this close, the colors were even more vivid. Hundreds of massive swamp flowers of all shapes and sizes bloomed in a chaotic bouquet. Some were as wide as manhole covers, others were as tall as street lights, their petals curling outward in layers of blue, red, purple, and golden yellow. The air was rich with their sweet, almost intoxicating scent.

  But Cade barely noticed them now. Because just beyond the row of petals, something was fighting.

  He heard it before he saw it—deep, guttural grunts, rhythmic and breathy, like bellows forced through a strained throat. Then came the crack of impact. Followed by a sound Cade was already too familiar with: the skittering of segmented legs on hard-packed dirt.

  He dropped to a knee and crept forward through the plants at the treeline. The day was quickly growing dim as the artificial sun sank toward the west, casting hues of orange and pink across the sky. Light filtered down, painting everything in fading warmth.

  Then he saw it.

  At the center of the clearing, in a muddy flower-stomped area, was a massive lizard-like creature that was in the midst of fighting off a tide of centipedes.

  It was easily three meters long, covered in glistening scales mottled green and black. Its body was low to the ground, muscular and broad, with thick legs and a whip-like tail that lashed through the air like a striking snake. Its head was blunt and powerful, with forward-facing eyes and a wide, snapping jaw.

  The centipedes surrounding it were smaller than the ones Cade had killed, but they were numerous. At least twenty, maybe more, slithered and snapped around the lizard’s bulk.

  Cade narrowed his eyes and focused to [Identify] the lizard-like creature.

  Tegziran, Burrow-Warden of the Bloom — Level 9

  One of the Lords of the Swamp. Known for territorial aggression and fiercely protective instincts.

  Cade’s breath caught.

  Another Lord.

  He watched from the treeline as Tegziran fought, never straying far from the clearing’s center. Even when a centipede broke off and tried to circle, the lizard only chased it a few meters before turning back.

  It’s protecting something, Cade realized.

  In the center of the clearing, half-concealed by flowers, he spotted a mound of disturbed earth—a burrow, wide and deep. The flowers clustered around it were now stomped down and broken from the battle raging ahead. That was what Tegziran was guarding.

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  Its tail whipped out again, cracking like a gunshot. Cade flinched and quickly looked back over to the battle. He saw one of the centipedes go flying, its shell dented inward. In the next moment the tail connected cleanly with another and the centipede exploded in a cloud of twitching limbs and green ichor.

  “Holy fuck,” he whispered. “I do not want to get hit by that.”

  Tegziran pivoted, slashing with its claws. The chitin resisted, but the claws found the softer gaps between plates. The centipede writhed as the lizard dug its claws in and pulled the centipede’s segments apart with brute force.

  As the battle raged on Cade noticed that while Tegziran was clearly winning, the centipedes were still able to damage the Lord. It was bleeding from multiple thin cuts and punctures that lined its flanks and one of its legs dragged slightly.

  It’s tired, Cade thought. Wounded.

  Then came the bite. Tegziran clamped its powerful jaws around a centipede and crunched. The insect thrashed, then went limp as the lizard spat out its mangled remains.

  The field was littered now—broken centipede bodies, twitching limbs, splashes of dark blood staining the flower petals.

  And then something changed.

  Tegziran, just meters from finishing off one last centipede, suddenly stopped.

  Its head snapped toward the burrow.

  It dropped its attack, completely ignoring the injured insect, and sprinted back toward the clearing’s center.

  Cade leaned forward, puzzled.

  What’s it doing?

  That’s when the ground erupted.

  A centipede burst from the dirt near the burrow. But this one was massive. At least two and a half meters long, dark green in color with a segmented body twice as thick as Cade’s chest. Its mandibles were longer, serrated and glistening with venom, and the air shimmered around its wriggling limbs.

  Cade quickly used [Identify].

  Vine-Lasher Centipede — Level 10

  A rare variant of the Marsh-Keel Centipede.

  The creature reared up like a cobra, its front half lifting high into the air. Its many legs trembled with an unnatural rhythm.

  Then, with a sudden snap, thick vines burst from the ground on either side of the lizard lord. They wrapped around Tegziran’s midsection in an instant, coiling tight and pulling it off balance.

  Cade’s jaw dropped.

  It cast a spell. Even the insects in this Tutorial could cast magic.

  The vines tightened. But the lizard didn’t thrash. It didn’t roar.

  Instead, a low hum filled the air. A guttural, vibrating chant rolled like thunder through clearing even reaching Cade with enough force to reverberate in his bones.

  Then Tegziran opened its mouth and spat.

  A ball of green goo launched from its throat, arcing faster than Cade could track. The globule struck the Vine-Lasher Centipede dead center.

  The moment it hit, the centipede screeched.

  Steam rose from its body. Cade saw the goo eating into its segmented plates—acid, without a doubt. The centipede tried to retreat, but it was already too late. Its middle section dissolved, legs liquefying as the substance devoured its body.

  The front segment skittered away on instinct alone, mandibles twitching wildly, only making it a few meters before it collapsed. Dead.

  Cade crouched, stunned. That hadn’t been a fluke. Tegziran had waited—saved the attack for the biggest threat. The acid had ripped the centipede apart in seconds.

  “That tail,” Cade whispered, “the claws, the bite, and acid spit too?”

  The lizard lord remained still, tangled in vines, breathing heavily. Blood dripped from its many wounds but the field around it was quiet once more.

  Cade stayed crouched at the treeline, eyes fixed on the wounded lord.

  His heart hammered in his chest. His instincts told him to flee and never look back. It would be suicide to try to fight this thing.

  But the lord was tired and wounded. Its power was spent on defending against the centipedes. Cade questioned if this could be an opportunity to take down another Lord of the Swamp.

  The question buzzed through his racing mind. On one hand, his quest demanded he kill the Lords of the Swamp. They were obstacles in this Tutorial and the sooner he took them down, the better. They’d only get stronger as time passed—just like the humans trapped here with them.

  And this one? This might be the weakest it would ever be.

  It was bleeding, exhausted, and still wrapped in the Vine-Lasher’s roots. The opportunity was real.

  But so was the danger.

  Tegziran wasn’t N’zhal. The snake had toyed with him, underestimated him. This lizard lord had shown no such arrogance against the centipedes. It had fought smart, fought aggressively, and fought with abilities Cade had no defense against.

  He lifted his axe slightly, feeling the weight as he looked at the obsidian flake embedded within the head.

  “That’s cut through everything I’ve gone against so far,” he whispered to himself.

  But would it be enough?

  He mentally replayed what he’d seen: the whipping tail that exploded centipedes into chunks of viscera, the claws that tore through chitin, the crushing bite—and that acid spit. Cade rubbed at the goosebumps rising along his arm.

  If he got hit by that there wouldn’t be anything left of him.

  He wished—desperately—that he still had arrows. He’d tried pulling some from the boar’s corpse before he left the banyan tree, but most had snapped or splintered. He’d broken more than a few just trying to un-wedge them. And the ones that had missed? Lost in the reeds.

  “I should’ve looked harder,” he muttered, annoyed at himself because right now, range would have been a godsend.

  Cade looked up again. Tegziran, despite being tangled, wasn’t trying to rip itself free. Instead, it had gone almost eerily still—eyes closed, chest rising and falling now in a slow rhythm.

  Cade narrowed his eyes as he questioned what the Lord was doing.

  Even from this distance Cade could see the bright wounds against its mottled skin. As he stared he could see the wounds were changing. Slowly knitting together, skin pulling tight over the many lacerations. Not fast enough to be immediate regeneration, but fast enough that waiting any longer would mean he’d lose the opportunity.

  He couldn’t let it finish. It was now or never.

  His gaze swept the clearing. The multicolored flowers were enormous—tall enough to reach his waist, broad enough to hide behind. If he crouched low, he could move from bloom to bloom almost unseen.

  He pictured weaving through the flowers, closing the distance, creeping up behind the lizard lord. A single, powerful blow with his sharpened axe right at a vulnerable spot—maybe the spine, maybe the neck, maybe the base of the tail.

  If he hit something vital he might be able to kill it before it reacted.

  Cade let out a slow, soft exhale. He needed to push himself. The fight with N’zhal had proved that he only really grew when he risked something. Without that fight, without his new titles, without the obsidian flake in his axe, he wouldn’t be standing here now.

  He swallowed hard. His mind was made up. He’d take the chance.

  He crouched lower, sliding into the first row of flowers. Their thick petals brushed against his shoulders, their scents heavy and sweet, masking his own.

  Eyes locked on Tegziran, Cade crept forward. Slow and as silent as he could be.

  The lizard lord hadn’t moved. Its eyes were still closed. The vines still wrapped it, though some strands had already begun to loosen.

  Cade’s heart drummed faster with each step. Sweat beaded along his spine despite the evening cool.

  Why isn’t it struggling? he wondered. Why isn’t it trying to get out?

  Did the healing require intense concentration? Could it not move while mending itself?

  He didn’t know—and he couldn’t afford to care at the moment.

  He shifted direction, angling toward the back of the lizard lord. He wasn’t going anywhere near those jaws, and he absolutely wasn’t risking the front where that acid spit could melt him into a bubbling puddle.

  He moved flower to flower, pausing whenever Tegziran exhaled sharply or shifted slightly. But the lord never opened its eyes, never looked around, never showed any signs that it sensed his approach.

  Cade was now only a few paces behind it. He tightened his grip on the axe. His pulse soared as his breath hitched. Time to push himself again. Time to kill the second Lord of the Swamp.

  The scent of crushed flowers and blood filled his nose as he knelt behind the massive lizard lord. Up close, Tegziran was even more imposing. Its scaled body twitched occasionally, muscles rippling beneath torn skin. Cade could see several open wounds—deep ones—were closing right before his eyes. Up close the regeneration was fascinating as he stared at one long gash along its right side and watched as the edges pulled together.

  Is it using a skill? he wondered. Or is this just how these Lords work? Either way, it didn’t matter. If he continued to hesitate, he’d lose this chance.

  He looked at the tail, it was massive. Even thicker up close than he’d expected. He remembered how it had exploded centipedes with a single strike. No way he was leaving that weapon attached to this thing.

  He gripped the axe in both hands, knuckles white. The obsidian flake shimmered faintly in the fading sunlight. He raised it slowly, silently.

  This was it.

  One clean strike. Make it count.

  Cade exhaled and swung.

  The flake met the base of the tail with a wet crunch—and sank halfway through. The obsidian cut effortlessly but the steel got stuck in the flesh and muscle.

  The lizard lord's eyes shot open. A bellow tore from its throat, loud enough to rattle Cade’s bones. The vines jerked in response, snapping as Tegziran thrashed.

  Cade gritted his teeth, yanked the axe free, and swung again—this time putting everything into the strike.

  SHRAKT.

  The blade carved through the remaining flesh, severing the tail.

  Hot blood gushed from the wound, splattering the nearby flowers in thick crimson. The tail spasmed violently on the ground, twitching like a dying snake.

  Tegziran let out another guttural roar, its body convulsing as the vines gave way, shredded by its strength. Cade didn’t stop—he stepped forward and brought the axe down again, this time targeting the lizard’s rear leg.

  The flake bit deep, slicing into meat and grinding against bone. Cade felt the crack reverberate through his arms as the bone gave way under the pressure.

  Another howl from the lizard shook the clearing.

  Tegziran twisted free of the last of the vines and scrambled forward, flinging blood behind it. Its movement was clumsy, its back leg dragging. The severed tail left a grotesque trail as it flopped uselessly behind.

  Cade stumbled back, his breath ragged, arms burning.

  The lizard turned.

  They locked eyes and for a split second, Cade’s body locked up.