With Vanya and Riena’s help, I stumbled into my room. They half carried me to my bed and sat me down. While Vanya shut the door, Riena asked, “Are you sure you don’t want a potion?”

  Fatigue darkened the edges of my vision. The strain of willing my blood to ignore the pressure difference of my wounds and not leak out was far more demanding than actually fighting the orc. I panted as part of my mind focused on recovering my reserves of energy while the rest maintained my aura and continued this conversation. “Yes… We have another excursion tomorrow, and I used one yesterday. Entering a portal with alchemical toxicity is foolish. If my limp is irrelevant, then I’ll have wasted a resource for nothing.”

  “You have a hole in your knee! I can see through it. That’s more than a ‘limp’.”

  A lance of pain radiated from the hole, the greatest drain on my aura. By carefully allowing pressure differentials to exist where the blood vessels used to be, the hole closed. New cells followed my bloodstream and formed a thin lattice from where further healing would build upon. “See?” I grunted around teeth clenched in focus and pain. “It’s fine. After a night’s rest, I’ll have a bad knee for a few days. If that becomes important, I’ll take another potion.”

  Vanya stalked back from the door. “Great. You’ll live. We all knew you would be fine. Now, we need to talk about the monster in the room.”

  Fyrnell’s tentacles uncoiled from underneath the bed and formed a loose shield/hug between me and Vanya. “What about me?”

  “A Bed Monster? Mari, are you twelve?”

  I pointed a lazy finger at Vanya’s face. The room only spun a little bit. “Shut it. Fyrnell is great, and I won’t have you besmirching them.”

  “Whatever, I wasn’t talking about them. Why are you carrying around a snake monster?”

  “Leave Coatlie alone!” the necrotic elemental on my desk hissed from their container.

  Coatlie herself uncoiled from my neck and floated by my head. “Well I—”

  “I need her,” I interrupted. Despite my room growing darker and spinning more, I had time to construct a lie of truths. “She confounds the orc’s language sensors. They won’t kill her species for knowing the language, but they will kill me. As eager as I am to fight the monsters, stronger heroes than I have died for knowing what I know.”

  Riena’s eyes opened wide. “No... you didn’t... I thought you were smarter than that. Why would you learn their language? I’ve known scholars so aloof that they’ve never seen the ground or a demon until they started studying orcish. No matter how thick their protections, no matter how many dragons and drones shielded them, they all ended up dead.”

  “It was an accident. I learned one word, but that’s enough. Coatlie here has offered to help with some books while keeping me company.”

  The snake nodded along with my lies. “Speaking of our pact. Feed me. Derek made fresh cookies, and I want some.”

  Through our bond, Riena could tell I wasn’t technically lying, but she could sense the deeper deception. She also knew that I believed my secrets were benign. Rather than push for more, she left to grab food for Coatlie.

  Vanya and Coatlie glared daggers at each other in Riena’s absence until the snake sighed. “I understand. You’re upset that you are no longer Mari’s prettiest friend. If it helps, I am a god, and pseudo-mortals like yourself shouldn’t hold yourselves to my standard.”

  “What all are you giving her for this ‘service’?” Vanya asked through gritted teeth. “I know you aren’t a tamer. You can’t have formed a real contract with her. How have you ensured your own safety?”

  I rolled my eyes. “In her current state, Coatlie wouldn’t qualify as a proper tier 1 monster. My bound elementals are greater dangers while contained. All she requires of me is my food, protection, and company.”

  At that moment, Riena returned with a warm plate of cookies that Coatlie pounced on like a big cat. My Commander was mesmerized watching the display of confection carnage for several seconds before rejoining us. “Vanya, I understand that you might have concerns, but Mari is on my team. As her Commander, I’m allowing this, which I learned recently has a shocking amount of legal weight in the more lawless districts.”

  Vanya nodded. “Yes, a Commander’s word is law for their team. You can be questioned by other Commanders later for the actions you order, but Commanders tend to suffer reduced consequences while shielding their teammates from trouble. It’s how inquisitors act with such impunity.” Her brows furrowed. “Fine. I don’t like it, but I’m not going to tell anyone. That still leaves the matter of Axel.”

  “We need to find him and silence him.” Both of their faces were growing harder to see. “Humanity isn’t ready for all-out war with the orcs. He knows things that will compel more attacks if he shares them. A manifesto or a radio in his hands is far more dangerous than any bomb. I’m struggling to determine any rational reason for his actions that would help us find him.”

  Riena hummed. “Axel did like to justify his hypothetical decisions in class with cold utilitarianism. He was always so irreverent that Professor Maze chastised him for not taking the class seriously, but what if he was? What if the mocking tone was meant to hide how much he believed in his extremist viewpoint?”

  I leaned back on my pillow. “What… were his… views?” The darkness was close to taking me.

  “Well, for every question, he always chose the option that would get most of the team killed. He ‘jokingly’ argued that the human condition was so full of misery that death was morally good.”

  “That… rings false… Collaborators rarely have high minded ideals… They… tend to believe a faction of monsters… is right, and…” I drew in a larger breath. “Sorry, I must focus on recovery… feel free to continue. I’ll be listening.” I closed my eyes and switched my body to autonomic processes while I spent most of my focus on restorative meditation techniques.

  “And she’s gone.” Vanya sighed. “I should also prepare for my excursion tomorrow. Gabriel’s team was willing to take me again, so I’ll be fine. If you could share your evidence against Axel with Scarlet, her teams should stop wasting energy on trying to prove that I’m the bomber.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Riena said. “Elf haters tend to be rabid in their pursuits, but she may also look into the real culprit. Inquisitors like her make my blood boil.”

  “But not inquisitors like Mari?”

  “…”

  “Did you not know?”

  “I didn’t, but I’m not surprised. You aren’t in her head like I am. Mari has her reasons for killing that are very personal and private. She might not even be fully aware of them herself.” A couple fingers traced through my hair before one of Fyrnell’s tentacles prodded them away. “Of all the monsters in this room, Exemplar is the most dangerous to be around.”

  On that wonderful compliment, I lost focus on my hearing and slipped into a semi-conscious state. My senses would pick up any threat or attack, but fine detail like the exact words spoken became muddled. At some point, Coatlie escorted my guests from the room and had Fyrnell help her lock the door. She then coiled on my chest.

  Her words struck my ears and bubbled up from my subconscious. “You have good friends. If you need me to stay so that you can be with them, then I can busy this small fraction of myself with that task. Who knows? This may pay off later in unexpected ways. Such is the way of the multiverse.”

  Hours later, I brought myself to full consciousness and gingerly left my bed. My knee could support weight again, and a quick glance in the mirror confirmed that my face wounds hadn’t scarred. I knew they wouldn’t. I couldn’t scar. The physical evidence of the trials I went through would fade, reduced to memory and myth. With that niggling worry satisfied, I slipped on my cleaning ring and then changed into my gear.

  A very subtle application of aura redirected most of the weight on my right knee through the surrounding armor. The strain was negligible and greatly reduced my limp. Coatlie watched my testing steps with a concerned frown before turning to the cookie she saved for breakfast. Before I left my room, she took her customary spot around my neck, and Fyrnell bade me to have a good trip.

  My team had already assembled in the war room. They were standing and ready to leave. Without having to say a word, we proceeded to our assigned portal for the day. Even though our mouths were silent, our emotions weren’t. Over the bond, I felt their worry for my injury, their nervousness around the esoteric nature of portals, and my own eager excitement reflected back through them. While my senses and danger recognition eclipsed theirs, I still experienced a heightened awareness. My team didn’t just have my back; they had my front and sides too.

  Beneath the lowest classrooms, we navigated through the twisting labyrinth of catacombs, around the glittering caves of the warrens, and to our destination before the professor arrived. All my companions had pained and haggard expressions.

  “What ails you all?” I inquired.

  Casimir half-smiled. “Nothing at all. Surely, we don’t find a small fraction of your own physical pain overly burdensome. You’re bearing it without issue. I don’t know why you didn’t wake your Healer when you were so hurt.”

  “Your rest was important to the mission.” That and I was so used to relying on myself that it didn’t occur to me to ask him. Riena’s blush indicated she had the same lapse in tactical awareness.

  Our healer sighed and conjured a ferret that wrapped around my knee and slowly died as all the vitality was transferred from it to me. My flesh knitted in record time. A quick shake of my leg confirmed that everything was in working order.

  “Thank you.”

  “Remember to call for your Healer. I know we’re still a new team, but that is critical.”

  “It is.” My previous teams had Healers of varying degrees of skill. Unfortunately, whenever I critically needed their services, the area around me would be far too dangerous. After a couple died, I stopped calling for them.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Rick Danger then loudly walked in behind us until he was standing next to the blue portal. “Students. Last week, we gave you a low tier portal to iron out your teamwork. Third years clear those daily as part of their maintenance duty. It’s trivial drudge work that’s only done out of necessity. For your Team Exercises course, we expect more. This tier 4 portal is more inline with the expectations. Normally, I would go on a lengthy explanation of our scouting data and what to expect, but your team will rely on Exemplar’s expertise instead.”

  I blinked. “We’re going in blind?”

  Professor Danger grinned. “Of course! We had to make this interesting for you somehow. I suspect you’ll figure out most portals instantly with your wealth of experience, but the off chance that you’ll be blindsided makes all of this far more lethal. Also, you used to blind check portals in the past by yourself.”

  “Those reports were supposed to be classified.”

  He laughed. “Only to stop other young hotheads from repeating your errors. Old Absolute doesn’t want one of her named soldiers getting a subpar education, so she shared everything with me.”

  I relaxed. Absolute didn’t know about everything I’ve done. Only what I’ve told her. Nothing like—

  “That includes the incident at the river delta. Finding a reasonable quest outside of Last Stand is proving difficult. You’ve made many personal enemies that are still hunting for you.”

  How? No one knew about that. Did the Hero Union have spies among the monsters? In retrospect, baiting a land and a sea Titan into fighting each other to destroy the surrounding countryside and all the monsters living there had been a tad foolish. “I could have been more thorough.”

  “No, you were plenty thorough. Enough chitchat, get into the portal.”

  This time, I had to rush to scramble through with my team. They had all leapt at Rick’s words, nearly leaving me behind. We landed in a field of overgrown grass surrounded by evergreen trees. A biting chill rode on the air, but no snow or the lingering rot of fall wafted on the breeze. The sky was blue and cloudless, marked only by the gaze of a tiny, blue sun with visibly leaking cracks. Behind us, the portal still hung.

  As my team got their bearings, I checked the back of the portal and sure enough, it was covered in a disc of clear crystal. I groaned, drawing attention from the rest of my team and several inquiring questions.

  I gestured at the portal. “It’s a defense oriented objective. We have to protect the portal from local monsters. If they break it, we’re stuck here until we can find where it reopened. But just defending the portal might not be enough. There might be an objective we need to accomplish in the forest. Common ones include: slaying the forest guardian, retrieving an artifact from a cave, felling the oldest tree, or simply exploring enough of the zone.” I hated these kinds of missions because they required splitting the team. People always died on these. The quality of my team is different now. I clung to that hope as they processed the information.

  Derek sealed the portal in a four-sided pyramid of barriers. “Will this work?”

  “Only initially. Sealing the portal will increase the local MP concentration and exponentially draw more monsters, but it will allow the rest of us to gather the timber and stone needed for a proper base.”

  Riena nodded along to my explanation until she realized none of us were moving. “Are we really making me say it?”

  “It’s good practice,” Nyla offered.

  “Fiiine. We’ll do as Exemplar suggested. Everyone keep Derek in sight as you gather as much materials as you can.”

  Nyla and I rushed to the nearest trees and began chopping them down with our bare hands while Casimir conjured goblins to rummage for stone in the field. Thankfully, a small stream near the ‘relative southern’ part of the field had a nice buildup in its bed. In a portal world, we had no way of knowing if the magnetic pole was truly north or if the sun went from east to west. Anything could be different.

  Riena saw me cleaning a fallen tree next to Derek and interjected. “My drones will take care of this. You can focus on chopping and moving them.” Her attack drones then uncloaked and began shooting the branches off.

  “Thanks!” I wasn’t looking forward to the drudgery of base building. Riena could probably do most of it herself, but that wouldn’t be a good learning opportunity for either of us. While we could all die here, we still needed to learn and get better if we wanted to survive the coming years. I dragged more trees around our portal—creating a visual barrier—as our team worked for the next hour.

  Once we had enough logs for a wall, Nyla cleared a patch of dirt, surrounded it with rocks, and used the leftover brush to make a fire. The roasting pine brought a fresh scent to our base that only increased as she retrieved pine cones from the flames and harvested their nuts for us to share. The alien fruits tasted of rime, months without sun, shorter summers, and more brutal winters. Magic gave the concepts flavor and provided more clues to this world.

  “Make sure you return before sunset,” I told Riena, Casimir, and Nyla as they were leaving to scout. “Either monsters will attack the base at night or more dangerous monsters will crawl from the dark. Remember, this portal is only tier 4 if we follow the intended path. If we aren’t supposed to be out after dark, then higher tier monsters could attack us.”

  Riena waved. “We’ll be careful.”

  I hated watching them go. Casimir should be able to keep them safe and heal injuries while Nyla kills anything they come across. Worst-case scenario, Riena could burn one of her trump cards. It should be fine. I sighed and began assembling a proper octagon log wall around the portal by carving notches at the ends of our timbers and linking them together. When Riena was far enough, her bond faded from Derek and I.

  He poked at the fire with a stick. “Do you need any help?” The large man had barely broken a sweat and the blue light reflected oddly off his silver hair.

  “Conserve your strength.” I had several logs on one shoulder and walked the perimeter to place the next link in the layer. “If you could open the bottom of the portal as the wall grows in height, then that should delay the first wave of monsters.

  Derek reformed his pyramid at a higher elevation before dismissing the first one. “If you haven’t noticed, I can’t move my barriers. I was hoping my second ability would let me move them, but…” He trailed off and stared into the fire.

  When the walls were done, I etched runes of durability, wind resistance, and warmth into the walls before powering them with my jars of monster paste. The generic slurry was an efficient and condensed way to store the individually useless parts from my hunts with Vanya and Fyrnell’s leavings. Since Derek had remained quiet, I did my best to engage in team building small talk as I went through the careful imbuing process. “So, why do you hate your turrets?”

  The ponderous man leaned back in his log chair and glanced at the endless blue sky. “Are you familiar with the kinds of abilities my family normally has?”

  “Yes, the Bane family is well known for producing frontline fighters with a variety of personal defensive abilities. Their Guardians are the most offensive, and their Vanguards are the most defensive. Their guild teams build around that almost unique role.”

  “Yeah, and I’m not exactly that, am I? On our last family outing, I had to stand behind my little sister. She’s half my age with a far weaker shade, but she’s physically stronger and can take more direct damage.” He conjured a small barrier in front of him and flicked it. “These are strong, but they don’t fill the same niche. I can’t fill my family’s role in our guild. No one has ever complained about my talents, but I’m barely a Bane. The turrets…” He sighed. “They’re the final nail in the coffin. I’m back line support.”

  I finished the enchantments when he was talking and hopped over the wall to bury stones covered in necrotic runes around the perimeter. Due to our enhanced hearing, we easily continued the conversation. “That’s really interesting. Most people would assume your diverging talents come from infidelity, but abilities tend to pass down the social bond rather than the physical one. You still bear the Bane family resemblance, but that could be because of your high shade percentage. It is the second highest on our team.”

  Derek laughed. It crackled with the fire, a dry bitter thing. “Most people wouldn’t speculate on my parentage to my face.”

  “I did cleverly place a wall between us before broaching the matter. Also, why can’t you frontline? You must have some weapon training from your family.”

  “Before my ability manifested, I trained with great mauls. Afterwards, my mother tried to teach me the bow. I never took to it. Only my hand-to-hand prowess is ‘sufficient for a Bane’.”

  “All three of those would round out your talents. You are underestimating the raw destruction every hero can output with their shade and magic weapons. Combined with your battlefield control and suppressive fire, you could be a nightmare. Your current one-man-walking-fortress tactics aren’t bad, but it’s a hammer looking for a nail.”

  Derek didn’t say anything for a while. The fire continued burning, and I dug into the cool earth to store my traps. The work was methodical, not pleasant or aggravating. Time passed and the sun grew closer, which could have been a troubling astronomical phenomenon if I hadn’t been on a variety of worlds. Some were flat. Some surrounded a small star and never had true night. Some were shaped like a donut and could experience multiple nights in a single day. There were no hard rules on the other side of a portal.

  Eventually, my Guardian broke his silence.

  “If you made weapons, I would attempt to use them.”

  That was all the encouragement I needed to hop back over the wall and gather several rocks together. “The MP capacity of this river stone is surprisingly high. A water enchantment would be best, but I have a close enough option I want to try for a set of gauntlets. Obviously, we should first enhance the style you're strongest with.”

  Before I could really get to work or Derek could comment, a tree fell over, prompting me to leap to the wall and examine the source. At the edge of the clearing, a humanoid with blue skin and over ten stories tall stood with a club in his hand as long as any tree. His braided beard and hair was woven with animal bones, antlers, and a few precious gems. Glacial blue eyes met mine before the creature roared. The intensity of the shout shook his fur pelt outfit and preluded his charge.

  Sweat formed at the back of my neck. “Frost Giant. Tier 5 monster.” We had veered from the intended path or—a single flake of snow wisped away from me and faded from existence with a faint familiar laugh. Yimigirr, so this was your death curse. You summoned another of your kin to die at my hand?

  “Uhhh,” the proud guildie froze in his seat. “That’s beyond anything I’ve fought. What do we do?”

  “Protect our fort and grow the fire. The only way to kill a Frost Giant is to cut out their heart and melt it in a wood-flame. He’ll summon a blizzard and ice constructs to smother it. If he succeeds, we’ll die. Leave retrieving his heart to me.” I ran toward the giant.

  Derek’s shouts were lost in the roaring wind. Snow reduced visibility until the warmth of my fort was a distant memory. Immediately, the frost bit through my armor and attempted to sap my strength and devour my flesh. Part of my mind devoted itself to managing my aura to reduce the heat transfer of my armor, letting my body heat keep me warm.

  Grass shattered like glass under my feet as I rushed toward a kind of foe that I last defeated with the help of multiple teams and borrowed heirloom artifacts. That had been merely months ago. Now, without half the advantages and only my own custom gear, I charged to slay a creature that could paste me in one hit.

  Finally!

  A grin consumed my face at the impossible odds. This was where legends were forged, surrounded by doom with no escape. These were the situations I threw myself in time after time. Could Derek and I retreat through the portal and reenter the world? Sure. Could Riena locate the next entrance and take the team there to meet us? Sure. That didn’t mean we would take that cowardly option, not when victory was attainable.

  The building of air pressure on my right side was the only warning I had to jump over the swinging club. As it swooped under me, icicles formed over runes carved into the wood and shot outward. My shield formed at my feet and blocked the ones headed toward me before I landed on the club, exploding my shield back into floating rocks.

  With a whoop, I ran up the weapon while dragging my blade along it. Each frost rune I severed exploded in ice behind me that no amount of careful shield placement could fully block. The enchanted rime spread from each point of contact on my armor and formed ice, inhibiting movement. I smashed a jar of monster paste on my face and spread the ichor over my chest and shoulder before igniting the corpse, enveloping me in green flames.

  Deft control concentrated the fire on the growing frost and spread it to the club. The once living material was fertile ground for the necrotic fire and spread rapidly. Bothered by this development, the giant lifted his club, forcing me to loosen my blade and loop it around his weapon to my other hand.

  From this position, I slid down the now vertical shaft to my prey. The creature swore and shook his club, stalling my progress as I had to tighten the chain and press both feet into the wood to not whip around.

  The blizzard died down around us until I could clearly see the giant’s face. It had twisted into a disgusted snarl of hate. As he turned his weapon around to face me outward, I slid the rest of the way down the club and tightened my sword straight in time to chop his finger with all my weight and speed.

  It bounced off his hoarfrost flesh.

  Shit.