Arthur's body thrummed with power, the kind that made the world around him feel weak. He was aware of his skeleton in a way he never had been before, resting within him like a dormant nuclear reactor. For the first time in a while, Arthur wondered if his body was durable enough to keep up.

  "Tell us then, boy," Viktor demanded. "Don't keep us in the dark. Did it work?"

  There was only one way to find out. Arthur pulled up his status. Much of it remained the same as the last time he'd checked.

  Arthur hadn't allocated the free stats from his last three level-ups yet, which he promptly did by dumping them all into perception. The stat had been lagging behind for quite a while now, and the opponents he was facing weren't getting any slower. Raising it had been long overdue at this point. When his eyes and ears exploded with a burning itch, Arthur reconsidered whether adding them all at once had been the smartest idea. He'd just tripled his perception in the span of a second.

  The only change the runework had brought to his stats was in the strength department, and it wasn't a small change by any means, either. His strength had literally doubled. It was no wonder that his body felt so different. Arthur focused on the new line of text on his status page, Incendium Skeleton, and brought up its details.

  The System didn't have much to say about his changed skeleton. It was a foreign power from an altogether different realm, one that Arthur was certain the System had never encountered before, at least not at this level of potency.

  "So," Vira interrupted his musings. "Did it work? I'm not a mind mage. I can't read your thoughts."

  "Viktor can, though," Arthur replied with a raised eyebrow.

  The ancient dragon coughed, seemingly embarrassed. "Not exactly, no. I can read the 'colour' of your thoughts, the emotions behind them. Sometimes, I can catch a stray thought or two, as I did with that old teacher you kept thinking about. Since we finished inscribing the runes, however, your mind is blank. It's like trying to read the mind of a stone. It doesn't even exist. There's no defence to target. In the realm of mind mages, you might as well not exist."

  Stolen story; please report.

  Arthur smiled. Now this was the kind of boon he'd been hoping for. With over 4,000 points in Draconic Vitality, Arthur's skeleton had already been one of the most durable materials in existence. Now that that durability applied to his mental defences, it made sense that Viktor couldn't access his brain so easily.

  "The runes worked," Arthur finally answered, "though without testing anything, I'm not sure how powerful they are. My weight's gone up quite a bit, though. I'm well over half a ton now. Oh, and the power output my charged skeleton provides is Green Fire, which I'm sure you know more about than me."

  Viktor grinned. "Green Fire. That's better than I hoped. It's a type of flame available to infant flame dragons, one that can both burn and nurture. Stops them from killing themselves and each other when they're babies. For you... Well, it'll make you a far greater healer than you currently are. Charged to full, I'm guessing you'd be able to set the entire battlefield upstairs alight, burning foes and healing allies simultaneously without spending a drop of ether."

  "For how long?"

  Viktor grinned. "I don't know, dragon eater. You're the first with the rune. The only one who'll ever get the rune, in fact, since my blood's all but used up. Get up there and test things out. Heaven knows they could use some help."

  Arthur cracked his knuckles. His levelling speed had slowed down for the last few days. Assassination attempts aside, Bastion had granted him a safety net, a barrier against the corrupted world. Haadran was an unrelenting planet, a place where survival was a constant struggle, measured in every minute of every day. It was why he had come here: the whetstone he would grind down to nothing to sharpen himself. Arthur smiled. The time had come to live up to that goal.

  Arthur turned to face Vira, who was still reclining in her chair. "Tell your men to pull back."

  The ancient healer smirked at him. "Really now, Arthur. We enhanced your skeleton, boy, we didn't make you a God. You're powerful, I'll give you that, but don't let things get to your head. Remember, not too long ago, Esmerald had you at death's door. You've lost a hand since then, too."

  "Trust me," Arthur said, staring into Vira's eyes. "Give me ten minutes. Let your men rest for a while on the walls. If it looks like I can't handle it, they can jump in, and you can tell me I told you so. If I can handle it, though, no one steps on the battlefield until I'm done."

  Maybe it was something in his eyes, or the sincere confidence in his voice, but Vira nodded. "You have your ten minutes, kid. Don't disappoint."

  "I always aim to please." Turning to Wovan, Arthur walked through the portal she'd already prepared. He arrived three kilometres in the air with four spiders surrounding him. From this high up, the monsters looked tiny, like insects fighting over who could be king of the mud. Behind the massive warp gate, the crystalline forest stretched as far as the eye could see.

  The men and women of Bastion were disengaging, retreating to the safety the walls provided, though the enraged monsters hot on their heels didn't make things easy. It was time to give them something new to focus on. Arthur released his domain, casting his Pinnacle skill on the skies of Haadran, The Homunculus Hunts. It had grown substantially since the last time he'd used it, spanning just over a kilometre and a half. Arthur pushed more energy into it, making it as large as possible before using Poisonous Swamp of the Hydra for the first time. His now two-kilometre-wide domain had just become a field of poisonous gas.

  Contrary to his usual modus operandi, Arthur wanted to make himself as attractive a target as possible. He brought his strength to bear, his ether, his ludicrous healthpool, his status as an Originator, everything that made him The Perfect Homunculus. Down below, the monsters stopped moving all as one, like some creepy hivemind and turned to look up; thousands of eyes of all shapes and sizes glowing an eerie purple. It seemed Shylo was paying attention. Arthur would give the corrupted Avatar his show.

  Wovan rose to hover beside him, all 44 of her bodies. Maverick's men were thankfully trained enough not to stop and gawk along with all the monsters, though he did see quite a few of them stumble and almost lose balance. Arthur wondered what he looked like to the soldiers of Bastion. A strange Visitor who lived up to the legends of his kind, a saviour descended from the broken heavens, or a monster, just like everything else that dared to fly in the Haadran skies.

  A minute later, everyone had gotten to safety, and Arthur was locked in a stalemate. There were creatures down below who could fly, and after passing level 150, near enough every monster out there was capable of attacking him despite the distance between them. They did nothing, though, going against natural instinct, controlled by something far greater than the man they faced. Arthur didn't mind. He used the time to communicate his plan to Wovan. His soul splinter hissed with glee. She seemed a little too eager to carry out the plan, in his opinion.

  Arthur currently weighed 683 kilograms, but with his enhanced skeleton, that value could be adjusted all the way down to one. Unfortunately, doing so meant that his ability to use Titan's Telekinesis was also reduced. He spent a few seconds testing the new ability to see exactly how it worked. Sadly, it wasn't as fluid as he'd hoped. While he could adjust his weight, it was like pushing down on a spring, requiring constant effort to maintain and bouncing back to normal the instant he let up.

  Nonetheless, it would suit Arthur's purpose well today. While he couldn't quite push his weight down to a single kilogram, he could get pretty close to three and a half. Wovan, meanwhile, was able to manipulate the equivalent of over 2,000 kilograms worth of force with Titan's Telekinesis. Arthur wasn't the greatest at physics, but on Earth, that translated to around 20,000 newtons. On Haadran, Arthur had no idea which way the math would go, especially when you added magic into the equation, but he was pretty sure the numbers would be big.

  Arthur focused on the biggest monster, a gorilla-like creature made from stone, only it was the size of a large hill. It was also the strongest monster on the battlefield at level 199.

  Ready Wovan? Arthur asked. Wovan gave him a mental confirmation, yes. Taking a deep breath, Arthur focused on his new ability, pushing his weight down as far as it would go. 100 kilograms. 50. 10. 5. He got it as low as 3 before he hit a wall.

  Do it! Do it now, quickly!

  Wovan began falling from the sky, the 2,024 kilograms of Titan's Telekinesis that she'd been using to keep herself afloat now directed at Arthur Ward. Over 20,000 newtons of force applied to a 3-kilogram object. Arthur had never moved faster. He travelled the 3-kilometre distance between himself and his target in 0.7 seconds, his weight already bouncing back up to his new normal. Arthur's timing was a little off. He hadn't expected Wovan to launch him so fast. None of that mattered.

  Arthur Ward weighed 397 kilograms when he crashed into the Corrupted Deepstone Ape.

  He'd been travelling at 4,285 meters per second.

  The world exploded into light.

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