Sorin had determined that there were three likely hiding spots for a group of overly ambitious thugs. His theory was mostly based on the easiest access points to the portal guardian’s stage that still allowed them to view the whole thing. Operating on the theory that there was no way to hide above ground, he’d narrowed it down to places that were more rock than dirt.

  Nothing was guaranteed, of course. A powerful enough climber could be using some sort of clairvoyance that didn’t require a direct line of sight, but that didn’t seem likely to him. If nothing else, it meant someone who could use a C-ranked soulprint, and Sorin just didn’t think there were enough people in the Black Hellions to rotate them through a continuous watch.

  Since it was pointless to watch a place only part of the time, he’d figured there’d be a group waiting behind some stone outcrop with a crack in it, and while it was pleasing to see that he was correct, he was a bit annoyed to find out that he’d guessed wrong about which one they were in.

  He’d chosen the one with the most direct route, but apparently the Black Hellions either hadn’t found this one or had had some other reason to disqualify it, because they were half a mile to the west. That would only take two minutes to reach, if that, but it did mean the rest of the team needed to survive on their own.

  Fortunately, he had a plan for that, too. He was Samael’s real target. Rue and Nemari were incidental, and none of them seemed to care about Odric at all. If he showed himself, some of them at least were bound to split off from the group to confront him. Getting all of them was probably too much to hope for, but there were only so many variables he could account for.

  So he set off at a run, as fast as he could push himself. It was kind of pathetically slow compared to what he was used to, but he was confident it was far faster than anyone else on his team could manage. The real question was going to be how he stacked up against the five men filing out of a hole in the side of a hill that hadn’t been there a minute ago.

  Three of them started down toward the fight below, but soon enough one of them spotted Sorin, and their formation shifted. Two of them returned to the top of the hill, then started in his direction. A few seconds later, they were joined by a third, leaving the last one and a guy that Sorin guessed had a focus on earth magic based on how he was calming the dust storm as he advanced.

  Three out of five for me. Better than I expected. I hope they can handle the other two for a few minutes.

  There was no chance of them winning, but they weren’t going to try. The plan was to just stall until Sorin could take care of the other climbing team, though admittedly guessing wrong about where they were hiding wasn’t a great starting scenario.

  He rushed forward, raising his free hand as he did and firing off an ice blade at the closest climber. There were only a few hundred feet between them, and more importantly, he wanted to set some baseline expectations about what his combat abilities looked like. Unfortunately, he couldn’t go slower, though he’d risked a few rounds of speed increases at the very beginning before they’d noticed him. Otherwise he’d have missed the fight entirely.

  But tricking them into thinking that he needed his hand to aim or that he could only fire off one spell at a time was a good start. That was expected behavior for a rank 2 climber. Whether they bought it or not would depend entirely on how well briefed they’d been on his capabilities, but he expected to surprise one of them in the next thirty seconds.

  The lead climber swatted the ice blade out of the air with a contemptuous snort and accelerated toward Sorin, leaving his buddy behind. He was tall, bigger than Odric, and so heavily muscled that there was no doubt he’d focused on physical enhancement soulprints. Can I nickname him Muscles, or is that too disrespectful to the previous Muscles? Let’s go with Board Face instead, on account of that unfortunate appearance his mother gave him.

  Board Face was holding a wickedly curved axe in his right hand and had a net folded up in his belt near his left. That wasn’t something Sorin saw too often outside of aquatic floors, but nets were quite common there. They required prep work to use properly. Once thrown, they’d be useless until they were refolded, so the climber only got one chance to tangle up their target.

  Sorin could tell just from the hand position that Board Face knew how to throw that net properly, and he was willing to bet it was properly weighted to give it some good distance even after it flared open. If Board Face didn’t throw it on his own, he’d need to be baited into wasting it early. Getting tangled up in it while fighting someone else would almost certainly cost him the fight.

  Scraggly—so named for the unfortunate attempt at a beard he sported—back behind him was a different story. He was leaner, short, and wielding some sort of animated whip that eagerly curled and uncurled in his hand. He didn’t appear to be quite as fast as Board Face, but Sorin was betting that was a deliberate choice to ensure his buddy was first into the fight.

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  So he’s got the better defenses then, and you’re both equipped to capture rather than kill. Handicaps like that will be the death of you, kids.

  Board Face blurred as he sped up suddenly, cutting the distance between them from a hundred feet to twenty in an instant. He came out of it directly in front of Sorin, the net already pulled free and cast out. It spun, unfurling over half a second, and perfectly aimed to engulf Sorin. Weighted and sharpened hooks glinted darkly all around its edge, the better to shred its victim after tangling them up.

  Sorin activated his own Speed Burst and threw himself to the right while hurling a wide, fat ice blade into the net to disrupt the flow of its movement. The net twisted, not quite enough to ruin the throw, but it was far enough off course now that it smacked into the dirt ten feet to Sorin’s left. That was one weapon defeated, but he expected that enchanted whip might be a bit more difficult to deal with.

  Undeterred by his failure, Board Face blurred in again. His axe came down in a powerful swing, aimed directly at Sorin’s shoulder—If he thinks that’s not a killing strike, he’s not very good at this!—in an attempt to chop his arm off. Sorin once again thanked Blood of the Mountain for giving him seemingly endless endurance and darted to the side.

  The battle quickly turned into a series of speed bursts as they shifted around each other, but Sorin was at a huge disadvantage. He hit Board Face no less than three times in the next second while avoiding every single axe strike, but Board Face had Stone Skin, too, or at least something along the same line. It was stronger than Iron Body, even an Iron Body pushed up to D-rank.

  Bet that costs a lot of anima to maintain, especially over your whole body like that. Let’s see how deep that well goes.

  Stacking passives to fight in melee was a popular build style for budding climbers who didn’t want to deal with the complexity of managing their abilities. It had the major drawback of drying up their anima in a hurry if they tried to go all out, and Sorin had a pretty good idea of how much the average rank 10 had in the first place. This guy had maybe thirty seconds left in him before he was down to baseline human, which meant he had thirty-one seconds before he was dead if no one interfered.

  All Sorin had to do was keep the pressure on, but there was one patchy-bearded issue with that. Scraggly caught up a few seconds into the duel, and neither of the rank 10s were honorable enough to keep it one-on-one. That whip snaked out like it was alive, nimbler than any serpent and every bit as fast. Dodging it cost Sorin a strike that would have gutted Board Face or, more realistically, cost him another chunk of anima keeping Stone Skin up.

  The axe flashed down, drawing a gash down Sorin’s left arm before deflecting off his bracer. The leather itself wasn’t enough of a defense against Board Face and wouldn’t have been strong enough even if it had come from a rank 10 monster, but it was enough to divert the downward angle of the swing as long as Sorin lined it up perfectly.

  Two climbers so obviously stronger than him was a problem, but his elevation to rank 4 and building out his kit did a lot to even the odds. He was confident he could win, but not how quickly. If not for the third guy running to join the fight, he wouldn’t be worried at all. The only saving grace was that Needle Nose appeared to only be rank 6 and wasn’t much of a fighter, just based on how he moved. His only visible weapon was a bandoleer of throwing needles—not exactly impressive even at low ranks.

  Small miracles, but it’s still a distraction I don’t need right now.

  Now that all three of them were nearby and working to capture him, though, he had another trick up his sleeve. Radiant Purge ignited all around him, not because he expected it to turn them to ash like it had done to those skeletons, but because a brilliant burst of light was blinding to those who lacked the sensory soulprints to handle it.

  “Son of a bitch!” Board Face screamed. He did the smart thing and immediately triggered Speed Burst to throw himself backward. If it had been just him, Sorin would have been in hot pursuit, but Scraggly was more than willing to flail blindly with his whip.

  Needle Nose was the least affected of the group. His pupils simply shrunk to black pinpricks, and he threw out a few more needles with reasonable accuracy while backpedaling to get out of Radiant Purge’s disintegration radius. Sorin ignored them, trusting his armor and Iron Body to absorb the attacks. Instead, he turned to run down Scraggly, who’d stumbled forward a few steps and drawn what looked like a simple, poorly worked iron dagger from a belt sheath.

  Sorin did not miss the blood stains on it. That’s a sacrificial blade—not normally suited for use when the sacrifice can still fight back, but…

  Sure enough, Scraggly stabbed it into his own stomach. Whatever soulprint he’d used settled heavily on Sorin, and a sharp pain erupted in his gut. At the same time, the slight burn of his own Radiant Purge ignited into scouring flame that threatened to consume him.

  Damage reflection, shit. I could outlast Needle Nose, but probably not this guy.

  Sorin triggered a chain of speed bursts to get out of the hex’s range. Without knowing exactly how far the magic would stretch, all he could do was charge head first at Board Face, who was still trying to furiously blink the afterimages out of his eyes.

  “Look up, you idiot!” Needle Nose screamed at him.

  Damn, half a second more and I’d have had him.

  Sorin slammed into the larger man, his sword leading. The point turned against a quickly summoned Stone Skin just before he ran Board Face through. Undeterred, he got to work overwhelming the rank 10’s defenses in a bid to drain his anima before the rest of the enemy team caught up.

  An explosion of flames down below interrupted the fight. Right, no time to play around. I need to end this and get down there to help before they all get killed.