Professor Danger favored his right leg, and his opposite arm was in a sling. If he held animosity toward Vanya and I for leaving him to clean up his own mess, he didn’t outwardly show it. The train hummed behind him as he handed Riena the map. “While there are plenty of portals within Aspiration, this is a place of learning and quests outside the barriers of Last Stand are a common duty for any hero. We try to identify such learning opportunities and let student teams tackle the problem. You have been tasked with clearing an abandoned tower. The Hero Union plans to use it as a staging ground for expansion efforts.”

  Riena passed me the map. I unfurled it and examined the contents. The tower was only a day away. That gave us a day to clear the tower and start the return journey. Nyla looked over my shoulder and frowned.

  “Your route should avoid the high tier monsters hunting for Exemplar, but the lesser threats are hard to track,” Rick continued. If I was by myself, I would avoid or kill my pursuers. It had been too long since I cleared out the riffraff, followed their tracks home, and slaughtered their families. Oddly, my number of hunters never seemed to decrease.

  Vanya rubbed her temples. “Dare I ask how Mari earned such antipathy? No offense, but she isn’t remotely our strongest hero.”

  “Uhh…” Rick faltered.

  I rescued him. “Effort.”

  Vanya scowled at me.

  “While there are heroes that share my enthusiasm, the ones around my strength tend to work for Absolute directly, and she goes to great lengths to obscure their identities. Such methods didn’t work for me because there were no other children purging villages and salting the ashes.” I shrugged. “Fame has its costs.”

  “ANYWAYS!” Rick interjected. “Enjoy your trip.”

  We piled into a single compartment on the train, and I summoned a wooden table from my ring to spread the map out. Riena started. “You mastered your storage item quickly.”

  I rubbed the cold band around my right middle finger. Like every storage item, its abilities were Pocket Dimension, Store, Recall, and Target. Of those, only Target required any practice. “This was trivial. Learning how to switch armor sets took a couple of tries.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Those spatial items are tier 5 unless you manually keep running calculations of three positional and three angular coordinates for each piece of gear. The slightest error summons the items inside of you.”

  I switched between my Oni and Infernal armor a couple of times to demonstrate. “It’s doable, and thus within my capabilities.” The Oni armor still had a cursed property, but I could freely remove or equip it now.

  Riena’s eyebrows rose. “I stand corrected.” When the train started moving, she flinched as the sun leaked through the windows. Nothing happened, so she slowly relaxed back into the light.

  Casimir conjured a few rats and had them scurry off. “What’s the chance our train gets attacked again?”

  Derek looked out the window at the flight of Valkyries escorting us. “Extremely low.”

  “Good. I can give you the rundown of what I know before we get to the barrier.” I pointed to the map and outlined the likely monsters we would run across. In other cabins, other groups of students were making similar preparations. This express only stopped at a few stations before we arrived.

  As we approached the barrier, Riena’s head craned all the way up, “I’ve lived next to the barrier generator most of my life and watched the Savior repair Ambitrox’s gift. Here on the ground, its protection is so much more grand.” The clear barrier was more than a dozen meters thick. “How do we leave?”

  “There are gate stations, but—” I gestured to a group leaving. “The barrier only works one way.” When the silver dragon bequeathed it to humanity, he assumed we only needed a brief respite to muster our strength and venture outward. That proved overly optimistic, but he was part of the flight of elder wyrms that tried to slay Tyrannus, so that optimism killed him before humanity.

  I led us out of—

  Riena grabbed my shoulder. “Before we leave, I should refresh the bond.”

  I nodded. It puzzled me why she hadn’t started it sooner.

  Riena pulled Casimir, Derek, and Nyla into her power. Each relaxed a fraction as the overlapping eyes and ears relieved their blind-spot anxiety. Every hero worries about the direction they aren’t looking. When they were settled, she drew Vanya in.

  “Woah.” The elf breathed out and smiled. “I knew humans and elves didn’t have fundamentally different minds, but it’s nice to have personal confirmation.”

  “Vanya,” Riena warned. “Brace yourself. I’m adding Mari next, and it’s a lot.” I tilted my head at that. Surely my emotions weren’t that diff—

  My elven companion’s jaw muscles flexed as my love of heroism connected with her all consuming passion to not only thrive but blaze a trail for those afflicted like her. Her head snapped to me, and she reached for her weapons.

  Riena grabbed her hands. “Easy. Mari is always like that. This isn’t new.”

  Horror and disgust warred across her features before she glared at me. “Why do you want to kill me!? What the fuck have I done to you?”

  I raised my hands. “Vanya, I’ve told you that I enjoy slaying monsters of all kinds. That includes my friends. I understand that it’s a social faux pas to want that, so I keep quiet, but it’s not like I’m going to act on the impulse. If I killed you, then you couldn’t be my friend anymore. That, and you're humanity’s ally, so it’s against my ethical principles to…” I pictured flaying her and crushing her skull. The skin could make for an interesting enchanting material. The reflexive thoughts soothed my inner turmoil and distracted from worse spirals. They tickled my mind and increased my anticipation for the next fight. “...blindly act on my desires.”

  She backed away several steps. “No… that’s…” Vanya paused and tilted her head. “You have a crush on me?” A deep confusion radiated over the bond. “How does that make any sense?”

  A weary sigh escaped me. “The heart is not bound by what is possible.”

  “That’s so fucked up. I’m a person. You know I’m a person. Visualizing my death shouldn’t make you hot and bothered!”

  I imagined Vanya falling to monsters and a wave of grief hit me. “Your death would upset me. It’s killing you that would bring me joy.” I tried to untangle it. “It’s like eating a box of cookies. In the moment, you’re lost in the fat, sugar, and chocolate, but afterwards, you’re lying bloated on the couch, regretting your actions. Take that example and magnify it. I have enough self-control to not eat the box of cookies.” There, that should reassure her.

  Nyla snorted. “Either way, you think she’s a snack.” She lightly punched Vanya’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Exemplar recently found out she’s a pervert.”

  “Hey…”

  “You drooled at Gabriel’s scales. If you weren’t such a psycho about monsters, I’d be more worried about your other hungers.”

  Riena’s own hunger for blood spiked at the mention before she clamped it down. She coughed. “I think—given our unique circumstances—we should do our best to ignore each other’s private emotions as much as possible.”

  Vanya tentatively relaxed. “I don’t like it, but I’ve tolerated far more unstable elves.” She then mumbled, “Though, those were trying to get better and didn’t think their sadism made them a better person.”

  With that settled, I led way through the barrier. The resistance was noticeable, and you couldn’t breathe in it—a fact some of my companions didn’t know given their spike in alarm—but we were through it before anyone passed out.

  The dirt around Last Stand was a blasted wasteland devoid of all life. Atom routinely patrolled the city and irradiated it. His ability then let him draw the energy out of the ground, leaving a sterilized field for dozens of meters. Turrets, drones, and other unmanned defenses guarded our territory from right outside the barrier.

  We strode past all of them into the surrounding jungle. The monsters scurrying in the underbrush were sub tier 1 trash that could be safely ignored outside the city. If left to fester, one of the critters would consume enough of its fellows to pose a threat to more than unpowered children. Since purging them didn’t fit within our time limit, I continued hiking in that easy mile devouring stride that was as comfortable as breathing.

  Almost immediately, I had to slow for my less coordinated teammates. Vanya and Derek had kept pace the best, but both Riena and Nyla had fallen far behind. I gave our Vanguard a raised eyebrow.

  She scowled. “I haven’t been outside of Last Stand for years… for what I hope are obvious reasons.”

  “You haven’t taken revenge for your family?” I knew some refugees tried to move on with their lives, but I expected any Aspiration student to balance the scales. Such quests were excellent for shade growth. My own benefited immensely when I destroyed Blood Valley.

  “Kind of hard to carry your dying family while fighting off monsters. Yeah, I ‘avenged’ them. It was an eventful day. Monsters attacked. I came down with shade sickness, burned through the illness, and slaughtered all the invaders with my special powers. It would have been the perfect start to my legend if all the aura and MP flying around didn’t get the rest of my family infested. But that was fine, right? I would drag them to Last Stand, and the Savior could heal them. He could do anything.”

  She kicked a rock through a tree.

  “He was busy. Apparently, all of humanity was in danger, and the hospital would ‘provide the best care’.” She laughed bitterly. “They couldn’t even stop a changeling from swapping with my sister. Some hero I turned out to be…”

  Nyla’s misery weighed on the group. I hung back to the middle of the pack and let her lead before pulling out both of Axel’s journals from storage. Learning the language would take too much time, but I could translate the words and then try to figure out the grammar.

  That distracted me for hours before Vanya strolled next to me. I felt the minotaur sitting on her chest as she pushed through the anxiety of talking with me to ask, “W-what’s in the journal?”

  “Remember when I said that you wouldn’t find the real me palatable?” She nodded. “Well? Do you like me for me?”

  Vanya sighed, some of the tightness leaving her. “I’ll admit, I underestimated what you kept hidden. Please tell me the journal doesn’t contain worse revelations.”

  “I’m not certain. These are personal accounts from Axel during a summer he spent among the monsters. Given the variety of creatures he converses with, I’m inclined to believe his ability is Polyglot or a similar language learning power. What’s odd is that the tone of the journal changes over time. Initially, he went into these communities with proper heroic motivations of poisoning their water and slitting the throats of their leaders, but as he got to know his targets, he lost sight of his goals. Towards the end, he starts blaming humans for the lack of coexistence, which is ridiculous.”

  “Not that I agree with him, but how so?” The scattered light from the canopy was a natural adornment on Vanya’s long silver hair. “Old Absolute has maintained a policy of genocide first, and that prevents most monsters from wanting to associate with us.”

  I waved the concern away. “Many of our draconic allies wouldn’t respect us if we didn’t routinely purge ‘lesser species’ from our territory. A handful of high tier dragons are worth legions of one-off species with no more than a village of a foothold into our world. It’s not like we have the luxury to let prejudice guide policy. Our alliances with various elven groves happened despite public outcry. The Hero Union has diviners and supergeniuses determining the best course to maximize our chances for survival.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  She scoffed. “Those alliances happened because elves are humans. We would never ally with a community of monsters. Only a few individual exceptions are tolerated within Last Stand. Look, I don’t disagree with what we’re doing, but you can’t argue that biases don’t influence these decisions.”

  “Hate is a tool humanity uses to survive. It builds unity and a common purpose, but we aren’t ruled by it. Our continuation as a species is a higher calling beyond any other consideration.”

  It was Vanya’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “And when exactly did you plan to have kids?”

  “Absolute has a lab set aside if I should lose my legs or suffer some other kind of injury that will take a while to heal. Those parts are entirely shade, so we’re interested to see what crawls out if I can get pregnant at all.”

  “Well, that’s horrifying.”

  “I don’t know; I find the prospect exciting, but I don’t plan to have kids anytime soon. It’s not like I have to worry about my biological clock, since my process wouldn’t be biological. What about y—”

  Dozens of heartbeats puttered to life around us before an equal number of deinonychus sprung from the underbrush and swarmed us. Were they under a hibernation spell? The warm-blooded raptors had blended their heat signatures and scents into the environment, rendering themselves undetectable. No, dinosaurs are too stupid for that, and I sense a hint of magic in the air.

  As I put away my books and swung my blade through a reptile, Riena’s bond proved its worth. Casimir caught a talon aimed at his back with a vambrace while stabbing a raptor leaping for Riena. Blue barriers formed between teammates and foes flanking them. Drone lasers cut through our group without hitting a single ally, and Vanya fired grenades on the other side of Derek’s barriers for precise explosions.

  Before I could see what Casimir conjured, a utahraptor wove through the melee, dodged several of my swings, and bit my shoulder before dragging me off into the woods. The foliage snapped and whipped at our passing. A few demonic vines exploded in needles that bounced off my armor and my opponent’s feathers.

  She tossed me into a clearing, and I squared off with her. The half-ton raptor was eye level with me while being easily over 7m in length. Her gray face was ringed with pink plumage that darkened into a deep red down her body. The longer feathers of her arms and tail were nearly as black as her talons. Yellow eyes stared at me with lifelong hate as the reptile roared another spell.

  Clever awakened after I slaughtered her parents and siblings while she was exploring away from the nest. The grief lit that spark of sapience and became an all-consuming rage to see me dead. She tracked me to another adventure and managed to survive that encounter. Each time she returned, it was with forces and plans that would have killed the previous version of myself.

  I loved my big floofy mortal enemy. We fought dozens of times and had to work together once to escape a giant’s castle. One day, I would kill her. No trick or last minute contingency would stop the lethal blow. “Eight years you’ve hunted me to no success, but you’ve survived the attempts. That’s more than I can say for most of my foes.”

  Clever snapped her teeth and copies of her formed from twigs and leaves.

  “This is the end, Clever. You’ll join your family soon.” That probably wasn’t true. Most scholars thought awakened animals were a kind of spirit, so she wouldn’t go to the same hypothetical afterlife.

  I threw a heat dagger through one of the copies, bursting it apart and igniting the tree behind it. With Fire Manipulation from my armor, I spread the flames around us as I dueled the dinosaur.

  “Your copies are missing an essential qualia.” I ignored the illusions and stabbed at Clever. She rolled away from it. “A higher tier spell would solve the issue, but this would have worked on me the last time we fought.” She hissed, and purple poison leaked off her longer feathers, which she then flicked at me. The projectiles splattered against my Spirit-Stone shield before the rocks broke apart and resumed orbiting.

  Awakened animals could have any number of spells. Their magical languages were some of the simplest, but each one had to learn the ‘words’ on their own. Clever roared again. As I braced myself for a new spell, she kicked at a rope and sent a log trap swinging through the clearing. I cut through it and ducked under the poison that would have hit me if I jumped. Clever kicked the half of the log near her and slammed me between the two pieces of wood. Sometimes I wonder if she is smarter than me.

  I stored the log between us in my ring and charged. Her eyes went wide at the sudden spatial magic, but a magically hidden snare snagged my foot and lifted me up. I cut the vine, flipped, and stomped the resummoned half of the log into the ground vertically and balanced on it. After switching to my Oni Armor, I tossed ice-spears at Clever. She dodged the sudden rain of death with reptilian grace before crying out in pain when one of her tail feathers brushed against the ring of fire around us. During that moment of distraction, I landed a spear in her side.

  She yanked it out and threw it back at me with her teeth before slashing my pole with a talon. As I fell, I conjured a massive ice-axe and switched back to my Infernal armor to control the spread of the flames. A forest fire would not be ideal.

  By the time I landed, Clever’s flank was covered in a poultice the reptile must’ve stashed here. We charged and tested my axe against her talon. The creature’s raw instincts had refined over the years to parry and deflect my attacks instead of just focusing on offense. We exchanged blows until my weapon cracked and shattered. Seizing the opportunity, she lunged and nearly impaled herself on my freshly conjured blade. I fucking love having a storage item.

  While the creature didn’t have a shade, awakened animals were similar enough that Clever nearly dodged the surprise attack with her enhanced speed. A shallow cut scored into her scales and drew blood. The dinosaur did not expect poison enchantment and stumbled. That moment of poor footing cost her several more cuts before her feathers glowed with a ritual protection and blasted me away in a flash of light.

  She fled through the fire in the opposite direction of my team, who was still fighting. I could hunt her down, but regrouping was a higher priority. Clever should leave me alone for a few months while she went on quests, learned new spells, and gathered more allies. Begrudgingly, I rushed back to my team to find birds chirping above the battle.

  The raptors turned their ears toward the sound and fled back into the brush. Some dragged their wounded with them. Casimir sent his giant chickens after them and yelled, “Fucking bastards!”

  None of my party seemed worse for wear, so I relaxed. “Sorry, that was personal.” I tried focusing on extracting the most MP rich parts of corpses—which varied depending on the animal’s lifestyle and diet—but my team demanded a full explanation on my ‘feud with a dinosaur’.

  Derek stared into the canopy after my tale. “I know tamers that spend their entire careers trying to awaken one animal. Those that manage, then struggle to teach them one spell, yet alone multiple. Your raptor is an archmage by comparison.”

  “Clever is not my raptor. We’re mortal enemies.”

  “Aside from when you work together.”

  “That was one time!”

  Nyla chortled. “Sounds better than your current relationship with Gabriel. Do feathers do it for you?”

  I shivered. “Don’t be gross. I’ve known Clever since she was a toddler.”

  “Right, that’s why.”

  “And I’m going to kill her.”

  Casimir guffawed. “I’m not hearing a ‘no’ about feathers.”

  “Self-discovery is a never ending journey with new vistas both strange and wondrous. I can’t say for certain if a fondness for plumage isn’t around the next bend. Only time and adventure will tell!” I ignored further teasing and led the way forward.

  By sunset, the tower was in sight, so I searched for a place to camp. I found a nice location within a short walk of a stream and resting against a dirt cliff. The tree cover was dense enough to break the wind and obscure us from flying hunters, but not so thick as to drop branches on us or hide the approach of a large monster.

  I pulled six of my camping kits from my ring and set them up. There was nothing wrong with any of them. I kept making new sets from worthless monster hides and other low value loot I gathered over the years. Each one had a story behind it, quests that went into it, and adventures done with it. All had the basic camping enchantments to ward off annoying critters and poor weather. I arranged them so that they circled the fire.

  Nyla sniffed the options before claiming an a-frame tent made from flower monsters. Casimir grabbed the small, silk pavilion. The color shifting fabric was cursed to always be clashing, so it had poor market value. Vanya ignored the natural options and dumped her pack in a dome tent made from drone parts. Derek boldly chose the miniature cabin that I made with the leftover bits of a witch’s hut. Riena claimed my oldest surviving kit, a leather tipi decorated with feathers and scales, before sitting next to me on one of the freshly carved logs.

  “Ooh,” She wiggled her ass in the seat. “That is far more comfortable than I expected.”

  “Carpentry is an underappreciated art,” I lamented while handing her a marshmallow on a stick. “This is a—”

  She snatched it from me. “Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I’ve roasted marshmallows. Several of my friends had yards large enough to…” She trailed off, deciding not to explain the sky gardens of the wealthy. “Um, are you alright with the tent we left for you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? This is the best one!” I patted Yimigirr’s taxidermied kidney. The Frost Giant organ had been lined with goose down and wool from vorpal rabbits. “Sure, it’s basically a sleeping bag, but it’s watertight and stops most attacks, making it the perfect place to meditate or convalesce after serious wounds.” I opened the zipper and showed Riena the comfy contents.

  She wasn’t impressed, but plastered on a fake smile, despite her real feelings transferring over the bond.

  I chuckled. “We don’t appreciate the utility of little lies until they are stripped from us.”

  While Riena tried to form a response, the rest of the team settled next to the campfire. As I passed out s’more supplies, Coatlie uncoiled from my neck and demanded one. The snake flitted between us and interjected herself into the idle conversations I was filtering out. In the wild, people tended to appreciate someone ‘on watch’ and ‘staying focused’. That let me relax a bit and drop more of the act.

  Sharing fire and food as we rested in a hostile land filled all of my social needs. The talking was more of a performance. I did it to cause laughs or impart knowledge. My attachment to these people came from what we did together, not the words. For once, my companions understood that as the warmth in my chest spread through the bond. Vanya still didn’t know what to make of my contradictory feelings and sat on the opposite side of the fire. She would make a beautiful scream as she died. Each monster is an instrument waiting for the right weapon to pluck their strings.

  I clamped down on the thought and let it fall into the background. Reveling on such idle musings would be rude in our situation. My murderous urges shifted to Coatlie, then Fyrnell, and rested on Gabriel. She’s a regenerator, so it doesn’t count. Ripping out her heart and squeezing it over her face won’t kill her. And despite her new uniform, she was human, so I wouldn’t want to kill her. These impulses were like the satisfaction I get when breaking the bones of bullies—nothing to worry about.

  Coatlie nudged my hand with her nose. “Share your s’mores.”

  I had laced mine with a local berry, adding a sour note. “Sure, but it is poison.”

  “Poison for you.” She gobbled the offered treat. “When did you find time to handmake graham crackers and chocolate?”

  “Before I went to Aspiration.” I had planned to bust them out at my farewell party after my commencement speech fixed everything. A log crumbled to ashes like my plan had. “They keep well if stored correctly.” I removed a bag of multi-color marshmallows from my storage. “I have a variety of flavors, but people tend to prefer vanilla.” A bag of bleeding marshmallows appeared in my other hand. “And no one has ever wanted to try my savory marshmallows.”

  Derek shook his head. “Whenever I think I have you figured out, you’ll reveal a new level of strangeness.”

  “Come on Derek, you’re supposed to meet people who challenge your way of thinking at college. This is what we signed up for!” Casimir braved one of the blueberry marshmallows.

  “No one has tried your bloodmallows? Fuck it, I’m game.” Nyla started roasting one and crinkled her nose. “What meat is that?”

  I put three on a stick and joined her. “Althaea officinalis, or marshmallow, can also grow in Blood Marshes. The environment infuses them with MP from dead monsters, giving the root powder a savory effect and causing the resulting confection to bleed. I captured a blood elemental, slew a migrating Swamp Lurker, and banished a corrupted naiad to get the roots needed.” I sighed. These weren’t the only part of the s’mores with a quest behind them.

  “That sounds like a lot of effort when you can get a ten kilo bag of marshmallows for 1 kuai,” Nyla said even as she focused on not burning hers.

  “If I pace myself, I only need to eat six times a year, so a bit of extra effort is worth it.” After roasting mine, I prepared three s’mores. Coatlie swallowed hers whole and made contented noises. I offered one of the remaining two to Riena.

  She scrunched her face. “Not funny.”

  “It might take the edge off,” I offered.

  “The edge?”

  Nyla stopped before taking her first bite and said, “Yeah, your bloodlust has been oozing over the bond all day. Whatever you got seems to be more culinary than Mari’s. What’s up with that?”

  Riena blushed and grabbed the s’more. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Okay.” Nyla shrugged and bit into hers. “Bleh! It’s like eating a gooey salt-coated nail.”

  “Barbarian!” Coatlie insulted. “You aren’t appreciating the umami.”

  “Chocolate doesn’t need an umami flavor.”

  “Someone hasn’t had chocolate covered mice before!”

  “Obviously not!”

  While they bickered, I enjoyed my treat. Despite the roasting, it tasted like raw bloody meat smothered in gourmet chocolate and pressed between the finest sweet crackers.

  Riena nibbled at the edges of hers in progressively larger bites until she ate it with a frenzy. After licking her fingers, she stared at her shaking hands and radiated with shame. “I… think I’ll retire for the night.”

  One by one, the rest of the team made their excuses until I was the only one watching the fire and the stars. I closed my eyes and meditated to the sounds of wind running through the trees, crackling flames, and a running stream. In this primeval wilderness, I was more at home than I ever was in Last Stand. The presence of my companions was both reassuring and an anchor that prevented me from really cutting loose. That human part of me understood their importance and valued them, but the hero within wanted to run into the forest and never look back.