Luke didn’t have much time to think as he was yanked backwards by the Steeltongue Toad. He threw his hands backwards and fired off all three spell rifles at once.

  They all missed.

  The spells detonated to the left and the right of the monster reeling Luke in. The toad still twitched to the side, five degrees to the left. That was enough of a deviation that Luke’s armored form didn’t land in the monster’s wide open mouth. Instead, he fell just to the side and rolled. The twist was enough to detach himself from its sticky tongue. The monster didn’t want to give up so easily and hopped in place to aim its tongue at Luke again. Before it settled another steeltongue already was on its way.

  This time, Luke was prepared. He activated Frictionless Slide and darted to the left. The monster’s tongue passed by harmlessly and he fired his spell rifles again. While the toad was still registering the fact that he had missed, lightning and ice hit its face point blank. It stuttered in place and its tongue fell limp to the ground. Ice started forming from the impact on its side.

  Now that he had a moment to breathe, Luke checked the battlefield. The other Jaegers had their fights in hand. He could afford to focus on just this one. The toad was recovering from the lightning and the ice had stopped spreading after freezing two feet of its belly.

  Luke decided to give his new skill a test. With a mental flex, he activated Overcharge. The runes surrounding him started glowing and tripled in power. The mana vision runes on his visor made themselves known. Where before he was able to sense magic better and pick out camouflaged monsters, now he could see into the toad’s body and watch mana flow from its core to its tongue.

  Knowing now that the monster was fully recovered and about to attack, Luke fired first. He shot out a lightning bolt to keep it still while he experimented.

  A thunderous crack filled the forest as an overcharged lightning spell shot out of his arm. The bulk of the spell hit the monster and fried it with crackling power. Luke was close enough that some of the lightning bolts connected to him and cracked his gauntlet. A burst of light accompanied the spell and when his vision cleared, the toad was a smoking corpse in front of him. Luke belatedly deactivated Overcharge.

  The System of the World considered the fight definitively over and sent him his notices.

  Luke checked his arm. His right gauntlet was smoking and cracks ran all the way to his elbow. Thankfully, his pilot suit isolated him from the electricity that had run through his mech.

  “You alright there, bossman?” Bumblebee asked.

  He turned to see everyone staring at him in shock. They hadn’t been expecting that display of power.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. The toad hit my arm and broke my spell rifle. That's why the spell exploded like that,” Luke lied. “Luckily, I can do this.”

  He activated the second half of Repair Craft and his gauntlet stopped smoking and the cracks sealed up. His back plate closed up and the dent popped out. The move left him with only three mana, he had used a lot with his experiment earlier and back to back skill uses. Still, now that his mech was repaired, he was ready to fight. He didn’t need internal mana to fire his weapons since he had tied them into the mana core at his back.

  “You sure you’re ok? I just got hit with lightning, and it wasn’t fun,” Bumblebee said and pointed to where he had been hit by the Lightning Bats earlier.

  “I got lucky, it wasn’t a direct hit like yours was.” Luke said.

  They got to work harvesting the cores from the monsters they had just killed. Vanessa walked over to him and looked down at the smoking corpse Luke was working on.

  “That was a really lucky accident,” she said, doubt leaking into her voice.

  “Yep,” Luke said brightly, “I’ll have to tell you all about it, later.”

  The oath he made to SPEAR meant that he couldn’t tell her all the details about his class. Not right now. After she made her own oath, then she would be in the loop and it would let him spill the beans. Until then, he would have to stick to the stupid lie. Or rather, the lie that didn’t paint him as stupid for experimenting with an attack spell so close to his target.

  The toads each had a tier two core. Luke collected the four monster cores and they headed out again. He was slightly miffed at the low rewards. The cores would be worth a lot, but he had expected tier three cores after how difficult the fight was. He just had to remind himself that some monsters were tougher than others, even when they were low level.

  It took some doing to get Jinx willing to travel. For some reason, she was fascinated by the toad’s tongue. She kept phasing through Vanessa’s hands so she could keep batting at it.

  “Jinx. We are going now. Can you please come with us?” Luke said.

  She looked up when he talked and back at Vanessa’s gauntlets reaching for her. She phased through the hands one more time and then jumped up to Luke’s shoulder. Vanessa was put out, but Luke knew that Jinx liked messing with people. Now that the cat could literally slip through hands, she was going to take that opportunity often.

  The squad got jogging again, heading north towards the Blue Valley where the hydra’s corpse lay. Luke sent his magic drone ahead to scout and directed them around a few groups of monsters. They were almost to the valley when he slowed to a stop, shocked by what his magic drone was showing him.

  “Big rats ahead. They have huge teeth, too. Maybe not rats, they don’t have tails. Could be gerbils? Rodents of unusual size, either way. Perhaps ROUS for short.”

  Vanessa giggled.

  “Ha, ha,” Shepard said, not as amused, “This isn’t the Princess Bride, and those aren’t Rous. They are Saber-Toothed Hamsters.”

  Luke laughed. “I don’t think their real name is any better.”

  “Whatever. They range widely and love to eat slimes. We should kill them.”

  “Really?” Luke said, turning back towards them. “Do you think they would be a good first fight for Jinx? She has a class if I haven’t told you before.”

  “I figured when she was walking through walls,” Shepard said with a droll voice.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Whatever, do you think Jinx can handle one of them? I’m trying to find a safe fight for her.”

  “Sure. Throw your mutant cat against hamsters bigger than her. They are weak monsters but so is your cat. The fight will be over quick either way.”

  “Don’t talk about Jinx that way,” Vanessa butted in. She walked over to stand by Luke.

  Shepard threw his hands up. “Whatever, I literally don’t care.”

  Luke narrowed his eyes. Shepard was being a real asshole today. First he lets Bumblebee get hurt, now this. He’d have to ask the guy what was up later. Right now it was time to kill a threat to the monster livestock.

  “Alright, let’s go kill the Saber-Toothed Hamsters. I’ll let Jinx hunt, but don’t worry about stealing her kills. There are six of them and who knows how effective a fighter she will be.” Luke said. The only reason he was thinking about letting her fight a new monster was that she had the ultimate escape if they were too tough for her.

  They made a beeline for the monsters, finding six of them squeaking and chuffing near a thorny bush. They were about the size of brown bears and twice as fluffy. The Saber-Toothed Hamsters were focused on the bush, moving closer and farther away. Like many of the plants around here, it could move. It was trying to attack them, but was too slow. They were slowly picking off the fruits on its vines without getting caught in its thorns.

  Luke led them to the monsters from behind and Shepard split them up to make a pincer attack. He paused before ordering the attack and gestured towards Jinx.

  Luke coaxed her off his shoulder and whispered, “Alright, Jinx. We are going to attack, and you can fight too.”

  She looked at the squeaking monsters and then padded around behind Luke.

  “You don’t have to fight, but you will get stronger if you do.”

  He wasn’t sure if she understood him, but she didn’t move to attack. Shepard rolled his eyes.

  Luke tried one more time. “You liked the little blue mana cores, right? If you kill one of these guys, I’ll let you have its mana core.”

  Her ears flicked up and she looked over to the monsters again. Then she stalked forward without another look backwards. He chuckled to himself when he saw her focus. She was very treat-motivated after all. Luke was glad he had remade her legs this morning, the new ones matched her larger size and would allow her to hunt easier.

  When Jinx was behind a nearby bush, Shepard signaled for an attack. Luke and Bumblebee shot out their ice bolts. They both found their mark and the monsters chirped in anger and charged the humans.

  Davis and Green came in from the right and cut two hamsters from the herd. They used their fire and acid swords to tag team the monsters and burn them to death.

  The two monsters hit with ice spells slowed and stopped after fifteen feet. They weren’t nearly as resistant to magic as the toads had been. Within moments icicles burst through their skin. Barrow added to the number of frozen monsters with his Ice Sword.

  That left one monster for Jinx to handle. She phased through the bush she was hiding in and leapt up with her claws outstretched. Her three foot frame looked puny in comparison to the bear sized Saber-Toothed Hamster. She was scarcely bigger than the monster’s long sharp teeth. The cat’s claws extended wide as she landed on the fluffy monster’s hide.

  Luke moved forward to help her fight, but needn’t have bothered. Her claws grew shiny the moment before impact and she cut right through the monster without stopping. He thought at first she had simply phased through the hamster, but then the cuts opened up and revealed a monster that had been sliced all the way through. Blood spurted out, painting the ground red. It tumbled to the ground, dead.

  Jinx was covered in streaks of blood, not able to get out of the way in time. She yowled in frustration and shook her paws. Then she phased out of reality and the blood fell to the ground, leaving her spotless.

  “Good job, Jinx!” Luke said and took off his gauntlet to give her pets.

  Vanessa walked up to them, carefully avoiding the pool of blood. “Awe, who’s my good little murder kitty?”

  Jinx meowed and pawed the air near the body.

  “I think she wants that core you promised her,” Vanessa said.

  Luke nodded and put his gauntlet back on. He grimaced as he looked at his mana. It was still low, too low to cast Repair Craft. If he got blood covered now, he would have to clean it off the old fashioned way.

  He could foist the work off on someone else, but that would be a poor leader. He plunged his hand into the corpse and rooted around until he found the small mana core. It was a tier one core, about the size of a marble. Unsurprising given how easy they were to kill. He cleaned his gauntlet off on its fur, as best as he could, and gave Jinx the core.

  She sniffed the mana core and gave it a tentative lick. Then she chomped down on it, chewing the core to bits in moments. Luke belatedly realized he had just given his cat a treat worth four grand.

  “Is that how animals level up? They eat monster cores?” Vanessa asked.

  “I literally have no idea,” Luke replied with a shrug.

  The conversation reminded him that he had leveled up in the last fight. It seemed weird that he had leveled up after killing a single tier one monster. Maybe his War Machine class liked it when he sent his cat into battle. Another weird thing was that he didn’t get popups for the class level ups, only the skill ones. Quirks of the system that he probably wouldn’t figure out today.

  For now, he had two stat points he had to assign. He pulled up his stat screen to consider his options.

  Luke had read the book Cormac had given him, the one that talked about classes and stats. Based on the information he read, Luke was guessing that strength and acuity were the best stats to focus on. The acuity was a safe choice. A faster mind meant he could react and plan better on the battlefield. It would also help his mana regeneration. Adding to strength was a risk, but he had a feeling it would pay off. Even though his mech suit would give him all the strength he needed, something he had read made him want to invest in the stat.

  The book mentioned something about druid classes that augmented themselves with tree bark armor. It said that the druid’s strength would enhance them and the bark armor, so investing in it would be doubly effective. Luke knew that it wasn’t the same, but he hoped that War Machine would gain the same benefits. The only way to be sure was to get his strength up to six for the qualitative improvement that would give him. For now, he put a point into acuity and strength. That meant he was one level up from twelve or six in each stat now.

  They headed over the foothills and into the Blue Valley. The corpse of the hydra was on the opposite side of the valley. Luke had been planning on walking around the valley to avoid disturbing the Purpleheart Ents. That would be a waste of time because someone had already disturbed them. The walking trees were agitated, many of them moving east towards a fleeing trio of orcs.

  Luke stopped at the top of the rise while he sent his magic drone to check them out. The orcs were young, each of them armored in white leather and holding weapons. Two held hook swords and the third a spear. They were jogging away from the ents, just fast enough that they would lose them soon. One of them spotted his drone in the air and pointed and shouted.

  They were too far away for Luke to hear what they said, but he realized a few things as they looked up at his drone. First off, they had familiar face carvings, their green skin in a pattern reminiscent of Cormac. The second thing was that one of them was holding a large argent rose. It was solid metal and the thorns on the stem were sharp enough that his hand was freely bleeding.

  That had to be the artifact. Cormac had sent his grandson to go collect the artifact and cut them out of the loop. Luke grit his teeth. He had half a mind to chase them down and take the artifact back.

  The trio of young orcs looked past the drone they had seen and saw the seven humans standing atop the hill south of the valley. To Luke’s shock, they immediately turned and sped up, running directly towards the mechs.

  “Looks like we’re about to get some company.” Luke said. “I don’t know why they are heading here, but be ready for a fight. The one in the middle has space warping abilities, and I’m sure the other two have classes as well."

  Today’s chapter title comes from X-Men (2000).

  It’s such an epically terrible quote: “Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning? Same thing that happens to everything else.” And then Storm blasts him with lightning. I liked the movie, but that quote was a groaner.

  Also, I noticed I missed accounting for a few stats from the level 5. I did some editing to fix that. Now his dexterity is 8, where before it was 6.