Lianhua moved past Ryan without a sound, sword at her hip, eyes sharp as she took over his watch. She was the most skilled among them in pure combat, and Ryan trusted her judgment without reservation. Fera was farther out, heat shimmering faintly around her as she patrolled the outer edge, dragon fire coiled tight beneath her skin. The strange draconic bloodline he’d awoken within her was growing stronger. Shikumo was nowhere to be seen, which meant she was exactly where she needed to be, shadows bending around her like old friends.

  Nekita sat apart, back against a stone slab, blood mana drifting lazily around her fingers as she watched the dark between the trees. Ryan could feel her restraint like a held breath. She didn’t like being hunted any more than he did, but she understood the cost of giving in too easily. Control mattered. Balance mattered.

  Amaya knelt near one of the larger glyph arrays, hands stained with ink and mana residue, already repairing stress fractures from the last engagement. She looked up when Ryan passed and offered a tired smile. “They’ll hold,” she said quietly. “For a while, anyway.”

  “For a while,” Ryan echoed.

  He’d tried to leave the Divided Realms. He’d crossed worlds within it, slipped through cracks that should have been unreachable, bent space and reality until lesser beings would have shattered. Walking the Void was possible, at least until he tried to take his family from the Divided Realms. Every time, Primus adjusted. The Void was vast, infinite perhaps. But somehow, in a way only a god could, Primus had blocked his ability to leave this system.

  Somewhere beyond the boundaries of the realm, Silas was moving, growing, and, knowing him, breaking systems in ways Ryan could barely imagine. The thought was a thin thread of hope, but it was enough. Ryan tightened his grip on his axe and turned back to the dark.

  As long as Primus continued to hunt him, he’d have to keep paying the price, all while hoping Silas would bring help.

  Back on Earth’s moon, now a dungeon, Cami stood watch over an ancient blue. Azuria was going to attempt to evolve her wings to gain the ability to cross the Void and follow her bonded rider. Something had happened to him earlier in the day which had nearly driven her into a frenzy.

  Cami would have advised caution, but dragons, despite their ancient ages, could be as impetuous as hummingbirds. At least it would come in handy, having more dragons who could cross the Void. Nico was twisted up inside over killing Tiamat. It was strange. He’d never shown that kind of remorse before.

  She worried for Azuria. The evolution was dangerous and needed to be handled in a safe place. Strangely, Cami felt safer on this dungeon moon than she did on Earth. There were too many variables there. Here, it was just the dungeon, which posed no threat at all to a demigoddess. With a wave of her hand, she had removed the souls from every monster within a mile of their location. Other monsters would know to avoid this place.

  And so she began her watch, as Azuria began her evolution.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Out of Time

  When Samvek’s eyes blinked open, I saw a fire burning within them, a spiritual hunger I’d never sensed in my mentor before. For a moment, I worried that despite the notifications and all my checks, I had harmed him in some way until he shook his head and let out a gasp. “Wow, what an intense rush!”

  His smile helped put me at ease, but not entirely. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. There were a lot of notifications. Apparently, as far as the Hell System is concerned, I’m your vassal now, although I hope you don’t expect me to call you ‘m’lord’ or anything.” If he hadn’t been smiling, I might have worried that he was being serious.

  “I think we can skip that. It said you got a class called Blood Hunter. I hope that isn’t anything too disgusting?” I’d been wary of blood-related abilities ever since I first read the description for Blood Bather.

  “It’s potentially overpowered, but we have to see how it functions in practice. I gained an ability—okay, I’m not sure if it’s really an ability, but it’s a part of me now. It’s called ‘Hunger’. I think it’s intended to be a combination of tracking and battle lust. The class isn’t really about blood, but rather about Vitae. By consuming the Vitae of monsters I defeat, I can gain a tiny percentage of their stats. The vagueness in the description is why I can’t say whether the class is good or not.”

  His expression turned serious, then. “I want to say something, and you need to hear me.”

  I nodded.

  “You did exactly what I told you to, but you don’t know why I made the request. Yes, I trust you, but I received advice from Priest Bahran, who is practically a second father to me. He told me he couldn’t explain why, but said that it came from a Seer named Brian.

  “Anyway, he told me that there would come a time when we were training together where I needed to allow you to augment me. He said without that, I was going to fall hopelessly behind you, but that if it was successful, I would be able to stand beside you at the end. Ominous, I know, and the ‘if’ part certainly made me nervous. But like I said, I trust you, and I trust him. So, stop beating yourself up about this.”

  With that, I told him about the Horsemen part of my quest, and how I needed to fill those roles by incorporating foreign systems into each of the people I designated as Horsemen.

  “I saw that about the Horsemen thing. The terminology seemed strange, but I take it there’s some significance for you?”

  I tried to explain the horsemen of the apocalypse, both from the biblical model and the X-Men version. When I finished, he smiled. “I think I like the mutant version better, but if the system says you’re going to need to bring apocalyptic force to bear, then we have to find your other three Horsemen. Knowing you, you probably already have some people in mind.”

  “I do. The problem is that there are only three slots, and at a minimum, four people that I need to include. I would say that we could look for another system, but I think my head is already full enough as it is. Between all the systems I’ve interacted with and my primordial aspect, I’ve got all I can handle. And that’s to say nothing of Psi.”

  He jumped up at that. “About that. I don’t have much Psi, but this new ability seems like it could come in handy. The notifications said you gained it through our connection as well.”

  “Yeah. We could try it out in the boss room.”

  Samvek shook his head. “As much as I’d like to, I get the feeling that helping Tad is more important than ever. You can’t be late for your crafting, and we probably need to bring him into the dungeon to gain some levels. He apparently isn’t locked at 150, so who knows how far he can go. Maybe we could catch him up to us.”

  I mumbled an agreement, but my mind was already elsewhere. There was something I needed to do with Tad, that was certain. I somehow doubted that it had as much to do with power-leveling him as it did with the crafting, but that was just a gut feeling. Being here was what had given me the idea for enhancing Samvek, as I’d followed Tad’s basic pattern of awakening.

  Samvek and I locked eyes and clasped arms. Some things were difficult to say between men, but in that moment, I knew that I had another brother who would never leave or betray me. No further words were needed as we raced to the exit, then teleported from the save room to the dungeon entrance.

  That was when things went to crap.

  The setup outside the dungeon was entirely different. The town guard was gone, and the only adventurers were gathered around a tent to the side of the entrance with a couple of tables set up to process information for those who wanted to enter.

  The actual dungeon guards were all Order members now. Identify went off without me having to ask. In front of the entrance were a pair of Lawspeakers and a dozen Lawkeepers. None were over level 80, and they felt like toy soldiers we could knock over on a whim.

  That sensation changed when my eyes strayed to the tents on the other side. They had the colors of the Order, with plenty of Lawkeepers standing around, all with strained expressions, and I got the feeling that their presence was mostly ceremonial.

  I felt three much more powerful presences inside the tent. Without being able to see them, Identify wouldn’t work, although I made a mental note to try and tweak that later. Samvek reached for spatial mana and began to warp the area around us to teleport us away, until one of the pylons along the path that led up to the dungeon pulsed.

  There was a horrendous screech, like a demigod’s nails dragged down the chalkboard of Eternity, and Samvek’s spatial mana popped like a bubble.

  Teleportation Lock Activated

  The notification flashed in my mind, but I didn’t need words to know what was happening. Neither did the sources of the three auras inside the Order’s tent, who all rushed out. The woman was whipcord thin and tall, decked out in ornate leather armor. The next out was a man in heavy armor, at least seven feet tall. The third reminded me of the Dreadnoughts we’d seen with Tad.

  Identify quickly did its thing.

  Vespa Saggen

  Tier: Legendary

  Level: 375

  Class: Inquisitor

  Darros Saggen

  Tier: Legendary

  Level: 368

  Class: Law Warden

  Marken Tal

  Tier: Legendary

  Level: 324

  Class: Dreadnought

  My eyes widened at their levels. I knew Samvek and I could hit above our level, but I didn’t know what to expect here in a new universe.

  The three approached us in unison. I recognized instantly in the comfortable way they moved together that they were accustomed to fighting side by side. Samvek and I had that same connection, although in our case it was more about covering each other’s backs. My dad had always told me that there was a world of difference between how a Marine unit worked together versus a random group of guys with guns, even if they were good shots.

  Vespa spoke first. “Hold and answer for how you are using magic beyond anyone from this world.”

  I knew better than to try pushing out with Charisma. My Trailblazer’s Aura had worked on lesser members of the Order, but something told me even that wasn’t going to be a solution to dealing with these three.

  Vespa continued. “Drop to your knees, hands behind your head. We will take you down hard at the first sign of a weapon or any hint of spellcasting. You’re going to answer our questions.”

  She was annoying, but I was still doing the calculus about whether we should fight now or try to play along with them for a while. That was when Samvek, who had been keeping his head down, finally looked up.

  Every member of the Order drew their weapons. The guild’s adventurers sprang to their feet.

  “What is he?” Marken asked. “Some new kind of beastkin?”

  “Disgusting,” Darros replied. “An abomination.”

  A simple look from Vespa shut them both up. The hierarchy here was clear. I was about to try talking our way out of the situation when the unexpected happened. Samvek’s spear was in his hands as he shot down the path at the speed of thought, straight at Vespa. I felt a swirl of Psi in his wake, and realized he was trying out Physical Enhancement.

  By the time my mind caught up to what he was doing, the consequences of his charge were already rippling outward faster than I could process. His spear had run Vespa through, the blow so clean and precise that for a heartbeat the world seemed to accept her death as fact. I saw the shaft buried deep in her chest, felt the certainty of the kill settle into my instincts, then watched reality reject it. Her wound sealed in a flash of pale light, flesh knitting together as though the spear had never pierced her at all.

  Darros paid the price.

  The damage tore into him instead, his armor collapsing inward as blood sprayed across the stone. He let out a hoarse scream and staggered backward, one knee slamming into the ground as holy light surged through his body to keep him upright. I felt it then—a rigid lattice of magic connecting them, a conduit that redirected harm from Vespa into Darros with uncanny efficiency. At least they didn’t appear to have any of the instant resurrection items which had become one of my banes when fighting higher-tiered people. This seemed more likely to be a function of Darros’ class, as the magic felt full of law and authority.

  Samvek didn’t slow when the kill failed. If anything, the backlash ignited something inside him, a sharp edge of aggression that I hadn’t felt before from my mentor. The Hunger he’d described earlier surged to the surface, bleeding into his movements and tightening his aura until the air around him felt predatory. He ripped the spear free and drove it forward again, Psi screaming as he poured more power into the strike, aiming for Vespa with single-minded intent. Darros took the damage as the redirection flared again, the spear punching into his shoulder and shattering bone with a wet crack. The big man was healing rapidly, not just his flesh, but also his armor, which seemed to be a part of him.

  I stepped forward to meet my own foe, bringing Wayfinder up, bracing the polearm’s haft against the shock of Marken’s advance. The Dreadnought hit like a moving wall, his presence slamming into me with enough force to blur my vision and drive my boots back across the stone. His weapon came down in a brutal arc meant to end the fight in one stroke, but I twisted into it, redirecting just enough of the impact to where it didn’t crush my chest. Lightning crawled along Wayfinder as I held, muscles screaming under the strain.

  Even after the shock of Samvek’s attack, they were still underestimating us. Marken was strong, but not stronger than me, even with nearly a hundred levels on me.

  Behind Marken, Vespa recovered with unnerving calm. Her eyes tracked the fight with cold precision as she wove something subtle and dangerous, a pressure sliding along the edges of my awareness rather than announcing itself. Precognition flared with a certainty that left no room for doubt—an attack was incoming. I shifted an instant before her blade cut through the space my spine had occupied. The air burned where the strike passed, close enough that I felt heat along my back. If I’d had the time, I would have taken a moment to revel in how Jedi-like the move had felt, but there would be time for that later.

  I spun with the motion, Wayfinder extending fully into its polearm form as I brought it around in a wide, controlling sweep meant to keep Vespa from closing again. She retreated a step, reassessing, while Darros dragged himself upright through sheer will, blood soaking into the stone beneath him. The bond between them pulsed stubbornly, their magic holding fast despite the damage piling up. Marken pressed harder, every strike layered with discipline and flawless timing, forcing me to give ground inch by inch. He flared flashes of light as though they would blind me, but my eyes played only a small part in how I saw the world now.

  Still, there was no doubt these three were true professionals, and under other circumstances I might have admired their resolve and their precision. Samvek was still pressing Vespa, his strikes growing faster and more aggressive as his Hunger fed on the fight, and I could feel the edge he was riding. If he lost control now…

  I shook my head, refusing to allow my mind to go there. Samvek had one of the most powerful wills I’d ever encountered. He’d keep it together. Besides, there was this new connection between us. He was my first Horseman, but above all, he was my friend. I could tell that while he fought with increased ferocity, he still had his wits about him. He was letting a little more of the beast out, that was all.

  I tightened my grip on Wayfinder and dug in, anchoring myself against Marken’s advance as lightning crackled along the blade. We were restricted, boxed in by the pylon’s interference, unable to disengage or reposition the way we normally would. They outleveled us, outnumbered us, and had planned for this kind of confrontation. Even so, as the clash intensified and the dungeon entrance echoed with the sound of steel on stone, I knew one thing with absolute clarity.

  They had underestimated us, and it was time to make them pay for their folly.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Spatial Disruption

  Lightning made the decision before my thought finished forming. I lifted my hand and sent a crackling bolt straight into the clustered Lawkeepers who were trying to regroup behind the tents. The strike tore through them in a jagged path, jumping from armor to armor, flesh to flesh, leaving smoking corpses where disciplined soldiers had stood seconds before. The smell of scorched metal and burned ozone filled the air, sharp and undeniable. They weren’t our primary opponents, but I wanted to keep them out of the battle.

  Samvek surged forward at the same time, abandoning measured footwork for raw momentum as he tracked a new target. Lightning burst from his body in violent pulses, thrown outward as blunt force, smashing into Marken and driving the larger man back step by grinding step. Each impact rang through the stone like a hammer strike, the sound vibrating up my legs. Samvek’s eyes were bright, focused, and hungry, and he chose every strike with calculated precision.

  Marken answered with brute discipline, meeting Samvek head-on with blows that would have pulped a lesser fighter. Steel rang against steel as spear and armored fists collided, sparks and lightning spraying with every impact. Samvek took a hit that should have broken ribs, but he didn’t flinch as he retaliated, slamming his knee into Marken’s chest before following that up with a lightning-charged elbow that cracked armor and drove the Dreadnought sideways. The exchange was fast, violent, and relentless, neither man giving ground for long.

  The trio chose to gang up on Samvek at that point, assuming he was the more dangerous of their foes. That was fine with me. It had been a while since I got to play a pure support role. I still remembered the early days, when my build tended toward providing assistance rather than leading the charge.

  I felt a rush of excitement when Samvek cast Haste. If there was one spell that by itself had the potential to change the tide of a battle, that was it. Despite feeling the surge in my reaction speed, I stayed back, as Samvek was having no trouble keeping up with all three. I expected one of them to have a counter for it, but so far, they hadn’t had enough time to do anything but try to stay alive.