I need some sort of heat resistance skill, Velik decided as he scaled the side of the mountain.

It wasn’t just the molten pools of lava, though those certainly didn’t help. His physical stat was more than up to the task of keeping him from cooking himself whenever he had to run above one. No, the problem was the sheer variety of fire-themed monsters living on the mountain. They weren’t even all elementals like he’d initially thought, either.

There were a ton of birds, all of them more than ten feet tall and with scarlet plumage. The damn things spat out gobs of flaming spittle when they were dive bombing him, which they did in flocks of a dozen or more. A week ago, Velik would have said they were an exigent threat to civilization, too fast for any monster hunter below platinum rank to have a hope of hitting and too tough to be battered down by any single person.

Of course, that was before Morgus had given him the limited personal system and allowed him to start claiming all the essence from his kills. Not having to support the communal welfare of every person living in the system made it significantly easier to increase his personal strength, not to mention the shortcuts he was able to take with direct essence manipulation.

Adding in a significant portion of a slain divine beast’s power to his own helped a bit, too.

Velik scaled the side of the mountain, dashing through the air over red glowing lakes and fending off the lava elementals hurling blobs of liquid stone at him. Some of them could rise hundreds of feet straight up, their magic drawing lava into their bodies to expand their size. Blowing one of those up with a [Dread Lance] made a hell of a mess and tended to piss off literally everything in the immediate area.

His LPS quickly completed a new essence configuration for him called [Flame Ward], at which point the climb got far more comfortable. The massive flaming buzzards circling around him became a complete non-issue, and other than the kinetic impact from the sheer weight of the lava the gargantuan elementals threw his way, they couldn’t do anything to so much as ruffle his hair anymore.

It was, however, a massive drain on his mana reserves, one that required him to occasionally hunt down a monster for the sole purpose of letting [Mana Eater] go to work. Truth be told, he probably would have had to do that anyway just because of how heavily he was abusing [Inevitable] to speed up the climb.

He was seven or eight miles up, he figured, with another two or so to go. It was difficult to tell with all the fumes shrouding the peak, but he’d fed tens of thousands of essence into his stats and skills. More of it poured in every few minutes, nothing compared to Halifex, but it all added up.

Something shifted in the fumes above him, something big and silent. Velik couldn’t smell any nearby monsters, but that didn’t count for much when so many elementals just smelled like stone, heat, and occasionally a bitter, acrid aroma. Generally, elementals weren’t sneaky, however. He hadn’t had one yet do anything but rush straight for him the moment he got close enough for it to realize he was there.

The wind was always howling this high up, and the air was so thin that a normal person wouldn’t have been able to keep breath in their lungs. As a consequence of that, the poisonous, smokey miasma of lava fumes that wreathed the area drifted about, obscuring the trail one moment and then baring it the next.

A leg of black fire glass stepped out of the smoke. It was that of a perfectly carved statue, black with red striations, except it was fully alive. Another leg appeared, equally massive with rippling muscle under glossy black fur. The smoke blew away, revealing the stone monster in all its glory: a thirty-foot-tall tiger with softly glowing stripes of magma held back by the thinnest layer of stone.

I think that might be even bigger than Tesir himself was, but it sure does look a lot like him. I guess this means I’m on the right trail.

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The tiger was on a trail that ran parallel to the one Velik himself was walking, just fifty feet or so higher up the side of the mountain. That did not stop it from leaping down at him, flames pouring out of its mouth and claws slicing deep gouges into the stone with every step. It was on Velik in an instant, but even so, he had time to see a second tiger crouched in waiting farther back.

Then he plunged a spear made out of shadows and golden blood into the chest of the first tiger at the same time it tried to bury him under tons of living stone. Grunting, he forced a [Dread Lance] through the weapon and into the monster’s chest cavity. Cracks branched out through its body, and its insides glowed with white light.

* * *

She stood next to Tesir, who lounged on his ‘throne.’ It was nothing more than a mound of skulls so old that a thick bed of moss had grown over it, and she could not imagine it was anything remotely resembling comfortable.

“I thought you were taking him to the others,” he growled.

“He slipped away,” she explained. “And he is coming here. I believe he’s already at the base of your mountain.”

“Not that I mind, but you’re just going to let him? You know I’m not good at holding back. That’s what started this whole mess in the first place. If he gets up here and picks a fight with me, there’s a good chance he won’t live through it.”

She shrugged. “I tried to subdue him and failed. As I am now, he can escape me.”

“So, bring someone else with you.”

“Reisha commanded the watcher to find him.”

He snorted. “And did the little bastard manage it?”

“I believe so.”

He stared at her. “And then?”

“I left him to his hunt to come warn you.”

“Why bother? It’s not like—” He cut himself off and stared intently out toward the edge of his domain. “Something destroyed one of the guardians.”

“Damaged in the fight, perhaps?” she offered.

“Find out,” the tiger commanded.

How dare he give orders, the Other raged, sudden fury sparking at the words. She smothered it ruthlessly.

Wordlessly, she cast a spell of far viewing. They watched together as the experiment destroyed another of the obsidian guardians. He brushed off tons of magma pouring over him like it was nothing, though he was also practically naked by the time he pulled himself free of the deluge.

“Where’s the bat?” Tesir growled.

“I do not know.”

But she remembered how the experiment had taken a bite out of her essence shroud. Normally, the only way to accumulate essence was with time. That was how divine beasts had gotten so strong. Being immortal was a distinct advantage there. There were a few other options, but they were clunky, time-consuming, expensive, and easy to screw up.

The Gardener’s system shuffles essence around, but he should have lost access to that capability when he walked outside the boundary. She studied the fight and noted how easily the experiment was tearing through beasts that could stop practically anything but another divine beast. What if he’s still harvesting essence from everything he kills? How strong would he be now? How quickly would he grow? Could he kill even one of us?

For the first time in a thousand years, she felt fear squirming through her guts, and she found she didn’t care for it. Worse, it brought the Other to the forefront of her mind. The Other reacted poorly to the idea that it should be afraid of anything, and after its recent cowing by Reisha, it was eager to lash out.

The experiment went through eight guardians in a matter of minutes, then started climbing again. At the rate he was going, he’d reach the top of the mountain soon. At first, she was content to watch, but then he looked directly at her spell, and with a scowl, reached out with some skill of his own. Abruptly, the window vanished.

“What was that?” Tesir demanded

“I… do not know,” she admitted. More fear churned in her guts. She was a divine beast, and had all the physical might that entailed, but her primary strength was her magic. The idea that the experiment could now just snuff out her spells and take her essence from her was disturbing.

She was surprised to find that she was no longer certain what the outcome of a battle between Tesir and the experiment would be. It might be better for them all if Tesir killed the wolf pup. They could dissect the corpse and see what there was to be learned.

She began casting again, searching for the watcher. It wouldn’t surprise her that she couldn’t find him. If there was anyone with the power to hide from her eyes, it was him. However, that was not the case. Her spell found him all too easily.

Rather, it found his remains, what little there was left. Tesir sat upright for the first time, his eyes betraying his agitation as he stared down through the magic. “Well, isn’t that interesting,” he purred.

His whole body quivered with excitement as he leaped to his feet. Without a word, he started to stride away. “What are you doing?” she called out behind him.

“Hunting, obviously.”