There was absolutely no doubt in Velik’s mind that the scent trail was deliberate. Before, he could have dismissed it as Tesir being lazy. The tiger divine beast had only hidden it for his trip across the desert, presumably to prevent the metal monstrosities there from attacking him. Before that, Veilk could have argued that it had been left on purpose to lead him to where he needed to go.

But he was here now, and Eslaka had been waiting at the boundary disguised as some researcher after using what he could only assume was a copious amount of magic to make the entire team think she was supposed to be there. There was no reason to leave a scent trail for him to follow, not unless Tesir was hoping Velik would escape custody and seek him out.

And yet, he could still smell Tesir’s passing even after he reached the far end of the grasslands. Not only had the massive tiger left behind a trail, he’d gone out of his way to ensure it remained far longer than normal. Velik didn’t know what kind of weather this side of the world had, but a scent trail didn’t typically last months without some sort of magic to lock it into place.

Maybe it’s not for me. Maybe this is how Tesir draws his own prey in, or marks a territory. I can’t be the only one who can smell this. Or maybe it is for me, and I’m the prey he’s drawing in. After all, he’s got no reason to think I’m a threat to him, right?

If so, that meant the divine beasts weren’t as united in purpose as he’d thought. What Tesir wanted didn’t align with the rest of them, which meant there was a crack there Velik could exploit. Alternatively, the tiger could just realize the confrontation was inevitable after he’d accidentally killed Torwin and decided there was no reason to put it off.

A huge mountain of glassy black stone loomed over Velik. It was wreathed in open pits of lava that released toxic fumes into the air, with several magma rivers coursing through its interior to slop out into the air in dribbling falls that formed massive lakes.

There was nothing living on that mountain, but Velik’s keen eyes caught a number of fire and earth elementals, sometimes both elements in a single monster, rising from the lava pits or rumbling along trails lined with jagged fireglass stone. It was probably one of the most foreboding environments Velik had ever encountered.

Tesir’s trail led straight up the side.

He watched a five-hundred-foot-long wyrm made out of lava crawl across the trail, leaving a line of half-slagged rock behind as evidence of its passing when it dove into one of the lava lakes bubbling a quarter of the way up the mountain. Bet that’s at least level 150, by system standards.

His hand flexed, summoning his shadow spear. It had veins of dark liquid-gold blood running through it now, strengthening the weapon to his own level of power. That was good, because that golem-core metal his old spear had been made of had failed a day and a half ago fighting some sort of spider with armored plates so tough he’d been unable to so much as scorch them with [Dread Lance]. In the end, he’d sacrificed the spear to pry a plate back just long enough to get a hand into its guts and rip them out.

Every kill added to his essence count, and it was building up so quickly that he was almost offended at having spent over a decade getting to level 50. The amount of essence the gods stole from mortals through their system was truly appalling. Level 50 should have been a good milestone for a teenager to reach, not the heights of human ambition.

On the other hand, it wasn’t like someone at level 10 was going to be fighting elementals that could melt stone just by striding across them, so it wasn’t really a fair comparison. There was also the fact that his LPS kept upping its estimates for how much essence it needed to remain functional as he grew stronger. The whole system had to cost astronomically more essence to function.

Not my problem, Velik reminded himself. I’m here to grow stronger and harvest a divine beast’s essence when I kill him, then hunt down the next one.

* * *

Two divine beasts flew through the night sky, one a bare shadow against the horizon, and the other even less than that. Both were in their true forms, which meant that she dwarfed him in size several times over. That meant little, as she followed his lead.

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‘This is where you lost the experiment?’ he asked through their telepathic connection.

She was the one maintaining it, as it was mostly for her sake. He could hear her just fine if she chose to speak audibly. That was one of his specialties, but if she wanted to hear anything he had to say, she had to resort to magic. She shouldn’t have needed it, but the bastard would deliberately whisper his responses so that not even a divine beast could hear them over the wind and distance between them.

‘Never mind. I see where the fight was,’ he said before she could reply.

He swooped off, his wings flapping silently while she was left to circle overhead and stare at the evidence of her shame. She’d lost control. It was inexcusable. Her weakness had almost cost them all something precious and potentially irreplaceable. Damn Tesir for fumbling this and dumping it in my lap.

It was a small mercy, but she didn’t have to spend long there. Her companion was already rushing off to the south, exactly the direction she was expecting him to take. Tesir’s domain, that ugly monstrosity of a mountain, lay that way. She’d scoured the forest for a hundred miles looking for signs of the experiment in that direction, only to come home empty-handed.

The other divine beast’s eyes had seen something she’d missed, or perhaps heard the echoes of the past that only he could sense. Even she couldn’t quite manage to figure out how that particular piece of magic worked, but nobody could deny its effectiveness.

‘You’ve found the trail?’ she asked.

‘Clear as day,’ he said. She thought she detected a hint of mockery in his tone. ‘Just followed his movements from the start of the… ahem… fight. He can’t hide from me.’

They flew for hours in a meandering course around the grasslands. For some reason, the experiment was slaughtering every single random creature he could find. There was no rhyme or reason to it that she could detect. Tar spitters, grass scythes, black locus—it didn’t matter. They even found the body of a sylvanhoof gazelle, famously difficult to track and kill.

‘He didn’t harvest anything from it,’ the watcher said as they flew over the body. ‘What was the point of tracking down such an elusive beast? Was he just proving that he could?’

‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘He was raised as a human. Perhaps this is some cultural thing with them.’

‘Maybe you can ask him. We’re not far behind now.’

‘Close to the border of his domain,’ she said.

‘Ugh. You deal with him,’ the man replied. ‘I will capture the experiment.’

‘Take care. He is slippery.’

‘He’ll never see me coming.’

The two divine beasts split up there. She winged it south, every beat of her wings lifting her higher toward the volcanic peak before her. Behind her, her companion faded into the darkness so completely that he hid even from her senses.

* * *

The elemental crashed down the side of the mountain, tearing huge boulders free to tumble with it. Velik danced atop its rolling body, his shadow spear tearing gouges from it with every movement. Great fingers, each the size of Velik’s body, flailed wildly through the air, attempting to arrest the elemental’s motion or to catch Velik and splatter him.

It succeeded in neither goal, and by the time it came to rest a quarter mile into the grasslands, Velik had carved away literal tons of its mass and revealed its core buried deep in its abdomen. Sharpened spikes of black stone burst forth from the wound in an attempt to skewer him and seal the injury at the same time, but Velik slashed through them contemptuously.

Phantom blades of darkness leaped from the spear, spinning in a shredding whirlwind that cut away the living stone body around the core, leaving it wide open. [Dread Lance] sparked down, energy tracing the veins of gold in the weapon and erupting into a brilliant, disintegrating burst of power that converted the core into so much dust.

The elemental collapsed on the spot, all the animating magic of its body severed, leaving Velik perched on its stone flesh, frowning as he peered around. Thought I heard… But there was nothing.

[891 essence harvested.]

Distracted by the LPS notification, Velik almost didn’t see the attack coming until it was too late. Something flickered in the darkness, a sliver of something even darker moving through the shadows. If the distortion had been moving slowly, he would have missed it. If whatever the monster was had simply been a bit more patient, it could have gotten a clean opening shot on him

But it wasn’t patient, and Velik didn’t miss it. He twisted in place, spinning with acrobatic precision as his whole body contorted to avoid simultaneous strikes against his chest, arm, and legs. At the same time, his shadow spear lashed out, tearing the darkness and ripping it free as [Magic Eater] destroyed whatever the black cloak hiding the monster was supposed to be.

It was an enormous, man-sized bat, still trailing shreds of tattered darkness like a ragged cloth clinging to its wings as it zipped past him. A few flaps took it a hundred feet away, where it tucked into a roll that ended with a graceful landing and the bat reverting to the shape of a short man barely five feet tall.

“Impressive to sense me at the last moment,” the man said. “Few can claim such a feat.”

Damn. I was hoping it would take them longer to catch up to me.