Alex looked from left to right, noting the small bits of debris and crumbling rock around the cave. He did what he could to slow his breathing and think through the situation, but his heart rate spiked once again as he saw shadowy figures fill the cave's mouth.

He almost realized too late that the shapes were the mana spinners reentering the cave, not creatures of the Night.

“Sam, do what you can to keep stabilizing him. I’m going to try and block off the entrance and make sure we’re not being followed.”

“What about me?” Sarah asked, looking up from where she knelt next to Mark.

“Help Sam however you can. If we get attacked, I’ll need you, though,” he said while inspecting the entryway. It was tall and naturally narrow, plus the way that it angled hid it from casual inspection.

Jogging to the side of the space, he lifted several rocks, straining his enhanced muscles. He extended a thread of mana toward the spinners as they moved further into the cave and passed on instructions to begin helping him set up some discreet rituals.

With a grunt, he dropped a stone in the entrance and moved back to grab another. His step faltered as the mana spinner refused to set up rituals, and he almost kicked himself.

Of course… they can see mana.

He turned back to his friends. “We need to get you guys to the back of the cave. The less mana visible from your healing, the better.”

After a few minutes of shuffling, Sam sat at the back of the cave with Valtherion wrapped around his shoulders. On either side of him, Mark and Olivia lay still. Both of their tattered and injured forms were a testament to the struggles that they faced. Olivia’s body was as torn as her clothes; dried blood of her enemies mixed with her own, causing sections of her clothes to become stiff. Mark’s armor was dirty and dented, with part of his pant leg torn away by Sam to examine the wound. It left one leg bare, revealing the slowly extending tendrils of black poison.

He scanned them both again, hoping to see some new information from their System readouts. Nothing had changed about their status, Olivia was still level 36 and Mark still 29. It hurt his heart to see his friend’s level so low, knowing that he’d been attacked and poisoned by something so much higher level than he was.

Even with the tension of the current situation, Sam’s trait bloomed around him, and the beautiful, ethereal grass coated the area beneath their injured friends. He gave Alex a nod. I’ll keep trying with [Cure] and see if I can push against the poison and injuries.” Before closing his eyes, Sam even tried using his new CC breaking skill, mentioning that it talked about removing debuffs. Unfortunately, it didn’t remove the poison, so he focused on steadily cycling the healing skills between each of them.

The next quarter of an hour crawled by as Alex piled heavy debris in the cave’s chokepoint entrance. Even with his increased stats, he was sweating from the exertion in the humid atmosphere. When he was done, he stepped back and put his hands on his hips.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked, noting the deep frown on his face.

He grunted. “It feels a bit silly to learn all of this magic and warding if the mana can be seen. Maybe it’s just a horrible coincidence that we happen to come to train in a Rift where everything seems to hunt and feast on mana.”

“I like mana,” Val chimed in, causing them both to chuckle.

“Maybe it’s a good thing?” She suggested, attempting to remain optimistic. “If you can make things work here, under leveled, watching out for us, and surrounded by things that see and track magic… everything else should seem easy, right?”

“Hmm.” He cocked his head. “That’s a pretty good way to think about it. This is all meant to be training after all,” he said, glancing at his friends at the back of the cave. “Just feels wrong to think about it like that while they’re both like this.”

“Sam will get them healed up. I have total faith in him.”

Alex nodded, looked around, and couldn’t find any additional debris to pile up. With nothing else to do other than wait for Sam’s results, they both moved a short distance away from the trio to give them space and sat with their backs against the wall.

Bracing his forearms on his knees, he pulled on his mana and began running through his mana shaping exercises in rapid succession. Not even a minute had gone by before Nox lifted his head and slowly got to his feet.

When he approached Alex and Sarah, he slowed in his exercises. “Nox?”

When the six-legged black panther stood in front of Alex, he let out a low growl. Its lips raised to reveal white teeth, and even with the odd stance he held because of his injuries, the huge beast was enough to make Alex pause.

“What?”

The growling continued, and Alex began to get a bit worried. Sarah glanced at him nervously.

Is he losing it without Olivia here to hold him back?

As the worry built and his pulse increased, he slowly let the mana in his hand dissipate and prepared to activate the barrier spell in his storage at a moment's notice. As soon as the mana fell away, Nox stopped growling. The beast blinked at him once, white eyes disappearing completely, before he turned and limped back to Olivia.

“Uh…” Alex and Sarah looked at each other. “I think he’s telling me to stop using my mana?”

“But you weren’t casting a spell?”

He shrugged while watching Nox curl up into a painful position near Olivia’s side. “I guess even doing the mana shaping exercises could give them something to sense?” He looked at Sam, worried for his safety. Valtherion watched Nox skeptically as he continued to infuse mana into Sam.

Scanning the room again, Alex let out a breath, looked at his hands, and shifted his position on the ground. “Well… this is really weird.”

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked, her voice rising in pitch.

“Nothing’s wrong, I just have no idea what to do with myself.” He scratched his head as she quirked an eyebrow at him. “For months now I’ve been doing something with my mana every moment I’m awake… hell, even some times when I’m not awake.”

She gave him a smile and reached up to fix the messy state her hair had devolved to. “Well, take a second for yourself. There’s nothing else you can do to help right now, right?”

He shrugged. “I guess I could practice my sword forms.”

“Or,” she said, drawing the word out, “you could give your body and mind a little while to rest.”

“I can’t do it,” Sam said quietly. Both of them looked over and stood quickly when they saw his slumped form and the area of his trait shattered. “I just can’t do it, it’s no use. Val’s out of mana too, and the healing just isn’t taking.”

Alex crouched down in front of Sam and put a hand on his shoulder. “What’s the problem? I’ve never seen your healing not work before.” Internally, Alex cursed and let his mind go into its fastest speed. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Sam wouldn’t be able to fix the problem.

“The problem? They both need too much healing. I can’t keep them both alive. Olivia is at least taking to the healing better, and I’m seeing progress… but Mark… It’s just like I’m sinking mana into him and it’s not taking.” Sam looked up at Alex with tears welling in his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, thinking through possible plans. “Okay, you’ve seen stuff like this at the hospital before, right? Maybe not this poison, but two people are in critical condition. What would you do there?”

The water building in his eyes spilled over, and his chin quivered, “I’d stop healing Mark and focus on Olivia… her body is receiving the healing, and there’s a chance she’d live through this. Mark doesn’t seem like he will.”

It felt like someone at punched Alex in the gut.

Stop healing Mark?

He looked at his best friend. The sickly black branches of poison were further up his leg now, reaching toward his hip. It extended far enough down that the lowest tendrils reached for his foot. “No… we can’t give up on him,” he said it more to himself than anyone else, but Sam took it as a bit of encouragement. He nodded and used his sleeve to quickly wipe his tears.

“I still have one mana potion. I’ll keep trying until I can’t.”

“Then what?” Sarah asked with wide eyes.

“Worst case scenario, we remove the poison…” Sam said, a cold sense of detachment rolling through his features as he removed the potion and drank it down. His movements came slower and smoother as he placed the empty vial in his pouch and rolled up his sleeves.

“You don’t mean–”

“It won’t come to that,” Alex interrupted her as a plan began to form in his mind. He scanned Mark again before asking Sam. He got almost an entire Status Screen on Mark now, considering that his Willpower was so low. He only cared about the top few lines.

He nodded to himself. “Sam, Mark has a higher Constitution and Vitality than Olivia. So, the healing should be working better on him than it does on her, right? Or his body should at least be more durable.”

Sam scrunched up his face. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“I think it’s because she’s D rank, and he’s not. It makes sense, right? It says when we go to advance our rank that it tunes our bodies to be more in line with our stats.”

“Yes,” Sam said, nodding along and some excitement building in his voice. “That makes sense. The poison is also from a D ranked enemy. His body might be too low rank to fight it off and take to the healing.”

Sarah groaned in frustration. “Well, that doesn’t help us! He can’t go out there and fight, he’s barely even conscious.”

“Yeah, we’ll need to fix that…” Alex looked around, noting the mana spinners that waited quietly against the wall and the impromptu barrier he’d built. He mumbled to himself and looked from Sam to the opening and back. “Okay, you said Olivia is stable, right?”

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“Well, for the moment.” Sam looked at him warily.

“Let’s move her over here.” He scooped her up and held her in his arms. Nox’s head came up and tracked him the entire way, though he didn’t make a sound. “Sarah, help me get Mark back on the stretcher. Keep healing him at the entrance for a few more minutes.”

“I thought you were worried about the mana.”

“We won’t need to worry about it in a few minutes. Let’s just move fast.” He bent to help lift Mark’s lower half onto the stretcher, and together, they carried it over to the makeshift barricade. Once the healing had resumed, he quickly returned to where Sam had been sitting against the back wall.

From his ring, Alex removed the main notebook he’d been using lately and flipped through the pages. He found the section of his notes that he’d been looking for and quickly reviewed them before letting the second half of his mind continue to work through the adjustments that would need to be made.

“What are you doing? Can I help?” Sarah asked.

“Can you lay out one or two of the lanterns? I need some light,” he responded absently. It only took a few minutes for him to have a designed drawn onto the cave floor. He’d modified it slightly, but over the last week, he’d focused a lot on learning the intricacies of the body tempering rituals.

“I’ve seen this before,” Sarah said slowly, watching him set up.

He nodded. Sarah hadn’t been there when Alex learned the mana absorption ritual those weeks ago, but she’d asked to see the drawings after learning that he’d passed out and lost his skill. “Yeah, you saw the ritual version of this.”

“Isn’t this a ritual?”

“Well, yes. But not how I learned it. It is partly used in different forms in the body tempering rituals, too, so I’ve seen a lot of variations. This one should allow Sam to pull mana into his body and keep healing.”

“Is there enough mana here for that?” Sarah looked around the cave.

“There is more mana in most Rifts, but this forest is pretty dead. Most of the Night seems to feed on mana, so there’s almost less here than there is on Earth. But that’s what these are for,” he said, pulling out a well-crafted leather bag of mana stones. It seemed out of place in the dark cave, held in his dirty hands and battered clothes, almost like he’d stolen something valuable. “I modified the ritual to pull from these stones. I got the idea from how my own body tempering ritual did it.”

He walked carefully around the outside of the chalk and placed the stones in each node of the outer ring. “I’m going to get Sam to sit in the middle, but I need you to make sure he has the mana he needs. If you see one of the stones go dim, replace it quickly. These stones have a lot of mana in them, so I’m hoping you don’t have to do it too much, but just in case.”

She accepted the bag as he offered it to her.

He crossed the distance back to Sam and gestured at the modified ritual. “I need you to sit in that. Make sure you don’t scuff the chalk. Once I pulse mana through it, it’ll activate and we won’t have to worry about messing it up, but before it starts, you need to be careful.”

“Okay,” he said, standing from where he’d been kneeling next to Mark. “What are you planning?”

He tilted his head toward their tank as he moved. “Can we get him any more lucid?”

Sam set his hand on Mark’s forehead, mana traveling through his hand. A few quiet moments passed, and the sound of clattering branches outside the cave was the only sound to be heard. Mark’s eyes opened slowly before he jerked.

“Mark, listen buddy.” He pulled his friend's kite shield from the bracer storage he wore. “I’m going to pull some monsters toward us, and I need you to use your [Taunt] skill when I tell you to, okay? Here– here, hold this.” Gently, Alex laid the shield over Mark’s torso.

Recognition lit in Sam’s eyes as Alex created his mirage-double and sent it running from the cave in search of a reasonable pack of creatures.

“Mark, you have to stay awake, all right? As soon as you level up, hey–” Alex gently shook his shoulder, and Mark’s eyes reopened. “As soon as you level up, you’ve gotta accept the rank advancement. Just hit the yes option, and we’ll take care of the rest.” He repeated the plan before his friend nodded in understanding. Looking around the cave, he saw that everyone was in place and watching him.

Sifting through his thoughts, he knew his mirage was sprinting through the nearby woods looking for a small pack of monsters to draw back.

“While we’ve got some time, we might as well make a few more preparations.” He sent a [Mana Thread] toward the spinners and shared his plan.

“All right! Here they come!” Alex called to his friends. His pulse quickened, despite being almost overly prepared for the fight. He stood back from the barrier and pulled Mark a bit further in as well.

His mirage turned through the choke point and out of sight of the pursuing pack before dissipating. The second consciousness returned to him as he drew his wand.

Before seeing the first monster, he heard the pounding of heavy paws and its nails clicking on the rocky outcrop outside. The scraping sound was akin to nails on a chalkboard, and that was definitely the only reason the hair on his neck and forearms raised.

It came around the side of the entrance so fast that it slid past it, shadows trailing, and slammed its shoulder into the rock face. Standing dazed, Alex took the opportunity to cast the first spell circle he’d made. The alteration circle, as he’d begun to think of it, hung in the air and allowed him to fire off two empowered bolts from his wand. The pop and crack from each shot was almost as disturbing as the creature's approach, but as black blood sprayed on the rocky entrance, a sense of grim satisfaction filled him.

He held back from sending any more bolts at the entrance, not wanting to deter them from entering too much.

“Wait for it,” he said, just loud enough for Mark to hear.

A second hound came barreling past the entrance just as fast as the first, its white spine and nails standing out against the brown and black surroundings. Instead of sliding into the cliff face, however, this one shoulder-checked its companion still standing by the wall, sending it falling back down to the ground.

From when he’d lured them to the cave, Alex knew that one other monster was coming, if a bit slower. So he waited, trusting their preparations to hold them at bay until the entire group was within range.

The standing hound charged but didn’t make it more than a foot inside the cave entrance as a tangle of magical webbing caught it and held it in place. The more the beast thrashed, the more entangled it became. From his vantage, Alex could see the mana spinner that was clinging to the wall, just out of view, feeding more mana webbing to the trapped.

It didn’t hold long, as the original monster recovered and lunged forward with its front claws extended. Both beasts threw their limbs and claws around wildly, hitting the rocky walls and ground as much as the webbing.

He took a moment to scan them, feeling the muscles in his leg begin to twitch with fear and excitement. With danger just out of reach, forcing his body to stay still was a challenge.

The second creature’s readout was almost identical, with a slightly higher level. He’d seen the nighthounds before, and they seemed to be a very common form of creature in the Rift. It was the third monster that he’d been shocked to see, completely unlike anything on Earth.

It rounded the corner just as the two hounds came free of the webbing trap, their combined physical power and thrashing too much for the spinner’s web to handle. The higher-level one became interested in the ground, sniffing around with great interest.

He scanned the final creature, taking in its unnatural appearance as he did so.

Noting the name and the structure of its body, Alex felt it was the one that needed to die first. Its unknown nature made it more of a priority in his mind. Shaped like an oversized Cheerio, the round yet flat body of the creature waddled slowly into the entrance of the cave. Its eyes were so high on its front surface as to almost be on top of its head, whereas 90% of its body was taken up by a large mouth that hung halfway open as it breathed loudly. It had small legs, no more than a foot long, that made it waddle more than walk.

Its entire appearance was disarming and almost comical, reminding him more of a cartoon than a deadly monster.

He forced himself to wait an extra heartbeat to ensure it was within range. “Now, Mark!” he called. Through his left eye, he could see his friend's skill activate as a wave of mana rolled through the cave and hit the small pack of monsters at the entrance. The lower-level nighthound and the screechmaw instantly turned their attention toward the prone figure, half covered by his shield.

That was his signal. Alex pulsed mana through the thread of mana still attached to his hand, leading to a ritual that he’d set up at their feet. Nothing happened, and he cursed as he realized that the nighthound had started to drain the mana from his threads while sniffing at the ground. With all the speed he could muster, he touched up the two disconnected sections before successfully activating the weight-increasing ritual.

All three creatures were caught off guard and became locked in place as the space around them became dense and pulled them toward the ground. They were all strong enough to fight against it, but it took a bit of intelligence to make it happen. Besides, the monsters weren’t what he was trying to pull down to the ground.

His eyes flicked up to the loose webbing that now held the majority of the cave debris he’d originally been trying to use as a barricade. Instead, it now hung precariously overhead, tethered by a weak net created by the second spinner. The spider released his hold on the webbing, and the rocks and debris fell to the ground, aided in their fall by his ritual’s strong, magical pull.

All three of the creatures were caught by the falling stones, but Alex hadn’t been prepared for the awful noise that followed. Both hounds cried out in a way that sounded like a natural, injured canine, and at the same time, the sounds of the rocks pounding, scraping, and cracking against the cavern floor were much louder than he would have thought possible.

Despite that, nothing compared to the inhuman wail of the screechmaw. One of its spindly legs got smashed by the largest falling rock and caused it to fall onto its oddly shaped, flat back. More rocks followed, and the power of its cry held enough pressure to push several of the stones off course. But, as they continued to fall, the trap worked as planned, burying all three creatures in an avalanche of small boulders.

Black blood of the Night seeped from under the mound, and within a few seconds, everything went quiet. The only thing to interrupt the silence was two blue screens in his vision and blue motes rising from the burial site.

Dismissing the kill notifications, Alex turned to Mark and was going to ensure he got an advancement notification, but he didn’t need to worry. Golden motes of light, visible to the entire cave, were already beginning to surround him.

He felt some of the tension leave his body as a third kill notification appeared, signaling an end to the fight. When Alex reached Mark, he lifted the stretcher to reposition it closer to Sam, who was still in the middle of the mana siphoning ritual. As he made his way to the back of the cave, Sarah removed her hands from over her ears and watched the entrance with wide eyes.

“It worked,” she breathed.

“Traps are what got me out of here alive the first time. I feel like I’ve been resorting to raw power more and more lately, but there is something satisfying about outsmarting the opponent like this. It wouldn’t have mattered what level I was, the fight would have ended the same, since the rocks did the work.” He looked over to Sam and realized he was preaching this like some sort of lesson. “Sorry,” he apologized.

She waved him away, and Alex glanced over his shoulder to see Valtherion sniffing interestedly at the rocks covering the buried trio of monsters.

“Okay, I’m full on mana,” Sam said, pulling his attention back. “Can you keep this going while I heal them?”

He nodded. “Yes. Now that it’s activated, there shouldn’t be a risk of us scratching the ritual unless we really tried to break it. Let’s move them back to either side of you, like they were before. You stay in the middle and see how Mark’s body takes to the healing now.”

Another round of shuffling bodies followed, though there was a heart-stopping moment as Alex positioned Mark at Sam’s side.

There was almost no sound to warn him of what happened, only the wild flapping of Valtherion’s wings as they thudded to the ground and the feelings of seer panic and surprise that filled their bond.

Alex’s head snapped up and saw a black snake wrapped around Val’s body, both of them coiling around one another for a position of dominance. At the end of the rapid struggle, the amphiptere’s wings worked against him as the shadow-snake pinned them awkwardly to his body and positioned itself for a strike.

With head reared back and mouth opened wide, Alex watched in slow motion as the fangs descended on Val’s unprotected body. His heart lurched, and he activated the barrier spell in his [Spell Storage], but had no hope of it activating in time.

What he could see, however, was the pool of shadow that formed in the rocks beneath Valtherion. A large, claw-like hand appeared in an instant and gripped the head of the snake before it moved more than an inch. In contrast to how quickly the claw had emerged, the rest of Nox’s body slowly emerged from the shadow.

Nox emitted a deep, unnervingly calm growl. His full body emerged as he pinned the snake to the ground, allowing Valtherion to wiggle free from its coils. The young amphiptere flew back to Alex's side, making small chirping sounds and glancing back with wide golden eyes, fear still coursing through their bond.

The following scene was gruesome as Nox feasted on the other creature, pulling, tearing, and consuming its flesh. When finished, Nox turned, dripping dark blood, and looked at Alex and Valtherion for a long moment, before lumbering slowly over to Olivia’s side once again. He sank heavily to the ground and let out a long and pain-filled groan.

Alex released an explosive breath and followed suit, sinking to the ground beside the ritual. The entire exchange had happened so fast that Sam and Sarah were confused and asked him for more information.

He shook his head and explained, resting his head in his hands after he was done. Sam told him that Mark’s body accepted the healing better and that the infection had already stopped spreading.

“It’ll take some time to fight it off, but with [Cure] and [Healing Touch], it should only take a few hours.”

“What about Olivia?” Sarah asked.

“She’s already stable. But without most of my mana sinking into Mark to keep him alive, I can save them both now. I’m sure of it. It’ll just take some time.”

Alex nodded, feeling tension bleed from his shoulders but not from his chest. As much as he wanted it to be true, he felt an irrational need to keep his psyche braced for the worst-case scenario. Leaning his head against the stone wall, he took another deep breath.

Even though two of them were injured, for the first time in weeks, the entire group was back together. If all Sam needed was time, Alex was determined to give the healer as much as he needed.