I am rich. Well, I have a lot of paper money backed by a likely collapsed government. Turns out my Visionary Chronicler’s identification will identify a card even if it is face down. Makes poker a breeze. When the table figured out what I was doing, they kicked me out.

  On a more serious note, Dad and the special forces captain had a disagreement. That man had the werewolf and some kind of tool sigil. Regardless when he tried to force dad to comply with a show of force, his whole team was taken apart. It all went down before I could make it out of my tent. Why do these government people think they own us? Even if the government was functional, it's a local municipality, and we’re from a different county.

  Day 93, Owen Landers

  “Are you sure we should be fighting these things?” Rekha asked uncertainly. She clutched the canine-tipped bone javelin to her chest.

  Silas shrugged, “You have to start somewhere, you did intentionally pick the sigils that looked the most powerful.”

  Rekha glared at him. She hadn’t realized that sigils had levels, and the point to vitality and the point to body did little for her. Her powers were also underwhelming, at least when it came to fighting. The first sigil gave her borderline infinite flexibility while the second gave her body many of the traits of rubber. Not a bad combination for any kind of exploration.

  Silas rolled his eyes, “Fighting is not strictly necessary to grow your sigils, but unless you can offer something more than fighting, that is what you get to do,” he held up a palm to forestall Rekha’s complaints, “I am asking you to stab javelins through a portal when I open it, not fist fight a bear. You can handle it.”

  Aron, Batu, and the other Indian woman who was coming, looked at Rekha reproachfully. The final one was looking after Mandy while her arm was healed. Silas was happy to see that Flesh Lord could indeed regrow arms, just slowly, even on a diet of beholder meat. He needed to get both women’s names before some awkward situation occurred. Maybe after he killed some mythological monstrosities.

  The Indian lady staying behind with Mandy had a strange identification sigil. That was something they needed. Silas currently had her identifying sigils, recording the information. If they found anyone else, Silas would be able to equip them with more synergistic sigils.

  Silas paused. He was happy for the first time in quite some time. It was an odd feeling. Things were looking up, a team full of people at ten capacity should have little issue breaking out of hell. That was a maximum of three more months here, assuming he couldn’t break out alone by that point. He grinned, I’m coming, Abby, and bringing a small army behind me.

  The portal opened to the top of a large, flat formation one and three quarter miles away. Silas stepped through, checking the surroundings for threats. There were plenty. A trio of German Raptors flew above the formations, screeching at something below. A particularly large centi snake was sleeping while coiled around a formation, while a pair of the crystalline ghosts hovered aimlessly.

  In the distance, Silas could barely make out something moving. It was far enough away that it could be mistaken for something small, simply due to a lack of background to compare it to. However, judging from the dust cloud behind it, Silas was sure he was looking at a kaiju. Briefly, he considered following it to find whatever it was searching for. Maybe it was headed to another portal.

  On another formation, a dragonkin pointed at the portal and made an excited chirping noise. Silas made eye contact with the pair of acolytes and their warrior chaperone. Once upon a time these were problematic numbers, now they were just a warmup. His gear, stats, and mentality had improved by so much that he was essentially a different person.

  Bella stepped through, chainsword propped on one shoulder, followed by Samantha. She had gotten better at handling her bubble armor, giving her a smooth synthetic appearance. Like she had been constructed by a novice glassblower. In her hand she held a fist full of rocks, each one glowing with heat a single step from melting. Silas contemplated leaving her behind, but she was the best defended out of anyone here.

  The newcomers filed through next, angling their long spears awkwardly. Batu grumbled, “Could you not make crossbows or even atlatls?”

  “Maybe, I might be able to make a bone that would work for the bow, however, bone is not suited for a winch, so you would have to supply the strength to pull the string back. As to that second thing, I don’t know what an atlatl is,” Silas shrugged.

  There were other reasons why he didn’t make bows. Primarily, their killing power was determined by draw weight and he wasn’t sure he could make a string out of bone to withstand that. A sixty pound bow would not work when his enemy’s vitals were covered in armor and any spilled blood was little more than napalm for the dragonkin to throw.

  “You know what macuahuitl is but not an atlatl?” Batu scoffed, “It's a handheld lever used to increase the force of a thrown spear.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow, he was not familiar with the term macuahuitl. It sounded South American, so he was likely referring to Bella’s war club. As to the other thing, it sounded like something easy to make and useful, with one major flaw. He did not want to give the club wielding dragonkin spears.

  A shriek interrupted them. The dragonkin didn’t appreciate being ignored, however, they were on a formation too far away. They would need to climb down into the ravines before climbing up again. It would take more than a minute, which was a problem for them.

  Silas planted one foot on a large rock and leaned one forearm on his knee. This was a cool position, at least it was on movie posters. He grinned at the dragonkin, “If you want us, come and get us!”

  Samantha made a rude gesture at the monsters, to the frustration of her mother. Silas cracked a smile at the interaction. They were in a hell adjacent realm and Bella was concerned about her daughter flipping the bird at three monsters they were about to mercilessly slaughter.

  The lesser fighter was affronted by their response. It didn’t climb down, it jumped, landing in a cloud of dust. Weaker monsters scattered, however a furry rhinoceros with a glowing green horn and a trunk like tail ending in a scorpion’s barb charged it. The fighter ignored its attacker, using its greater mobility to evade it and scramble up the formation.

  Silas raised an eyebrow. It was fast, maybe he would be here before Silas’s spirit recharged, “Samantha, Bella, you're up.”

  The youngest member of their party gave Silas a sloppy salute before pushing her thermal cultivator to the limits. She drew back her arm and pitched the stones down at the climbing dragonkin. Most missed, but the ones that struck deformed, splattering across the fighter's face and upraised arm.

  It hissed in pain, but endured the bombardment to get to them. Batu and Aron also had the thermal cultivator sigil, though a lesser variant. Together, they could get an object to nine hundred degrees, nowhere near melting stone, but problematic when dropped as a dust that invaded the eyes and lungs.

  The bombardment was dirt cheap in both resources and energy, resulting in a very worn out fighter. Silas wondered why this thing was so determined. It had to know that Silas alone could handle it. Was it Nimrod’s reward? If the whole tribe got involved, what were the chances that this dragonkin would receive the boon?

  Now that Silas thought about it, was Nimrod the one granting him a technique for victory? That didn’t seem to fit with a hunter's mentality. The reward for wily prey was some experience and living another day. There was a second being involved, someone who wanted to see Nimrod humiliated.

  “He sweeps aside the schemes of the wily,” Silas muttered. A retired detective from their church had liked to quote that whenever he caught a young Silas misbehaving. He had no proof beyond circumstantial evidence from a clearly predatory company’s biotech that his God was behind the message. However, if there was someone opposing Nimrod, who would they be but a greater god?

  The dragonkin jumped over the edge of the formation ready to tear into Silas. Its body was covered in burns, and its eyes were red and watering. Drool dripped from the corner of its mouth from the cough that had been caused by superheated dust. Fire bloomed around the monster like armor as its baleful eyes locked on Silas.

  Unfortunately, that was the wrong move. Bella met it, chainsword whirring and thermal cultivator’s greater power turning heat into kinetic force. The fighter barely had time to flinch before the spinning blade hit its spine and ground through the meat of its neck. She followed it to the ground and kept pressing until the spinning blade started biting into the dust below.

  “That was much cleaner in my imagination,” Samantha complained as she wiped blood off the bubble visor of her helmet.

  Blood had splattered the top of the formation. Nobody escaped, but Samantha and Silas had been closest and received the brunt of the splash. Aron looked horrified, but the other three seemed less impacted, looking at the corpse impassively. It was a reminder that the adults had seen much worse things happen back on earth.

  Bella quickly purified the dragonkin and tossed the resulting sigil to the gawking audience. Rekha nearly fumbled the catch, before seeing the scaled human outlined in flames depicted in the crystal. She glanced at Batu and Aron, realizing which sigil Silas had given them.

  The Mongolians saw the similarities as well, turning wide eyes on Silas. Aron asked the question they were both thinking, “Will we be able to use fire like that?”

  Silas shrugged, “I don’t know, we aren’t too far into sigil levels. I assume it will be possible someday. For now, you get to just make things warmer.”

  The father and son looked at each other with an uncertain grin. Silas focused on the two remaining acolytes. The fighter had moved fast enough that they had witnessed his brutal death. Their eager attitude had done a one eighty causing them to back up uncertainly. Normally, Silas couldn’t read their scaled and fanged expressions, but fear was clearly writ across their faces.

  “Are they going to run?” Bella asked with her eyes wide.

  “They won’t get far,” Silas muttered, turning to the newbies spoke louder, “Get your spears ready.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  These dragonkin lacked the body stat to leap from the top of the formation. Silas was not clear on what their purpose was. Would they become a kind of pyromancer when they gained power or were they a juvenile from which all other castes would eventually develop? As of now, their abilities were skewed similarly to Samantha’s but without a guardian keeping them safe.

  Something Silas took advantage of. The last seconds ticked by, then he opened a portal just behind the dragonkin. They had a moment to look back in horror, before two spears stabbed into each of them.

  “Keep going,” Silas ordered.

  Batu and Rekha kept pressure on their weapons while the other two withdrew and thrust again and again. The acolytes could do nothing, they lacked leverage and maneuverability. They couldn’t even push up the spear shaft as Silas had put wings behind the blade. It did not take long for them to succumb to the assault. The corpses were purified before being dropped for the shaggy rhino to eat.

  Silas glanced at the sky, a useless habit, as there was no sun. He turned to Bella, “Time?”

  “We’ve only been out here a few minutes, at this speed, we could go through half the camp by the end of the week,” Bella said checking her watch.

  That might have been a bit optimistic, but clearing them out by the end of the month wasn’t ridiculous. They would attempt another two or three teams by lunchtime. Still optimistic, but not ridiculously so. He opened another portal to the furthest safe house he could reach. There was no need to make their main base location obvious.

  Silas answered Bella as he stepped through, “We’ll be home in no time.”

  He froze when he saw the shocked look on her face. Was it something he said? But Bella wasn’t looking at him, she was looking over his shoulder. Silas whirled, just in time to see a wall of rust colored fur barrel through the aperture.

  A sharp crack denoted the horn snapping Silas’s chest plate right over his sternum. Thank God he had another two layers of armor or the scaled bear would have killed him on the spot. The beast roared, throwing Silas to the ground and rising to its rear legs.

  Still a bit dazed from the surprise attack, Silas failed to respond. Thankfully, he wasn’t alone. Samantha jabbed a glowing knife into the monster’s back, and flesh sizzled and fur caught fire soon after. Bella brought her chainsword into the bear’s gut tearing through muscle and into the organs. Rekha even had the mental awareness to jab the beast with her spear.

  The bear came crashing down, though it was no longer focused on smashing Silas. He trusted Bella to distract it for the next moment while he focused on closing the portal. The purple glow snapped off, but he could see an extra two pairs of legs. He quickly identified the pair as belonging to dragonkin.

  Silas could have attempted to regain his feet, but the bear was kindly offering shelter while snapping its jaws at Bella. Rolling onto his belly, he drew two serrated skinning knives and dove forward. The bear screeched in agony as Silas used its viscera as a lubricant to slide out from between its hind legs.

  Both dragonkin were focused on the chainsaw wielding woman tearing the bear apart. They seemed intimidated by the spinning weapon that ground more than cut flesh. Silas stabbed out with both knives, cutting into their heels before slicing the Achilles’ tendon.

  Neither of the monsters was unskilled. At the first sign of pain, their flaming armor bloomed into place. One had ghostly incorporeal flame wings while the other had solid ones that radiated intense heat. Silas pounced on the stronger one, he needed to kill it before it could start using its power.

  His arms burned as he sprang up and met the falling dragonkin’s jaw with the point of his knife. To his shock, the blade punched through the lower jaw and tongue, but failed to crack through the roof of its mouth. Silas only had a moment to feel shock before the dragonkin fighter grappled him.

  The armor did help, stopping his flesh from being converted to ash on the spot. Silas ignored the burns rapidly spreading across his body and punched his spiked gauntlet into the dragonkin’s face. A lucky shot blinded it in one eye. It tried the same maneuver, but to little effect. Silas’s armor was better.

  Once again, the dragonkin proved its grappling superiority when the spike on its tail stabbed into Silas’s gut. It may have had the appearance of a striking snake, but it hit with the force of a hunting rifle. Bone proved to be superior at stopping bludgeoning and cutting attacks than piercing. The spike rammed through the thinner plates there, through the second layer, and got stuck halfway into his under armor. That still left three or four inches stabbed into his guts.

  Silas gritted his teeth. He needed leverage. Reaching up he grabbed the horns on either side of the monster’s skull. Bella had claimed they were a weak spot, but she had broken the first one while these were still firmly anchored. Silas endured a punch that cracked his cheek guard and a set of grooves gouged into his thigh and knee guards from the dragonkin’s hind legs. These things were ridiculous, they were basically naked and were able to tear into armor and ignore most injuries.

  Thankfully, they were also ridiculously aggressive. It had forgotten about the stone knife stuck through its lower jaw. Something the dragonkin shared with humans was a similar skeleton, minus the fused exterior ribs and natural forearm and shin protection. That meant there was only soft scaly flesh between the inside of the dragonkin’s jaw and its collar bone.

  Silas drove down in a savage sawing motion. Using the hand gripping a flaming horn, he shoved up with the other. He only made it halfway down before the knife snapped. Stone was not meant to be used in such a way. Despite not delivering a lethal blow, the dragonkin still reared back.

  That was all the room he needed, a portal snapped open right above them. Silas had tried finding ways to use the slicing edge of the portals in combat. Unfortunately, the restriction forcing the portal to open facing him was prohibitive. There was another way.

  The dragonkin reared back through the port, the other side of which was exactly a mile in the sky. Before it could react, Silas closed the aperture. This did not close the portal enough to cut the dragonkin in half, but it did collapse to the shape of its torso. The upper half was stranded a mile in the air with nothing to push off of to extract itself. Its bottom half was already kneeling on the ground, so it would struggle to get low enough to free itself.

  Silas bucked his hips and shoved backwards with his heels, sliding out from between the dragonkin’s knees. His body was one giant burn, skin cracked like old paper as he moved too quickly. The temporary nature of his injuries made the pain significantly easier to deal with. The dragonkin frantically scrabbled at the ground and Silas assumed its upper half was doing something similar.

  It didn’t help, the dragonkin was too close to the ground for its efforts to matter. Not that Silas intended to struggle for long. Now that he had space, he drew the mantis blade and brought it down in a two handed chop on the dragonkin’s thigh. He didn’t have the angle to deal an instantly lethal blow, but he could sever a whole bunch of arteries.

  The leg exploded into flame, however, Silas had expected that and had taken care to avoid blood splatter. His sword was a flaming bar of metal now, painted in napalm like fluids. It only took a minute for the dragonkin to die of blood loss, a fact proven by the portal snapping closed, slicing the monster in half.

  He briefly wondered if the top would also be purified, or if this was a tapeworm situation where both halves needed to be killed. Silas mentally shrugged, he killed it once, he could kill it twice. A quick tap purified the creature.

  The pain of all his injuries tried to push back into his forethoughts, however, the fight wasn’t over. Turning, he found Bella finishing off the bear. It was in the process of turning into a dragonkin through their parasitic life cycle, but it was still animalistic enough to bite the chainsaw. Bella had taken the opportunity to shove the spinning blade down its throat.

  Silas had expected her to win, however, there was a second dragonkin. One that he couldn’t find. The top of the formation held a dead dragonkin, a dying bear, Silas, Samantha, Bella, and the four rescued newbies. No second dragonkin fighter. He then noticed that the only idiosyncrasy, Samantha held a spear.

  She was holding it under her arm with the point resting on the edge of the formation. Silas limped over, the lack of danger weakening his will and making the throbbing on his skin all the worse. Samantha turned when she heard him coming, her face was obscured by the bubble like film covering her body, thankfully there were no cracks in it.

  “You need to stop lighting yourself on fire,” Samantha said. She sounded happy, something that was likely bad for her mental state.

  Silas would have smiled if he didn’t feel the skin on his cheeks stretch uncomfortably, “Not my fault, these stupid lizards are pyromaniacs. Speaking of them, where’s the second one?”

  Samantha pointed over the edge, “I shoved it off the edge once I realized it couldn’t stand,” When Silas took a step closer she clarified, “You might not want to look it's kind of gross.”

  He glanced over at Samantha. She likely didn’t know that seventy foot falls weren’t lethal to dragonkin fighters. They had killed a few acolytes this way, so maybe she had made an assumption.

  “Now you have me curious,” Silas smiled to take the edge off his actions.

  Samantha shrugged, “Your loss.”

  Stepping up to the edge, Silas looked down. The first thing he noticed was how incredibly dead the dragonkin was. Maybe it had survived the fall, but the fuzzy scorpion rhino had put it down. There was a starburst of blood splattered outwards from the monster's front legs. It looked like the rhino had reared back and stomped on the dragonkin, popping it like a balloon. The top half of the corpse was impaled on the stinger, which held the body at the perfect height for the rhino to chew on. Even if resurrection was possible, Silas was certain that the dragonkin wouldn’t want it.

  “Ok, you were right,” Silas said, “I didn’t need that image in my mind.”

  Samantha nodded, “Told you so.”

  The sound of tearing flesh ceased and a brief flash of purple light signified Bella’s victory. When Silas and Samantha made their way around the bear, they found Bella holding the sigil with a bit of wonder and a lot of frustration.

  “It only took me two months to do this,” Bella said. Tears were making tracks through the blood splattering her cheeks.

  “Mom!” Samantha yelled. She rushed over to make sure Bella was fine.

  Silas paused, letting them have their moment. He knew why Bella was crying. It only took two months to kill a monster similar to the one who killed her husband. Not just kill it, but dominate it from start to finish. If she had just had this power back then, Connor would still be alive.

  His circumstances were different. Yes, Abby needed him, but she was not alone. His father was a proactive man, her father was a rancher, and both were adept in survival. Silas’s younger brother had followed in their father’s footsteps, though he had yet to make it to police chief. Finally, his family was well liked by the community, outside a bunker, it was likely the safest place for Abby to be.

  However, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be in the position Bella currently was. If he wanted to prevent that, he needed to be as capable as possible. His portals needed to go farther, his gear needed to be better, and his body had to be stronger than anything that could threaten her.

  He winced as the skin on his knuckles cracked and blood started leaking out of his gauntlet. Silas made a mental note, don’t clench your fist while your skin has the texture of a potato chip. Cutting off his thoughts on the future, Silas planned out what he needed to do first.

  Healing first, then figuring out how the dragonkin got into his hideout. It could be a fluke, but it still warranted a check on the other ones. If their current home base was in danger, they needed to move. It would not be unreasonable to hollow out a cave a few hundred feet underground and use an open portal to go back and forth. He would need to talk to Bella about setting up an emergency retreat like that.

  “Aron, bring me the sack I gave you,” Silas called out.

  The boy was shivering in fear, and judging by the puddle around his feet he was more than a bit terrified. Silas chose not to mention it, God did not make everyone to fight and Silas would be happy if the world never needed soldiers. Aron did not verbally answer, he jumped before scuttling over with the bag.

  Silas nodded his thanks before removing a chunk of beholder and popping it into his mouth. The feeling of flesh regrowing was strangely pleasant, like an itch finally being scratched. He would compare it to picking at a scab, though scaled up to his entire body.

  While he healed, he pulled up the pair of notifications he had gotten earlier. They had appeared while he was fighting the dragonkin, which had been a terrible time to read them.

  Notice: You have used Portal Manipulator with creativity and intense regularity and it has taken a step forward as a result. Your Memory, Focus, and Control have increased to reflect this.

  Notice: You have used Bone Crafter in conjunction with another sigil to create a replacement limb. Wisdom has increased to reflect this.

  Notice: You have used Bone Crafter in conjunction with another sigil to create a lifesaving implement. Focus has increased to reflect this.

  Silas’s eyes widened, three sigils upgraded at once. That was more than he had ever seen at one time. There also seemed to be one for the prosthetic and one for the chain sword. Previously he had also gotten an increase to his sigils from fixing Samantha’s arm.

  It made him wonder if cooperating with others was a way to advance quickly. Logically it made sense, as he had noticed things like staying up for extended periods had diminishing returns. What was the saying? Variety was the spice of life or something like that.

  The sound of footsteps caused Silas to forestall looking at his interface. Looking up he found Batu approaching with an excited look in his eyes. Silas wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with the mafia boss right now.

  “That was insane,” Batu gushed as he strode up to Silas, completely ignoring his son’s state, “You three are like demon slayers. Do you think I will be able to do that someday?”

  Silas shrugged, “What did your sigil do again?”

  “I have thermal cultivator and aerial regalia,” Batu said proudly, then realized he hadn’t answered Silas’s question, “aerial regalia does this.”

  A pair of phantom wings formed behind his back. They looked large, but Silas knew they were far too small to keep him aloft, at least without soul magic shenanigans. A set of claws covered his hands with the index finger being much larger. For a moment Silas thought it was just a better variant of Pack Guardian, exchanging antlers for wings.

  Then Batu read off its effect, “It halves my weight and the weight of anything I am carrying.”

  That was still not bad and it explained why the sigil gave Batu no physical stats. Also, there was soul magic shenanigans. In a peaceful world, Silas thought it was a sigil everyone would want. It not only allowed flight, but would make everyday labor significantly less tiring.

  “Sure, I can see some uses for it, however, before we get to that, please see to your son,” Silas sighed. He really hoped that he wouldn’t end up being a careless father, despite it being something of a common stereotype.

  “Oh sorry,” Batu rushed off to take care of Aron.

  “Bella, I’m going to take them back to camp, then we’ll check out the other hideouts,” Silas called out.

  He got a nod, then opened a portal for the newbies. It was time to get to the bottom of this and find out if there was anything to worry about.