Its been three days since Dad was supposed to arrive with the military incursion and the gold adventurers. I was beginning to worry, it was like when my girlfriend forgot to text me that she got home safely, but you know, with blood sucking monsters. I am not sure how that is comparable.

  All I can do is throw myself into my work. The SIM scale was officially adopted and we ironed out all the bugs. It's just hard to find enjoyment in discovering that lesser sigils only produce 75% of the radiation as normal sigils when I’m wondering if Dad has been sucked dry. Sometimes I wished I had taken the combat sigils when I had the chance.

  Day 100, Owen Landers

  Finding his last target turned out to be both a major and a minor problem. Minor because he had forgotten that he had seen one while rushing back to base camp. Major because the God forsaken bug decided to pick a fight with the fluffy, now stingerless, rhino.

  Was Silas going to jump down and join the fight? No. He had forgotten how terrifying the mantises were. After seeing a few dragonkin take them down several months ago, then solo killing an equal number of dragonkin on a pseudo regular basis, he had started thinking of them as durable but weak monsters.

  An assumption that was partly correct. They weren’t the fastest as their bodies were only barely better than Silas’s. He was just forgetting one thing. Their sword arms bisected just about everything. Stone chopped with no problem, the ground, scarred with zero issue, the rhino’s skin, parted like butter. He almost wished that he had the chop everything sigil, though on second thought it seemed worse than what he already had.

  Silas got to watch all this from his perch on a makeshift portal ledge. He ate raw beholder like popcorn at a movie theater. Frowning he looked down at the fist full of flesh. His father always said concession food cost an arm and a leg. What Silas was doing costed something else an arm. He smiled at his joke while watching the two beasts fight it out.

  In the end, the mantis got smashed against the wall, its metal exoskeleton deforming under the pressure. Gore oozed out of the cracks as the non-compressible organs got squished. Thankfully, the rhino was not in much better shape. The mantis had initiated the fight by gutting the rhino from the side. Gut wounds hurt but weren’t immediately fatal, as the mantis discovered.

  While the rhino would have lived for hours or days with this gut wound, it was far from the only injury it had received. Its face had been badly cut up and its rib cage had also been opened. This was on top of its previous wounds. It staggered drunkenly towards the formation.

  Despite the awe Silas felt for the beast’s plodding determination to survive, he wanted the last strike. This thing should have one hell of a sigil. Maybe he could make a future ally this hard to kill. Coupled with a healing sigil, Silas might be able to make an unstoppable tank cleric hybrid.

  Maybe it wasn’t the best time to be taking a risk like this, but Silas wasn’t willing to pass up the opportunity. Walking up beside the rhino, it didn’t react. Because of course, it couldn’t. Its eyes were torn apart and its nose was clogged with blood. An ear twitched, but the only reaction the beast could muster was a wet wheeze.

  Silas gave up on his attempt at stealth and walked up beside the rhino. Its thick skin had been lacerated and the heavy bleeding was slowing down as its blood supply drained into the dirt. Again, the beast did not react when the tip of the mantis blade was placed at the back of its skull. He pressed and met a surprising amount of resistance, the rhino’s skin didn’t stop the blade, but it felt like trying to cut through frozen meat.

  Something was different about this monster. Its flesh put up more resistance than most exoskeletons. Unfortunately, it was not different enough to save its life. When the blade met the brain stem, the rhino jerked and then collapsed. It did not scream or bellow, simply slipping quietly into death. Silas placed a hand on its side hoping for the notice. He was not disappointed.

  Notice: you have made contact with spirit manifestation Cornu Magnum Exempli. Would you like to purify the taint of Fenrir?

  “Yes,” Silas answered. Then the body was enveloped in the black smoke he had come to associate with purification.

  Silas looked down at the glowing purple crystal emblem. It had the engraved picture of the rhino's face from a frontal perspective. The horn was lowered like it was attempting to charge out of the crystalline structure. Silas smiled as he put it in his satchel.

  After popping another piece of beholder into his mouth to keep the poison at bay, he turned to the deformed mantis. It was big, standing upright it would likely be a few inches taller than Silas. While that was big for a bug, Silas found himself wondering if it would have enough material for a full suit.

  “Only one way to find out,” he grabbed the mantis by a gap between its head and neck plates.

  A portal opened to the top of a formation. One that was large, flat, and nowhere near the old base. He didn’t want to get jumped by any dragonkin sent to scout out the location while he was only partially armored.

  Finding a relatively flat rock, Silas set the giant bug down. He got to work peeling the mantis’s shell off. While armor was important, he was more interested in having a bow. Thankfully, he had gone bow hunting before and understood the basics of how bows worked.

  While he couldn’t make a compound bow in the allotted time, a standard longbow was not out of the question. Most of the time they were made of a single length of ewe wood. Now Silas had no idea what ewe wood felt like when used in a bow, but as it was a single piece all he needed was a bow shaped metal rod. That was easy enough to make, an application of his spirit allowed him to warp the flexibility until it seemed right.

  The part that caused issues was not the bow. It was the string. He couldn’t just roll out a wire and call it good. His sigil did not allow him to affect the hardness of an item. The first time he attempted to draw the bow, it snapped and gave him a nasty cut.

  Steel cables were made of multiple strands. His father had a winch hooked up to his truck’s front bumper. Silas remembered many winters when he would help neighbors get their vehicles out of snow drifts. Braiding a wire wasn’t an issue, but it did make the string too thick.

  Silas ended up making some pliers and a draw plate to get hair thin wires. Those worked, but it ate up nearly six hours of his extremely limited time allotment. Thankfully a control stat of six and a focus stat of eight were exactly what he needed to rush his alteration. He wasn’t sure how long normal bows took to make by hand, but six and a half hours had to be some kind of record.

  “Who am I kidding, I don’t know what the draw weight is and I don’t have any arrows,” He muttered. At least the draw plate and pliers would help with arrows as well.

  He tested the draw. It felt only a bit heavier than his seventy pound hunting bow. However, that had been a compound bow with its pulley assisted draw and he was now much stronger. His aim would be off as he would need to account less for the effects of gravity. Though the arrows would also be solid metal, so maybe it would be worse?

  He quickly made an arrow. Normally he would have gone for a broad head, but he needed it to deliver a toxic payload. He settled for a needlepoint with a rough surface. It would mess with its aerodynamics, but he needed the toxic paste he had made to dry on the shaft and grip well. That however was for later arrows.

  The first one was for testing. Silas placed it on the wire string and pulled. He engaged his back muscles, pulling his shoulder blades together and bringing his thumb to his cheek. The shaft rested on his pointer finger. Without the pressure release at full draw, Silas couldn’t take his time aiming, so sighting in on a rock on a neighboring formation, he let go.

  He had been right not to account for gravity. The arrow hit the rock with a sharp crack that startled a few creatures in the ravine below. Chips went flying and the arrow warped, bending into a U shape. While the rock didn’t get a hole punched through it, there was a fist sized chunk missing. Silas looked at the weapon, this was going to be a game changer.

  “Yeah, definitely more than seventy pounds,” Silas got to work making the arrows.

  He mixed the venom with bone that he had turned into a kind of putty. It was sticky and more than a little nerve racking. The pain of the initial sting was showing no signs of lessening. Now he had to handle a much larger volume with his bare hands. Thankfully, the venom didn’t soak into his skin, or at least it was a small enough dose to be unnoticeable compared to the initial amount.

  That bone was slathered on the arrowheads. A quick application of Greater Bone Crafter solidified the mixture. Silas looked up at the sky to check the time, then grimaced. The lack of a day-night cycle was messing with his concept of time. Silas wanted to rush off with his new weapon. He could kill a few dragonkin, maybe even a few dozen, but he wouldn’t get them all.

  Lehka’s bloodstained face flashed through his mind. She would have died alone, scared, and in pain. She had died and Silas could do nothing about it. While he hadn’t made an oath to Lehka, he still intended to honor her final wish. He took a deep breath, his death would guarantee the others’ deaths, so he needed to make every preparation to guarantee his victory.

  That meant armor. If his vitals weren’t protected, there was every chance that he would get one shotted by the dragonkin chief. Armor plates didn’t need to be pretty, they just needed to do their jobs. With that in mind, Silas took a shortcut and used rivets driven through bone plates to layer the metal armor over the bone set. No it wasn’t as light as it could be, but he had the energy to put up with the extra drain on his stamina. He then softened the bone plates, giving the whole set a slight flex that could hopefully lessen some of the blunt force impacts.

  There was just one more thing to do. Smiling, Silas quickly made two more mantis blades. Could he use three? Well, not yet, but maybe one day, and his people might need them.

  Standing, he flexed and stretched making sure everything moved properly. It looked like he was good to go. A quick portal over to home base so he could rehydrate and grab the barrel of beholder flesh was the last thing on his to-do list. He took a moment while standing on the lakeside, thinking over his plan.

  “Portal in, shoot all the arrows, and then go into melee with the remaining dragonkin,” Silas rubbed his forehead. This was a stupid plan.

  He would kill for some help. Even one more body could change things up. Another bow or tank of some kind, someone to add a little chaos to the conflict. The cards were stacked against him and anything he could do to shake the table would be good.

  He went over his interface to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything….

  Bone crafter was working overtime. Flesh Lord would patch up anything that was not instantly lethal. His eyes landed on Greater Portal Manipulator. He rubbed his chin.

  This sigil was great for travel, but it had been notoriously unreliable in combat. Was there a way he could use it? The portal already in the camp interfered with Silas’s sigil. There had to be a way to leverage it. He thought back to the idea of using it like a razor blade. Maybe he could get dragonkin run into it and slice themselves in half.

  The portal's range of interference likely didn’t extend all the way to the tops of the formations. He could use it to reposition every thirty seconds. That would work great all the way up until he ran out of arrows. He came back to the main problems of a lack of resources, manpower, and the time to gather enough of either.

  “Wait,” Silas muttered, “Am I really short on those things?”

  He quickly opened a spy portal and started looking for victims.

  Bella-

  Bella wanted to cry as they shoved her toward the dragonkin camp. She had been so close to victory. In only a month or two, these monsters would have been eradicated once and for all. They’d been close. So damn close. And then it all fell apart.

  Part of her wanted to blame the newcomers. Their arrival had marked the beginning of the end. Without them, the dragonkin might never have found their camp. But blaming people for being in the wrong place when an alien threat tore them from their world felt wrong. If Bella was being honest she was in the same position, as she was certain of two things. Silas would come and he would die trying to rescue them. She couldn’t even manage to die alone, Bella had to drag down her friends and family with her.

  Sammy walked along beside them, her eyes dull and lifeless. If the Sphinx hadn’t managed to regain control, Bella would have fought them to the death to keep Sammy safe. As it was, Bella wasn’t sure that the Sphinx couldn’t order Sammy to harm herself.

  Rekha was in a similar position and she was doing the best out of the trio of Indian women. Lehka had been left behind and, judging from the screams, tortured. Likely to send a message to Silas. Mia was little more than a walking corpse. The dragonkin had slashed her across the back deep enough to reveal a vertebra. Bella had supported Mia on the trip back and could confirm that she would likely die without medical attention.

  After a nearly six hour walk, they entered the dragonkin camp. It looked exactly as Silas described it, half built, savage, and wrong. All structures were composed of blood-mixed bricks and lacked roofs. One more thing that pointed to a lack of rain. The Chief’s home was the only different one, it had a roof made of bones woven between a skeletal centi snakes legs. It was disgusting.

  The only other things in the camp were two piles of junk. One was made of furniture, appliances, and random parts of a house. The other was on fire, because of course, the dragonkin would light things on fire.

  A quick glance confirmed that nearly a hundred dragonkin remained, going about community activities. Bella felt her hope die, how could Silas handle that many? They dragged the captives to the clearing near the burned out husk of a semi truck, parked beside the dark shimmer of the corrupted portal.

  Sammy was chained to the truck with a pair of handcuffs, likely retrieved from a member of law enforcement. Bella clenched her fist, resisting the urge to simply rush in and start fighting. One hand and no weapons would not serve her well in any conflict. So it was with disgust that she let herself be led away, her daughter standing placidly like a well trained animal.

  Mandy and Aaron followed with hollow eyes, shoulders slumped. They already had quite a bit of trauma from being captives and had given up on surviving. Batu was different, his fingers twitched like he was used to having a gun on hand. It reminded Bella that the man was originally part of a mafia adjacent organization.

  The dragonkin barked guttural orders, which Rekha translated, “Come to the heap, give Jikininki the answers he seeks.”

  Bella wanted to balk. Not only were they bait, but they were also expected to serve as the dragonkin’s encyclopedias. She paused, eyeing the pile. Could there be something to cut metal in there, maybe a pair of bolt cutters? They did loot a cop’s body to get the handcuffs, so it wasn’t too out there for other tools to present.

  Due to this, Bella moved to the pile with far more vigor than was strictly necessary. Bella stared at the mound of human detritus not sure where to start. Rebar and stucco, a busted microwave, dusty television were piled up. Deciding to start with what was familiar, she grabbed the television.

  “Explain,” Rekha droned. A dragonkin stepped forward to examine the cracked screen.

  “That’s a television,” she stammered, “It was used to talk, I mean to send images. The screen showed what someone else saw, far away.”

  Rekha translated. The dragonkin murmured among themselves in low growls that spiked Bella’s anger. They just left her standing, balancing the television precariously in one arm. She tried visually scanning the debris for what she was hoping for.

  “Make it work,” Rekha ordered. The sphinx seemed to be getting the hang of communicating using humans.

  She hesitated. “It needs electricity, it's like lightning but smaller.”

  They didn’t understand, how could they, clouds and rain seemed unnatural here. When her explanation wasn’t enough, Bella was backhanded. She dropped the television and staggered back, nearly falling on the pile. If she ever got her hand on the dragonkin, she would burn the life from it.

  They attempted to get a better answer from Batu, as if Bella didn’t know what she was talking about. They were like children, or politicians, only accepting the answer that matched their agenda and ignoring reality.

  Unfortunately for Batu, Bella had been telling the truth, “Lightning doesn’t exist here, not naturally at least. It comes down from the sky and you can catch it if you’re fast enough.”

  That angered them. A dragonkin lashed out, slicing Aaron’s back open with a claw. He whimpered, but didn’t cry out. Batu looked on impassively, so the dragonkin struck his son again. The only tell that he was livid was the twitching of his trigger finger and his hand drifting to his hip. A few more blows landed before the dragonkin realized they wouldn’t get a reaction from Batu. Only after a look of disappointment crossed the chief’s face did he stop the beating.

  The day bled on, an unfortunately literal description. The dragonkin would ask endless questions and get meaningless answers, and then punish them when they couldn’t explain the technology of Earth to their satisfaction. It was junk, did they really think tearing an appliance apart would allow its continued function? Evidently yes.

  Every time they explained an item's purpose and how it was useless, that item would be placed in the burn pile. In short order, it grew larger than the one they were working on. That fire made working much harder as dehydration started setting in on them. Mia was hit the worst of all, staggering around while wheezing.

  A few hours in, her search bore fruit. Bella found a small metal file. Not the bolt cutters she had been hoping for, but close. Maybe she could use it to wear down Sammy’s cuffs if she could just reach her. She only needed to wait for the watchers to be distracted, then she could slap Sammy awake and pass her the file.

  Bella couldn’t help but feel a new hope fill her, it gave her new energy. An energy that the dragonkin noticed. A clawed hand shot out, tearing her palm as it ripped the file from her grip.

  “No,” Bella instinctively yelped as she tried to snatch the file back.

  “Jikininki wants to know what thing this is?” Reka translated.

  Bella opened and closed her mouth a few times. She couldn’t say what the file actually was, so she blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “It's a knife,” She winced at those words, the last thing they needed were armed dragonkin, “It is a tool for, uh, cooking.”

  Again the dragonkin turned to Batu for a second opinion. This was starting to get offensive, did Bella really look so untrustworthy? Well, she had been in nearly daily combat for nearly three months, she might be a bit ferrel at this point.

  Batu kept his face passive as he answered, “This is a dull dull knife, it can’t be used for more than prying things apart,” A calculating look filled his eyes, “The sharper ones can cut through flesh with ease.”

  Bella could only stare at Batu in horror. Why would he arm the dragonkin? There were likely to be knives in this pile, it was mostly looted from a wealthy neighborhood. She didn’t know what kind of hobbies wealthy Indians had, so maybe there was a collection of swords as well.

  The dragonkin exchanged looks, then barked new orders through Rekha, “Find knives.”

  Bella cursed under her breath. She hadn’t meant to give them ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas bore fruit. Three different sets of cooking utensils were unearthed, along with one maintenance kit. The chieftain pulled Mia off collection duty to sharpen all the blades as soon as he found out.

  All this added to the rising dread Bella felt. Her file had been tossed into the burn pile and rescue was becoming less likely as a dragonkin got its first steel blade. She knew she was spiraling, falling into self pity, but she had no real desire to pull herself free.

  Then a dull gong sounded out as something metal and hollow bounced off the ground. Everyone turned to see Aron scrambling after the propane tank that he had just dropped. How something like that had survived these pyromaniacs, Bella did not know. However, Aron saw the same thing she did, if they could use it as a bomb, maybe they could use it as a distraction and escape.

  If they had less attentive guards, maybe it would have worked. Aron reached the tank and snatched it up just as Jikininki arrived. The boy had a look of fear mixed with grim resolve as he jerked the tank away from the chief. He made to toss it to his father, but the massive dragonkin caught it before it had even traveled a few centimeters. The dragonkin tossed Aron to the dirt and placed one clawed foot on his chest.

  With a glance at the sphinx, Jikininki summoned Rekha, “You will tell me why this is worth such a risk. Tell me why you chose to resist.”

  No one answered. Even the terrified Aron sealed his mouth. No one wanted to give the dragonkin a bomb.

  Jikininki snarled, though his rage was somewhat muted by Rekha’s monotone delivery, “Jikininki is master of the hunt. Jikininki tolerates no descent.”

  The monster straightened its fingers before stabbing down at Aron’s skull. Batu roared as he charged into the side of the chief, shoving the arm aside with one hand while shoulder checking the monster. Jikininki took one step, that was all Batu’s entire body mass could manage. It was enough, a line of red dripped from Aron’s ear where his ear lobe had been cut. The chief’s claws were buried in the dirt beside the boy’s head.

  Jikininki twisted into a backhand, aiming to smash Batu’s skull. The man smoothly read the motion and stepped within the swing. He shoved the dragonkin again. Batu was well trained, which may have been the reason he didn’t see the tail coming. It knocked him to the ground.

  Bella didn’t think. While every eye was on the scuffle she rushed to the burning pile and grabbed a shard of pottery from the fire. The heat burned into her palm, as she turned back towards the chief. If she could just ignite the tank. It was worth her own life to cut the head off this snake. Maybe then Silas could capitalize on the chaos and save Sammy.

  Greater Thermal Cultivator activated, raising the temperature of the shard to well over five hundred degrees. Jikininki heard her coming but it couldn’t respond in time. She slammed the shard against the metal. Nothing. No explosion. Just a dull clang.

  Pain came instead, cutting through her confusion. A claw raked through her side, throwing her across the dirt.

  The dragons laughed, the sound sharp and cruel. Bella gasped, blood wetting her lips, rage burning through the haze giving her the strength to get back up. She had forgotten that heat takes a bit of time to transfer through objects.

  The leader barked again, and the Sphinx looked on with interest from just behind the chief. Rekha translated. “Why strike carapace with stone?”

  Stone? Then she realized there was no metal in this world. None except for the mantis’s exoskeleton. No wonder they hadn’t developed steel age weaponry.

  “I was trying to kill you with it,” she spat. Maybe if they knew it was a weapon, they would use it with their fire and blow themselves up.

  That made them laugh harder. A harsh, predatory sound that made her stomach twist. Her body shook with exhaustion. Sammy sat chained to the truck, her lifeless eyes staring ahead, her mind locked away under the Sphinx’s control. Bella had sacrificed everything, her arm, her morals, her humanity, and still, her daughter was a prisoner. The laughter faded. The dragonkin’s eyes sharpened, gleaming with the promise of pain. Something in Bella snapped.

  Reaching over, Bella drew a piece of rebar from the flame once again using her sigil to throttle the temperature as high as it would go, “Go to hell!”

  Bella charged Jikininki, brandishing the glowing rod of metal. The chief sneered and swiped its claws at her face. Unfortunately for the dragonkin, they weren’t its target. Bella hit the dirt in a parody of a baseball player taking a base.

  The claws passed over her head as she slid between its legs. Scrambling back the sphinx tried to avoid her. Its muscles were tight from disuse after their fight. Its wings were torn and its eyes were severely damaged. The muscles along its flanks were injured, completely nullifying the advantage catlike reflexes granted.

  Bella glared into the sphinx’s feline eyes as she planted the glowing bar into its chest. The skin parted and fur burned as the rod penetrated its chest cavity evaporating blood and rupturing organs on its path to the monster’s spine. Bella wasn’t strong enough to actually break the vertebrae, but that didn’t matter, the rebar was hot enough to cook the sphinx from the inside out.

  Jikininki roared, kicking Bella in her already injured side. She winced, the world darkening around the edges of her vision. Vaguely she heard Rekha screaming and Sammy crying her name. That last one brought Bella back.

  Looking at her daughter she screamed, “Run, Sammy, run.”

  “Mom!” Sammy struggled to get to Bella. She felt pride mixed with despair at her daughter’s stupid actions.

  Bella refused to show fear, that was not the last memory of her that she wanted to live with. Firming her gaze, Bella glared at Jikininki. Only the chief wasn’t looking back. It was glaring at the rim of the clearing.

  A monstrous screech tore across the camp as something vast slammed into the cliffs above. Dust and debris rained down. A massive centi snake nearly seventy feet long, armored in scales and insect legs tumbled over the side of a formation. It crashed into the chief’s home collapsing the roof and sending stone flying like a building-sized grenade. Dragonkin scattered, shrieking in alarm as the creature writhed, gouging the dirt and a few unfortunate monsters with hundreds of limbs.

  Bella stared, stunned, until she saw the figure standing beside the glowing portal atop the formation.

  “I’m here!” Silas’s voice echoed down into the chaos, “And I brought friends”

  The portal flared again, and Silas disappeared. A few seconds later a third opened and a forest of tentacles followed him through. This beholder made the first one they had killed look insignificant as it squeezed through the aperture like a demon octopus. It roared from thousands of maws vibrating the world as it met no floor on the other side of the portal, falling into the clearing as well.

  Bella felt hope kindle once more. She pushed herself upright, blood slicking her side, and looked toward the propane tank.

  The dragon chief’s gaze locked on Silas with religious fervor and its claws curled in fury.

  Good. It was time to kill some monsters.