With seven seconds left on the clock, Edge lined up a killing blow.

  Thanks to Able, the colossal summon was out of the picture, and his friends had eliminated the nearby Claws. Foebinder had stripped the last bug from Roth’s body, leaving her critically exposed… or so he thought.

  As he closed the final few feet while preparing to Double Slash, a centipede sprang to intercept him. The killer insect had been wrapped around the summoner’s waist the entire time—disguised as a belt.

  It wasn’t the same species as the swarm. It was faster, tougher, and far more venomous—deadlier by an order of magnitude.

  Before Edge had time to Harden his body or Step out of the way, it landed on his shoulders, passing through Warlord’s Mantle without resistance since it hadn’t begun its attack.

  Once the summon was through his ghostly cloak, its tail lashed out in the blink of an eye. The bug’s stinger pierced his armor and plunged into his chest, aiming straight for his heart. It would have been the end of him if it wasn’t for one critical detail—Edge still had one charge left on his Heart-Guard implant.

  Instead of perforating his ticker, the beast’s barb deflected off the aether shield and emerged from his back, dripping with venom and gore. He didn’t have time to worry about it now, so he Hardened both sides of his body, trapping the centipede between his diamond scales. Then he reached out and Slashed with Elemental Blade, flaring both skills and Regeneration as hard as he could.

  Magic suffused the crystalline weapon and the arms that held it. His swing abruptly sped up as the iceblade formed a ghostly double. The silver runes covering the cerulean sword shone like the full moon—the air so cold it froze the sweat covering his body.

  In the fraction of a second before his attack landed, Roth reached out and ignited her core, getting ready to hit Edge with some manner of skill.

  But she couldn’t compete with his superhuman Speed. The subzero sword sheared her arm off at the shoulder, then sliced all the way down the side of her body, cutting her to the bone and freezing her blood before it had time to fall.

  It was a mortal wound, even for a stage-two elite, but the ice kept her breathing for another few seconds, which meant he still had time to act.

  After stealing a skill from the goat monster and one from Ella, Edge only had one use of Extraction left. He honestly wasn’t sure if he wanted to claim any of Roth’s powers, but there was no way he was going to give up the chance to find out.

  In the final moment before Overdrive cut out—the trapped centipede still squirming inside his body—he reached out and activated Extraction, following the black chains as they plunged into the summoner’s core.

  After a momentary flash of disorientation, Edge found himself standing at the top of a ramshackle tower, overlooking a sorry collection of mud-and-brick buildings he assumed was the Gilded Heights.

  The lavish name seemed to mock the settlement sprawling out below him, which was too haphazard and rickety to call a town—much less a city. In the distance, he could see a vast desert stretching from horizon to horizon. The high-threat biome was far from lifeless, although it looked like a hard place to survive.

  But Edge wasn’t here to learn about the Claws’ living conditions—although they revealed the convicts were fundamentally unfit to ever be more than a brutal band of killers—so he turned away from the window and examined the room instead.

  When he ran his gaze across Roth’s central chamber, he wished he hadn’t. He began by cataloging the less-revolting details before forcing himself to explore the rest. One wall was filled with bookshelves containing journals, scrolls, and a variety of artifacts he couldn’t even begin to identify. Another was lined with shelves containing beakers, test tubes, and racks filled with chemicals and resources.

  The rest of the room was covered with corpses in various stages of decomposition. Some were hanging from hooks, more were lying on medical tables, and another set was piled into bloodstained metal tubs.

  The rotting bodies were bad enough—although Edge was no stranger to death by this point in his adventures. But the closer he looked, the stronger his revulsion grew. Some of them are children for fuck’s sake.

  Thousands of insects were crawling over, around, and through the remains. Most were centipedes, but there were dozens of other species gnawing away at flesh and bone. He pinched his nostrils to dampen the stench, but it still made him want to vomit. As bad as the sight and smell were, the sound they made was even worse.

  It seemed that Roth wasn’t just a summoner; she was also a beast breeder—the most vicious and toxic variants, judging by the species he recognized. They were confined to their corpse by some manner of skill, feeding, laying eggs, and occasionally devouring each other.

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  It was the worst thing he had ever seen, and he turned away from the gruesome display—ready to steal a skill and get the fuck out of here as quickly as he could. The avatars themselves were hideous, skittering representations that delighted in the grisly spectacle filling the summoner’s central chamber.

  Just like Ella, Roth’s inner world and the powers it contained were deeply disturbing—awful in a way that was distinctly different from the corrupted blight filling a monster’s core. Given his own experiences, Edge suspected that over time, the jailbirds’ skills changed in accordance with their bearers’ nature, and the Claws’ strike leaders were some of the vilest individuals in inhabited space.

  The skills that summoned and buffed the various centipedes forming Roth’s swarm were repulsive on a primal level, and the others were almost as bad. In that moment, Edge almost left the core without stealing anything. He didn’t want to have these powers inside him—even for the brief moment it took to Absorb their experience. He forced himself to stay for a few more moments while considering each avatar in turn.

  When he completed his survey, he realized there was one power that seemed different from the rest—the one that let Roth manifest the giant insect she had ridden. It was just as ugly and twisted as the others, but through his growing ability to sense the true nature of skills, Edge could tell the power didn’t have to be that way.

  If his intuition was right, it was a Companion skill—not a direct summon. If he claimed it, the entity it brought into this world would reflect Edge’s soul instead of Roth’s. He still had grave reservations about touching anything in here, but he was willing to give it a chance. He was about to order the chains to steal it when something unexpected occurred.

  Skill-Eater was fully awake, and the prospect of stealing another Rare skill had the ravenous lord salivating in anticipation of its meal. The hunger was so intense that it flowed through their bond, filling Edge with an overwhelming desire to feed.

  The problem was that his core didn’t want the Companion skill—it wanted the swarm instead. No. I don’t want to manifest those vile creatures. That isn’t who I want to be.

  But while it was consumed by gluttony, Skill-Eater didn’t care what Edge wanted. Its appetite grew by the heartbeat, dominating his will until only the need to feed remained. In that moment, he almost stole Roth’s horrible power, screaming inside his own mind all the while.

  Will. Not. Relent. Through sheer effort of will, he suppressed the link between himself and the bound giant long enough to guide the chains to the other avatar instead.

  To extract a Rare skill, you must sacrifice 2 Mortium.

  Would you like to proceed?

  He could sense Skill-Eater’s fury at being denied, although it calmed down when he confirmed the prompt. After spending the Mortium, he couldn’t change his mind, and stealing any Rare skill was better than none at all. The giant bound by endless black chains grumbled as it returned to unwilling slumber. Its insatiable craving faded away, leaving Edge alone in his head once more.

  Infused with the chilling power of death, the black chains went surging toward the centipede Companion, which refused to be stolen without a fight. The contents of Roth’s inner world went flying as the living links struggled to restrain the berserk beast, but they couldn’t gain the upper hand.

  By this point, the Extraction was in danger of failing. If the chains didn’t win soon, the Mortium would wear off and Edge would lose the chance to claim the summoner’s power.

  Acting on instinct, he rushed in and joined the battle—like what had happened when he Extracted Intimidating Roar. While this Rare skill wasn’t as powerful, it put up one hell of a fight. Further complicating matters, he sensed that both his mental projection and his chains could be harmed by the rampaging centipede.

  Luckily, there wasn’t much room to maneuver in the tower chamber. Working together, the three of them were able to trap the big bug between a series of stone tables. While Edge dodged its mandibles and tail, Foebinder wrapped itself around the writhing creature and held it tight. At that point, the right chain of oblivion was able to yank the power free from Roth’s core, letting him leave this awful place for good.

  When he found himself back in his body, he knew he had to work fast. As the chains dragged the avatar toward his lips, he lunged with his iceblade, piercing Roth’s skull and killing her instantly. As the centipede that had been trapped inside his body vanished and Regeneration began healing the damage, Foebinder dropped the skill into his mouth.

  He only had a few seconds left on Overdrive, and he needed to digest it before the exhaustion hit him and he lost the ability to think.

  Edge began chomping as fast as he could, precipitating a brief struggle that was almost as intense as the battle inside Roth’s core. The venomous centipede squirming behind his gums was just as deadly as the version he’d fought inside the tower, only smaller. It tried to sting him and cut its way through his lips, but he’d already Hardened his mouth.

  Fighting to keep the avatar contained within his jaws, he quickly performed the move he had developed for eating particularly tough or dangerous skills. He turned his iceblade toward him and stuck it between his teeth, freezing the shit out of his mouth in the process—although thanks to Regulate Temperature, he didn’t turn his brain into a lump of ice.

  When he speared the skill, the damned thing stopped struggling. Three Warlord’s Mantle-bolstered chomps later, it turned into goo, making the short voyage across his tongue, down his throat, and into his core.

  The flavor was far less sinister than the power’s appearance. It tasted like loyalty and camaraderie. Like a friend who would never betray him and would be with him for the rest of his life. Also a bit like blackberry, chocolate, and sage, for some inexplicable reason.

  He received confirmation from the System, just as Overdrive ran out.

  You have extracted an unidentified skill (Rare, Rank 5).

  It will take 2 days to digest it.

  An onyx wave of fatigue broke over him as the great engine switched off and vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared. He collapsed as the strength left his limbs—unable to concentrate on the final moments of the battle. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Foebinder gesture to Roth’s belt pouch before retracting through his wrist.

  A group of Claws came rushing forward to end his life, but Jumo and Riller stepped in front of them, holding their own even though their mantles had disappeared. As both sides came together for a final exchange of blows, Momo grabbed Edge by the legs and pulled him out of harm’s way, squeezing his shoulder before turning to rejoin the fight.