I reached the gory little glade just as Alpha and his pack arrived at the base of the ravine. It sounded like another dozen werewolves followed Alpha, and they all came on like a tide of death. I caught glimpses of them racing through the wreckage of the ravine, heedless of any danger and absolutely confident in their power.

  At the lead, Alpha ran on all fours, his long forelimbs allowing him to run at a forward crouch instead of all the way over. Even though I’d faced him up close and personal before, the sight of him coming straight in, his red-eyed gaze locked on me, was still awe-inspiring.

  So I waved and called, “Took you long enough.”

  Either Alpha spotted my tripwires and traps, or his luck stat was working overtime because he missed them all. The first several werewolves behind him weren’t so lucky, though. They all ran into magical bear traps, and those things were even better than I’d imagined.

  I wish I could have watched them trigger from a better vantage. From what I could see, the giant steel traps seemed to snap out of nowhere, crunching down on werewolf limbs and one unlucky snout with horrific force, snapping bones and stopping their forward momentum hard. Other werewolves triggered tripwires, blasting themselves with high-powered acid.

  “Welcome to the party, pal!” I shouted and cast Immolation and whispered, “Here goes something.” At the same time, focusing on my Spellweaver ability to synergize spells, I also cast Elemental Harmony and tossed in 3 Stygian Ichor poison potions.

  Cyrus chuckled at my Die Hard reference, but thankfully didn’t interject. I was kind of busy.

  Mana poured out of me in a torrent as Immolation melded with Elemental harmony and a tornado of black fire erupted around me. The flames roared like a pride of lions and instantly filled the entire ravine. Immolation could spread a lot farther, but the stone walls of the ravine hemmed it in and seemed to make the flames even more dense than ever.

  With the Stygian Ichor potions mixed in with Immolation, the result turned an already-terrifying spell into a true monster. The firestorm tore through the underbrush, vaporizing bushes and leaves and setting werewolf fur alight while delivering triple-strength doses of the poison.

  The rest of the pack panicked, their terrified cries echoing between the walls of the ravine again and again. They would not find escape before the inferno vaporized them, while the poison slowed their regeneration to fatal levels.

  “I will eat your heart and your spleen!” Alpha roared as he burst through the flaming trees into the little glade like a wolf demon. His regeneration was so insanely fast that even that firestorm and poison avalanche hadn’t slowed him yet.

  “That’s oddly specific. Do spleens even taste good?” I replied, pointing my wrist with the Stiletto Quiver at him and channeling every bit of mana in that it could handle.

  Shhk, Shhk, Shhk. Crystal blades shot out rapid-fire, each one coated with more of the Stygian Ichor poison. By the time he took his next step, I’d pincushioned him with 50 blades. He didn’t even try dodging. Probably figured the tiny blades couldn’t harm him. Never ignore poison.

  He unleashed another absolutely mighty howl of bloodlust, along with another howl spell. The entire clearing groaned under immense weight, as if an invisible hand had slapped down over the area. Even with my high Strength, I had to fight to stay upright. Most people would have been squashed down into the ground, temporarily immobile.

  “Congratulations, Lucas! Mimic has captured Weight of the Pack. Time remaining to re-cast the spell: 15 seconds.”

  Nice spell. I instantly triggered Mimic’s new upgrade, making the spell a full temporary spell.

  Alpha leaped, springing into the air and launching across the entire glade in a single bound. Totally impressive, and if I’d been immobilized, it would have worked perfectly. Hadn’t he learned that he couldn’t change directions mid-jump?

  I might not be able to run and jump as easily as usual, but that wasn’t my plan anyway. I triggered Tether Slide with my single tether point a tree just behind and to the right of his trajectory. And of course I activated its Implacable upgrade.

  “Implacable. Rare. Double your slide speed. Ignore any force attempting to deflect or impede your slide to your next tether point and add 500% more damage to your first strike. Cooldown: 1 hour.”

  I shot across the space like a bullet, aimed to pass just out of reach. Alpha roared in impotent fury, snatching uselessly with deadly claws, but didn’t quite have the reach.

  I did.

  The weapon I’d gotten in that loot box after killing the Graveclutch Mandrills dropped into my hands.

  “Naginata of the Trebuchet. Epic. Imbue a single blow with Siege Strike.”

  “Siege Strike. Magnify your strike with the power of a siege weapon, adding 10 times the impact and penetration damage. Cooldown: 1 hour.”

  As I soared toward Alpha, the long, heavy weapon settled into my hands with a reassuring weight. The polished stone haft and dully gleaming steel sword tip made for a really impressive weapon. It also gave me a lot of reach. As I shot past the raging Alpha, I gave him my best Babe Ruth swing, driven by every point in Strength and the full force of my Implacable-infused Slide, compounded by his own forward momentum.

  To top it all off, I triggered the Siege Strike function of the naginata, multiplying the force of my swing 10 times before Implacable multiplied it all again another five times. And for good measure, I cast Cascading Force to add an additional random force hit.

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  I’d get one good shot, so I was pouring everything I could into making it count. My class let me stack spells and find unusual synergies, so I pushed its power to the limits.

  I had to give it to Alpha, his reflexes were amazing. He saw the blow coming and crossed his heavily-muscled arms to block. I twisted my weapon to strike with the flat of the blade at the last second. I didn’t want the sharp edge to simply bisect Alpha and maybe waste some of the compounding force.

  Time seemed to slow as we came together and the moment burned itself into my memory. The two of us passing each other mid-air, surrounded by roaring black flames as the entire ravine transformed into a giant torch. My blade sweeping in and connecting with his crossed arms while he howled with rage, crimson-eyed glare burning as hot as my Inferno.

  The impact of my blade against his crossed arms sent a shockwave blasting out through the ravine that shattered wolf carcases all through the gully, ripped trees apart, and blasted stones to splinters. It shook me all the way up to my shoulders, although the heavy weapon absorbed much of the impact, or maybe just reflected it back on Alpha.

  His arms simply disintegrated to gory bits that vaporized in the black flames. My blade, barely slowed by his arms, blasted through his rib cage and shattered his spine. His entire body crumpled around the strike as the flat of my blade tore out his back in an explosion of blood and gore and bone.

  Then the Cascading Strike force hit. Gravitational force. That was all I could figure because his body crushed down to the size of a basketball before rocketing away.

  I tried to watch where Alpha’s squashed body went, but it tore away like a cannonball, smashing through trees, then disappeared so fast beyond the bottom of the ravine, the night seemed to swallow it up. I couldn’t track its trajectory beyond my dark flaming tornado, even with Spellseer’s Gaze.

  “Well, Schumann,” I swore as I reached the tree I’d selected as my tether and kicked off to drop back to the ground.

  I didn’t get a kill notification, so that plucky bastard would still be able to regenerate even from that multi-stacked finishing move. It would take a while, though, even for him, especially with that Ichor poison infusing his system. He wouldn’t bother me again tonight.

  “Have fun regenerating from a meat basketball,” I shouted.

  Kind of a lame ending to an epic hit. I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop grinning. Stacking synergized spells worked better than I’d ever hoped. Best class ever.

  I took a deep breath, savoring the moment, then really took stock of where I was standing. The entire ravine was being consumed by a towering wall of roaring black flames and I stood in its heart.

  Even though the fire didn’t affect me, it bothered me. If I left the spell on too long, I could incinerate entire swaths of forest. I would usually abhor that thought at a deep, visceral level. I was a firefighter, after all. I’d dedicated several years of my life to fighting forest fires. I’d seen the absolute devastation they could wreak across vast sections of country, destroying and killing everything in their path.

  And yet, now I had unleashed a magical fire. The flames were even more destructive than a natural fire, and yet they were purging the rot and evil of the Death Stalker. Sometimes fire cleansed.

  It was a weird dichotomy I wasn’t sure what to think about. Most days, I would want another way, but today there was no better option. Immolation was a terrifying spell, but it had saved my life twice now and helped me destroy disgusting monsters.

  So I chose to embrace it for the moment. I walked through the flaming black tornado, letting my senses expand through the fire, trying to understand the monster I’d unleashed. The poison didn’t seem to affect the remaining trees, so that was a minor bonus, but even the thick trunks were igniting as the flame consumed the protective layers of bark. The rot infecting the wood did seem to burn aggressively.

  Could I focus it better? I concentrated on the flames rippling up a nearby trunk and willed them to reduce the heat. I got a hint of a reaction, but the fire resisted. It wanted to burn, needed to burn to be fire.

  How about directing the heat?

  That got a much better reaction, and extra heat billowed off the flames but left the tree largely intact. I worked it for a few minutes, fine-tuning my control so that the trees did not burn, but the rot did. Most of the rot was only surface damage, which made the effort much easier. Soon I expanded my influence, organizing my fiery tornado, focusing its entire roaring deadly expanse on targeting the rot.

  Were there other aspects to my other spells I could unlock if I actually thought about controlling them more? Maybe the mana manipulation ability could prove even more useful than I’d hoped. Were there runes I could have used to fine-tune my control over Immolation more easily? Definitely something to practice.

  The other werewolves were reduced to unrecognizable lumps of ash, but I still managed to loot them and trigger Soul Feed. I didn’t bother with Harvest. Cyrus wouldn’t give me Lycanthropic Transformation again, and honestly, I could finally admit I didn’t want it.

  Then I rushed back up to the top of the ravine to finish dealing with my other target. The core of the Death Stalker had tried oozing back into the cave, but much of it had burned away. The rest was being consumed, and the nasty black ooze burned like it contained alcohol. With the ravine hemming in Immolation’s flames, they’d eagerly expanded into the cave.

  “Purifying with fire. The perfect choice for you,” I growled at the disgusting elemental.

  Soon the nightmare sludge body burned away, leaving a brightly glowing emerald loot box in its center. Once it became visible, I got a notification.

  “Congratulations, Lucas! For killing the Death Stalker and cleansing the ravine of its lingering rot, experience doubled. You gain 1 level. Stat points allocated, plus 1 free point.”

  Sweet! Killing the elemental felt as satisfying as one-shotting Alpha. This insane death battle world was cruel and vicious and deadly, but sometimes it just felt right to destroy a vile monster.

  I dropped my free point into Dexterity, cast Loot, and rushed into the cave to open the bonus loot box. When it flashed and disappeared, it left one item floating in the air for me.

  “Gloves of the Healer’s Touch. Epic. Triples the effects of any healing ability, or any ability triggered while healing. Grants the ability Cleansing Pulse.”

  “Cleansing Pulse. Ability. Epic. Send a pulse of healing through a target, removing all diseases and soul-afflicting conditions suffered less than 24 hours. Includes healing vampirism, lycanthropy, and similar ailments within 24 hours if patient has not yet killed others while infected.”

  “Incredible,” I breathed as I reverently took the soft, white gloves. I knew exactly who could best use them.

  Marching back into the open glade, I threw my hands wide and turned slowly in a circle. I hated uncontrolled forest fires, but giant tornadoes of black flame that did my bidding were actually pretty cool.

  A piercing cry rang out from the sky and I instinctively ducked into a defensive stance as I scanned the night. It took less than a second to spot the onrushing threat since it seemed to fill the entire starry night sky.

  A giant bird, maybe even a dragon, shaped entirely out of red flames and as big as a warehouse, was swooping straight down toward me, its fiery body framed by the brilliant stars. Even from that distance I could sense its aura like a heavy blanket slamming down across the area. It was overwhelming, way stronger than Alpha’s.

  “Stockhausen! I am so screwed.”