“What is it?” the lieutenant shouted as the walls shook. There had to be a huge monster out there.

“I don’t know, I have never seen one before,” the light mage shouted back, panicked.

The lieutenant swore and jumped up to the vents in the ceiling. He held on with one hand and peered out at the attacking monster. He said, “It’s a giant iron rhino.” He let go and fell ten feet to the floor. He turned to his sentinels and said, “It’s going to get in here within minutes. We need to stop it before then. Lonwabo, give me a slit facing the monster, eye level. Make it about three inches wide. Everyone else, arm up, get ready. Bows first.”

The light mage shot out a powerful beam of light and carved out an arrow slit in the rock dome. The sentinels armed themselves and crowded around it. They shot out at the charging monster. Hugo heard plinking noises as he got his own crossbow ready. He got to the stone wall just as the monster hit, and flinched back as the dome shook.

The monster was enormous. It was twenty feet tall and had a twelve foot curved horn on its nose. Its thick metal skin made it look like it was plated in armor. The iron skin resisted all of the arrows by the other sentinels, including the potions of the alchemist and the light beams of the light mage. Hugo confidently stood up to the wall and shot out his exploding bolts. Seeing the size of the beast, he went ahead and shot four exploding bolts.

The iron rhino had been backing up to get another run at the stone dome and caught each bolt on its left shoulder. When the dust cleared, the shoulder was dented in, but not pierced. The monster roared in anger and ran at the dome again. The walls shook and a crack appeared, branching off from the arrow slit.

“Ice arrows, Xhosa! Lonwabo, blind it right after it hits,” the lieutenant yelled, “Everyone else, now is the time to pull out the stops.”

A pair of sentinels dropped their bows and positioned their spears just inside the arrow slit. Hugo ran back to his pack and hurriedly swapped out ammunition, dropping all of the exploding bolts and slotting in his last two cold bolts.

Before the monster could get going too fast, Hugo shot it with both of his cold bolts. Both shots hit the rhino’s left shoulder, in the same spot that the explosive bolts had hit. The magic puffed out on contact, delivering its full load. The monster shivered, and ignored the cold as it ran towards them. The magic just wasn’t powerful enough to affect the rhino.

Lonwabo shouted, “Eyes!” just before it hit their shelter. Hugo ducked down and closed his eyes and the light sentinel detonated a flash of light right in front of the monster’s eyes. It distracted the beast enough that his charge was deflected to the side. The two formation sentinels used their enormous strength to pierce their spears into the monster as it stood there dazed. Both spears went in deep, but didn’t kill it.

The last charge still hit with enough force to take a small chunk out of the wall. One more hit and the whole thing would come crumbling down. The lieutenant yelled, “Everyone out!”

The ritualist deactivated the ritual and the sentinels pushed the wall out. Everyone rushed out of the makeshift door and spread out. Everyone but Hugo that is.

He realized that if the formation sentinels were strong enough to pierce the monster’s iron hide, his piercing bolts should work too. They were titanium and mithril bolts with the sharpness rune inscribed on them. This was his last chance to help kill the monster. He hurriedly grabbed a handful of the piercing bolts and slammed them into his crossbow. He ran out to see the sentinel team harrying the monster.

It had three spears embedded into its side now, and it ran with a limp. It still ran though, and the sentinels had to jump out of the way. One sentinel was too slow and his leg was crushed by a passing hoof.

Luckily, the lieutenant was on hand and grabbed the screaming sentinel before he could be trampled further.

Hugo ran closer, and shot at the monster. The bolt went deep into the monster’s side, making it scream. It was too big for a single bolt to do much though. He fired a few more times before he was forced to duck behind a tree. The tree was five feet wide, but it still shook as the monster hit it.

The barrier sentinel saw that Hugo was effective and used his blue shields to line up a shot for him. Four shields appeared, under and over the monster’s head, holding it in place. Hugo took the assist, and shot three bolts into the monster’s skull. The iron rhino flinched back, shattering the shields holding the monster in place.

The damage was done though, and the rhino stumbled to the side and fell to the ground. A formation sentinel jumped forward and stabbed his sword into the monster’s eye. Hugo heard the metaphorical dings, two of them in a row. This must have been a high tiered monster. He had enough points now to rank up to seventeen.

The lieutenant called for their life mage to come over and heal the trampled sentinel. It turned out the injured sentinel was one of the two barrier mages on the squad, and he thanked their life mage profusely.

Once everyone had their bags packed and out from under the stone dome, the lieutenant turned to the alchemist motioned at the body and said, “Well, I imagine that one of your potions would be convenient right about now.”

“Well, yes, I suppose a decay potion would save us some work. But I was hoping to save it for when we have a lot of bodies at once. I would hate to waste a potion for a single mana stone,” the alchemist said.

Lieutenant Silumko smiled and said, “Thank you for thinking of the squad first, private. That potion will save us a lot of time and effort in the future. In fact, I order you not to use any potions on this corpse. We still need that manastone though, so get to your butchery. Fezile, since you were careless and got hurt, help him out.”

Everyone else ate a cold breakfast as they watched the two sentinels struggle to pry off armor and cut down to the monster’s core. It was a mana shard, which normally would make them happy, but Hugo felt like it should have been a mana cryst at least. It was a ferocious monster, a mana shard felt like it was a lacking reward for risking their lives.

Once the two blood soaked sentinels were cleaned off, they headed back. They never did get to their intended hunting grounds. But where there was one rhino, there was bound to be more. They had gotten lucky, defeating this monster, they couldn’t count on defeating more.

Hugo suspected that the squad would change their loadout after this mission, to better be able to tackle heavily armored opponents. By the time they returned to the city, Hugo had gained enough points for another level. It wasn’t his goal of twenty, but it should be enough for his purposes.

...

Hugo rubbed all four hands together. He was home now and it was time to rank up. He loved this part. He looked over his stat screen and made his plans. He would have enough points to get to rank eighteen. That would automatically push his intelligence up to twenty eight. He decided to put two points into wisdom for the mental defenses. Klaus had also said that higher wisdom helped with understanding runes.

That still left him with four stat points. Strength and dexterity still felt like they were high enough. Even on the monster hunt, he didn’t feel like he needed any more stats there.

It might be a good idea to add points to resilience, because that would keep him alive if he was hit. He planned on going into enemy territory soon, so survivability would be important.

Then again, fighting was his backup plan. His primary plan was to infiltrate the Deva army and learn who was part of the splinter group trying to destroy the cities. It was clear which stat he should choose. Charisma.

He wasn’t a fan of charisma, the social stigma and run-ins with the fox gang had thoroughly soured him on the stat. However, he was pragmatic enough to ignore his icky feelings about it. He needed more charisma to be a spy, so he added the remaining four stat points in there. The result was looking pretty good.

Xhosa Bandile [Runic Domain]

Strength 21

Dexterity 21

Resilience 12

Regeneration 10

Intelligence (28)

Wisdom (18)

Charisma (14)

Perception 12

Rank 18

345/1900 Points

Health 53/53

Mana 128/(140)

Skills: Mana Dart, Mana Vision 3, Inscribe 3, Fabricate 8, Solidify 6

Lingua: Isibhozo, Zintathu, Choice available

Frequencies: 400-700, 1016-1032, Choice available

Elements: Mithril, Titanium, Choice available

The choice for the barrier domain frequency was an easy one. He wanted to be able to set up wards. He knew that there were other frequencies he hadn’t learned about, but wards were useful. He went ahead and selected it.

The element choice would require more research again. He felt like he had been through the ninety six elements a dozen times at this point. He would just have to make it a baker’s dozen.

He decided to ask his fellow apprentices for advice on lingua. Not today though, today was eighthday and he had arranged to meet with Mia. It was mostly to check in with her on Lenna’s progress, but also to talk shop with a friendly runic mage.

His grandmother was not happy about him leaving again. If he interpreted her tirades correctly, frequent travels were associated with immoral nox. With their position as the white house in a colorful neighborhood, they didn’t need even a whiff of impropriety.

Hugo felt for her, particularly when she stood at the door and begged him to stay. But there were bigger things at stake here than one family’s pride. His little sister deserved a better life, but it was more important that everyone stayed alive in the first place.

So he slipped out when she wasn’t looking, winking at Nobomi as he climbed out of a window. The train rides to Reval were somber.

It didn’t bother him too much to leave today, he knew that all of his work was important. What bothered him was the very real chance that he wouldn’t succeed in this life. There were still too many unknowns. If he succeeded next time around, what would happen to this nox family? They weren’t like some of the other people he cared about, money wouldn’t solve their problems. They needed a son with a magic domain so they wouldn’t have the social stigma of a magicless family. If he didn’t stop Deva this year, there wasn’t anything he could do to help them in a different body.

Once he got to Reval, he headed directly for their meeting spot. The White Orchid was not too far from the train station. She suggested the spot because it had private meeting rooms in the back. She also told him he had to pay.

The White Orchid was a high end tea shop. Hugo was greeted at the front by a woman wearing ornate robes. Once he told her who he was meeting, she personally escorted him to a meeting room in the back. It was an interesting set up, the walls were literally paper, but all sound cut off once the door was closed. He didn’t see any runes on the walls, but there was obviously some magic in play.

“Mia, good to see you again,” Hugo said and sat on the floor.

Mia served him some tea at the low table and said, “It is good to see you again. Thanks for agreeing to pay. I hope you brought enough.”

“Enough? It won’t cost golds will it?”

She just smiled and sipped her tea.

Hugo took a drink himself. It didn’t taste that great. He guessed that it tasted better to a human palate. He set the dainty cup down and said, “So how are things progressing? Does Lenna have her third element yet?”

“Yeah, I convinced the dean to send us out into the backcountry with some harvesters. It took forever, but she got her rank sixteen. I asked her to start working on her armor, but she needed me to inscribe runes in the armor before it worked.”

“What’s the problem? Was it a rune that you didn’t know?”

“No, I know almost all of them at this point. She insisted on using mithril, and that shit’s expensive. Anyway, it worked, and we have started making them. Each set takes forever, but we should have enough sets of armor to give each city four shimmer blocking vests.”

“That’s good. Have you gotten ahold of Alexandru yet?” Hugo said.

“Sort of. He didn’t agree to meet with me, but he is responding to my letters. Apparently you told him that his ritualist friends were actually hedge mages, so he doesn’t know who to trust anymore,” Mia said.

“Yeah, I sent him a letter after our meeting. I didn’t think it would make your job harder though, sorry,” Hugo said.

“It’s fine,” she said and took a sip, “I don’t need to see him face to face to help out. I have been sending him the questions that the sentinel ritualists want to know, and he has been sending the answers back. For example, Alexandru thinks it would take at least 96 mana cores to create the cascade failure you were talking about. The sentinels are tracking mana cores moving towards Deva and trying to intercept them now. So, we are getting answers, I just can’t see him in person. He has no idea how to tell normal people apart from hedge mages so he is avoiding everyone now.” She shrugged and said, “Which isn’t really a problem, I guess? Although I do wonder how you knew they were hedge mages.”

“It’s the mana. When you look at them with mana sight, you can see they have mana in their bodies but no soul core. It’s pretty simple. That reminds me, do you know how the hedge mages hide their mana? It might be useful when I am infiltrating Deva,” Hugo said and took another sip. The tea wasn’t any better. It just tasted like hot leaf water to his nox tongue.

“No, I was never able to pick up mana sight, so I don’t know much about that.”

“Really? My master said that it was required for learning runes. How do you fix an embedded rune if you can’t see it anymore?”

“I don’t. If I make a mistake, I just throw it away and try again. It’s not like quartz and aluminum are all that expensive.”

“You still use aluminum? I thought that didn’t last very long in runes. I usually use mithril.”

“Most of my runestones are single use, there is no way I would use mithril for that. Although, I would love to get my hands on some mithril. I have some projects that I am just dying to try out. It’s so annoying to buy mithril for Lenna's armor and not be able to use it for my own stuff.”

Hugo checked his mana pool, it was full. He held out two hands and fabricated a thin mithril rod between them. Mia watched as he let the rod fall to his two other hands and he fabricated two more rods. He handed the three of them over and said, “Sorry I can’t do more, I always like to keep mana in reserve in case I run into trouble.”

She stared at the mithril rods in her hands, slack jawed.

“What? You knew I had three domains. I showed everyone in the meeting,” Hugo said.

“You didn’t tell me you picked mithril! This is worth two gold right here!”

“A little less than that, but you are right, it isn’t cheap. Don’t let the metal guild find out where you got it and we will be fine.”

“Thank you, thank you so much!”

“It’s just a bit of mana for me,” Hugo said and shrugged.

“Still, I feel like I owe you now,” Mia said.

“Well, perhaps we can exchange specialties. My master is a bit of a jerk and isn’t teaching me anything until I am already competent. It’s tough teaching yourself the runic domain. Maybe you could give me a few pointers? I feel like I don’t even know where to start with rectifying runes.”

“Of course, I would be happy to help. I can teach you a few strategies. I can even show you a few things they won’t teach you in schools,” Mia said excitedly.