“What do we know about crussors?” Ranvir asked as he headed towards the entrance to the water.

“They are strong and tough, but their amphibious nature doesn’t come for free,” Amalia said. “They’re covered in a slimy mucus that helps them breathe in and move through water. Its petrifies slowly once exposed to air. That’s your best time to strike. Once it’s fully petrified, the crussor can break out and move freely.”

“Abilities?” Ranvir asked. His tether-sense was locked on the slowly approaching creature. The only thing stopping it from immediately reaching them was the size of the tunnel. He couldn’t get a perfectly clear image since his natural senses having trouble extending into the shadowed liquid, but it was clearly a size bigger than the stone allowed.

“Nothing too dangerous to my memory,” Amalia replied, finishing her packing.

“Stone and water manipulation, depending on the environment it’s in,” Alexis said, filling in for Amalia. “That’s what the calcification represents, its an internal conversion from water to stone. Its control is weak on anything that’s not its shell, though.”

Ranvir nodded his thanks, then tuned them out. Turning his Perception inward, Ranvir focused on himself. At first, it was the sensation of touch. The cloth of his pants, ripped, torn, and stained as they were, rubbing against his skin. Blood pumping through his fingers. The pressure and texture of the axe as he squeezed the haft, his nails digging at his skin. The slight shift in pressure on his neck, ears, and nose as more of his life’s liquid moved through them.

His sense of hearing changed next. Amalia and Alexis fell to the background. Even the lap of the water dissipated. Ranvir’s breaths grew louder, more pronounced, helping Ranvir ensure he took them deeply and strongly. His stomach burbling slightly as the hefty dinner they’d had earlier shifted. His own heartbeat, loud with the rushing of blood matching the sensation in his extremities.

His eyes gave way to his internal spiritual sense, stronger and more encompassing than his tether. Power flowed from the core of his being, the Fundament, streaming into both Amanaris- and tether-space. Another power left these chambers of his soul. Each space was massive. Both took up so much room, Ranvir could hardly imagine what his spirit would look like after either advanced. The new power, mana, was weaker, not nearly as strong, but for every degree weaker it was a magnitude tamer. This new power flowed through pathways carved between his spirit and body.

Sand mana emerged in his native presence, at first like tiny grains of light, but slowly, as the overspill increased, they gained more texture, becoming grains of sand that slowly started drifting downward. A portion of the mana, relatively small compared to Ranvir’s full potential, didn’t travel to his native presence, instead it manifested within his arm, gathering in the patterns carved by his bonded spirit.

No light escaped Loce’s presence, nor did it randomly generate as sand in the air. Instead, the storm locust jealously hoarded all the power Ranvir could give it. Letting build into an actual storage of power within its control. While Ranvir was emanating enough power to light up the cavern, no one could’ve detected Loce on the lines despite the amassing mana. Soon, as much power sat within the locust’s domain as Ranvir was emanating, the small amount building up quickly compared to Ranvir’s amateur control.

Space mana flowed differently from the sand mana as well. Not as strongly and under more control. Instead of emerging within his natural presence, a connection between tether-space and Ranvir’s body had fully manifested. A near-burning sensation began in Ranvir’s eyes as sparks of mana crackled in the surrounding air. Tiny network lines of right angles appeared to devour the energy Ranvir emitted as he prepared for the fight.

“Don’t touch him!” Amalia hissed. Ranvir was vaguely aware of Amalia pulling Alexis away from him. “He’s going to get us out of here, don’t you worry? We just have to worry about not being pancaked as he does.”

“What do you mean?”

Ranvir considered an attempt to consolidate his power with a redirection line, but they were notoriously inaccurate and difficult to control. Even space-masters like Floki lacked to do more than turn an attack away. Instead, Ranvir would have to rely on his sand mana entirely.

“Tell me you sense the powers gathering around him,” Amalia called out, her voice seeming to grow closer as the crussor did. Sand crunched under Ranvir’s feet as he shifted to an attack stance. “All that power’s going to go somewhere.”

“Why isn’t he bringing us out first?”

“I can protect us from what comes next, but if the crussor thinks it can attack us to draw him out, then he loses the first strike. Now, I think it’s time to be quiet.”

A warning blazed within Ranvir’s body. This was not safe. He was not invulnerable; he was in danger. His side flashed with red pain, clawing hands gripping at his mind to haul his attention away from what was coming. It could not.

“Sandstorm Strike,” Ranvir whispered. Sand and mana coalesced around his axe, gathering into a storm of power around the head. He attempted to shape the attack, condensing it down to simply the axe head. Convulsing, the storm shifted to only include the upper haft and head.

Ranvir sharpened his focus as the water rippled as the crussor managed a leap forwards. He could vaguely make out the creature underneath the water. Just the outline of limbs, not yet ready to attack.

Smaller.

Ranvir’s command reached down into the axe head and nearly blinded him with white pain as it spun across his eyes. Dots and spots lingered even as the pain faded. Somehow, Ranvir’s focus held. The axe, once consumed by sand and power, now glowed a bright yellow as the storm roiled convulsively around its head. A constant low hiss of sand slapping the nearby walls filled the air, the Ability throwing off gusts of the stuff.

“SMALLER!” Ranvir’s cry echoed off the walls. Pain surged through, white and red and blinding and nauseating. He staggered, falling to one knee, keeping a death-grip on Sandstorm Strike. The hissing of sand on stone dropped, becoming instead the quiet drip of an hourglass.

Blinking, dizzy from the pain and sickness that filled him at the last command, Ranvir staggered to his feet. Somehow, he hadn’t lost his focus, his grip on what was important. The axe, still in his hand and still glowing with power, dripped a twisting stream of sand from the edge like it had been dipped in water. The entire weapon shook, glowing with an inner yellow light as the material strained to withstand the force of the Ability.

For the first time, Ranvir truly saw what his Ability was supposed to look like. Then he glanced beyond the axe and its light revealed the crussor in the water, its eyes reflecting the light back at him.

Someone had taken the most sadistic and vicious of the tortoises, given it a cruel beak—curved and serrated—with flat beady eyes, scaly leathery skin, given it a toothy maw and clawed hands instead of stumpy feet. Then they’d it given it the rear body of a shark and made it as big as a boat. Thankfully, the monster didn’t have a tortoise’s shell.

Its forelimbs tensed and shark tail twitched before it rocketed out of the water, knocking loose rocks from the tunnel. Water fueled its charge, turning the charge into a lunge of catapult-like caliber.

Ranvir swung.

The axe shattered on impact, barely holding on to all that pent up energy. The slimy exterior that Amalia had warned him about, wrapped around the crussor’s form and would’ve protected it completely from a lesser attack. However, Ranvir’s Sand Strike had been delivered with all the focus and concentration he could muster. Four years of daily control exercises, three months filled with many hours of exercises, the expertise of Urityon that would make even this monster tremble in its leathery hide. He struck with an Ability Score of 251, fueled by 450 points of Mana: Draw.

The stone pillar within which Ranvir, Amalia, and Alexis had made their hideout was one of the tallest in the fold, sticking out nearly three meters from the water and was nearly thirty meters across. When Amalia had found it, she discovered it was actually run through with plenty of smaller caves, though only one that ran above water.

Ranvir’s attack blew the roof off the cave below them, sending a spray of water and stone so high into the air it could be heard smashing into the roof. The mercenaries on the other side of the fold, already assembling as they sensed his power gather, heard the sound moments after they witnessed the event.

Only the last five meters of the platform stood whole. The area around which Ranvir and the beast had clashed had sunk well below the waterline.

Ranvir lost track of Amalia and Alexis somewhere in the clash, forced to focus on his own survival. The waves slammed him into a nearby platform hard enough that his vision darkened on the edges and he almost slipped under the water. It was only Loce, releasing energy back into Ranvir’s body, that jolted him to awareness.

By the time he got control of his body again, he’d been pulled away from the pillar and was rushing back on another wave. This time, aided by a little space mana, Ranvir took the hit easily and caught the lip.

He tried calling on Amanaris and his Draw, but the entire space convulsed in red agony. Groaning, he kicked in the water, slowly dragging himself out of the water. Somehow, he’d survived the attack with minor injury. His Ability had blown all the stone away from him before he could be blown into it.

That was the last time Ranvir ever used an entirely unmitigated attack Ability. He understood now why braced went for the physique stats. He rolled onto his hands and knees, coughing water onto the stones. Blood dripped into the puddle below him as well. Unsurprisingly, his wound had sprung open.

Distantly, he sensed the mercenaries getting ready to approach him. Thankfully, Amalia was already approaching him, rocketing through the water towards-

Ranvir wrapped himself in space and move as quickly as he could, suddenly jerking six meters to the left. He nearly rolled off the platform again, which would’ve been about a thousand times better than to be struck by the veritable catapult of vicious muscle, stringy gore, and raw animal hate that blew through the water and platform together.

The crussor hit the platform with a wet smack, Ranvir felt in the stone as much as he heard. Severe gashed streaked its body, leaving long wounds running the length of its four-meter-long body. Its right arm, half its dorsal fin, and chunk of its tail were missing entirely. Mucus was already crusting over, turning into a whitish chalky stone.