Stormblade [Skill Merge Portal Break] (B1 Complete)

As I looked around for the portal, two thoughts warred in my mind.

First, that this was impossible. There was, undeniably, a Paragon attached to this portal. The strength of the storm and the metallic glow on the portal itself had been proof of that. The portal had to be here. Trap portals and Paragon portals were mutually exclusive. They didn't happen together. They couldn't. I breathed, as much to push radioactive air out of my lungs as to clear my head.

The portal was a Paragon portal. And it was a trap portal. That was obvious. There was no exit—unlike the Eldritch City portal, which had simply been blocked. We couldn't leave, and the Paragon awaited us, impossible or not.

And second, that this was impossible. This entire place was impossible.

The portal had spat us out on an empty, glass-smooth sandstone courtyard. The red-tan stone had been worn to smooth, black-sheened ruts in places by the sheer number of creatures that had moved across it. The building—and I wasn't sure it was a building, at least in its entirety—looked like a cross between a medieval desert castle made of sandstone bricks and a gigantic termite nest. Three gigantic spires loomed overhead, the tallest at least a couple of thousand feet tall.

And dwarfing that was the storm.

Its walls rippled inches from the sandstone walls that marked the castle-mound's borders. They'd torn the rock apart all around it and shredded the stone below it. I couldn't tell if the whole thing was flying, or if it was simply balanced on a pinnacle too thin to see beneath it. Either way, it felt like we were thousands of feet above the ground—if there was any ground—below us. Lightning lit up the swirling, racing clouds, a constant barrage.

My core ached. It took me a moment to realize what it was. "The Paragon is in here," I said under my breath.

Then I gathered myself and looked at the team.

Carrol was fine. Of course he was. He was A-Rank. But he was on edge, looking back and forth, trying to figure out how to leave. I ignored him for now.

Ellen looked confused. I put an arm around her in a quick side hug. She nodded. I nodded back. "I need to check on Sophia."

She took a deep breath. "I'll get Yasmin moving."

Sophia was clinging to Jeff. I knew why right away. As I joined them, I put a hand on each of their shoulders. "I know this is bad. But we're going to get through this. I promise."

"How?" Sophia asked. Her voice cracked as she asked. Tears ran down her face. "The last time we got into a trap portal—"

"The last time we got into a trap portal, it was bad. This time, we're a proper team, we have an A-Ranker who's done this stuff before, and we're going to get through this. We don't need to go fast. We can take our time. I have a plan," I said. I squeezed her shoulder, and Jeff's.

He looked at me. His eyes were hollow and empty. I had to say something. "We're right where we need to be to save your friends. We just have to keep going."

Then I cleared my throat. "Let's talk strategy. Do we know anything about this portal archetype? The monsters in it? Anything?"

"Yeah. They're a cross between bugs and skeletons," Ellen said. "I don't know what kind of portal this is, but we should expect swarms. Lots of swarms. I'd guess that we'll see more low-rank monsters—B and C—than A-Rank ones. Not that there won't be big ones, but there should be fewer of them. Hopefully."

Carrol nodded. "The real danger is that we can't let the enemies pin us down for the A-Rankers to swarm us. We'll be outnumbered all the time. Our best bet is to find a place to hide and stay there."

"That won't work. We have to be the aggressors," Jeff said.

"Can we…can we do that?" Sophia asked.

"Yes," Ellen said. "We'll have to be on top of our game and be unpredictable, or they'll corner us. And if there's anything we're not in control of, we'll have to get control of it. Fast. But we can do it."

She was lying. Or at least, she was trying to be reassuring. I had an idea, though. If we did it right, we could win.

"Right." I took a deep breath. "So here's what we'll do…"

Ten minutes later, we moved out.

Quietly.

My strategy was based on two facts of our situation. First, that Jeff and the rest of the team could handle B-Rank threats. It'd be rough, but we could do it. And second, that when we ran into an A-Rank monster, Carrol would be our only path to victory.

The scale-up from C to B was ridiculous, but the B to A jump was even worse. The five of us might be able to take out a single A-Rank monster. If it was hurt—say, from Angelo and the strike team injuring it—those odds went up. But we couldn't clear an A-Rank portal. Not as we were.

We needed more power. And until we had it, we had to play a quiet, opportunistic game. So, we didn't head for the boss. And we didn't try to hunt Tathrix.

Instead, we crossed a narrow bridge over the tempest below us—Carrol first—and entered the smallest of the three spires.

The moment we got inside, the roar of the hurricane outside cut off, quieting to a low rumble I felt in my feet and a static that rippled across my armor and cloak. The damp humidity lessened, too. Instead of feeling sticky, it felt…not dry—not compared to Phoenix. But tolerable.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"We're looking for lone monsters we can quickly kill. Full go, no holding back. We kill, we hide the body, we move on," I reminded Carrol.

"Got it, kid." The A-Ranker moved up, next to a round, arched doorway. Our feet were on carved stone, but on the other side was roughly hewn rock and packed dirt as the spire meshed with the termite mound it was built into.

"Go," I said.

He went. Jeff followed him, and we pushed into the room.

The monsters were small—four-armed, with soft carapaces and bodies that seemed to squirm instead of walking. No legs. Atrophied insect wings.

There were three of them. And they were all B-Rank. "Carrol, left, Jeff, center. I have the right," I said quickly.

Carrol was already there. His spear flashed. A moment later, the B-Rank monster screamed, then cut off as three more thrusts ripped its chest open.

I wasn't about to let him show me up. Two ranks or not, I could fight. I could kill. I lunged at my monster, two-handed Thunderbolt stance ready. Two quick stabs. Then I backed up as the thing's arms flailed at me. One cut into my leg. I ignored the pain, Stamina flooding the wound.

Then I used Thunderblade. A thrust to the face. Two to the neck. A vicious slash across the monster's body. Another across its atrophied wings as they started to unfurl. The attacks came in too fast to see. Almost too fast for me to control them. I put everything into them.

And the monster fell. It wasn't dead—yet. But another two strikes to the head changed that.

"Good work, kid," Carrol said.

I nodded, breathing hard.

Then he killed the one fighting Jeff in a single blow.

"A-Rankers," I muttered.

Carrol laughed quietly.

We cleared the bodies, shoving them into a small chamber to the side of the main tunnel. The longer we could be invisible, the better off we'd be. Not that there was a chance that the portal boss or Tathrix, Hurricane Warlord wouldn't figure out we were here, but every minute or hour we could draw that out was one more minute we'd stay alive. One more minute that the others would gain power.

That was the plan. Try to rank up Ellen, Yasmin, and Sophia. Move the team's average as close to B-Rank as we could get it. Then take a shot at the boss as safely as we could.

It was desperate. But our situation was bad. It was our best play.

We kept moving, quietly. The next group of monsters went down smoothly—although I had to use Windfall to slow one of them and Gustrunner to catch up and kill it, which burned a ton of Mana. Then we vanished into a side tunnel. It was really little more than a crack in the wall, and I doubted most of the big monsters would be able to fit.

Jeff made it through only a minute before the first A-Rank monster appeared.

Sure enough, it was tall. It reminded me of the Legionnaires: four arms, four legs, weapons, and the hum of Mana. Skeletal, chitinous, and insect-eyed. I ducked around the corner as those eyes scanned the room. They locked onto a pair of yellowish blood smears. Then it dropped to six limbs—two arms and four legs—and scuttled around the room for a moment.

I braced myself. It was going to find the corpses—and when it did, it'd either hunt for us or go for back-up. Either way, we'd be screwed.

Then Carrol erupted past me. The fighter charged, all his weight behind his spear. It punched into the A-Rank monster's chest. Then it stopped like it had hit a solid steel wall.

"Go!" he yelled.

And I went. But I didn't run. I charged the monster. Flanked it. Shadow Boxing rippled across its armor. Squares of flesh seemed to vaporize. I followed it up with a single spell: Shade Scythe.

My free hand wrapped around a shaft made of shadowy smoke. The thing's blade hung over my head, twice the length of my body. I brought it crashing down, and the very air seemed to rip as darkness flickered across the black blade.

Then it made contact with the A-Rank monster's armor. It sliced in. Blood erupted. And two arms flashed toward me faster than I could react.

I flew. Then I stopped.

Pain.

I leaned against the tunnel wall where I'd landed. Breathing was pain. Moving was pain. All the Stamina in the world wasn't enough. Something in my chest had shattered when the monster hit me. I looked down. The Stormsteel breastplate had given. Its portal metal frame was twisted, and a churning cloud leaked onto the tunnel below me. I gasped. Fire ripped through my lung.

"Get rid of that," Sophia snapped. Her face was white. I unsummoned the broken breastplate, and her fingers ripped my shirt open. "Yeah, this is bad. Bite your shirt or something. It's going to hurt."

I gritted my teeth, ready for a lecture about being safe.

Instead, even more pain hit me.

I hated this. I was supposed to be stronger. To be more ready for this kind of thing. As a striker, I should have been able to do meaningful damage to the monster in front of me, even if Carrol was our main killer.

Instead, here I was, bleeding and broken, with Sophia pumping healing into me to keep me alive. Nothing had changed from E-Rank to C-Rank.

No. That wasn't true.

I turned my head. The monster's body lay in the corner, a massive gash cleaved into it from shoulder to mid-chest. Shadow leaked off of it. It definitely hadn't been enough to kill it. But my blow had mattered. I'd all but severed two of its four arms. And it had cost me…

Mana: 163/470

A hefty chunk of my Mana. Almost a hundred. I couldn't do that often. But I could do it. With someone like Carrol, a few massive blows might be enough. I could rely on him—and on the rest of the team. We needed to do our jobs, and we might survive this.

Ellen and Sophia dragged me back into the hiding spot, and for the next ten minutes, the healer's magic slowly, agonizingly stitched me together. Bones shifted through muscle, cut into my lungs, and snapped into place. Then healing melded the fresh wounds back together. It wasn't a full heal. But it was enough to get back to my feet and keep fighting.

And then we kept moving. Ten minutes was longer than we could afford to spend in one place—especially somewhere we'd been killing. The only way we could make this work was by pushing on.

Eugene couldn't have set up a better situation to force Kade Noelstra into growing if he'd tried.

That wasn't true. It'd be easy. All he'd have to do was make an appearance, facing off against the kid. But that wasn't something Kade could realistically win, much less grow from. And all the God of Thunder wanted was to make him grow.

The God of Thunder had traveled into Queen Mother Yalerox's realm seconds after Kade had. Trap portal or not, the A-Rank Paragon couldn't keep him out, and she couldn't stop him from leaving, either. It would be easy to intervene. He could kill the Hurricane Queen. No problems there.

But that wouldn't help Kade grow.

The kid couldn't rank up. That would kill him. But there were other opportunities—for instance, that open skill slot. Eugene hovered over the shortest of Queen Mother Yalerox's spires, concealed by the storm and by an aggressive suppression of his aura. He needed to force Kade to fill that slot with something that would allow him to hit a rank or two above even his current strength.

How, though? That was the question. As long as Kade wasn't desperate, he'd keep trying with what he had. But if Eugene could get him desperate enough to save the people he cared about—without pushing the kid into a battle fugue—that might be enough.

Eugene laughed. Thunder rolled across the portal world, blending in with the roaring hurricane.

Yes. Yes, that would work. He'd push Kade to the brink, and when he did, the kid would have no choice but to take that last step and fill his last skill slot. And Eugene knew exactly what the storm would offer him.

He transformed, leaving his draconic body behind. In its place, a man plunged toward the spire below, lightning arcing off in a cone around his feet. His spear crackled with energy, and Stormsteel armor covered every inch of his body. He hit the stone mound below. Bored a hole through it. Landed on his feet.

Then he shed power, reducing his effective rank. SS+ turned into S, then A. After all, he wanted attention, not fear.

And then, finally, it was time for the God of Thunder to hunt.