000

Several newly sorted monster plates slid from their crates. A hanging lantern swung violently overhead before tearing loose and crashing against the stone floor.

Gemma sat upright. "What the fuck?"

A second tremor rolled through the cave. This one was stronger. The ground bucked beneath her bedroll. Cracks spread across the stone walls, spilling dust over the sleeping camp. Somewhere in the darkness, a stack of metal containers toppled with an earsplitting crash.

Hunters and supporters scrambled awake.

"EARTHQUAKE!"

"SECURE THE EQUIPMENT!"

"GET THE SEIKRETS OUTSIDE!"

"SOMEONE STABILIZE THAT SUPPORT BEAM!"

Gemma threw off her blanket and lunged toward the forge. She caught her tool chest before it fell, hugging it protectively against her chest.

People could run.

Good tools were harder to replace.

A deafening roar echoed through the mountains. The sound reached the cave as a wall of pressure. Everyone froze. The few remaining lantern flames guttered, and loose stones rained from the ceiling.

That was not an earthquake. It was a monster.

Before anyone could react, a second roar answered the first. This one was deeper. Larger. It carried something unnatural in it, an overwhelming pressure that made every animal in the camp panic simultaneously.

The Seikrets shrieked outside.

Gemma"s heart began pounding. Two monsters. Two very large monsters.

"Move!" Fabius shouted. "Everyone outside! Keep away from the cave walls!"

Nobody needed convincing.

Hunters grabbed weapons. Supporters seized medical packs and emergency supplies. Researchers gathered whatever notebooks they could carry before joining the rush toward the entrance.

Gemma shoved her feet into her boots, snatched up a hammer, and followed. She emerged into cold desert air beneath a sky filled with stars.

The entire camp was already staring toward the distant mountains. Blue light flashed beyond the forest.

A mountain exploded.

For several seconds, Gemma"s mind refused to understand what she was seeing. The range lay miles away, beyond the desert and the dark forest. Even at that distance, the debris plume climbed high enough to blot out part of the horizon.

Then something enormous moved through the dust.

A massive golden fox crashed through a ridge, sending stone tumbling down both sides of the mountain. It rolled once, dug its claws into the earth, and rose with ten huge tails fanned out behind it.

Blue fire burned along its body.

Its opponent leapt from the ruins.

The second monster was even larger. White and silver scales covered its vaguely draconic body, though sections had turned blue. Broad wings opened as it landed on another peak, and several enormous chains whipped through the air around it.

One chain struck the golden fox.

The collision produced a flash bright enough to illuminate the distant forest.

A moment later, the shockwave reached the camp.

Tents snapped against their anchors. People stumbled backward. Gemma planted her boots and shielded her eyes while a blast of hot wind swept over the desert.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT."

Every fear response in her body screamed that those creatures were too large, too powerful, and far too close.

A different part of her brain immediately began cataloguing materials.

The white monster"s scales had absorbed a direct blast of blue fire without disintegrating. Its chains remained intact after striking the golden creature with enough force to shatter a mountainside. The fox"s claws had carved through solid rock like soft clay.

What could I forge from either of them? Armor made from those white-and-blue plates might absorb elemental energy. The chains could be incorporated into a transforming weapon-perhaps a greatsword that separated into a segmented whip, with each link retaining the creature"s ability to drain power. And golden fox fur-

Gemma had no idea what it did, but considering the scale of the battle, she could probably use a handful to forge something capable of killing an apex predator. "Yes," she whispered to herself, "I have a one-track mind."

She forged monster corpses into weapons for a living. This was essentially pornography for blacksmiths.

"Hunter!" Alma pushed through the crowd, glasses crooked and notebook somehow already open.

The Hunter stood beside his Palico, wearing the equipment Gemma had completed only a few hours earlier. His hand rested on his new greatsword as he watched the battle.

"Get your equipment ready," Alma ordered. "If those creatures continue fighting, they could destabilize the entire region. We need to draw them away before they destroy the surrounding ecosystem."

The Hunter nodded once. He reached for his greatsword.

"Don"t bother." The voice came from behind them. Sasuke Uchiha leaned against the stone beside the cave entrance, wearing Haru"s dark-blue kimono. His injuries had disappeared completely after drinking from the mysterious red flask, though his expression had remained just as unpleasant.

Everyone turned toward him.

Sasuke looked at the distant battle with open contempt. "All of you will die..."

The Hunter"s hand tightened around his weapon.

Several nearby hunters bristled.

Sasuke didn"t seem to notice or care. "That monster has reached Ultimate Class," he continued. "Haru is beyond Satan Class. Just getting close to their battle will probably kill you."

Silence spread through the camp.

Gemma looked at Alma.

Alma looked at Sasuke. Then she turned back toward the mountains.

The giant golden fox seized the white monster with several tails and slammed it through the side of a peak. Blue flames erupted from its jaws a moment later, turning the entire mountainside into a burning silhouette.

Alma slowly lifted one hand and counted. "One, two, three..." Her finger moved across the enormous tails. "...eight, nine, ten." Her face went pale. "It has ten tails," she whispered. Then her head snapped toward Sasuke. "IS THAT HARU?"

Sasuke scoffed. "Obviously."

The camp erupted.

"THAT"S THE CHEF?"

"HE SAID HE WAS A FOX!"

"HE DID NOT SAY HE WAS THAT MUCH FOX!"

"HE COOKED US ALL LUNCH AND DINNER!"

"WHY DID NOBODY TELL US WE HAD A GIANT MONSTER SLEEPING IN OUR CAMP?"

Gemma continued staring toward the battle. The golden fox was Haru. The handsome, shameless man who had boarded their airship without anyone noticing, produced a gold bar from thin air, flirted with her beside the forge, and cooked food good enough to make hardened hunters cry could transform into a monster larger than most buildings.

Gemma had spent most of the day flirting with him.

That was crazy. It was also, if she was completely honest with herself, extremely hot. She accepted that this revealed uncomfortable things about her tastes. Then again, she made weapons from monster bones and wore a necklace carved from the fang of something that had once tried to eat her. Her standards for normal attraction had never been particularly conventional.

Fabius stepped closer to Sasuke.

The Guild leader"s usual composure had cracked. His eyes remained fixed on the distant fox, but the muscles in his jaw tightened whenever another mountain shook. "What does "Ultimate Class" mean?"

Sasuke glanced at him. "A level where destroying a city requires little effort."

Several people swore.

Fabius pointed toward the enormous white monster. "And beyond Satan Class?"

"A Satan-Class being could erase a nation."

Another flash illuminated the horizon.

The golden fox caught the white monster"s jaws between its forepaws and hurled it into the ground. The resulting crater swallowed part of the valley.

Sasuke folded his arms. "Haru is stronger than that."

Fabius stared at him. The Guild leader had so many questions that he appeared incapable of selecting one.

A small figure pushed through the gathered hunters. Nata stopped at the edge of the camp, staring at the distant white monster. The boy"s eyes widened. "That"s it."

Alma turned toward him. "What?"

"That"s the White Wraith!" Nata stepped forward as if getting closer would help him see across the miles separating them. "Its chains-the wings and white armor. That"s the monster that attacked my village."

The White Wraith rose on its hind legs and tore one of the golden fox"s tails away from its body. The severed tail dissolved into blue fire before reaching the ground, and a new one grew from Haru"s back moments later.

Nata shook his head. "But it wasn"t that big. It was large, but not..." His voice faltered. "Not that."

The wraith now stood more than twice as tall as the golden fox.

Blue energy moved beneath its scales in luminous veins. Every time its chains struck Haru, the glow intensified and its body expanded slightly.

Sasuke"s expression darkened. "That arrogant fox did something stupid."

Gemma looked at him. "What kind of stupid?"

"The monster is absorbing his power." Sasuke"s black eyes suddenly became red eyes for some strange reason. Strange patterns rotated inside them as he studied the battlefield. "He probably noticed its ability and decided to feed it energy just to see what would happen."

Alma stared at him in disbelief. "Why would anyone do that?"

"Hmph! Because Haru is arrogant."

The white wraith wrapped three chains around Haru"s torso and swung him through a mountain.

Sasuke"s mouth tightened. "Arrogant but extremely powerful..."

The fox vanished beneath the collapsing peak.

Nata gripped Alma"s sleeve. "Is he losing?"

"No," Sasuke said. His answer came without hesitation.

The mountain exploded outward.

Haru erupted from the rubble in a storm of blue fire. His body had grown larger, golden shoulders rising nearly level with the wraith"s chest. He caught two chains in his jaws and pulled hard enough to drag the monster from the opposite ridge.

"I can still sense more power inside him than the white-and-blue monster has absorbed," Sasuke continued. "He"s controlling the fight."

Gemma wasn"t convinced.

The white wraith crashed into the valley, rolled, and immediately returned to its feet. Its damaged wing repaired itself as energy flowed through the chains.

"How much stronger can that thing get?"

Sasuke"s red eyes narrowed. "That depends on when Haru stops playing with it."

A streak of lightning appeared over the forest. It raced toward the mountains, resolving into a flying man with a red cape and a hammer raised overhead.

Gemma blinked. "Who-or what the hell is that?"

"Thor," Sasuke said bluntly. Sasuke stared after him. "Idiot number two has arrived..."

It was strange, from this far away Gemma"s eyes shouldn"t even be able to make out that it was a flying man that joined the battle, and yet she clearly could, as if something about the man was larger than life itself. His hammer collided with the white wraith"s face. Lightning exploded across the entire mountain range. The monster staggered one step. Then one enormous chain swatted Thor out of the sky.

He disappeared through three distant peaks. Was he even alive after a hit like that?

The golden fox threw back his head. Even from miles away, Gemma could tell he was laughing.

— Haru —

I clamped my jaws around the White Wraith"s throat.

My fangs punched through its blue-white armor and sank into the dense muscle beneath. Strange blood flooded my mouth. Thick, metallic, and almost artificial. It tasted like alchemical preservatives, monster marrow, and concentrated life force.

Beneath all of that, I tasted myself. My stolen magicules saturated the creature"s blood. They had been processed and changed, but the underlying signature remained mine. Blue foxfire flickered between my teeth as my power reacted to its corrupted reflection.

The White Wraith thrashed. Its enormous claws tore trenches through the ground. Three organic chains wrapped around my torso and tightened, their hooks digging through my fur as they tried to drain one final burst of energy from me.

I bit down harder.

Its armor cracked.

The chains went rigid.

The White Wraith couldn"t even release a final death scream. Its throat collapsed between my jaws, severing its spine and destroying the strange organs that controlled its chains.

The massive creature shuddered once. Then it went limp. Its weight dragged my head toward the ground as the hundred-foot monster collapsed. The impact sent a final tremor through the ruined valley and kicked up enough dust to bury a village.

I released its throat and planted one paw on the corpse.

Then I threw my head back and howled. The sound rolled across the Forbidden Lands. It echoed through the mountains, crossed the distant forest, and scattered every flying monster within miles. Blue foxfire surged along my ten tails, lighting the night brighter than the moons overhead.

Victory felt good. When the last echoes faded, I looked around. Mistakes might have been made.

The mountain range had been thoroughly remodeled.

Several peaks no longer existed. One had been split down the center, while another had collapsed into a neighboring valley. Craters overlapped across the battlefield, and long sections of exposed stone had melted into rivers of blue glass.

The terrain probably hadn"t looked this bad before. On the positive side, we had avoided destroying the ancient laboratory.

That wasn"t an accident.

Once the White Wraith grew large enough to threaten the facility, I deliberately pulled the battle away from it. Every time the monster tried retreating toward its lair, I intercepted it and redirected the fight into the surrounding mountains.

The laboratory contained dormant pods, unknown machinery, and evidence of an ancient civilization capable of artificially creating monsters. The Hunters Guild would want to explore it.

Alma might actually explode from excitement.

I looked down at my prize. The White Wraith"s corpse twitched. Its huge body began shrinking. The armored limbs contracted first. A hundred feet became eighty, then sixty. Its enormous wings folded inward as bones shortened and muscle mass compressed beneath the scales.

"What?" I pressed one paw against the corpse. I couldn"t stop it. The White Wraith"s body had been artificially enlarged by stolen life force. Death had interrupted whatever process maintained the transformation, forcing its physical structure back toward its original configuration.

Within seconds, the monster had shrunk from over one hundred feet to roughly twenty.

Its energy hadn"t diminished. The same tremendous amount of power remained compressed inside the smaller corpse. Its scales retained their blue coloration, and my magicules continued circulating through its dead tissues in stable channels.