The Blink Ball hit Jinx on her left shoulder and instantly teleported her twenty feet in a random direction. She yowled in surprise as that direction turned out to be almost straight up. Luke rushed forward to catch her, but needn’t have bothered. She took a step midair to slow herself, fell another ten feet and took another step on empty air. With her momentum successfully bled off, she gently landed on the bedrock with all four feet.

  She gave him a death glare and growled out, “You didn’t tell me you would be throwing me high into the air.”

  Luke held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t know, sorry. I thought the same thing you did, that it would teleport you to some random place on the ground. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. I’m glad you had your air step skill so you didn’t get hurt.”

  He held out the tier three monster core to her. It was worth about twenty grand at home, so giving it to his pet as a snack was wildly wasteful. Then again, he did just spend millions on a book. And Jinx was pretty awesome, she did deserve an insanely expensive treat now and again.

  She kept her ears laid back, but still came over to him and scarfed down the monster core. Luke scratched her behind her ears as she ate. Her ears perked up and she chuffed, “It’s called Solid Footing. I can walk on air, or water, or slippery ground.”

  “Huh, that’s impressive. Although, I always knew you were impressive.”

  “Indeed. More scratches behind the left ear,” she said imperiously.

  Luke smiled as he kept giving her love. He glanced over to his Black Mamba mech and sighed. The Blink Ball skill was wonderfully useful, but it hadn’t brought his power armor along, just the inner suit. He wondered if it was the skill considering them two different things, or if it couldn’t move that much mass yet.

  A quick check of his mana levels showed that the skill had cost about three mana per activation. Fairly cheap, but he wouldn’t be able to bounce around the battlefield endlessly.

  When Jinx was satisfied with her grooming, Luke went back to testing. He formed another Blink Ball and gripped it tight. It was much easier to hold now that he was using a much smaller gauntlet. He aimed and threw, going for distance this time.

  The gray and violet ball arced through the air, whistling softly as it flew. It landed over three hundred feet away. The instant it touched the ground, Luke appeared there. This time it wasn’t disorientating since he hadn’t changed elevation, only location.

  A monster spotted him in his new location and started charging his way. A single Hive Wolf. The monster’s long claws and tall stature made it look dangerous, but he knew from experience that it was a basic tier one monster, and fairly stupid on its own.

  He decided not to kill it. The chances were it was a new spawn, and killing it would reduce his glory. Not something he normally cared about, but glory was the whole reason he was down here.

  A moment before the eight foot long monster barreled into Luke’s lightly armored form, he created a Blink Ball and tossed it to the ground a few feet away. The result was an instantaneous dodge and the Hive Wolf missed him entirely. It scrabbled to a stop and spun around, a surprised look on his face.

  “I don’t want to kill you, buddy,” Luke said calmly. “You’re too much of a small fry.”

  The Hive Wolf kept charging forward. Luke avoided it again with another Blink Ball. And again. And again. Each time he focused on the skill, trying to be as efficient with mana as possible. If there had been any doubt that the monster was alone, that was gone now. This Hive Wolf was clearly too stupid to be connected to any sort of hive mind.

  On the next charge, Luke didn’t use magic to avoid the monster, instead he used his higher stats. He leaned out of the way, avoiding the long claws by inches, and snapped his ice baton onto its right hind leg. A few moments later, it stumbled slightly as the ice spread. Another charge resulted in ice forming on its left hind leg. Now the monster was grounded, only its two front limbs working.

  Still, it clawed forward, dragging its body behind itself. Luke let it get into range and only leaned slightly out of the way. The claws still connected, leaving rents across his sabatons and cuirass. He smiled to himself. He had judged the distance perfectly, his armor was damaged but he wasn’t harmed.

  He had let himself get hit to test his next skill, the passive Armor Repair. He walked a few feet away and watched as the skill got to work. It slowly stitched together the rents in his armor, starting on the edges and working its way forward. It was like a magic 3D printer, building up the armor layer by layer.

  Luke had to move out of the way of the crawling Hive Wolf twice while he watched it work. The skill clearly wasn’t something that would be useful in the middle of battle.

  Jinx appeared then, landing atop its back and biting its neck. The monster died instantly.

  He basked in the sensation of easy levels. It was almost nice that his skill levels had gone down so he could quickly bring them back up. Almost.

  Jinx said, “I understand how fun it is to play with your food, but did you forget you are supposed to be supplying me with cores?”

  “I didn’t promise to feed you. I said I was going to go practice my skills and you said you wanted to come along. Feel free to eat that wolf’s core, but I’m not here on a hunting mission. I’m testing out my skills. Look at my armor, it’s healing itself,” Luke gestured towards the spots that were just finishing their repair. The skill hadn’t even taken any mana from his pool, only sipping from his passive regeneration.

  “It looks like your armor has scars now,” Jinx said and scoffed.

  Luke looked down and saw she was right. The repaired sections of armor were a slightly different color, darker than the surrounding silver metal and gray chitin. He knocked on the repaired armor and listened to the ring. It seemed tough. He pulled up the skill description again.

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  Armor Repair - passive skill that repairs and strengthens armor over time. Higher levels allow faster repairs for additional mana.

  Repairs and strengthens. Did that mean that the repaired sections of his armor were stronger? That was both good and bad. He wanted stronger armor, but he didn’t want to have to make sure every section of his armor got hit in order to have the full set strengthened.

  The second line was helpful though. For extra mana, he could speed up the repairs in an emergency. He started walking back towards his big mech that Jinx had left unguarded.

  A Mist Fox had knocked over the mech and was pawing at it and sniffing, trying to figure out what it was. Luke stopped a few hundred feet away. He realized the slim power armor didn’t have a spell that could take out the insubstantial monster. He had two embedded spell rifles with weak lightning and fire spells. Neither could handle this situation. It was part of the reason he had the big mech, since it could support more offensive spells.

  Maybe it was time for Variable Ammunition. He focused on the skill and fed it into his spell rifle. He intuitively knew that the longer the barrel was, the more powerful his skill would be. He focused on the idea of an acid spell and mentally fired it.

  A tight ball of yellow light flashed through the air, moving faster than his typical magnetic ammo. It didn’t drop in elevation either, which meant that the spell missed completely. Luke grumbled to himself and fired again while the Mist Fox was still figuring out where that shot had come from. This time the magic impacted the fox’s chest and spread out like a shotgun blast. The fox dissolved from the inside out, falling into a puddle like half melted cotton candy. A tier two core formed over the remains.

  Luke checked his mana. Four points. Not great, not terrible. With a full mana pool he could get off ten shots without using up any real ammo. It was fantastic in sniper situations, but terrible in situations that called for a machine gun. At least until he got better at the skill. He expected to be able to get it down to two or three points with practice.

  A few more tests produced a fireball, a lightning ball, a fracture spell, and an ice spell. He ran into problems when he attempted a poison shot. At first he thought he wasn’t clear enough, the skill didn’t understand him. So he tried to form something he completely understood, light magic. The ammunition refused to form, no matter how clear his mental image was.

  He was forced to conclude that he could only reproduce ammunition that he had used before. Kind of a bummer limitation. On the other hand, the skill did work with the dissever magic he had just learned, so his book of combat runes would give him endless options for ammo. Eventually. He would have to carve out and use each rune first.

  Jinx padded over and chomped down on the tier two core. It disappeared down her gullet with a deep rumbling purr.

  “How does leveling up work for you, anyway? Do you kill monsters to level up or do you have to eat monster cores?” Luke asked.

  “Superior beings like myself don’t have levels. I get stronger and faster when I pass thresholds. I don’t know exactly what it takes to pass a threshold, but I’ve already passed three of them. I must be doing something right. I guess I’ll just have to keep being wonderful.”

  Luke chuckled. “Ok, Ms. Wonderful. Are you sure that eating even low level cores will help you progress to the next threshold? Because I don’t want you to eat up all of my profit just because you are feeling peckish.”

  She huffed. “I have never partaken of your hoard of cores, even though they smell delicious. Your money is in no danger around me. But while we are out here, I hope you won’t begrudge me a few small morsels.” She lowered her head and widened her eyes.

  Luke rolled his own eyes. “You are scary good at that. Fine. Eat anything you want while we are in the crater. When we do the gauntlet, I want to keep the cores.”

  “An agreeable arrangement. Please go fetch me some cores.”

  Luke stared at her.

  “What? I said please.”

  He huffed and turned away. He needed to make sure she didn’t see his smile. He thought her trying to manipulate him was hilarious. Cute too. So what if it was working? Just because he was going to give her a bunch of cores, didn’t mean she was some mastermind.

  But first, it was time to test out his fourth new skill, Apex Machine. He had saved the best for last. He had a feeling this skill would be the key to blazing through the gauntlet. He mentally reached out to his core and it told him he still had three machine templates stored. Perfect. He had been worried that he would have to start over.

  He decided to go for broke with the first use of Apex Machine and selected the Viper helicopter. Gray mana rushed out of his core, more than normal for Summon Vehicle. It formed a blob a dozen feet away and started stretching out, violet mana forming edges and lines. It was already slower than the previous skill, which was another knock against it.

  Finally, the skill clicked into place and the summons was complete. Luke tilted his head to the side. What was that? It looked vaguely like a helicopter, but it was changed. Instead of helicopter blades, it had a thin disc attached to the top with a similar circumference. It didn’t have skids, it hovered three feet above the ground. The main body was mostly the same shape, but the canopy was bigger and more rounded. The nose gun and missiles were replaced with a spell rifle and ballista bolts. Most surfaces had large violet runes placed on them. It was sucking down about three mana a minute to keep it summoned, so it wouldn’t last long.

  “Huh, that’s weird. Well, no time like the present to try it out,” Luke said and threw a Greater Machine Soul into the construct.

  A few moments after the soul sunk into the construct, Luke heard a voice in his mind. What are your orders, master?

  Luke jumped in place. “Did you just talk?”

  Yes, master.

  “How intelligent are you? Like, are you a person now?”

  No, I am not a person. I am a machine of mana. My intelligence is determined by the average of your mental stats.

  “You must be brilliant then,” Luke said with a smile.

  Jinx tilted her head to the side. “Have you gone insane, Luke? The gray thing isn’t talking.”

  “Yes it is, only I’m the only one that can hear it.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Whatever.” Luke turned to the runic heli. “Fly around this area and herd three monsters back towards me. Once they are within two hundred feet, kill them with different weaponry so I can see how it all works.

  Yes, master.

  The runic heli immediately lifted off the ground and shot forward at mach oh-shit. It banked and dived for the ground. Its spell rifle popped again and again with force spells. Quieter than the machine guns had been, but far from stealthy.

  Within a few minutes, three more Hell Pigs were heading his way. They squealed in pain and terror, bewildered about the machine harassing them. Luke watched with a growing smile. He couldn’t wait for a demonstration of the heli's other weaponry.

  Before the monsters got within five hundred feet, something happened that ruined Luke’s show. A tight beam of pure white light speared up from the distance and hit the runic heli. It held up for a moment against the magical onslaught, but then it shattered into nothingness. Luke used his visor to magnify his vision and focus in on the source of that spell. It was a person, probably an orc, jumping and throwing his fist in the air.

  Luke swore and punched his palm. Someone else had mistaken his summons for a monster. Either that or they thought he was cheating for using such a superior method for killing monsters. Either way, he wouldn’t get to see a fun show.

  He contemptuously killed the three Hell Pigs with his Black Mamba. An acid bolt, firebolt, and lightning ball each hit a different monster. Two died screaming. Jinx wandered over and put the twitching pig out of its misery.

  A check of his mana pool showed only three points of mana left. Even if the orc hadn’t dispelled his summons, his runic heli wasn’t going to last long. The skill was a real mana hog. He hadn’t started the test with a full mana pool, but even when he did, he wouldn’t be able to keep his summons up indefinitely like he had before.

  He stuck around in the crater for another hour and a half and gained a few more skill levels. He practiced three of his skills as his mana regenerated. Apex Machine was too costly to practice right now, but he felt like it would be very effective even without practice. Since his Greater Machine Soul was always instantly familiar with how to work the summoned machine, there wasn’t the same type of learning curve needed with other skills.

  Regardless, he looked forward to trying it out in the gauntlet. He headed over there now, timing it so his mana would be full by the time he got there.