Shuni, clearly not inclined to keep the team waiting longer than she had already, launched into her report. “The hallway leads to a big space, like we thought. It recesses down into the floor rather than up, but it’s tall enough that our bug friend here can reach up with her arms at full height and not touch the ceiling at the center. It’s kind of like an inverted pyramid, with rows of old benches ringing around the place.”

  “A stadium?” Daniel asked tentatively, unsure if the concept would cross over. He’d heard of plays being a thing, but hadn’t seen much in the way of sports. Whatever translation effect allowed him to function on this world wouldn’t work on words the Octyrrum just didn’t have an equivalent for.

  “Eh, if it is, it’s not from Threst.” Shuni jerked her head back and forth a few times. “Not that it would be, I guess. This whole place feels wrong for me to be in, but I’m sure Khiat would be loving it if it weren’t for the monsters.” She bemusedly plucked at one of the trip ropes still strung in the air. “There’s a couple of things we’d have to worry about if we went that way. First of all, there is a rift there. Center of the place on the floor, right where you expect it, glowing like a high level draconoid threw up in a pool.”

  “Wait, what?” Daniel asked, taken aback by the analogy.

  “Not important. As expected, there are monsters there. At least a dozen, I couldn’t get in there to see if there were more hiding. They all weren’t crawlers either, and it gets worse. The biggest one in there is directly connected to that rift. When I came in it used some kind of power to block all the exits. Didn’t go away until I hid in place for a few minutes.”

  “Trap,” Khare put succinctly.

  “What do you mean by block the exits?” Daniel asked. “I can damage these walls, though going through them completely could be an issue.”

  “It throws a mana shield over the door.” Shuni jerked a thumb at Willow. “Same as hers but purple, those things really like that color.”

  Once again, Daniel was split by the temptation to investigate a rift and the trepidation of putting his team in danger. Going into the not-stadium would force them to put down at least the guardian monster before they could escape. It was a huge risk, but then again?

  “This is starting to sound like the rifts aren’t placed randomly,” he mused, a few on the team giving him quizzical looks. “The two we’ve found for sure are in that murder train, and what sounds like a gathering area for the local blocks. The fact that a monster locks down the room when it detects something gives me a checkpoint vibe.”

  “The Regent could have told us about that. He did find one,” Shuni complained.

  “He was moving fast,” Daniel said, thinking. “He said he saw the rift spawn monsters. I’m guessing he got in and out of there before the barricade got thrown up. It’s…” he trailed off before finishing what seemed like an out there thought, even for him. The others wouldn’t have it, though, and he was cajoled to explain. “It’s starting to sound like an immune system, almost. It doesn’t mean there isn’t something intelligent behind this, but scaling threats, reactive defenses, some part of this is automatic.”

  “Does that change what we’re doing?” Willow asked, and Daniel was surprised she didn’t need clarification on what he meant. Khiat surely would, but her access to education had been more limited than Willow’s. That people in this world had some understanding of immunology, however limited, was still something he couldn’t completely reconcile. Then again Quala knew about allergies. Also, crazy scientist wizards like the Illustrious existed, so someone somewhere might have figured it out.

  Internal ruminations on how magic figured into biology aside, Daniel relayed his conclusion and hoped it wasn’t solely the result of his inescapable oath bias. “No. If I’m right, the monsters are there because that’s the only place we can go to move beyond this part of the ruins beside the tunnel. At the least, it’d be easier than crawling through these suburbs. We came in here knowing there was a chance we’d have to fight monsters. A dozen sounds like a lot, but we have powers and teamwork. Anyway, the more monsters there, the better chance Tlara finds something she wants to use.”

  The dino-bird the Beastmaster was hijacking glared him down but as was the new status quo, he ignored her and observed the rest of the team. He’d need to use their judgment to make sure he wasn’t leading them all to their deaths chasing the demands of his heart. “Who thinks we should keep moving and try to find another way?”

  He wished he had Evalyn’s power to track the surface emotions of others, which might have made such a question unnecessary. Then again, he’d just be at the mercy of his own perception that way too.

  “How long will Soraso wait for us?” Khiat asked, clearly conflicted.

  “He is the leader of the region,” Shuni pointed out. “He said he’d wait, but if more of those kidnapper monsters show up he could bail and come back later. Since I’m the only one actually from here I’ll go ahead and say I don’t know too much about him, though. Not like I’m from Aurus, and the upper flights are fairly exclusive.”

  “It’s a gamble either way,” Willow said, somewhat decisively after recovering her equilibrium. “If we stay away from that area now there’s no guarantee we won’t be led back to it. Plus, if we wait more monsters might spawn there.”

  Everything he heard fed into the bond-driven desires, and he couldn’t find any argument himself to counter. Neither did anyone make any. “Sounds like we have a plan. Shuni, tell us about the monster types you saw. We’ll need a minute anyway, I’m going to modify my blast bow.”

  “Barrels?” Khare, the only one who knew the intricacies of his weapon as well as he did, asked.

  “Kind of. Let’s just say I’ll be using my third barrel.”

  …

  The entrance to the stadium was lit by fell light reflecting off the ceiling from a currently out of sight astral rift. They’d told Khare to stop painting the wall on the approach, both for stealth and because they could see where they needed to go.

  According to Shuni, there were two crawlers positioned close to the door, and they hadn’t moved as she was leaving. The Rogue confirmed their positions with hand gestures, though that wasn’t their largest concern. The one in the center was. If they could burst that down in a surprise attack they could just rush the exit closest to the direction they needed to go and try and lose pursuit.

  It wasn’t Daniel’s preferred outcome of total victory as they wouldn’t get to check out the rift, and also because it would lessen the chance he’d get advancement potential. Life or death stakes aside, he could use a few more points to spread around his attributes. He had to get stronger.

  That didn’t mean they could get right down to the bottom and assassinate the target. For one, Khiat had given up that class and hadn’t received anything stealth-adjacent since. The preparation archetype might have been wide enough in scope to afford a few, but the only one that was directly tied to it was a recent power that let Khiat designate a few of her arrows every day to give them a decent damage bonus.

  No, the basic idea was to get as close as possible without aggroing the crawlers at the door, and then run in while giving it everything they had. Daniel had already tagged all the monsters he could sense, which thankfully included the one in the center.

  Khare was ready with Called Shot, he had Power Shot charging, Khiat was ready with Double Shot, and for the losers like Tlara who didn’t have a cool power that ended in -Shot, they were prepared to either defend or throw out the best they could.

  That being said, Daniel wasn’t fully throwing himself behind this strategy. If it worked, great. If not, he needed the most powerful weapon he could put his hands on. Obviously that was the blast bow, but even after developing the explosive rounds there was room for improvement. Specifically, a formulae Daniel had gotten from the wolves but hadn’t effectively used yet.

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  Splitting ammunition sounded great in theory, and in practice it worked for most people. Sadly, Daniel’s ultimate weapon had a design flaw. It was the same principle that allowed for swappable barrels to give different enchantments without remaking the entire thing, though this also had downsides. In this case, it was that anything using the base splitting ammunition enchantment divided once it was fired.

  As all that would be accomplished by using splitting ammunition with the blast bow would be creating shrapnel inside the barrel, he’d stowed the enchantment at first aside from using it for Khiat and Khare. With the next fight not calling for either long range or stealth past the first shot, he could change that.

  Daniel lifted his blast bow as the team charged the room. The crawlers had reacted according to Shuni, but not fast enough. He was completely focused on the one in the center, willing to use Moment of Clarity to assess both his shot and the surroundings once the ambush was done.

  The noticeably shorter weapon was missing its barrel, though that wasn’t all. Daniel had used the properties of the added hammerite in the receiver to mold a stubby barrel directly from it, just tall enough to shield the ammunition within while being out of range of the split. This had been the primary reason he’d needed time after removing the silencer.

  In practical terms, he’d changed his rifle into a shotgun. Unlike video games, the damage fall off of the weapon wasn’t atrocious… though the accuracy was past a few meters. Snap Shot struggled to reign in multiple projectiles as it couldn’t account for the way it split off after firing.

  Perhaps the greatest downside was that splitting ammunition was incompatible with spineshard ammunition as they were both base enchantments, meaning he couldn’t shoot bullets that would multiply, explode, and then have those explosions explode. Yet, two out of three wasn’t that bad.

  Good old Scatter Shot could still fit nicely into his ‘spell slot’, even with all the other factors accounted for. It was like Khiat’s new designation power, once the mana was invested it stayed that way until the slug was fired. He only did it right before each attack because he didn’t want to make his ammo even more dangerous if mishandled, and because the spell only worked when he used them.

  He fired the shot, lining up as best he could with the center mass of the monster in the center. The slug began splitting as soon as it cleared the stub barrel, forming at least a dozen pieces that were smaller than the original shot but at least three times as large altogether.

  Moment of Clarity triggered half a second later, Daniel making sure to keep his eyes open for the ability. Fortunately, the room had an open, roughly rectangular design and did give him the sense of an indoor basketball court. There were differences, such as the fact that the entrances were at the top of each corner, and that there were monsters.

  From his position at one of the entrances, he could see almost the entire area. The height of the chamber was level with the hallway where he was, though indeed the center area added a few meters to that. Unbacked benches fell to his left and right, sloping downwards and even reaching the far floor. Four large poles ran up from that space as well, marking an internal rectangle that contained the rift and the barrier monster.

  It, and the other non-crawlers in the area, were disturbingly humanoid. Not that they looked like that one avianoid had, corrupted, but that they had mimicked human form as part of their creation.

  The barrier monster itself, or as the tag called it:

  Arcadian Warden - (Astral Projection: Grade 1)

  Appeared firmly entrenched in the floor by a collection of glazen flesh that reflected the light cast off from the rift. Atop the pile was a torso and three arms, the third placed where the head would normally be.

  Daniel’s scattered Scatter Shot coned toward the warden, along with Khiat’s arrow and a slightly delayed volley from Khare. Shuni, meanwhile, had opted to toss a dagger at each nearby crawler while Tlara prepared to acidify one of them.

  He last noted the seven visible monsters in the room, of which there were two types, but marked only their position mentally and allowed time to restart to see the effects of their opening move. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t need to bother with-

  The sound of scattering hail joined with several heavier ricochets as a purple barrier intercepted the team’s combined volley, the warden completely deflecting it into the floor of the center ground before it had crossed what Daniel had decided to call the goalposts.

  In the next moment, it pushed both lower hands into the ground while the third’s palm remained facing toward them. Purple light appeared behind the group, shutting them inside.

  The arcadian crawlers next to them weren’t a huge threat by themselves, so long as there was someone like Sigron or Shuni to hold their attention without taking injuries. Mix in other threats, and they became a pressure he wanted released before the rest of the nearby force reacted. It was primarily for this reason he’d taken the sawed off approach for this fight, and now that the warden had proved to be tricky they needed to deal with the closer enemies.

  Rock-glass sizzled as Tlara’s smaller acid attacks pelted the crawler on the left, Sigron moving to block both it and attacks from the monsters ahead per their discussed plan should the warden survive. He turned his sights on the other crawler while shouting, “Khiat, try and pick off the impalers!” Of the two other types of monsters, the arcadian impalers seemed the largest ranged threat with the large javelins they were preparing to throw.

  He left her to deal with them, Dodge Rolling towards danger and racking another shot while in motion. No time for Power Shot, but hopefully…

  Daniel came to rest under the bulbous center body of the crawler, which had just unsuccessfully tried to stab him on the approach. They weren’t cumbersome in their movements, but if he was pushing himself or using a power he knew he’d be faster. Without the experiences of Beast Mode he wouldn’t have reached these heights.

  A blast of shrapnel assaulted the crawler’s underside, and Daniel was already on the move. Best case it died and fell on him if he stayed to watch, worst case the split ammo would reflect at him while the monster tried a stab.

  To his disappointment the monster was still alive, but it did seem his shot had had an effect. A quick glance at the rest of the fight showed Sigron and Tlara making an effective duo, though spears of false glass were beginning to sail toward their position. The arcadian impalers had two arms and legs, as well as a conical head that directly attached to the body. Rather than have a reasonable limit on their projectiles, the four in the area somehow summoned more javelins from the rift to their hand whenever they ran out.

  Both the impalers and the last, clearly melee-focused monster were the ones he was truly worried about. They showed the most potential for damage, with the warden focusing on deflecting attacks against its side and the crawlers being annoying. So far neither had shown anything too terrible, but one of those rift javelins would easily kill Willow if she was unshielded.

  He reloaded, internally debating whether he should go for a Power Shot or not. It would do the job and with less of a charge, as firing that close to the enemy eliminated much of the spread in the ammunition. Though, if splitting ammunition gave him a combined projectile four times as massive he would still need more than 15 seconds to charge as the bonus from Power Shot increased exponentially. On the other hand, that was only if he needed a full charge to break the armor.

  Coming to a quick decision, Daniel opted for a repeat of his last strategy. He could go in and out at least twice in the amount of time he’d be charging Power Shot, and in the latter case he’d be locked out of other abilities because of the active mana flow. He Dodged through again, mindful to keep Hunter’s Evasiveness active just in case, and barely stopped to deliver another payload before getting out. It was more mana expensive to do this considering the Dodge Rolls, but he was coming around to Shuni’s way of thinking now that the passive mana restoration was a known factor.

  There was an immense feeling of satisfaction as he saw purple bleeding out from under the crawler as the life force animating the body fled. The other side was still fighting theirs, but Sigron was now attempting parries while morphing his arm into a large hammer. The simple sword he carried was somehow able to subvert the movement of the massive limbs of the crawlers, and Daniel recalled the flame enchantment he could also put on it.

  I guess he is full sword and board, he thought, deciding they had that handled and he should join those destroying the other monsters. The three melee specialists had to travel from the center and seemed slower than the crawlers, though they’d be here in half a minute. “Khiat, take the left impaler!” Daniel shouted, before marking one of the ones using a goalpost to gain a little bit more momentum with their throws by partially spinning around it. “Khare!”

  He chose one in the close corner, the one to the right, growing feathers along his arms. If the impalers lacked good armor it wouldn’t matter if Grow Feathers lacked the explosive punch of the blast bow, and they’d be far more accurate with Snap Shot.

  Two clusters of feathers went out at the impaler at roughly the same time his other designated targets were attacked. As he hoped, the warden was only able to throw up one shield. Unfortunately, the impalers weren’t helpless, and even coordinated with the other monsters. The one that was shielded continued attacking, unbothered, while the other two were able to dodge Daniel and Khare’s attacks.

  “The other crawler is dead!” Willow called out across the short distance that had come to separate them as the battle continued. His frustration at missing the target was briefly relieved, but as the second purple stream began heading toward the center there was an unmistakable flash from the rift. As its hazy light grew brighter, the monsters became far deadlier.