Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

Ike rushed into the deepest part of the darkness. The closer he got, the more tense Shawn became, so though he couldn’t see far himself, he could use Shawn’s body posture to guess the right direction to rush. The throbbing got louder and louder, beating off the walls. Ike’s body thrummed with it, the sound rattling him to his bones. His heart beat in sync. His breathing moved to the rhythm of the pressure. There was no evading it, no fighting it. He was nothing but a minnow in a mighty sea, awash with the churning of the tides.

Shawn no longer said anything. He clenched Ike’s shoulder harder and harder, a lump of silent tension.

They were in it. It beat all around them. Ike searched the darkness for the source of the beating, scanning the walls, the sky, even the ground. It was dark here. Incredibly dark. As though the sun that poured down from above couldn’t reach the earth so far down below. Not just twilight, but the interminable dark gray fog that clouded the world after twilight. Before it got so dark that his eyes swapped to night vision, but after it grew too dim for day vision. The gray blended into the walls, and the walls blended into the gray. Everything was one solid blur.

“Watch out!” Shawn shouted.

A slab of solid stone plunged down at him from the walls around them. Ike’s eyes widened. He jumped back, barely dodging in time. The stone smashed into the ground. Shards flew. And then it lifted back up again, not a slab at all, but a massive hand.

“What is it with me and giant enemies lately?” Ike muttered.

“That’s not an enemy. It’s the mountain,” Shawn replied, but there was a note of hesitation in his voice.

“Yeah? It sure seems like an enemy to me,” Ike said.

Far, far above them, two bright beams of light flickered into existence, each one as big around as a dinner plate. They swung around and blazed down at Ike, illuminating him in their spotlights. Ike squinted up, struggling to see beyond the blinding light.

“Puppets? Foolish puppets! Die here!” a horrid voice roared.

Ike pushed his mask back, revealing his face. “We aren’t puppets!”

There was a pause. A piercing, grinding sound echoed off the sheer walls, like fingernails on a chalkboard amplified a thousand times. A higher-pitched voice cackled. “All but puppets must die!”

“Well, what the fuck,” Ike muttered, half to himself. Couldn’t be a puppet, couldn’t not be a puppet. There was no conclusion to this conflict but battle, was there.

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A second later, he grinned. That was fine by him. It had been too long since he’d had a good fight. This whole time, sneaking around, playing diplomat and choosing not to fight the centaurs, scooting around in Brightbriar’s territory and trying not to cause too much trouble… it was time to let all that out. Right here, right now.

The wall cracked. A body stepped out from it, about half as tall as the giant he’d fought in the hidden realm. As it stood, he finally could make it out as the light poured down from the top of the cliffs and illuminated its surface.

Dark slate made the rough shape of a feminine face and body. The figure was like the first form of a rough statue, with bits of stone still clinging all over it, as if it had been made in a rush and half-finished. Its eyes glowed, the source of the spotlights that had illuminated him earlier. Each one blazed like the sun, warm with a pure, bright light.

Ike raised his brows. Now that’s a fight and a half.

The figure turned. White flashed, bright in the light of the upper half of the mountain. Porcelain clad the other half of their face, a fine white mask that was as smooth and perfect as the body was roughly shaped.

“What?” Ike asked, so startled he said it aloud. His mind went to the black-cloaked mages and Shawn, on the side of Mont’s mountain. Those black-cloaked mages… had they been associated with Brightbriar? He couldn’t remember. But if they were—and they were close enough to Brightbriar’s home base that it was very possible—then was this what they’d been trying to do with Shawn, in that horrible ritual that they’d interrupted back there?

“Fucking hell,” Wisp breathed. She stared. “A mountain?”

“He won’t transform the centaurs, but he will puppetify a mountain?” Ike muttered. Then again, it wasn’t as if he didn’t understand. Mountains were massively powerful. They naturally contained insane amounts of mana and the ability to channel mana directly from mana veins, drawing on the planet’s own mana source. If Brightbriar really could turn a mountain into a puppet, he would create a weapon that could wipe out regions on its own.

“But he failed,” Shawn murmured, gazing up at it. “She’s only half-turned.”

Ike followed his gaze. He was right. She wasn’t a puppet, just a mountain infected with porcelain. Then, is that why we couldn’t be a puppet or not a puppet? Either we were, and her mountain half hated us, or we weren’t, and her puppet half demanded we die?

Still, good thing he failed. If this mountain were fully under his control, we’d be even more fucked than we already are.

The mountain lifted her arm. It creaked. Bits of stone fell off the arm, raining down on them. A shadow fell over the group as her hand blocked out the sunlight.

“Everyone ready?” Ike asked.

“What would you do if I said no?” Wisp asked rhetorically.

“Tell you to get the fuck ready,” Ike replied.

That giant hand slammed down at them. Ike’s eyes blazed with purple light. Lightning flickered over his whole body, spawning clouds, rain, wind, sleet, and hail. His fists and feet turned metallic, and the lightning rushed to them, flickering more brightly there than anywhere else. Beside him, Wisp took on her giant spider form, and Mag turned into a magpie, soaring up toward the open palm as it dropped.

“Time to take down a mountain,” Ike said, punching his fist into his palm with a clang.