Cold sweat ran down Freya’s back.

Urrwaa!

The four new orcs ran out of the dungeon, bounding downhill towards them. They had only killed one of three orcs that first emerged and now they had to deal with four more!

“Tangling vines!”

Freya glanced back at Infamous Biscuit, then did a double-take.

He held his staff in one hand to cast the Tangling Vines spell, but in the other, he held an open book–and he was reading it.

“What are you doing?” Freya shouted.

He didn’t look up from the book, “Trying to improve our chances! Watermelon bombs!”

Three watermelons dropped from the sky and hit the orcs. They didn’t do much damage, but at least the orcs seemed annoyed to be covered in fruit.

K13 and Freya rushed in to deal damage to the tied down orcs. Hitting with her Shockwave again, she turned to try to use her Implosion on another.

“Ouch!”

Freya leapt back. She underestimated the orc spearman’s reach. Luckily it just grazed her shoulder.

Turning her attention to the orc who almost skewered her, she watched the orc’s hold on the spear. Using her Hit Redirect, she changed the course of the spear thrust then snuck up close to the orc. Plunging her hand between its chest plate and pauldron, Freya grabbed its meridian lines and pulled.

As Freya stepped back, she noticed the Tangling Vines also disappear. She retreated further and used her Self Heal skill.

A crimson light came off of K13 from using his Red Aura taunt. Two orcs were momentarily disabled, but the other five zeroed in on K13.

An arrow from Heilong struck the orc with the lowest HP, but nothing happened. Freya looked at the big numbers on her cooldown counters. 

The orcs surrounded K13. The first few spear thrusts bounced off his armor, but then one after another hit.

Freya kept attacking, but her weak attacks didn’t do any damage or even distract them.

“Heal!” Infamous Biscuit shouted, then immediately buried his face back in his book.

[K13]

[Lvl 15 Berserker]

[345/580 HP] [50/60 MP]

But in the next second, K13 was on the ground. 

Hurk hurk, one orc laughed and drove its spear into K13.

Freya leapt onto the orc and physically tried to wrestle the spear out of its hand. The orc threw her off, but she managed to grab its helmet in the process.

An arrow shot into the orc’s eye. The runic writing on the arrow shaft briefly glimmered.

A different orc roared in disgust at the sight and charged Heilong. Freya ran after the orc but fell. Slick blood covered her hands. K13 groaned beside her. 

Above Freya heard chuckling, Hurk Hurk Hurk.

She turned. Four orcs smiled down at them.

Freya grabbed K13.

“HHAAAA!!!” 

Diviner Houkyu stood over them; staff outstretched, shaking. His heroic shout seemed to momentarily confuse the orcs, but they quickly recovered. One of the orcs batted his staff away.

The diviner held his ground, but Freya wished he would run. She scrambled to her feet.

“No, get back,” K13 said weakly, struggling to get up.

drip

Something hit Freya’s face. It felt like raindrops, but when she wiped her face, it wasn’t wet. After a moment, she felt the sensation of wind, yet she didn’t feel any force.

The orcs paused in their attack, trying to figure out what was happening like Freya. Rain began to swirl around the whole battlefield. Freya could barely see the orcs in front of them, but they were struggling against the wind and rain.

UUURRR

HUUKKRRRAAWW

Freya heard the rain drumming the ground, and the wind rush past. However, the soft sensation of light rain and wind did not match what she saw. Strangely, she was also not wet, and her hair hadn’t moved an inch. K13 and Diviner Houkyu appeared similarly unaffected by the wind and rain.

But the high orcs flailed in the storm. Their HP was dropping too.

Standing up, Freya noticed her countdown timers were up. 

Running to the nearest orc, she got an easy hit in with her Shockwave. It vanished, the strong wind making the normal smoke cloud disappear instantly. 

Freya’s heart lifted. Using a Sweeping Kick, another orc toppled down. That skill hadn’t been working against them before, but with the chaos of the storm, it was possible. She swept through the orcs, using a mix of skills and a flurry of regular punches and kicks.

Sweat poured down her face by the time the storm cleared.

As the rain stopped, she finally saw Heilong and Infamous Biscuit again. The latter’s vine-pine just dropped to the ground as an orc disappeared.

Only one orc remained.

Heilong notched an arrow. 

The orc defiantly thumped the end of his spear on the ground, then threw it at Heilong.

Her arrow found its mark first. The arrow glimmered then the orc burst into a smoke cloud.

Heilong casually sidestepped the spear. She nodded at Infamous Biscuit, “Good thing we learn well under pressure.”

…

“That was your skill?!” Freya exclaimed.

“Yep,” Infamous Biscuit said, smiling a little smugly. “It’s called Induction Storm. I picked up the skill book a while ago, but it required Meridian Manipulation and a lot of MP to activate it. I had to take an MP boosting potion to cast it.”

He sat down next to their reconstructed campfire, “I know Heilong figured out a Meridian Manipulation based skill, but you or K13 must have found a new one too.”

K13 shook his head.

“I think I figured out the skill opposite to my Shockwave skill,” Freya said. She explained how she pulled on her opponent’s own qi, leading to damage.

Heilong nodded along to her explanation enthusiastically, “Having the skill name ‘Implosion’ makes sense.”

“What about you?” Freya asked. “How did you figure how to combine your qi into an arrow?”

“Well, it’s not solely skill-based for me. I need special wizard made arrows that can temporarily store my qi in them and then release them when it meets a foreign qi. It took a lot of explaining to get this wizard to make them for me.”

She huffed out a sigh, “Anyway, it looks like our chances of completing this dungeon look a lot better now. Maybe we even took out a lot of the orcs already.”

“Or they might have respawned in the dungeon,” Infamous Biscuit said grimly.

Heilong gave him a piercing sideways glare.

He shrugged, “I’m just being practical. Also, before we try the dungeon, there’s some other things we should prepare. Also, with all our new skills we should discuss some new strategies.”

“Sounds good,” Heilong said, a mischievous smile returning to her face. “I have some ideas.”