Arek growled. He brought his weapon in closer and waited for the man to make the next move. He didn’t see the brutal strike that slammed into his back, sending him staggering forward. Arek cried out in pain.

The strange man appeared before him, a wicked grin on his face. The runes shifted back to his arms and he lunged forward, driving a fist into Arek’s stomach. The force of the blow lifted the orc into the air and sent him tumbling backwards.

Arek slammed into a wall, which crumbled to dust around him. He forced his aching body to rise before his opponent could follow up on the injury.

“It’s unfortunate you have no idea how to use your powers!” The leader called with a mocking laugh. “For you, that is. For me, this is more fortunate than you could imagine.”

He shimmered, reappearing before Arek once again. The runes had shifted back to his feet, but they were already returning to his hands. Arek gritted his teeth and braced himself. The man stepped forward and drove a fist into Arek’s stomach.

Blood flew out of the orc’s mouth as his internal organs shuddered from the blow. However, he kept his footing. He wrapped his left arm around the man, pulling him into a tight hug.

“This will just make things worse for you, fool!”

Another violent blow slammed into his stomach. Arek muted the pain as his body screamed in protest. With a bloody grin, the orc reversed his grip on the guandao and thrust it through the man’s back with all of his strength.

The weapon punched through Arek’s opponent and continued onwards, piercing the orc and erupting from his back with a flower of blood.

“You forgot one thing,” Arek snarled. “I’ve got a healer.”

The man tried to say something, but the blood filling his mouth make his words come out in an incomprehensible gargle. While the blade had gone through his heart, Arek was much taller than him, so it had only pierced the orc’s stomach.

The guandao dissipated, leaving a large bloody hole in both of the fighter’s chests. Arek grabbed the man by his hair and tossed him to the side. A wave of weakness rippled through his body, and his hands tingled.

Arek turned to check on Malissa and Ming, but his hands suddenly lit up with pain like they were on fire. The runes on his claws had lit up a pale green, even though he wasn’t using them. The light grew stronger and stronger until it was so bright that he couldn’t even look at them.

At the same time, the runes on Arek’s dead opponent lit up as well. Light enveloped the square and a blast of energy rippled through the air. A pillar of energy launched into the sky. What felt like a barrage of electricity pumped into Arek through his hands.

He gritted his teeth and held his hands out as far away from his body as he could. The light was so bright that he could see it even through his closed eyelids. As energy flooded into his body, the pain faded away.

To Arek’s surprise, it felt good. Really good. The pain from the gaping hole in his chest faded away as a blanket of bliss enveloped Arek, muting the outside world. He wasn’t sure how long it lasted, but the light faded away, leaving nothing but motes of light dancing in front of his eyes.

The fight was over. The two men that had gone after the rest of the Happy Sunflowers laid dead on the street. One had a smoking hole the size of a dinner plate in his chest, and the other was in a growing pool of his own blood, daggers jutting out of his stomach and neck.

Belmont rushed to Arek’s side, raising his staff to heal him. He reached the orc, but he didn’t move to use his powers.

“Arek, where did your wound go?” Belmont asked, his voice flat.

“What do you mean?” Arek asked, looking down at his chest. There was a large hole in his shirt and a small nick in the leather of his bandolier where the guandao had gone through his chest, but his skin was completely unblemished.

“Do you know any healing spells, Arek?” Malissa asked, ripping her daggers free of her fallen opponent and wiping them clean on his clothes.

“I do not,” Arek said. Then, noticing the dangerous expression on Belmont’s face, he rapped on the ground several times, doing the secret knock that the healer had taught him.

Belmont’s features loosened and he let out a sigh, lowering the staff.

“Good thinking. I wasn’t sure if you’d been swapped with a mimic of some sort during that flash of light,” Belmont said.

“Where would they have gotten a mimic?” Malissa asked.

“Where did they get the giant pillar of green light?” Belmont replied.

“I think that might have been my fault,” Arek said. He raised his hand so that the rest of the party could see it.

There as a new line of runes circling around his claws. Belmont examined them and let out a grunt.

“I don’t recognize most of them, but I see one that I do know. It’s the number one,” he said.

“It’s from killing whoever that man was,” Arek said, nodding in the corpse’s direction. “I’m pretty sure my runes just got stronger, and it happened when I killed him. I think we might have found out what happened to us when we walked through that portal.”

“The green pillar was a signal,” Belmont swore, dropping to his knees beside the man Arek had killed. He flipped him over and started to ruffle through his pockets. “We need to move. Now. Those runes are meant to make you stronger while drawing opponents to you.”

“But why?” Malissa asked. “That seems like an incredibly powerful spell without much of a purpose.”

“We could ask Magus,” Ming suggested. “With the amount of pure magic I used to kill that dude, I think he might have noticed.”