The Spirit of Rebellion manifested in the heart of Stonethorn Cave. With a resounding roar, it stamped closer and closer—its footsteps like the ominous beats of a war drum. Never in his life had Vance encountered a dragon, but he had seen illustrations of the fearsome creatures in several books, and the Spirit of Rebellion had striking similarities to these drawings.

It had an alligator-like head that tapered into two round nostrils, teeth that were the size of human hands, and eyes that were a vertical line of xanthic against a background of pitch-black. A long scaly neck connected its head to its broad chest, and there were visible embers shining in the spaces among the rough scales: a furnace was burning under a natural layer of armor. It walked on two large back legs and reserved two shorter arms for hacks and slashes. A pair of five-meter-wide wings appeared on each side of its body—so that it had a total of four. And its tail, which was made of a material like stone, had the shape of a war hammer.

Another roar from the mighty spirit forced Vance to stand up and blew away Stonethorn Cave from around him. Suddenly, the stalactites and the rock were no more. Eleanor and Pamela vanished like banished spectres. And to replace what had been lost, wood and steel rose from the ground and formed a massive arena. In the seats of the spectators, there were thousands of priests, each of them shouting words from ardent sermons, and in the battle ring, Vance stood face to face with the dragon. He cast glances right and left—at walls of steel and barriers of reinforced wood. It seemed that there was no way to avoid direct confrontation. The stage had been set for an inevitable battle.

But where were his weapons? Where were his items? Where was his armor? Equip Spectre. He summoned his most reliable weapon, but he knew deep down that it wouldn’t be enough against a dragon so mighty. A dagger alone couldn’t defeat a dragon. He needed a ranged weapon and armor resistant to fire. But he had no access to such things, and in the next moment, he felt the staggering effects of this disadvantage. The Spirit of Rebellion flapped its wide wings and rose off the ground. It flew in the shape of an ellipse, and when the course of its flight brought it closer to him, it opened its mouth and breathed a massive fire.

The priests cheered loudly. The column of fire charred the ground and headed toward Vance, but he didn’t gawk at it helplessly. He started to move fast. His parasitic feet were working. Although he could feel them resisting every one of his commands, he managed to assert his will and raced out of the fiery storm. With a final roll, he made it to relative safety. Turning to look up at the sky—a stretch of clear blue—he found that the dragon was turning around and flying back. I have no way to stop it. He clenched the spectral dagger in annoyance. I can only dodge at this point. He readied himself for the next attack, but as the dragon flew closer, it didn’t fire its lethal breath. Instead, it descended to the dirt ground.

The arena shook. The priests fell off their seats and rose again to shout new sermons. The dragon had landed right in front of Vance and now reached for him with angry bites. A left crunch. A right crunch. A hack with its right arm. A slash with its left. The dragon continued to attack without mercy, and if it hadn’t been for the superhuman movements that the parasites granted, Vance would’ve fallen for each and every one of those attacks. It was only because of the parasites that he managed to avoid the crunches, jump over the stomps, back away out of the range of the slashes. But against a barrage so violent, facing an enemy so brutal, he couldn’t evade forever.

After the last successful dodge, the irate dragon spun around and swung its hammer-tail. It was this tail that spelled the most trouble for Vance. He stepped back as far as his parasitic feet could, but he still ended up within the range of the devastating swing. Bones cracked. Muscles wavered. Blood curdled. The hammer-tail struck his body from the side and sent him flying across the entire width of the arena. The priests cheered and clapped, and he crashed into the steel barrier that separated the elevated stands from the battle ground. For a moment, he remained stuck against the cold steel. Then he began to fall to the ground—bleeding in more than one part of his body, losing his consciousness.

“Vance … Vance … Vance!” As his Mental Eye saw hazy images of the dragon turning toward him, he heard someone calling his name. Again and again. It was a familiar voice, and it took him only a second to be sure that it was Pamela. The lunar elf was nowhere inside the arena, but her voice was reaching him as clear as if she was standing right beside him. “Vance … Vance … Can you hear me?” Her words alerted him to his surroundings. His vision became sharper, and he realized that the dragon was preparing to breathe fire. But his numb body wouldn’t move. He had been knocked down so hard, and the parasites had used this chance to slip out of his control.

“Vance … Oh no! Did I mess something up during the channeling?” Pamela said again, as the dragon gathered more fire. “Vance! Can you hear me? My voice should be reaching you! Answer me!”

“I can hear you,” he said, weakly.

“Finally!” Pamela seemed relieved.

“But I’m about to burn to ashes,” he added.

“I can see that. This is why you need to do exactly as I say. I want you to imagine a platinum shield. Picture yourself holding it now!”

Vance closed his Mental Eye and imagined himself holding such a shield. The dragon breathed a raging inferno, but before this feral fire could reach him, a platinum shield appeared in his hand. It was a large, wide scutum that was well-suited for this situation. He gathered every bit of his remaining strength and lifted it in front of him. Then he curled up into a ball and hid behind the protective platinum. The flames raged around him, ate away at the steel wall behind him, forced the crowding priests to retreat from the stands—but he still remained unscathed thanks to the sturdy platinum shield, which sundered the inferno into two.

“You’re fighting a hallucination, Vance,” Pamela’s voice said. “You’re inside a mental space, and here you can imagine weapons into existence.” Vance stood up slowly after the inferno subsided. He looked at the shield in his hand and then at the ireful dragon roaring. “Because you’ve achieved Manotic Stability, I believe you have the freedom to summon most weapons,” Pamela continued, speaking as fast as she could. “And the Redspine High has also given your mind extra fortitude. It’s preventing the Spirit of Rebellion from freely summoning other hallucinations to counter you. You’re not at a disadvantage; you have the upper hand! Use your power! Slay the dragon as fast as you can!”

Hearing these words, Vance filled up with renewed hope. The fierce dragon breathed another inferno at him, but he raised his platinum shield and hid behind it for the duration of the attack. When he lowered his shield, he was wearing a set of fire-resistant light armor and holding a wooden crossbow in his right hand—gear that he had summoned solely by imagining. He aimed his new crossbow at the dragon and fired three platinum bolts in rapid succession. With each release, his body recoiled. The bolts traveled faster than sound. The first pierced the dragon’s neck near its upper left wing; the second sank into its chest between its two short arms; the third hit its right eye as it was flinching from the first two bolts.

The tide of the battle changed. Vance threw the wooden crossbow away and summoned a long platinum spear. Raising this spear, he charged at the injured dragon. As he approached, the dragon beat its wings and began to retreat to the sky. It wanted to escape or perhaps to breathe lethal fire from above, but Vance refused to give it the chance. With three last steps, he swung his arm and threw his spear into the sky. It traveled fast as if it had been thrown by a mythological god—and indeed, Vance felt like the sole god of this mental space. Before mere seconds passed, the spear had struck the dragon right in the heart, and it was tumbling toward the ground—strong and mighty no more.

This should be it. Vance thought that he had won, but then he looked up and saw that the dragon was heading toward him. In a matter of seconds, it had transformed its fall from grace into a spiteful plunge attack, diving at an incredible speed and with an open mouth—a true dental mincer. Facing this unexpected attack, Vance had no option but to summon more platinum spears. As the falling dragon neared him, he held one firm in his hand and launched it with as much force as he could gather. Then he summoned another sharp spear without waiting for the first to hit, and this second spear he also launched at the dragon with as much force and as much desperation.

The priests in the stands shouted at him to stop, but he refused to heed their meaningless words. His first spear struck the dragon in the neck; his second in the stomach; his third in the leg; his fourth in the wing. The diving dragon now looked more like a corpse skewered on many poles, but still it didn’t halt its attack; still it continued to dive toward him. You can’t be serious. In a moment of complete shock, although he had fired as many as six spears in total, Vance felt the dragon teeth digging into his light armor. The dragon bit his upper body, raised him off the dirt ground, crashed down heavily, and then continued to slide toward the edge of the arena—with him still caught between its jaws.

If Vance did nothing in this bleak situation, he would either crash into the steel wall with the dragon, or sooner and more likely, he would lose half of his upper body to a brutal crunch. The odds were against him, but the spears had weakened the dragon just enough to give him a few seconds to act. He had to use this interval before it was too late. What could he imagine that would save him? What could he summon to his aid when he was already inside the mouth of his unfeeling enemy, when he couldn’t swing knife, dagger, or sword? His mind went blank, and he couldn’t think of any proper answer—especially with the dragon teeth digging deeper and deeper into his flesh.

He was on the verge of defeat, ready to give up, ready for loss; but then a tiny silhouette flashed there before his Mental Eye. Out of nowhere, little Timathor materialized on top of the dragon’s head. The child goblin looked the same way it had when it was fighting alongside Vance in the Tombs of Solario. It wore the pieces of light armor that Vance had purchased for it and had the steel dagger in its tiny green hand. With a big smile of happiness, of gratitude, of the plainest and simplest admiration, it said, “Ow-ushga-Vance!” Then it planted its steel dagger into the left eye of the dragon—forcing the mighty lizard to lose its sight completely and to open its mouth with a roar from the accompanying pain.

Free from the teeth, Vance fell on the ground, and the dragon slid past his body and continued to slide until it hit the steel wall at the far end of the arena. Timathor disappeared in the cloud of dust that ensued, but the little goblin had given Vance a chance that even Pamela hadn’t foreseen. The injured Adventurer Slayer withstood the great pain from his bleeding wounds and started walking toward the fallen dragon. He knew of only one attack that was strong enough to end this confrontation, and as he approached the squirming lizard, the spectral dagger appeared in his hand again. Time to put it down for good.

Sensing its approaching enemy, the relentless dragon swung its hammer-tail in one last effort to survive. It was a quick attack—sneaky and deadly. But Vance had never forgotten about the tail. He had watched it throughout his approach, and when it swung toward him, he jumped off the ground with his parasitic feet and landed on the back of the dragon. He stepped on the scales and kicked down the wings. Such humiliation was unbearable for the prideful Spirit of Rebellion, so it swung its tail again—against its better judgment. It tried to hammer Vance into a pulp; but the latter jumped off the scaly back, and the former ended up attacking itself with its own tail, in a most comical display of self-destructive ego.

After this self-injury, the hammer-tail sank to the ground, and Vance thrust his spectral dagger forward. Spectral Execution. Into the stomach of the dragon it went, and the countless dark-green cracks followed. They spread all over, drawing patterns like those of parched lands. The dragon roared one last time; then its heavy head hit the dirt, and its wings moved no more. Vance pulled his spectral dagger out and banished it whither it came. Having ensured victory, he backed a few steps and looked at the dragon’s corpse. He was not only feasting his eyes on his accomplishment but also observing a strange phenomenon.

“It’s burning?” he said, slowly.

“As it should,” Pamela’s voice replied.

He stood and watched as the priests booed and as the body of the dragon was consumed by green flames. It was turning into ash, and soon the wind would blow this ash away into a forgotten corner of his mind. Or would it? Before he felt too happy about his victory, he noticed that there was something wrong. The ashes weren’t dissipating with the wind. They were forming a pile that was growing and growing. A veritable mountain formed in front of him out of pure ash. Then this mountain exploded into a storm of green fire, and the dragon that he had slain emerged from inside. It looked exactly the same as before, except that its body was bound with green chains and fetters.

“What’s happening?” Vance said, as his wounds too began to heal.

“Don’t worry,” Pamela’s voice replied. “You did well.”

“The dragon is back from the dead.”

“This is normal. The Spirit of Rebellion never dies. We simply wanted to bind it with the chains that you see now so that it would neither fight nor escape.”

“Does this mean that I achieved Manotic Mastery?”

“Not exactly. But you’re almost there: you only need to draw water from the Gleengiric Well and to douse the fires of the Spirit of Rebellion.”

“The Gleengiric Well?” Vance was a little confused.

“Look around you. It should’ve already materialized.”

Vance turned away from the bound dragon and scanned the arena with his Mental Eye. After a short search, he noticed that there was a well in a secluded corner. It hadn’t been there before, and he concluded that it must have been the Gleengiric Well that Pamela was talking about. He headed to it, and on his way, he noted its strange appearance. It was built of fluorescent stone that was piled up in a circle. Two smooth columns of the same material rose beside the circle, and each had marks portraying the life cycle of several creatures—moths and butterflies were the most easily recognizable. Supported by the two columns, an ebony axle stretched across the top of the well, and a rope was tied to this axle and extended down into the watery darkness.

Vance used a handle to rotate the axle, and a heavy bucket of green water came out of the deep well. He carried this bucket across the arena until he was standing in front of the bound Spirit of Rebellion. Then he looked up with an inward smile. So ferocious had the dragon been during the fight, but now it neither roared nor soared. Even its mouth was chained and couldn’t breathe the tiniest ember. Its docile silence was like music to his ears, and he would’ve found it very enjoyable, had it not been for the priests who were still shouting loudly in the background: “Cease at once! Agent of Chaos!” “Release the dragon and repent for your grave sins!” “Have you forgotten what it truly means to be human? Humans are mediocre! Humans are the meek race!” “You will never find peace without submission!” White noise.

Vance swung the heavy bucket and splashed the green water on the Spirit of Rebellion. He did so calmly, casually, silently, without paying any attention to the desperate priests, who fumed and contorted and pulled their hair out of their scalps. When the Spirit of Rebellion was doused with the water from the Gleengiric Well, it started to shrink and shrivel: the mighty dragon became an earthbound dinosaur; this dinosaur further deflated into a salamander; this salamander was soon demoted into a chameleon; then the poor chameleon, small and powerless as it was, turned into an even smaller and more powerless gecko. No traces remained of the original fire-breathing monstrosity.

The priests started to leave the arena in clear disappointment. Vance laughed at their shameful procession. Then he looked down and found that the small gecko had crawled closer to him. It brushed its body against his parasitic feet as if it were greeting a friend. Seconds later, it started to climb up his pants and through his clothes until its tiny head appeared out of the neck of his shirt. “It seems rather fond of you,” Pamela said, with delight. “And why wouldn’t it? You continued to fight even when it had you in its mouth. I believe you earned its respect.” Pamela’s compliments were sweet, but Vance didn’t pay them much attention. At that moment, he was receiving the system message that he had been waiting for:

Status Alert You have proven your worth and regained dominance over your Manotic Connections, thereby achieving Manotic Mastery. The Dragonsgrief Parasites now see you as a superior being. While they serve you, you shall surely walk like a dragon among men.

***

It was a triumph of will over misfortune. It was an assertion of oneself over the machinations of fate. A lone slayer had been destined to die of a parasitic infection. A lone slayer had been destined to die of an incurable disability. And yet the two deaths combined canceled each other out. And yet the timid hope was transfigured, through the ingenuity of a lunar elf and the relentless efforts of the slayer himself; the timid hope, at first so meaningless and so futile, continued to sprout and grow until it monopolized the sun and forced despair to wilt in the shadows. Was it a return to the proper order of things, or the start of greater mayhem and chaos? “Chais pas, moi!” said the fortuneteller.

After defeating the Spirit of Rebellion, after claiming the golden badge of Manotic Mastery for himself, Vance returned again to Stonethorn Cave. Unlike with the Redspine High, he remembered clearly what had happened, and he knew that he had achieved his goal. For a few minutes, he floated in a blissful world of pure happiness and relief. But then, when the sugary blurriness was over and he reoriented himself in time, he was in for a slightly unpleasant surprise: although it felt as if the fight against the dragon hadn’t taken long, it had in fact consumed many hours of his dying Flame of Revival. What a shock it was when he gauged the flame and learned that he now had only 42 hours left to find and slay his Middlerift Beast.

“How did I lose all these hours?” he said, in disbelief.

“Now, now, you should be happy you didn’t lose more,” Pamela said, sitting beside him on the ground. “Few Helminsmages manage to defeat the Spirit of Rebellion on their first try. I certainly thought you’d need a second or a third. Even if you don’t believe in any gods, you have to consider this a blessing.”

“Yeah … You’re right,” Vance said, reluctantly. “Things could’ve been worse.”

“Much worse! But you somehow pulled through.”

“Yeah, I somehow did.” He felt slightly proud of himself.

“By the way, what was that small Miresian dwarf who appeared to help you?” Pamela asked, without hiding her curiosity. “I haven’t seen anything like this before. In the Gleengiric Domain, a Helminsmage is capable of summoning weapons to their aid … but never other creatures.”

“I helped this dwarf get revenge for his mother,” Vance said, “and well, he’s been following me around ever since.”

“You helped a Miresian dwarf?” Pamela seemed even more puzzled. “Why?”

“I don’t know. It just happened. We helped each other out in a tough time.”

“And this dwarf … He just follows you around? Obeys your orders?”

“So far, yeah. He’s still a child … probably got abandoned by the rest of his tribe and decided to cling to me for protection. He acts as if I’m his tribe leader, though. So I’m not sure what he’s thinking.”

“I guess there are still many things I don’t understand about you, Turncoats.”

“About us?” Vance laughed at what he thought to be a strange comment. “I’d say the little rascal is the weird one here. Not me.”

“Is that so?” Pamela laughed a little. Then she extended her arm toward him. “Either way, it’s time to get up!” She pulled his sleeve as she herself stood up. “Up, up! We wasted enough time talking. I want you to demonstrate to me the full effects of Manotic Mastery. Show me what it’s like to have a real pair of dragon claws at your command!”

Vance laughed as Pamela pulled his sleeve. He got up from the ground and stood straight for a moment. He looked down at his parasitic feet with some anxiety, with some lingering fear that they might move on their own. But then they didn’t. The parasites remained obedient and tame, just as Manotic Mastery promised, and he felt encouraged to start giving them commands. He began to walk, then to run, then to sprint. Suddenly, he realized that he was much faster than normal. Never before had he reached such speeds, even with his human feet. The 100 meters that he once ran in 12 seconds he could now run in 9 or even a fraction above 8.

It was simply astounding. At the end of his sprint, he jumped off the ground and flew several meters in the air. Then he kicked the cave wall and jumped even higher, grabbing the stalactites on the ceiling with his hands. There, at the highest point in the cave, he remained suspended for a few seconds before he let go of the stalactites and landed down on the ground with a graceful step—a light touch produced by a cushion of parasitic grime. Following this landing, he turned to look at Pamela as if he couldn’t believe what was happening, as if he wasn’t sure who had been sprinting and jumping.

“So?” Pamela said. “How does it feel to be in total control?”

“I don’t know how to describe it.” Vance looked down at his feet. “Two days ago, I was crawling in mud like a worm. Now I’m moving like this … It doesn’t feel real. I almost feel like I’ve been reincarnated. I don’t know if I’m making any sense, but it just feels like that.”

“Don’t worry. You’re making perfect sense,” Pamela laughed, with her hand politely placed in front of her flame. “I guess my job here is done. Have fun with your new feet, but remember to feed them well. Ignore their needs, and they’ll turn from blessing to curse … from your best ally to your worst enemy.”

“I’ll remember your advice,” Vance said. “Thank you, Pamela. I couldn’t have made it without your help.”

“Oh, no need to thank me at all,” Pamela said. “I already received a generous payment for my work. If we do meet again, however, I’ll count on you for a few precious samples … for my studies. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Vance laughed.

“And do introduce me to your Miresian friend if we ever get the chance.”

“Sure thing,” he laughed again.

And so without another word, Pamela dragged her long dress and headed into the deep darkness. It was goodbye. She was returning to the remote depths of Stonethorn Cave, where she would spend hours and hours meditating before it was time for her to complete her own Class Ascension. Vance watched her tall figure until her flame dimmed and melted away into its surroundings, and he didn’t turn away until he was sure that she was gone—out of great respect and sincere gratitude for the lunar elf who saved his life. One elf almost kills me; the other virtually revives me. He felt amused by the thought. I guess that’s how life works. He turned to face the cave’s entrance. With his mobility restored, it was time to see if the Dullahans would let him go “without fights or drama” … or if Eleanor had spoken another one of her damnable lies.