The pressure against Hunter’s body popped like a soap bubble. He stumbled forward from the lack of resistance and had to catch himself against the wall. He was exhausted from the effort but cheerful at the result. It wasn’t the new Path or the attribute gains that were rewarding. It was the knowledge that he made the right decision. Hunter finally thought he had an inkling of why teachers and coaches told him that nothing worth having is easy to acquire.

Rallying against his sudden fatigue, he stood up to his full height. He had a mission, and it felt good that he was doing it for his own reasons rather than at the behest of some arcane faction. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough to sustain him for the short term.

Instead of walking to the armory, he made a beeline for the crafting area. If he would be outside the Sanctuary for a while, he wanted to stock up on provisions. When he entered, he went toward the station he had assumed was related to potion-making. Sure enough, he found a bunch of different glass vials and bulbs. They were empty and had cork stoppers to prevent spillage.

He grabbed about a dozen of each and stashed them inside his belt. As soon as they slipped into a pouch, they disappeared from his fingers. While his hand was inside, he felt that he could summon them back to his hand with a thought. Satisfied, he left the crafting zone and crossed the central room to enter the grove. He picked up all the apples on the ground and stuffed them into his storage. When he had enough rations to last him a couple of weeks, he started pulling out the glasswork he had taken from the crafting area.

He slowly filled each one with water from the fountain. He marveled at how well-stocked the Sanctuary was. No matter how many apples he picked up or how much water he siphoned, the supply never decreased. More apples dropped to the grassy ground as soon as he had taken all of them and the water in the fountain looked unchanged despite the gallons of water he had retrieved.

When he was finished, he left the grove and made his way to the front entrance. He still felt a tugging from his equipment when he passed the armory, but its hunger was blessedly diminished. Before he left the Sanctuary, he sat in a lotus position in the center of the bell tower. With his newfound freedom, he wanted to earn some levels in Cleanse and Meditation before he left. Both his stamina and mana had been drained by the battle against his armor.

Now that his head seemed clearer than before, he realized that he had been neglecting both skills for some time. They were a measly level two and three while Covetous Eyes was level eight, and Midas Touch was level four. Now that he decided to stay unaffiliated until he had more information, he wanted to make sure his skills reflected the sentiment. Additionally, his new Path, Body of Will only required ten points to complete out. He had three points in the bank, and if he alternated Meditation and Cleanse until they were level five, he would be most of the way there. After that, he would hunt some imps until the sun went down and hopefully raise some of his combat skills by enough to complete out the Path.

With a plan in place, Hunter started to alternate between his two Archive-given skills. It took a few hours to level them both to five, but he was helped along by his higher Intelligence and Willpower. The former gave him a larger mana pool, while the latter gave him better regeneration. After the new boost to Willpower, mana was his fastest regenerating resource.

He didn’t forget to account for the boost to skill gains that the Sanctuary provided. He briefly toyed with the idea of practicing some of his swordplay within reach of its skill-boosting aura, but he had already noticed that actual fights seemed to level his skills far more quickly. When he had been running and sprinting away from danger, the skills have leveled slowly. When he used those same skills during a fight, he gained a point in every conflict. It was an annoying but entirely logical way to progress. The Archives wanted him to fight demons—not sit on his ass in a Sanctuary.

Feeling refreshed from his efforts, Hunter stood up from his meditative position. He took one last look over his gear and then pushed aside the doors to the Sanctuary. The teenager studied the terrain in front of him and tried to reconcile it with his memory of Snodgrass Mountain. From what he remembered, Snodgrass wasn’t a large mountain in comparison to many of the others in Colorado. It had two prominent peaks, but the biggest had a pretty gradual incline that ran parallel to the town of Crested Butte. However, once you reached the top, there was a steep drop off. That meant there was only one real path to the peak.

The trails curled all the way to where the Sanctuary was located. If he were frank, the building was a perfect staging point for ascending the mountain. If Rift’s worked like a video-game dungeon, then he would face enemies in escalating strength as he went up. At the lowest part of the rifts, imps were rampant. They scavenged for riches or fought amongst each other for dominance. It would be these denizens that he targeted first.

Nodding to himself, he left the Sanctuary and broke into a jog. He had enough stamina now that maintaining his current pace shouldn’t be detrimental to his performance against the imps. The creatures had powerful magical abilities, but they were poor melee fighters. With his new equipment, he should be able to take on two or three of them with no issues. Besides, he wanted to level his passive running skill. When he acquired two more points, he would be able to complete his new Path.

He had been jogging for about thirty minutes when he chanced upon his first set of opponents. Luckily, he spotted them before they saw him. There were three imps that were dancing manically around a bonfire of emerald fire. Hunter spotted a spit erected over the fire. One demon paused its dancing so that it could turn the spit.

Above the fire, the corpse of a small deer was fastened. It was the first time Hunter had seen an imp trying to eat something. The scene brought him up short. He assumed they had to get sustenance somehow, but he hadn’t thought about what such an arrangement would look like. He had imagined they cannibalized each other or subsisted off of mana. It was actually a relief to know that they had biological imperatives like everything else. He did feel a bit of pity for the deer, though.

Instead of attacking the group with a bang, Hunter wanted to develop his stealth skills. He had already seen his padded tunic and trousers shift color until they were a dark gray. It matched the ash-colored snow that blanketed the ground. It was exciting but almost useless since he was wearing shiny gold armor that screamed, “Hi! I’m right here! Please shoot the big golden target!”

Hunter made a wide circle around the cackling demons until he was approaching them from behind. They were so focused on their upcoming meal that he wasn’t discovered. It was his first opportunity to experience the muffling effect of his boots, and it was interesting to learn that they didn’t make any noise even when he stepped on hidden branches or splashed into concealed puddles of melted snow.

The teenager had read storied about approaching prey from ‘upwind,’ but he had no idea what that meant, much less how to accomplish it. Instead, he settled on just approaching the demons from behind. There was one imp directly in front of him and another on either side as he crept closer. He received a number of notifications informing him that his level of stealth was increasing, but he dismissed them.

When he got with striking range of the first imp, he struck like a viper. His Sword of Avarice snaked out and pierced the demon where its blackened heart was located. He received a notification for his efforts, but it wasn’t important enough to distract Hunter. Instead of following up on the attack, he flexed his legs and leaped to the side while throwing his right hand out. A fireball was summoned into his palm, and he let it fly into the center of the bonfire.

Hunter had seen the explosive effect caused by two types of Flame of Avarice met each other, and he wasn’t disappointed. When his fireball hit the bonfire, they exploded with catastrophic effect. The boom from the two opposing forces reverberated across the mountain, and a wave of green fire spread from the epicenter.

Even though Hunter had already expected the reaction, he wasn’t prepared for the severity. The fire blew away the two living imps and then continued its deadly march. The flames shot by Hunter and their passing caused him to scream. He put an armored arm up to block some of the damage, but it wasn’t nearly enough. The fire seared parts of his face and set his hair alight. He wanted to roll over into a patch of snow, but the heat had turned everything nearby into steam.

Hunter stumbled to his feet and dropped his sword so that he could frantically pat his hair. The acrid stench of burning hair and flesh was overwhelming, and he was trying to suppress his growing panic. He had been hurt before, but it was somehow different when it was his face that was burning.

He was able to put out his flaming hair, but he could already feel the burns on his scalp. He checked his health and found that he had burned through a quarter of it. He saw it ticking lower a point at a time, and his heart clenched.

Seeking to stop his health from dropping lower, he reached into a pouch at his waist and pulled out a vial of water. He pulled the cork off with his teeth and poured the cool liquid over his scalp and face. The relief was immediate. The flesh still pulled painfully with every small movement, but at least the burning edge of the pain had been soothed. He sighed in relief and put the empty flask back into storage.

He checked his surroundings for the first time and found that all of the imps had been killed. The snow had melted in a wide circle all around him. The ground closest to the bonfire had been cracked by the heat, and there was no sign of imps former meal. He reached down to collect his sword and he heard a damaged tree in the distance as it cracked and fell to the ground with a rumble.

Note to self: get a fucking helmet and don’t throw fireballs at bonfires.

As Hunter was grumbling to himself, a roar answered the falling tree’s challenge. The teenager looked up at the source of the sound, and he saw the effects of something massive making its way toward him. Whatever it was, trees were being tossed aside like kindling as it ran toward his position.

Hunter wanted to run, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to escape what was coming.