After moving another few hundred meters away from the valley Tormacc put Athra down. It was a risk allowing her to touch the ground, as she could potentially be broadcasting their location to monsters, but it was also a risk to keep carrying her. While her Stonesensing abilities could allow monsters to find her, it also allowed her to find monsters, and without Zedna they would be in trouble if they were ambushed, which was why Athra ended up getting down so she could start sweeping the surroundings for enemies.

“Anything?” Tormacc asked.

“Only what is behind us,” Athra said as she used her abilities to check for monsters.

“Good. Let me know if you find anything new.”

Even though Tormacc was no longer carrying Athra anymore their speed actually decreased slightly instead of increased. The reason for that was Athra refrained from using her Stonebending abilities to help her run, and without them, she was a heavy rock person that couldn’t move very quickly. But as long as Zedna was able to keep the monsters in the valley occupied they shouldn’t have to worry about speed very much. Being ambushed was the bigger concern.

A short while later Athra signaled for a stop.

“Monsters ahead. Maybe, they are other scouts.”

“Other scouts? You mean like the group of four-armed trolls we can into before, but keeping watch on the other side of the valley?”

“Yes, is what I said.”

It wasn’t really, but Tormacc had gotten much better at understanding Athra’s staccato speech. And her guess about the monsters up ahead made sense too, so he was inclined to agree with her analysis. If you were going to have scouts at one end of the valley you likely had them at the other end too. Now they just had to figure out how to get past them.

“Do you think we can take them in a fight?” Tormacc asked.

“Yes. We will win. Only, there will be commotion.”

While Athra’s presence had the potential to alert monsters to her position, when she wasn’t actively using her abilities her presence was minimal, only like a light ripple on a lake. That all changed when she started to actively use her abilities. A good comparison was fire on a dark night. If two armies were facing off against each other during a cloudy night there was a good chance that as long as they kept their light sources to a minimum, like only using candles, the other army wouldn’t notice them. But if they started building a big bonfire the other side was sure to hone in on their position.

In this scenario Athra was the candle, but as soon as she started fighting she would turn into a bonfire. If there were any other monsters in the surroundings with Stonesensing abilities they would definitely notice her.

“We don’t have any other options than fighting, right?” Tormacc said. “There’s still only a single path, which makes it easy for Zedna to follow us, but it means we can’t go around, as if we did that you would have to use your Stonebending abilities, which would defeat the whole purpose of evading the trolls.”

“No use thinking too much little Tormacc,” Athra said. “We fight, and if more monsters come, we still fight. Unless big rock comes. Then we run.”

Athra was right, and they could only take it one step at a time. Besides, how likely was it that other monsters were around? Tormacc suspected the odds were in their favor. Since the surrounding area was probably the territory of the monsters in the valley the chances of other monsters being around were slim; and even if they were nearby and did sense Athra they might not want to intrude in the valley’s territory.

Clenching hold of his Hammer Tormacc moved forwards. He thought about swapping weapons but the trolls still had a high enough defense that the blunt force damage would be useful. The skills he had unlocked were also focused more on force than finesse, so swapping weapons didn’t make much sense. His plan to actually kill the trolls was to use skills like Crush, as if he didn’t fully squash them he knew they would simply get back up again.

During the trip through the valley until now he had been gaining a steady drip of Essence from Zedna killing the trolls. It wasn’t a huge amount, as most of her blows weren’t lethal, but it was still substantial, and with the extra few hundred Essence gained he decided to unlock the tier four ability Explosive Blow for 100 Essence, as it seemed useful for fighting monsters that regenerated, as he needed to not only kill them but literally blow their body apart to make sure they didn’t get back up again.

The two abilities revealed by Explosive Blow were Air Compression and Explosive Strikes. Air Compression allowed him to strike the air to create a pressure imbalance and cause an explosion while Explosive Strikes was a short duration buff skill that gave all his attacks a small explosive knockback effect. He had the 200 Essence needed for a tier five skill so he also unlocked Explosive Strikes.

As they got closer they were able to confirm that it was indeed a four-armed troll scouting party. Athra and Tormacc were approaching them from the valley, which meant they were behind enemy lines, so because of that the trolls weren’t focused on their direction and it was rather easy to sneak up on them. There were sixteen of them in total, and Tormacc knew it would be a tense fight. The trolls were rather slow, so it wasn’t that he was afraid of them hitting him. He was more afraid he wouldn’t be able to kill them before his stamina ran out.

Glancing over at Athra he confirmed she was ready to fight, and on his signal they both charged over. Rushing up to the first one Tormacc raised his hammer before bringing it down using Crush, almost flattening the troll. He didn’t have time to inspect the corpse as two more trolls immediately turned on him, but when he took a glance down he realized that the first troll wasn’t actually dead. Its limbs were twitching, and as he watched its flesh slowly started to reform.

Activating his new skill Explosive Strikes, he unleashed a barrage of blows on the four trolls surrounding him, buying him space to use Explosive Blow on his downed opponent. He was worried that wouldn’t even kill it, so after using Explosive Blow he followed up with Sudden Strike combined with Elemental Blade, which was finally able to finish it off.

Because of his focus on the first troll the other four were able to close back in and fully surround him, severely hampering his mobility. Checking out how Athra was doing, Tormacc could see that she was struggling. She was occupying the attention of eleven trolls, but based on her frustrated expression she was having little luck actually killing them. She had a wide variety of skills, but most of them were focused on augmenting her inborn Stonebending abilities. She had very few skills that she could use to deal lethal damage, as her normal battle plan involved wearing down the enemy with a sustained assault.

Most monsters, and people, would perish under the onslaught of endless stone spikes, so that was where she focused her efforts. But these trolls had enough defensive ability that unless you were able to overwhelm them with explosive damage in a short period of time they just kept getting back up. Athra could keep knocking them down, but putting them out for the count was proving more difficult.

Tormacc couldn’t afford to worry about Athra for long; he still had his own battle to contend with. From watching Zedna cut through the four-armed trolls he had underestimated how tough they were. It wasn’t just that he had a hard time breaking their defense but it was more that he had to defend against all four of their arms. Knocking them back was also difficult, partly because of the increased gravity, but thanks to skills like Whirlwind he was holding on, at least temporarily.

The bigger concern was the gravity. Were he outside the mountains he would escape the troll’s encirclement by moving vertically, using skills like Air Step to leave the circle by going up and over it. That was currently not an option for him, and he was feeling the heat, unable to defend against every single attack and forced to let some of the weaker ones through.

Deciding he had to break out of the encirclement he waited for an opportunity, and as soon as one came, he used Stunning Strike on one of the trolls before activating Speed Burst and bowling it over as he tried his best to dodge the attacks of the other three. He was mostly successful but, just as he was about to escape, a punch from a troll clipped his shoulder, causing him to lose all feeling in his left arm.

Pain lanced down his spine, tingling all the way from his toes back up to his head. Wincing, he turned to confront the monsters and prevent them from surrounding him again. He was reasonably certain his arm was only dislocated and not broken but he didn’t have time to fix it during the fight, the trolls already closing in on him. But without two arms, he wasn’t sure he could muster the necessary force to actually kill them.

After some flurried exchanges where Tormacc was constantly in retreat he knew he would have to take a risk. He might be able to fight off the trolls but with one arm he was on the losing end of a battle of attrition. He needed to defeat his group of trolls so he could go help Athra, as he wasn’t sure he could count on her being able to spare the attention to help him. She was fending off eleven trolls after all, while he had only four, or five with the one he had already killed.

Cycling through some of his more powerful skills Tormacc knocked down two of the trolls temporarily. Knocking one of the other two away, he turned to the last one, but instead of attacking it with his hammer he charged it, slamming his currently defunct shoulder into the troll while activating his skill Body Boost to give him a small burst in physical ability.

His vision flashed, a million different colors exploding before his eyes as he screamed in pain. Moments later he felt feeling return to his left hand, and he grasped his hammer in fury, ready to pound the trolls into mincemeat.

Now with two fully-functioning arms and more battle experience against the trolls under his belt Tormacc was able to parlay that into one more dead troll, and with only three enemies in front of him it was only a matter of time until he could cycle through his abilities to finish off the rest before turning to help Athra actually kill her bunch. She had been struggling, pounding on the trolls in a vain attempt to overpower their regeneration. She had eventually killed one of them, but he could see it was a hard won fight.

He had viewed her as perfect when they had been fighting before, but now he realized that she may have just not been pushing herself, the application of intense force something that didn’t come naturally to her. From their interactions and what he knew of her personality she likely didn’t take risky battles. That meant her life was rarely in danger, but it also meant that when she eventually got into a dangerous situation she wasn’t as experienced with overcoming it and pushing past her limits.

The two of them took a few moments to catch their breath, the battle immensely draining despite its short duration. They had both expended a large amount of mental energy to spam abilities, and they were exhausted. Right as they were getting ready to leave and continue on Zedna ran up the path behind them.

“We need to leave,” Zedna said, her expression grim. “I underestimated the threat of the monsters in the valley.”

Tormacc hadn’t expected Zedna to catch up to them that quickly but that wasn’t what made him stare at her in shock. What had him so gob smacked was her right arm, or rather, the fact that it was missing from the elbow down, the stump scabbing over from a potion Zedna had just drank.