Jack hissed, realizing that the chamber was spinning and he couldn't hear a thing. He gazed up at the boy now grinning down at him with alarm, hoping he hadn't somehow played the fool.

Sapphire eyes that flashed with the brilliance of dragon's flame now gazed down into his own.

And Jack felt the snap he couldn't hear, before everything came to him in a ringing rush, as the youth secured Jack's greatest prize back on his forearm.

Jack grinned sheepishly despite himself as he stumbled back to his feet, soon feeling right as rain, surprised by the warmth that he felt from his copper armband.

"That... was unexpected," Jack said to the youth before him, earning a fierce smile in turn.

"The question is, do we have time to make use of it?"

Jack felt an odd chill with those words. At how quickly the youth realized their imminent peril, already thinking in terms of tactics and consequences, wasting no time on laughter, tears, or any further shouts of exultation beyond that which had nearly deafened Jack.

To this Jack looked back down the hallway, clenching his fist as a dark smile crept across his features. "I think we just might."

He turned to the youth, hiding nothing of the killing intent in his gaze. "I've got a present I think our enemies will absolutely love. But let's be honest. We're both level 1, or 0, in my case, and if my sense of things is right, the bastard about to come for our heads is level 10 at the very least." Jack forced himself to say it. "I know a back exit. Considering that these bastards don't seem to have ever stumbled upon it before with all these winding side corridors and what I figure are hundreds of doors... I think they're unlikely to follow. So, stay and fight? Or flee. I'm leaving it up to you."

The youth's features hardened, his gaze boring into Jack's own. "We fight. We fight and we send those bastards straight to hell!"

Jack couldn't hide his pleased smile. "Damn straight we will. Come on! As fast as you can."

And within seconds they were sprinting for Jack's barricade as fast as they could. Much to the younger man's credit, he didn't do anything but nod and do his best to pitch in when Jack began scooping out massive globs of dough-soft basalt stone and marble tiles, extending his trench as fast as he could as his young companion stacked them up beside Jack's now nearly indestructible 4 foot high barricade.

"Any of your worms still alive? Five minutes before I drain you fools of every last scrap of life...or unlife, as the case may be!" hooted the mocking shout of their enemy as Jack and the boy who's name he still hadn't caught exchanged glances.

"Do you think it will possibly..."

Jack winced, noting how rough and ugly his trench looked. He had extended its width considerably, but it still needed to be deeper for what he planned. "It will work, trust me."

To his credit, the boy just nodded. "My name's Drake, by the way."

"Jack."

"Thanks for saving my life, Jack."

Jack grinned. "Thanks for being a good sport, with these globs of stone clay. They can't be light to carry."

Drake laughed. "It's not too bad. I boosted Strength and Vitality, along with several other stats."

Jack nodded as he scooped and handed off as fast as he could, feeling both mana and time ticking away. "What class did you pick?" he asked.

"Vrala," the kid said, his voice ringing with pride.

Jack blinked at this. "Vrala?" The boy nodded. "Think bard, but not one that tells stories."

"A bard that doesn't tell stories?"

The boy smiled. "Nope. This one doesn't tell them. He makes them."

Jack grinned, playing along. "And how exactly does this Vrala bard forge the tales that bards will sing in grand verse before tavern patrons and noble courts alike?"

The boy's grin widened. "By shaping reality itself with the power of my voice. My roars redefining reality around me, rallying my allies and breaking my foes, whoever they might be."

Jack froze, wasting precious seconds gazing at the young man in awe. "Wait... you have a Shout class? They're not draconic shouts, are they?"

The boy smirked, eyes twinkling in a way that made Jack wonder if he actually understood the reference. Yet what he said surprised Jack even more. "Nope. Titan shouts. The fathers of our world. Their words of power, words of shaping, forged the realm we know. And at first level, I have just begun to tap into the barest whispers of their power."

Jack's eyes widened with something close to awe, even as he raced to place cylindrical blobs of clay evenly spaced in the rough-forged and still too shallow pit, not nearly as deep and large as he would like... but at least the now spiked trench was much wider than it had been, and they were most definitely running out of time.

"That's fantastic!" Jack cheered. "What shouts do you know? And would you mind handing me a few globs of that clay-stone? perfect," Jack said, putting the final touches on his preparations, his smile turning to a worried wince as he locked at the mess he dared to think of as salvation.

"Deafening Roar," Drake said softly, as if he too felt the urgency of their situation, and was just as worried as Jack was. "Do you really think..."

Jack held up his fist, hearing a mocking voice in the distance.

"Ready or not, worms, here I come!"

Jacks heart began to race.

He took a deep breath, quickly turning to the wall and placing the last of the sad looking drooping clay cones into place.

For fastest results, nothing beats crafting under a deadline. Artesenal Manipulation is now Apprentice Rank 2!

Drake was doing his part as well, using the cutlass Jack had handed him to flick off the drooping tips off the cones planted on the shallow pit. "Jack?"

"I know."

"Come out, worms! Your master has a present for you!" Roared a voice in the distance. And Jack was surprised it wasn't even closer. Then his guts twisted as he realized why.

Because this monster was hunting for slimes. Knowing that slimes were ambush predators perhaps better than anyone else...having deliberately sent so many innocent mortals to their deaths, and knowing the results of their transformation a well as anyone.

"Morlin! Something's wrong!"

"Don't use my name, fool!"

"No one's here. Do you understand, boy? Nothing's here! No slimes, no terrified slaves, nothing!"

"Impossible! There are to be no loose ends, Vidrig! Father ordered that! You know that! Now go collect those sweet bundles of experience, as you put it, and let's finish this! We're already running late!"

The slaver hissed and spat. "Stupid little shit. We delayed at your insistence!" Jack heard the muttered words clear as day, so close it sent shivers down his spine as he put the finishing touches in place. But even as he jerked his head up, peering into the crimson mists, neither eyes nor Mage Sight detected his foe nearby.

Drake's fists were clenched. Jack spotted his tremble when anxious blue eyes gazed up into his own. "The pit's barely two feet deep, and clay globs aren't going to do more than twist an ankle, Maybe. And your wall might reach the ceiling, but it looks about ready to collapse. Even the hole we're using to cross back and forth looks about ready to cave in!"

Jack grinned through one of the foot-long, four inch wide slits he had carved into the heart of his wall, just above the point where his earlier barrier topped off, now covered with slabs of barely stable clay.

"I know. It's squashed together and looks like half-melted shit. Now grab my hand and let me lift you over the lip here, before I finish sealing this extra hole off."

"But Jack! What good's a foot-thick wall of clay against a monster?"

Jack winked. "Watch and learn," he said, before whispering a pair of words that had him stumbling to one knee at the sudden drain of potency, even as Drake hissed with awe when a pair of red sigils blazed to sudden fiery life upon the parapet before them.

"Jack. The wall's changed!"

"I know."

"Then why do you look pissed as hell?"

Jack forced himself to chuckle, shaking his head. "Because those Runes cost me more to cast than I really wanted to pay. And I'm not quite done yet," he said, slipping back through the hole that was now as hard and durable as steel with a double handful of the clay stone he had saved, now smoothing over the rough, crevice-covered wall, and adding as fine points as he could to the cone shaped blobs on the ground.

"Pertinax," he whispered, still wincing as a fresh wave of potency left him, for all that it was the tiniest fraction of what he had just sacrificed.

And he wasn't even finished yet.

"I'm coming for you, worms! Don't think you can hide from me!"

Jacks heart skipped a beat, knowing that the killer he both hated and feared was just feet away... before the voice and it's terrible curses faded off once more.

"Check all the side passages before you leave, Vidrig! All the ones I see on my academy map!" Snapped the imperious voice just beyond the gate.

"I know that, whelp!" roared a furious Vidrig, no longer bothering to hide his ire. "You don't like the way I do things, Morlin? You can damned well do it yourself! Let's see how many others will put up with your father's shit!"

"Watch your words, guttersnipe! Unless you want Father's carefully hidden evidence of all the girls you took such liberties with to come to sudden light before the Council."

Morlin chuckled cruelly as Vidrig spat a vile curse. "Your life will be short and bitter indeed, when the Council finds all those bodies, and we both know the Guild doesn't give two figs about homicidal adventurers like you! Hell, they would pay the Council to put you down, just because you make them look so bad! And yes, fool. Father knows where they're all hidden! Now quit back-talking and know your place. Your life of indulgence is sweet only because of my father's forbearance, and best you never forget that!"

Jack wasted no time as he could all but sense danger rapidly approaching.

"Aulum Acidum," he whispered, allowing his Tier 2 Acid Spout spell to rapidly fill up the shallow pit. Because even if his Enhancer variant was quite a bit more potent once per ounce, and with the potential for inconceivably hot flames, there was no time to fill up the shallow drop with anything save a fire-hose's worth of water pressure. And though it was neither flammable nor the essence of dissolution, the gallons of caustic acid pouring forth from the palm of his open hand would melt the flesh off bones just fine, as a certain pack of feral wolves had already proved.

Finesse Check made!

Just barely having time to throw out his camping tarp, settling taughtly, just over the spikes as he whispered a final Obscuro rune to make his tarp covered trap a tiny bit less obvious in the dim light before he turned around and darted back through the opening he had left, surprised and pleased to see Drake already plugging the two by two foot hole with blobs of clay, the terror in his eyes giving evidence as to just how badly the rapidly approaching warrior dressed in toughened beast hide covered in blue lacquer with a glowing crimson gladius in his hand now laughing in their direction terrified him, having been a captive to the monster who had sentenced him to the most grizzly of deaths, less than a half hour ago.

But it didn't stop him from gamely climbing onto the elevated embankment beside Jack and gazing out the slits a good ten feet above the spiked pit below, glaring down down their sneering enemy.

"Oh ho! So it looks like there might be survivors after all! And did I catch sight of one I didn't recognize? I believe I did!"

The warrior's mocking smile turned hard and cold as Jack pressed his hands against the soft clay now turning hard and resilient as steel itself before once more looking out through one of the three narrow slits he could fit his joined fists through, and no more than that.

"You're trespassing upon Academy grounds, fool. On a day that's closed to all Delvers. Guild laws are no longer in effect. That means their protections no longer apply!" The broad-shouldered Vildrig's brutish features twisted in a cruel smile. "So you have two choices. Surrender whatever worms managed to survive their first taste of Regio and swear yourself to my master, or die!"

Jack, trembling with rage he could barely suppress, flashed a fierce smile of his own. He was only at two thirds of his freely available mana, but it would have to do. "I have a third option. How about you and Morlin both go fuck off and die? Because I promise you, Vidrig, as soon as I get out of here, the Guild will definitely be hearing about you using the Academy Delve as a killing ground, and I look forward to seeing your expression once Lord Hecklebart sells you out and we dig up all the bodies you thought so carefully hidden!"

Vidrig froze. Then his body turned beet red as he trembled with killing rage. Glaring at Jack smirking down at him through the murder hole.

"You're dead, worm!" The man screamed, his blade glowing crimson with the promise of death as he roared and charged forward.

Just as Jack had hoped he would.