As the manticore approached, I felt my heartrate increase in excitement. The manticore was level 56, with the body of a lion, but the torso was actually closer to the length of an elephant than a lion. By some presumably magical means, it was able to keep itself in the air with a huge wingspan that cast shadows over all of us.

Rather than land right away, the manticore attacked with its tail first.

The tail was a serpent, about one foot in diameter and twenty feet long at least.

The serpent’s head turned to face us and spat a shower of venomous rain towards us.

“Petrov!” Adia called.

Petrov tried to condense an ice shield above us, but I could tell he wouldn’t have enough time to complete it.

I followed Samantha’s outline, breaking our formation and running towards the smoldering monster carcasses.

Ryker and Hank took the worst of the venom, screaming as the venom burned through their armor and skin.

“Parker! Heal them! River, bring it down, now!”

River was waving her staff in large, circular motions, safe from the falling venom, for now.

I could feel the ambient mana around us gathering, sucked towards River’s hands, pooling into a single, fiery whip.

“Stand back!” she called. As more mana pooled towards her, the tip of the whip, originally red, turned blue.

The heat became suffocating, and the manticore was already wheeling around for a second pass above us, about thirty feet in the air.

Just as the serpent head on the tail of the manticore readied itself to spit, River swung her whip.

The whip lashed out almost faster than I could follow, just barely reaching around the bone that connected the manticore’s left wing to its body.

The creature reeled, canceling its venomous spit halfway through. It flapped its wings furiously, lifting River up into the air.

Hank ran over, grabbing River’s foot and yanking, hard.

River groaned, but the whip held tight. Then, Hank started to get lifted off his feet as well.

“Jarek! Rock bears in the woods!” I turned, heeding Adia’s warning, just in time to see a tree stump the thickness of my torso flying towards me.

I poured mana into Agility, and rushed towards my attackers. They looked like grizzly bears, but like the badgers we had encountered already, they seemed to be made of stone. The two bears moved on all fours, barreling towards me.

It seemed these were the elites that the manticore had been holding in reserve. Two level 45 bears—basically tanks that could distract us long enough to for the manticore to finish us off.

If that was the plan, then the manticore was woefully underestimating me.

I poured my mana into Agility and Strength, dodging the bears’ initial charges and slicing at the weak point that Samantha highlighted in the nearest bear.

My blade met heavy resistance, but thanks to my increased Strength, I was able to cut a crucial tendon in the bear’s rear leg.

Both bears snarled and spun towards me, but I was already on the move, turning with them and placing one bear between me and the wounded bear.

This time, when the front bear raced at me, I acted as if I would flee, but then I spun, dug my heel in the dirt, and braced the pommel of my blade against my shoulder, pointing the sword directly at the attacking bear, modulating mana to gain even more Physical Defense and Strength.

The bear had no time to dodge, and it rammed its chest up against my blade.

I was immediately forced to one knee, as the full weight of a rock bear pressed down on me.

Fortunately, or, rather, thanks to Samantha, the blade pierced the rock bear’s heart—otherwise, one swipe from one of the massive paws would have killed me.

The other rock bear growled in anger. I stumbled up to my feet, dislodging my sword with great difficulty.

I was helped by the fact that the remaining bear was still limping. When it reached me, I stabbed my sword directly into its snarling mouth, and pierced its brain.

With the two rock bears dealt with, I took advantage of a small breather to recoup my mana and observe the battle against the manticore.

The manticore was grounded, with its left wing completely shorn off. Amos, Ryker, and Hank stood facing its front. The manticore had a face that was a mix of a human and a lion, except the head was easily twice the size of a normal lion head, making the creature's features abnormally large. Its mouth was locked in a twisted snarl, revealing rows of dangerously sharp teeth.

Meanwhile, Adia was facing the creature's second head--the serpent. She stood protectively between the manticore and Parker, Petrov, and a very pale-looking River.

Petrov had created a snowstorm that was redirecting the manticore’s gobs of venom, and Adia was sparring with the serpent’s head, which would flash towards the physically weaker players intermittently.

Now that I was so close to the manticore, I could fully appreciate just how massive it was.

I moved, stealthily, towards the manticore, hoping to catch it unawares. Even though I was out of the manticore’s line of sight, it somehow still sensed my approach, recalling its tail and sending a shower of venom towards me.

I dodged the venom easily, putting even more mana into Agility so that I could dodge the incoming serpent head barreling towards me.

I barely dodged the serpent’s gaping jaws, but then I had time for my counterattack. With a heavy swing of my sword, I cut directly at the serpent’s neck.

To my disappointment, my sword only dug a few inches deep—enough to draw the whole manticore’s attention, and another furious hiss—but that was it.

As the manticore turned to face me, Hank’s massive hammer rammed into its body.

The heavy blow forced the manticore to stumble backwards, which was the opening Ryker and Amos were looking for.

They struck simultaneously, Ryker swinging his battle-axe towards the lion’s mane, and Amos stabbing his sword deep into the manticore’s neck.

Another shower of venom flew towards me, with a wide enough spread that there was no easy way to dodge without retreating.

Rather than retreat, I activated the skill of the Vampiric Blade, focusing on covering my face and eyes as I charged and started hacking at the serpent in front of me.

I could feel my arms burning from the venom, and I could hear the sound of my own sizzling flesh.

Ignoring the pain, I dodged around the serpent’s head and started tearing through scales with the Vampiric Blade.

Every 10 HP that I took from the manticore, I received 1 mana back. Then, with every point of mana that returned to me through the Vampiric blade, I reinvested it into my Strength stat.

Thirty seconds after activating the Vampiric Blade, my total stats were inflated to higher than they had ever been.

The serpent’s neck was shredded to the bone, and with a final blow, I decapitated the snake.

The manticore roared.

It was a terrifying sound, a combination of a lion’s roar and a human’s pained yell.

Ignoring Hank, Amos, and Ryker, it spun on a dime and charged me.

I started to dodge, but then I saw that my outline hadn’t budged.

Samantha said.

At my feet, a massive icicle appeared out of the ground, honed to an incredibly sharp frozen point. The manticore’s unnervingly human eyes widened, but it had already committed to its leap towards me. It flapped its remaining wing, turning off-course slightly, before its charge carried itself into the icicle.

Samantha said.

Breaking out of my shock, I followed Samantha’s combat outline, running up the angled icicle pointing out of the ground, and stabbing my sword directly past the three rows of teeth in the manticore’s human-like mouth, up, and into the brain.

Just as I did, I saw a second icicle at my feet stabbing into the manticore’s heart.

Level up!

Congratulations for killing a Region Lord. +5 Available Stat Points

“Holy shit,” Parker breathed, glancing at me—still standing on an icicle about two feet off the ground, with my forearm reaching into the manticore’s mouth, which was left in an anguished expression. “He didn’t even dodge.”

I yanked my sword free, and glanced around, checking for any remaining enemies.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Adia shouted, coming over to me. “What was that about? Face down a manticore? You could have died! Just for a final kill bonus?”

“Think of it like a sixth sense,” I said. “I knew I would be fine.”

Petrov came over and clapped a hand on my back, a strange glint in his eye. “Well done, Jarek.” To my surprise, he didn’t look pissed that I had stolen the kill from him. Only the person who dealt the killing blow would receive the +5 Stat Points.

I felt a few strange glances from everybody else.

Adia picked up the City Token that had appeared at the foot of the corpse, along with a D-rank Alchemy recipe for a poison.

“What? Is that it? Where’s the loot?” Amos asked, glancing around suspiciously at each one of us.

“The corpse is the loot,” Parker said. “The Manticore core—ahem, get it?”

River gestured impatiently, and Parker continued, “Yeah, so the manticore core is buried in the abdomen. This is a D-rank beast, which means virtually every part of the corpse is a D-rank crafting material. The hide and bones can be used by rune masters, and the blood and organs can be used by alchemists to make all kinds of different potions. There’s a certain logic to it, you know—the manticore didn’t fight with many skills, just brute force, so the main benefits are going to be what we can glean from the body—with the one exception of the poison recipe.”

As Adia used her Communication Amulet to contact our teleportation mage, I started loading the manticore carcass into my Interdimensional Pouch. The corpse took up all the space in my pouch, so it was a bloody process to split it between my pouch and another pouch that Lord Ignatius had graciously lent us.

Once everything looked like it was on track, I finally pulled up my stat sheet. With each level, I automatically gained +1 HP, +3 Mana Pool, +1 Mana Regeneration, AND a free point per level.

On top of that, I had 5 more free points to allocate from defeating the Region Lord. I split all six free points equally between Mana Regeneration and Mana Pool, and surveyed the results.

Name:

Jarek

Level:

20

HP:

30/30

Physical Defense:

18 (+2)

Strength:

20 (+5)

Mental Power:

11

Dexterity:

10 (+4)

Agility:

10 (+7)

Perception:

20

Mana Pool:

52

Mana Regeneration:

28 (+6)

Available Points:

0

Coins:

6,462,800

Class:

Mana Modulator (D-rank)

Profession:

Rune Master

(E-rank)

Titles:

Region Lord (E-rank)

Skills and Spells:

Identify (E-rank)

Mana Modulation (D-rank Core)

Death’s Defier (A-rank)

Mana Sensing (E-rank)

Healthy Magic (E-rank)

Affinities:

Internal Mana (D-rank Low), External Unattributed Mana (E-rank Low)

Equipment:

Vampiric Blade (D-rank): +5 Strength, +5 Agility.

Rune Master’s Knife (E-rank): +2 Dexterity; +2 Mana Regen.

Rune Master’s Ring (E-rank): +2 Dexterity; +2 Mana Regen.

Orc Helmet (F-rank): +2 Physical Defense

Magician’s Robes (F-rank): +2 Mana Regen.

Orc Boots (F-rank): +2 Agility

Interdimensional Pouch (E-rank):