Solera shouted, taking a wild swing at the tiger as his feet frantically scrabbled away at the bed. He was able to tumble over onto the ground and narrowly dodge the monster’s swipe. Tearing, ripping noises rang out as the sheets were shredded into confetti.

Before Solera could get up, the tiger leapt at him again with its fangs bared. He wrapped his second hand around the sword hilt and slashed with as much force as a boy on the ground possibly could. The tiger still landed on him, its claws pattering onto the ground just centimeters from Solera’s face. It had a long gash running from its torso up to the bottom of its neck where Solera’s sword had cut it, and its eyes gleamed a feral viciousness no human could ever match up to.

Solera flipped the sword around, stabbing it into the ground at a diagonal angle between him and the tiger to protect himself while his legs retracted back into his stomach in preparation for a kick. His face was a contortion of both despair and rage. Again! Stuck on the ground, his enemy on top, again! Attacked in a fortress, again! Without Chianti or Macaw or Verreaux or anyone else, again!

The singular difference was this time, both his Lake and his power crystal were nearly empty!

The sword came out of the ground at the same moment his feet slammed into the tiger’s belly and at the same moment the tiger’s gaping maw pounced downwards around the sword towards his head. The tiger’s belly was its weakest point, but it still felt like iron to Solera’s bare feet. The tiger’s neck, too, felt like tough meat, and Solera’s sword stopped cutting into it almost as soon as it made contact. He was able to knock the jaws of certain death away, but it was so close that the whiskers on its chin had brushed past Solera’s forehead. He could feel the hot breath of the savage beast passing through his hair, and wondered in passing how Chip felt the wind blowing past his exosuit.

The moment passed, and Solera used the fraction of the second he had bought to twist around and ledge his feet around the tiger and kick himself into a roll that brought him out from under the animal. As he rolled, his sword swiped at it again, creating a small red line on the tiger’s chest.

As he rose to his feet, he could see sharp black stalagmites rising out of the ground, stabbing through the air and curving towards a shape he could not clearly make out because blood was trickling down from his forehead onto the side of his left eyelid. It didn’t matter, though. He chopped at the tiger, sending it down to the ground, and chopped again, creating another line of red in its orange-black-white fur. Again, and again, and again. The red lines became red puddles, and the red puddles started to gleam with white flecks as he chopped into bone.

Why was he so weak that he could not even chop through a tiger? No, why was this tiger so sturdy? No, why was a tiger even here? Solera didn’t know, but he kept swinging. He was looking at the tiger’s eyes, just like he did with Jogujo’s patients. He was looking to see if it was still alive.

It was alive, but for some reason, the animal just laid there as Solera chopped. Maybe he had disabled it somehow. Or maybe it had just given up on life, and was waiting to die.

Solera stopped, his breath ragged. The tiger was still breathing, but the breaths were broken, ragged gasps that sounded like they could stop at any moment. As Solera recovered his bearings, he turned around to look at the rest of the room.

The black oil of Chip’s exosuit had created multiple spikes around Guinness’s bed, forming a sort of tent. They shielded Guinness from the other two tigers and a helmeted man, who was blasting a flamestream at a black silhouette.

A tiger glanced back at Solera, but by then his sword was already arcing down into the controller’s shoulder. His body was a lot softer than the tiger’s, so the sword cut straight to the bone and even cracked it before stopping. The man toppled to the ground like a bag of rice. Solera stabbed his sword straight into the channeler’s neck the moment he fell to the floor.

From where the fire had been came black claws shaped like spider legs, piercing into the tigers’ feet with a sick squishing sound. They were immobilized. Blood sprayed into the air as a flurry of semiliquid spikes shredded them into fur and detritus.

A black figure stepped out, morphing back into an expressionless Chip. Around him, Solera could see the charred bodies of another three soldiers. Solera would have thought this sight would have been very striking if Chip was not clearly wearing a very skintight black uniform. Without a word, Chip walked right past Solera to Guinness’s bed. The oil merged seamlessly into his body, transforming back into his neat robes and slicked hair.

“Get yourself cleaned up.” Chip said while he slapped Guinness awake. “We only came across this small team, but more tunnels must have been opened up elsewhere.”

Solera stared at Guinness, dumbfounded and a little frustrated. While he was fighting desperately for his life, Guinness was actually snoring away!

And Chip! He had dealt with three soldiers and two tigers and who knew how many Vigors, on his own! Yet right now, he was completely at ease. His expression didn’t even change, although Solera wondered if his face was actually covered by that mystical exosuit.

“Solera. Snap out of it and clean up.” Chip repeated. “We don’t have much time here.”

“Got it, Chip.” Solera wiped the blood out of his eye and looked himself over. There were several lacerations on his legs that he had never noticed, along with a short, but deep gash along his left arm from the tiger claw when he had rolled off the bed. His back throbbed with a dull pain from when he had tumbled out of his bed, but other than that he seemed alright.

The power crystal had only a few hours worth of power at most, but Solera still felt much better as the verdant power rushed into his Lake. The various pains in his body instantly vanished, including forehead pain he didn’t even know he had instantly vanished. Solera frowned. His free hand reached up to touch his forehead. It came away, slick with blood.

Solera glanced back at the tiger behind him. Its diced organs were clearly visible and it lay in a slowly growing pool of blood. The tiger seemed to have died in the interval between Solera charging away and him looking back. He could see blood matting the whiskers on the tiger’s chin.

Solera massaged his forehead, astonished. These monsters had been engineered to be killing machines! Even their hair could cut! Him beating this particular tiger was probably more luck than skill.

Guinness whimpered. Solera turned his head and saw Guinness staring at the bodies of the burnt humans. He seemed to have in his eyes a sense of primal fear, one surpassing anything Solera could ever feel himself.

Solera bent down to pick up a shred of what had been his bed. He dabbed at his wounds with them, wondering if he should use any of the meager amount of verdant power in his Lake to heal his current wounds.

No, he wouldn’t, not before sizing up the situation at hand. It was a meager amount of power, not even enough to overpower for a single attack, but perhaps he could use it to heal something more serious down the line. Damn it! Damn it damn it damn it! Why did the enemy choose today to attack? Originally, Solera had decided that using the power crystal only for cultivation which it was not even suited for was a complete waste, and he could help save lives with the healforce the crystal imparted instead. But he had been caught completely off guard by this attack from the blue.

“Solera, let’s go. Use this, Guinness, and don’t lose it.” Chip grew a shiny black battleaxe out of his arm and handed it to Guinness. Without any further talk, Chip walked out of the room, as if he was taking a morning stroll. Solera hurriedly strapped on his boots, grabbing his Truesight goggles and backpack as he ran out.

This particular section of the tunnels was deserted, but Solera could hear the clangs of weapons and shouts from above. Directly on top of them was the fortress, so the noises definitely didn’t mean anything good.

“We need to find Macaw. He just left, so he shouldn’t be that far away.” Chip cocked his head, listening to the sounds of fighting above them. “Up there.”

As they ran to a ladder that would take them into the bottom of the fortress, Solera struggled to strap on his Truesight goggles. The upper rim pressed into his raw forehead, creating twinges of pain.

Truesight goggles could only see through powerless items. Solera gazed upwards, but could make out nothing but the green shine of the power within the fortress itself.

CLANG!

Solera snapped his head back down to see a black spike jutting out from Chip’s leg. It had stabbed towards something far down the hall. Solera squinted. It was the face of a woman, but he could barely make out the colorless robes and hood she wore.

“So it is ~you~, Elijah.” The woman had an enchantingly rich voice, and spoke as if she was singing, but when he heard her, Solera’s nerves couldn’t help but numb. This woman… was dangerous!

Her face floated there, impassively smiling. She was wearing goggles that obscured her eyes. After a moment, Solera realized that she was wearing insulator robes which rendered her invisible to his Truesight goggles. He stripped them off, turning the colorless walls back into a dark shade of brown and the area where the woman’s body should have been into clean, white robes.

She had straight blonde hair poking out around her Truesight goggles, and on her cheek was a strange tattoo, a rectangle whose corners looked like they had been stretched, with two round knobs poking out from opposite ends.

“Hmph.” Chip’s voice remained calm on the surface, but Solera could detect the anger hiding below. “Those goggles… you suck even dead men dry now?”

The woman took off her hood with a husky laugh, revealing a beautiful face that was too young to be old, but also too old to be young. “Sucking men dry… Are you saying I’m some slut?”

“And a whore.” Chip leaped forward, black ribbons shooting out from all over his body towards her. Solera extended his arm out to block Guinness from extending. Sweat beaded off his face.

When he looked at this woman, he felt absolute fear! He didn’t know what this woman’s relationship to Chip was, but his very core was absolutely certain that it was incredibly bad luck to run into her. Her demeanor exerted an invisible, yet enormous pressure on his mind. On the surface she looked harmless, but the moment she clashed with Chip, Solera’s instincts were proven right.

CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG! Chip’s ribbons and her arms made a cloud of dancing blurs and a discord of countless clashes of metal. Solera thought she was wielding two short swords, but he really couldn’t be sure.

“Elijah, Elijah, Elijah!” The woman called out sweetly as she blocked his blows. “Your mouth is dirty as ever, but it’s like this strange toy of yours has given you the great big thing you always wished you had! You actually want to fight me, an immortal?”

Chip said nothing, but his blows visibly intensified. Shallow nicks started to appear in the tunnel walls from their clashes. Little flecks of mud flew everywhere, with one landing on Solera’s cheek.

“Did you think you could kill me today? Or do you think you have to fight today, because I tracked you down here to kill you?” The woman laughed, stepping forward with her left shoulder pressing towards Chip. Her left arm made an unfathomably powerful circular swipe from the bottom to up that knocked Chip and all of his ribbons backwards a meter.

“I could have killed you any time, Elijah! Finding you would have been so easy! But I never did, because,” her eyes narrowed as she smiled widely, “why should I execute a fly like you?”

Chip’s ribbons swayed rhythmically, like a grasshopper waiting to strike at its prey.

“Still sucking men dry. Still lying your lies. Elia, I know you would have killed me a thousand times over if you could have.” Chip leaped forward again. Hundreds of his ribbons whipped towards the woman from all directions in a pattern very much resembling a blooming flower.

Elia’s hands, which did indeed grip two short swords, turned into a blur again.

“Oh, Elijah! Thinking I couldn’t kill you before. You’re at that stage of life where you think you are smarter than everything that came before you!” Elia’s smile was so wide, her eyes had turned into slits. “What do you call yourself now? You did like calling yourself Circuit. And Chip. With that chip on your shoulder, that must be the name you chose, isn’t it? Chip?!”

Solera tugged on Guinness’s shirt, his mouth a thin, hard line. This was an immortal in front of them. Whether Chip won or lost, Solera and Guinness would be entirely useless! If this Elia won, she could slay the two of them without a modicum of effort! They had to run!

They turned and fled back into the tunnel system, leaving Chip to fend for himself. Solera felt no remorse at all; what they faced was an immortal! If it had been a normal soldier or even a King monster, Solera would have stayed. But in a fight with an immortal, he was nothing but dead weight. If he stayed, he could only die. Besides, it looked like Chip’s personal problem. He wanted nothing to do with it.

Right as they ran out into the open, a loud cracking sound emerged from the fortress, which was now several hundred meters away from them. A thin, but clearly visible crack had appeared in the walls, where Solera knew Chip and the immortal were fighting. He realized his back was matted with sweat, and shivered before scanning the area for any soldiers of Eden.

The grass was shorter this far from the fortress, but still nearly as tall as Solera was. All around him, he could see the ripples in the grass created by the movements of people and monsters. Solera looked at the ripples, his brow furrowed. He had no way of telling what hid within the rustling grass was ally or enemy, so it was best to stay far away from them and find a large group of Eden soldiers he and Guinness could link up with.

“Soleh-ra!” Guinness shouted, pointing off to the top of the hill. After peering closely, Solera could see a throng of soldiers poking out from behind a rocky outcropping. Among them, he could clearly see Luthor!

Without further delay, Solera led Guinness towards the group, careful to avoid drawing near any ripples in the grass. The others were only several hundred meters away, easily reachable by the two of them. If they were careful and quick, it was extremely unlikely they would have to run into any enemies on the way.

His hopes were dashed when a wind blade blasted out from right in front of them into the distance, where some imps were fighting a large bird. A piece of mud and grass turned around, revealing itself to be a channeler in full camouflage. She seemed to be as surprised to see them as Solera was to see her.

Sssssssssss-! Solera dove to the side, narrowly dodging the channeler’s wind blade. A quick roll had him back on his feet and charging towards her. The channeler was already charging up power into her gauntlet for another shot, a grim look on her face. Solera was only ten meters away, and fast closing in for the kill. If she missed again, she would have no option but to die.

Her gauntlet glowed a bright shade of green, causing Solera to narrow his eyes. Just as he was about to dodge, the channeler’s arms flailed, and she was dragged onto the ground. A vine-like blade of grass had wrapped itself around her foot and yanked her off balance! His dodge instantly changed into a leap towards her, his sword stabbing straight for her lungs, but his killing blow was batted aside by a frantic movement of her gauntleted arm! Her body was thrashing, struggling to wrench itself free of the spirit grass’s grip.

“AAHHHHH!”

Before Solera could fully process why Guinness was shouting from behind him, a giant rock about half his size and definitely over a hundred kilograms crashed into the channeler and crushed her into the ground. Her legs poked out from the mud, faintly twitching. She had overpowered to defend against the impact, and was still alive, albeit mortally wounded.

Guinness brushed past Solera and gripped both hands around the rock. He lifted it up into the air above his head, and then threw it down again with another loud yell. Solera gaped in shock, his mind simply unable to comprehend the inhuman display of strength Guinness had just made.