"No!" Melody screamed. The Beast holding her mother ignored her pleas.

Even from dozens of feet away, Melody could swear she heard her mother's bones snapping as she watched Bremain tighten his trunk around her trapped form.

"No, please!" Melody tried to run forward, not even noticing Loghain's grip holding her back. He grimaced. He was under oath enforced by his Calling to place Melody's safety above all else. If not, he would be charging in there himself, no matter how much he knew that this fight was outside his ability.

That is far enough.

The world froze as the words scrawled across Melody's vision. More than that, she heard them, felt them. She experienced those words on an almost spiritual level. Everything around her was completely static. The wind was not blowing. Loghain stood unmoving next to her. Melody could see he wasn't even breathing.

Gun, Show yourself.

In front of her, close to where her mother was, still in the grasp of Bremain's trunk, Melody saw Tia appear. She looked much as she had before, but this time she was in a grey sweater and yoga pants, looking like she had been relaxing. Her red, crystalline hair and dark skin as exotic as ever.

Across from her, a swirling cloud of blood-red gas started to gather until it became a roiling, undulating pillar five feet tall. Melody could smell blood and metal from over a hundred feet away. She was familiar with the smell. After all, it smelled like slaughter, and she had been doing that daily for almost a week.

"What is this?! You have no right!" A gravelly, angry voice boomed. It was loud and scarily forceful, but it paled in comparison to Tia.

You must be joking. Tia's words carried a hundred times more weight than Gun's, touching Melody down to her soul.

"I've done nothing wrong! You're the one who stole one of my Called! That's against the rules! You had no right!" For all the impact his voice had, the god of war sounded…whiney.

You want to lecture me on the rules? I am the one who enforces them. You have no claim over Melody, as you are the one who could not control your own Calling. Now this! Champions were not meant to be used this way.

"I don't know what you mean," Gun said, once again sounding like a belligerent, scolded child. "Rules dictate I can empower a Champion whenever I want. They just have to worship me."

In self-defense! The rules say you can empower Champions to defend your mortal Avatar until such a time as your divine essence is no longer bound to it. It was a privilege given to prevent the extinction of what few gods were left! Not so that you could assault people or bandy it around, handing out power-ups like candy to children. You have violated the spirit of the agreement. As Overseer, I hereby revoke this Champions power and forbid you from empowering another without my approval.

"...Fine," Gun muttered. "Didn't need him anyway."

Then his pillar ceased moving as well.

Tia appeared in front of Melody an instant later.

"Thank you!" Melody cried out, hugging the short woman tightly. She had to slip out from under Loghain's still frozen hand.

"Oh, hush. Honestly, he's been doing this for a while, but with much weaker Beasts. Pushing a seventh tier to the border of the ninth tier, almost the limits of mortal power, that was a bit too much." Tia hugged Melody back, patting her gently. "Now, you're not out of the woods yet. Your mom is hurt pretty bad, and that big brute is only going to drop back to seventh tier. I think you can handle it, though, if you're smart about it."

She pulled back, looking Melody in the eye with her scary, strange black orbs. "I'm not going to help with this, ok?"

Melody nodded. She felt like she understood what Tia was getting at. If Tia just fixed this, Melody would depend on her to solve any problems she ran into later. And honestly, Melody didn't want that. She wanted to be strong for herself. All Tia had done was make this a fair fight, and that was fine with Melody.

"Good. Now this will all unfreeze in a moment, so you'll have to think fast, got it?"

"Yup," Melody responded, already pulling up her Interface. She knew what she wanted to do. It was an idea she's had for a while now, for how to deal with something outside of her ability to fight.

"Great! Thanks for picking that class, by the way. Gun still had his fingers in the old one, and he kept fighting me. It was super annoying. Hope you like it."

"It's awesome, Tia! I have so many ideas!"

"That's good. Well, toodles." And she disappeared.

Immediately, the world started up again. Melody glanced up when she heard the sounds grunting from Bremain. He was rapidly shrinking, losing his red aura and spikey extras. He also dropped Arainell's limp body, staggering like he was drunk, which led to a lot of shaking, considering his size.

Focusing back on her Interface, Melody had searched up what she was looking for. Oof. 10,000? I really hope this works. She bought it and quickly went to the Construction menu and enchantments using some of the resources she had been keeping in reserve for a desperate situation.

Rapidly, a small, lumpy-looking ball that was a disgusting mix of purplish-black and muddy red formed in front of her. Next to it was a cylinder roughly as long as the palm of her little hand. Considering the small size, it took less than a minute to form both. Melody was once again grateful for her new class's increased Construction speed. She had made a 'Remote Detonated Explosive'.

"Loghain," Melody turned to the big man, who was staring at the stumbling elephant like a starving man staring at a steak.

His head whipped around. "What?"

"Can you get this in his mouth?" She held out the lumpy ball.

"What? Why?"

"It'll hurt him. I don't know how much, but hopefully enough for us to grab mom and run."

"Melody…" He looked torn. "How sure are you?"

"Very sure." Melody had absolute confidence that, with the enchantments she had shoved into this thing, it would ring Bremain's bell so hard he would barely be able to think.

Loghain looked from her to the elephant, who was shaking his massive head, slowly reorienting himself after coming down from his power-up.

"...Fine. All of you, guard her with your lives. I'm going to get lady Arainell, and then we are booking it out of here. Prepare to disengage at top speed."

"Yes, sir!" Rang out from the echelon of guards. They quickly surrounded Melody in a wall of bodies as Loghian grabbed the ball and sprinted toward Bremain, rapidly closing the distance.

"I need to see!" Melody yelled. She had the trigger, after all.

The guards around her shot glances at each other before one shrugged and lifted her onto his shoulders. She looked toward the fight, just in time to see Loghain, now holding a massive two-handed axe with a blueish-gold half-moon blade in one hand, reach Bremain's feet.

Thick around as a tree trunk on some kind of plant steroid, Those feet could crush Loghain's whole body. Whipping around with an expert form and grace, Loghain slammed the blade of his axe, now coated it in a field of intense blue energy, in between two of the massive toenails on that foot.

As if he had planned it, which Melody was sure he had, Bremain roared in pain. Instantly, Loghain's arm whipped around, executing a perfect throw that ended with Melody's explosive slamming into the roof of Bremain's gaping mouth.

Flinching in surprise, Bremain closed his mouth in shock.

Melody pushed the trigger.

Now, Melody had been a fan of explosions for years. It had all started when she was three, and her father had taken her to an exhibition by a company from Cathor that specialized in all things that went boom. He had wanted her to see the fireworks and other colorful, fun things they were showing off. Melody had liked those, but she had reality loved the weapons demonstrations they had put on. All that raw, physical damage in a small package had amazed her.

So, much like many other things that Melody found interesting, she tried to learn as much as she could. That was how she knew; most of the damage from an explosion wasn't from the fire. It was the physical impact it produced. Put that in an enclosed space, and it was going to hit harder than any hammer out there.

That said, even Melody was surprised by what happened next.

There was a muffled whumph that even she could hear, as far away as she was, and Bremain staggered. He let out a pitiful moan, a waterfall of blood falling from his mouth as he keeled over with a much more impressive, earthshaking boom.

"Oh, my Grim," Melody whispered. She had been expecting him to be concussed. Bremain was a seventh-tier Transcendent Beast that obviously specialized in defense and constitution. She had gone all out, trying to make the explosion as powerful as possible. She didn't think she could do this.

When Melody had first started Absorbing things to harvest what resources she could get, she had noted that some resources were very rare. She hadn't thought about it any farther than that until she stumbled across the options that let her modify items when constructing them. At that point, she had also remembered Loghain's lecture on how physical magic worked. The main point being, it was all about working with the mana already in the material.

So, she had gone looking in her Resources tab for the things that sounded the most dangerous. The tab didn't actually organize anything according to material but according to the mana that was Absorbed. A quick search and an Interface upgrade later, and each mana type had a submenu with all the materials that mana came from attached. Then she went looking through the Resources for anything that caught her eye.

What she had thought would add the most 'oomph' to anything she made, and what she had put into that explosive was Death mana. She had very little of it, only what the tab considered to be 7 units worth, whatever that meant. She had put all of it in there. That, and War, which had apparently come from the wolf she had shot. Using the materials associated with that and adding them to the bomb had given her new options for enchantments to add. She had opted for what the Interface had labeled as 'Killforce' and 'Warformed'. She had hoped it would be enough. Maybe it was just a little too much.

Recovering from her surprise, Melody looked at the prone elephant. If he was that injured…

"Loghain!" Melody yelled at the top of her lungs. "Kill him!"

Whether or not he heard her, Loghain also saw the potential opportunity in Bremain's injuries. He stepped over, squaring himself up with the Beast's exposed neck, and leveled his axe back for a massive swing. A giant, glowing blue axe manifested over the one in his hands, and he swung with such speed and force that the axe blurred down. When it hit Bremain's skin, the blue axe shattered after only cutting in a few inches. The durability, even of the portions of the elephant not covered in shell, was insane. However, it didn't look like the behemoth of a Beast would be getting up anytime soon.

Loghain went to work. Swing after swing, he continued to slowly cut Bremain's head from his body. All told, it only took a few minutes before the elephant stopped breathing, but it felt longer. Mostly because Melody had no idea what condition her mother was in, and none of the guards would let her get any closer until they were sure Bremain was dead.

Finally, after what felt like hours, Loghain shot a nod to the group, and Melody took off at a sprint toward Arainell's collapsed form. She was still surrounded by guards, who only had to commit to a light jog to keep up with her. Once she reached her mother, Melody gasped. The damage was extensive. All four of the wings on Arainell's back were a crumpled mess, and Melody could see several bones sticking out of the mess of feathers. Both her arms were bent at wrong angles, and even though she was still breathing, the noises she was making didn't sound right.

Pulling up the Interface, Melody hoped she had enough experience left for something, anything to help her mother recover. The number of things she could buy was vast. There had to be some medical equipment in there somewhere. When she checked her experience total to see how much was left, she nearly fell over. She had Six. Teen. Million. Experience. How…

The only logical answer was Bremain, but Loghain had killed him. This raised so many questions about how experience worked. Questions she wasn't worried about answering right now since her mom might be dying. She was just glad she had more to work with. Melody got to work.

Going into the store, she began searching for medical equipment. Luckily, there appeared to be a lot of options for her to choose from. Pouring through them, Melody wanted to find something that she had a good guarantee of success with. She finally landed on a 'Sustain and Rejuvenate Pod'. It was 8,500,000 experience and sounded like exactly what she needed. She bought it and started Construction immediately. It was big, so it would take a while. Almost two hours. The whole thing was designed to have someone as big as Loghain fit inside.

Just then. Arainell let out a wet gurgle, and her breathing stopped for a moment before starting again. One of the guards, who had some variety of healing magic, was trying to help her, but it didn't seem to be working. No one here was a Body mage.

Panicking, Melody flipped over to the Nano-Swarm tab and began rapidly pouring all her experience into the level and speed upgrades. In moments she had everything up to 10 once more. Then the Interface locked out.

You have met the requirements for a class-

Melody accepted the message before it could finish. She didn't have time for this!

The second she accepted, the Interface popped back up, reset once again, and she poured more experience into her level. At this point, the speed of the Swarm's Construction had increased visibly. By the time she had bought up to level 10 a third time, The pod was nearing completion. It was an upright hollow cylinder with a door-shaped opening in the side constructed of a white metallic substance she had never seen before. Melody briefly wondered where it had come from. It wasn't something she had Absorbed. She really needed to figure out just exactly how the Swarm, and her class in general, worked.

In the meantime. She had the guards heft her mother into the tall cylindrical device as gently as possible. Realizing she didn't know how to operate the machine, Melody went into the Interface once again. Another upgrade and the Construction tab now held instructions on how to operate anything she had purchased. Luckily this one was simple. She pressed a section of the cylinder's surface, just to the right of the opening.

The pod rapidly began filling with a slightly blue liquid. At the same time, small mechanical appendages unfolded from within the structure, all of them poking and prodding at her mother in different ways. Somehow, the liquid remained in the pod despite the opening. Trying to reach in, Melody's hand pressed up against an invisible force field. Melody noticed that the appendages were rapidly, but carefully, removing her mother's armor. With a glare at all the guards, who quickly turned their backs, Melody consulted her user's guide.

Holding down on the same spot as before caused a sort of holographic display to show up on the side of the cylinder. From there, she made the forcefield opaque. Then, she set the display to show her mother's vital signs and how long it would take the machine to restore her. It was going to be hours. Her mother had many broken bones, along with several severe internal injuries. They would have to wait.