The giants — jotunn — saw them and almost instantly, slowed down, legs spread wide like a surfer, and slamming its club into the ground and dragging it behind like some berserk plow, rending the stone with an enormous roar of breaking granite as it used the weapon to slow its enormous momentum.

So that it could turn towards Lukas.

The ground shook under the violence of their very presence.

“Muspels!” Tanya shrieked, “We’ve to leave. As quickly as we can!”

Lukas glanced at the dome that Mori was still holding around themselves, while Kradir continued with the extraction. Unlike the ifrits, these jotunn, or more particularly, muspels, would very much be able to demolish that dome with ease. One hit from those clubs and it’d shatter like a house of cards.

Right. That made his choice simple. Suicidal, but simple.

He looked at Tanya, who was already creating more of those assault spheres, ready to rain fire at a moment’s notice. Technically, he mused, he could do the same if he tried.

Not the time, he scolded himself. Having his mind rush to mindless pursuits was an easy way to get himself killed. Each of those muspels were flexing muscles the size of tree trunks and moved with a technique perfect to use the full force of its unthinkably powerful body. Just one punch was equivalent to getting hit by a speeding truck in the face.

And yet all he could think of was how impressive he’d look while standing on a hill of muspel corpses.

“Your curse is such a pain in the ass, Inanna,” He muttered to himself and quickly analyzed his opponents.

MUSPEL

Bipedal, lifeforce-producing organisms with innate fire mana-forges. Characterized by extreme physical strength and lack of rationality.

GARM

Quadrupedal, lifeforce-producing organisms with innate fire mana-forges. Weak in strength, but impressive agility and regeneration.

IFRIT

Soul Architecture shows 100% similarity to IFRIT from Monster Prototype Array

That was informative, He thought and looked up at Tanya and yelled, “They need more time, so ignore the ifrits. Stick to bombing the big guys and avoid hitting me, if possible.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “I’ll try.”

One muspel raised its club in rising fury, the weapon bursting into flame. The creature roared, flexed its muscles, and flung the club, easily several quintals of hard, burning rock, whirling towards his freaking face.

Lukas wasn’t stupid enough to stop it. It was just too much energy, too much momentum. Sure, he could use kinetomancy to alter its motion, but it’d be like using a medieval shield to block a descending war maul. Possible, but if you did, you’d soon wish you hadn’t. No, a few pounds of pressure to the right place, at the right time, would be far more effective.

Molding power in his palms, Lukas tilted the club’s trajectory by a few degrees, which, given the distance, made the fiery weapon miss him by several feet, and smash itself against the surface of a boulder, obliterating it.

“Yo Tiny,” He yelled, “Try to aim properly next time, yeah?”

That stopped the muspels in their tracks. Tiny, in particular, scowled at Lukas, tilting its enormous head and studying him for a few seconds. Then, in a voice so deep that he could barely understand the word, it rumbled, “Seidmadr!”

Its voice felt like someone had taken a rusty metal rod and dragged it across the floor. But what the hell? Turns out even that wasn’t beyond the pendant’s ability to recognize and translate. Talk about hax.

Lukas faced Tiny and said, “Muspel.”

The creature furrowed its temples, snorting out flames from its mouth. A dark, ugly scar marred its face from the bottom of its left eye, to its chin. Neon-yellow nerves criss-crossed over its lava-kissed skin, with hands and legs ending in nails sharp enough to serve as daggers. A heavy mantle of fur over a long cloak gave its lean torso some kind of protection as it glared at him.

“This land is ours! Your kind is not welcome here.”

“Yeah, that club kind of made that clear.” He said and instantly cursed himself. He didn’t need to look at Tanya to feel her penetrating gaze. Talking to svartalfars in the old tongue was one thing, but muspel? No way she’d dismiss that.

Me and my big mouth.

Lukas glanced at the stone dome behind him. Mori and Kradir were still working and showed no signs of stopping soon. He turned back at the muspel and drew himself up to his fullest height, which meant he was eye to lower quadriceps with it.

Then I spoke.

“The svartalfars are extracting metals there,” I said, gesturing with my thumb, “they hired us to protect them. You know what that means?”

“That you’ll die before they do.”

“Well…” Lukas nodded, “you’re not wrong!”

The muspel lifted its hand. There was a groan of rock shattering, and then that damned huge mountain-wrecking fiery stone club just flew back into its hand as if a cartoon magnet had drawn it.

Something told him that the other muspel wouldn’t be interfering with this fight. For whatever reason, Tiny had noted him and that made him worthy in their eyes. From what he remembered about Norse culture, their rules of combat were sacred in their eyes.

Lukas clenched his fists. Not out of panic, but preparation. His eyes dilated. Alert. Focussed. No more reservations. No more holding back for the sake of holding back. This battle was his to win now, and he’d guide it to whatever conclusion he deemed fit. This vermin would not stop him.

The last thought triggered something within him. Lifeforce surged, and fire arose as well, both in amounts far greater than he normally brought out. Ordinarily, he’d have deployed them as kinetic bursts or bullets, but now they covered his wrists, coiling, slithering, begging to be unleashed.

Lukas nodded at the creature.

The muspel nodded back.

Then it roared and came at him, club whirling.

Lukas dashed in its direction, clashing with the muspel midway. He grabbed the motion around the club and yanked it just before the creature could smash him with it. The club missed out of the giant’s hands, only to be pulled back into the creature’s hands, but it gave Lukas enough window to send a pulse of kinetic force at the giant’s left ear. The muspel faltered and lost its balance, but belched hot, crimson flames in Lukas’s direction, which got deflected by another force-shield. But the creature didn’t give up, instantly spinning mid-air with a grace that defied all logic and smashed a tree trunk-sized muscular leg at Lukas.

His world went white, as Lukas was flung a good fifteen feet back across the ground and wound up slamming against a boulder. If not for Blob instantly covering his upper extremities like a protective sheath, he’d have gotten some serious head-injury from the hit. Lifeforce burned hot within him, while his body sent weird tingly sensations to let him know what was going on.

Lukas stood up, shook his head to get the damned bells to stop ringing, and looked around blearily. The ground shook as I did.

Oh right, the muspel.

“Good hit,” the creature said, laughing for once.

“What do you know?” Lukas grinned back, blood pooling around his jaw. “You too.”

He had been wrong in his estimation. Usually, creatures the size of this muspel came without power steering. There was simply too much mass building, too much momentum for them to be quick to alter course, kind of like walking on slippery ice. But that was based on Earth-physics, not this borderland. The creature before him had slipped past his attacks with a grace that defied all rules. He was reasonably sure that a combination of lifeforce-enhanced speed and Shatterpoint Intuition was enough to overcome the muspel’s agility, but he couldn’t do that without losing power behind his attacks. Whereas all the muspel needed was a single hit and he’d be jelly.

Thump!

The creature’s foot slammed down on the granite-floor, crushing it into splinters, as it launched forward at him. In less than a second, it had crossed the entire distance and in a fraction of one, his weapon swung down and—

“HOLD!” Lukas roared defiantly, and conjured up a shield of pure energy, pouring every bit of his lifeforce into neutralizing the muspel’s motion, trapping it in a motionless-state. He could feel the rising fury and mind-boggling pressure from the muspel as flames erupted out of the club it was holding, but Lukas held it off. Facing resistance, the muspel sprung back, and charged at him a second time, hammering on his force-shield with one arm, not even once trying to go around the shield even though it’d be ridiculously easy to do so. The impact of the unstoppable force and the unmovable object was deafening as the resulting shockwave made cracks on the ground in all directions.

Lukas had no choice. He had to bring this to an end if he wanted to get out of this.

Slowly, carefully, he focussed his mind on the muspel. At its body, its motions and the trajectory.

His shield broke. Lukas instantly forged a new one before the muspel came again, hammering upon his force-shield like a raging insane lumberjack. The shield broke again, and Lukas noticed the time limit.

He crafted a third one, which broke within five more seconds of its chaotic assault.

Almost done. Yes.

The fourth shield broke, this time barely crossing past the fourth. He wasn’t even sure if he had the energy to keep going. If not for the lifeforce, he’d have already been in agony.

The fifth shield formed, and Lukas went down on one knee, making the giant loom over him. A perfect mix of preparation and deception. He’d most likely have to suffer a hit in the worst-case scenario, but he’d not get a better chance than this.

“I’ve had enough of you,” he said irritably, and mentally thrusted Blob outward. The aqāru-slime sprang out from his wrists like an angry serpent, and pierced straight through the muspel’s eyes, tearing through its brain-goo and exploding out of its skull from the other end. And then like a recoiling weapon, it rushed back and reformed into his wristband.

The muspel was dead before it hit the floor.

MONSTER PROTOTYPE — MUSPEL

SKILLS

LEVEL

Fire Creation

2

Fire Manipulation

1

Temperature Manipulation

2

Lifeforce Manipulation (Body Augmentation)

2

Momentum Manipulation (Force Transference)

2

Body Augmentation. That was new. One benefit of upgraded Scan and Analyze functions was that they showed the particular portions that the skills affected. Between augmenting his body and Force Transference, he could get some really creative solutions in battle, especially when combined with Shatterpoint Intuition. He had killed the muspel in a one-on-one battle. So why was Tanya looking at him like he had done something incredibly stupid?

“You attacked him in the face,” He heard Mori’s dispassionate mutter. Whirling around, he found her standing right behind him. The dome was still intact, but both she and Kradir had terraported their way out. Lukas couldn’t see anything aside from their backpacks and hoped that they were done with their collection.

“You finished the extraction?” Lukas asked.

Kradir shook his head. “Fifteen kastrians. We needed at least twenty.”

“Then?”

As if in response to his unfinished question, several among the muspel crowd let out a howling roar. The ifrits drowned that with their wild ululations and scratched the ground with their clawed limbs. He saw Tanya ready with at least two dozen of her spheres, ready to rain fire upon them at the slightest movement. The entire situation felt like the calm preceding a ferocious storm.

Or a war just about to begin.

Mori walked up next to him. “You spoke in their tongue, and that muspel considered you worthy for a one-on-one clash, but you tricked him. Deception and trickery is sacrilege in their eyes. And now they're waiting for you to pay the price."

Lukas’s blood ran cold.

"What price?"

"Say your final greetings. Put your affairs in order and then walk up and get beheaded. What you did wasn't clever,” Mori advised a still flustered Lukas Aguilar. “This was suicide."

"Well, that will not happen, obviously." Tanya retorted, now down on the ground, glaring at the svartalfars. “No way I’m leaving him as a scapegoat.”

"It is that, or risk being massacred," Kradir spoke in their usual bland tone. "I doubt they'd have let us leave without some wounds, but if you don't accept punishment, they'll bring all their kin until they hunt us down."

"Then we'll kill them all," Tanya replied, now down on the ground.

Lukas smiled at her vicious support. “We won’t be allowed to get out if you two are dead. That leaves two options. One, Tanya and I fight them, while the two of you focus on finding a shelter. The rescuers should open portals any day now. We see them, we rush in and get us out. Or, we leave both of you here and try our luck by ourselves. Because I’m not gonna keel over for whatever goddamned custom, these freaks might have.”

“And I’ll help him,” Tanya added. “And remember? If he dies, you don’t get any of that featherglass. So decide, and decide now.”

“This is against the arrangement.” Mori stressed. “This will not fare well.”

“The arrangement was to protect you,” Lukas shot back,” not respect those creatures and their stupid traditions. And by your own logic, you’ll do everything that helps us protect you better. So what’s it going to be?”

Kradir scowled.