Arrows ripped through the space Velik’s head had been occupying an instant before. Each one had waves of heat rolling off them and, despite missing their target, exploded into small balls of fire right next to Velik’s face. The flames were almost blinding, but he knew better than to close his eyes against the flames. Heat could be withstood. Blinding himself in the opening moments of a three-against-one fight was a sure way to get himself killed.

Velik leaped forward, chasing after the swordsman. His throwing knives flung themselves backwards at the archer, but with only a sliver of Velik’s focus, their job was more to harry the man than to hurt him. The goal was to put his spear through his first target’s throat before either of the other two hunters caught up with him.

There was a sneer on the swordsman’s face as Velik got within range. He went into a spin, whipping his blades in wide arcs while mana coursed up through his arms and into the weapons. Magic rippled out, some sort of skill, probably, and crescents of silver light sliced through the air one after another.

It was an impressive display of power, and certainly had greater range than Velik had ever achieved with [Dread Lance], but it was too little to slow him down. Trying to dodge through the onslaught was playing into the enemies’ hands, so he didn’t bother. The swordsman was spinning full circles, and that meant there were fractions of a second in each rotation where his eyes weren’t on Velik.

He leaped up and pushed off an [Air Walk] to maintain his forward momentum, letting the silver crescents fly unimpeded beneath him. That was one attack avoided easily enough, but the swordsman wasn’t alone. The archer didn’t seem to be able to fire off rapid shots like Torwin did, but each arrow practically hummed with power.

Now that it was no longer an ambush, the hunter was shooting one at a time, each imbued with different elements. The exploding fireball arrow was followed by one that crackled with lightning as it skipped in front of Velik’s face, practically slicing off the tip of his nose and only missing because he jerked his head aside again. Arcs of lightning caressed his skin, searing him and sending his hair straight up.

Velik gritted his teeth against the pain and pushed through. He bounced off a tree, his feet planted to throw him sideways an instant before another arrow that pulsed with winter chill struck the bark. Ice immediately coated the tree, too late to harm Velik, but standing as a stark display of the archer’s power.

Velik’s spear led the way down as he fell on the swordsman, but the man swiftly turned his spin into something that whipped his whole body into a flip and altered the rotation so that two new silver crescents shot straight up. A second [Air Walk] got Velik out of the way, and his spear stabbed into the swordsman’s hip.

[Dread Lance] exploded into the man’s body at the exact same instant an arrow thunked into Velik’s chest. The tip caught in the muscle, lacking the force to penetrate deeply after spending its momentum getting through the [Armored] enchantment on his shirt. That didn’t stop the magical effect from taking hold, and fire washed over him.

Simultaneous detonations hurled Velik and the swordsman apart. Velik landed on his feet twenty feet back, his ring already working hard to repair the damage to his chest. The arrow itself was gone, vaporized in its own fireball, leaving just the steel tip embedded in his skin. Velik would have torn it free, but the spearman had finally caught up to the melee.

He parried the spearman’s thrust, his own spear cracking against the haft. Superior leverage and greater strength let him throw his opponent off balance, but that wasn’t enough to defeat the attack. An echo of the spear appeared in its wake and kept driving forward to sink into Velik’s thigh, just above his knee.

That looks like [Phalanx]. I wonder how many he can hold at once.

Velik had possessed that skill for a brief amount of time, but it had folded into [Dread Lance] soon after he’d gained it. The skill created phantom copies of the wielder’s spear, but they were designed more for battlefield control and defensive maneuvers. Using them offensively wasn’t terribly effective, at least they hadn’t been when it had been Velik’s skill.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelBin; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

This guy had clearly gone a different way with them, because the magic spear was two inches deep into his leg muscle and hadn’t vanished. If anything, it was becoming even more real, its form morphing as magic pulsed down the length of the spear. It started to dissolve, pooling around the injury and forming into a band of heavy metal.

At least a hundred pounds. That’s a lot of weight to throw my center of gravity off. I wonder how long it lasts.

“Got you, you bastard,” the spearman said.

“Oh?”

He hadn’t felt anything like an [Identify] from them, but it was possible they had some passive form of threat of assessment that gave them a good estimate of how strong he was. If so, the skill had done them a disservice. He was only five or six levels higher, but his class gave him five points to spend into his stats every level. Combined with the boost he’d gotten when he’d used a class orb and formed [True Form], he probably had more stats than all three of them combined.

That meant that a hundred pounds was negligible, and Velik proved it the next moment when he smoothly pivoted, dodging three arrows and deflecting a fourth. Three of them were solid magic, possibly the result of a skill or enchantment, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Just because Torwin had often complained that his conjured arrows were weaker than real ones didn’t mean the same was true for this archer.

He pushed back into range with the spearman, who was clearly surprised that the weight had failed to slow Velik down. They exchanged a few more probing thrusts, but with Velik so badly outnumbered, he couldn’t afford to be patient. His weapons in this fight were overpowering strength, speed, and a reckless disregard for his own personal well-being. All he had to do was survive long enough to heal himself back up to full strength.

Surprisingly, the swordsman was still on his feet. One arm hung limp, the sword discarded into the dirt, and he was obviously in a great deal of pain, but he’d weathered a [Dread Lance]

far better than Velik had expected. Maybe Torwin’s on to something with taking time to merge skills together into something stronger than the individual pieces. Who knew?

He was incredibly aware of how lopsided his build was, his level and stats far outstripping his skills, but some things couldn’t be rushed. In the case of skills, there was no good shortcut. His level had shot up from the low twenties to almost fifty in the span of a year, but his skills weren’t that much better than they’d been back when he’d first met Torwin.

If it wasn’t the middle of the night with [Duskbound] fortifying him, this fight might have been the death of him. It was just lucky that Velik hadn’t caught up to the three hunters before the sun had gone down, else he’d have been forced into a running game of cat and mouse so that he could pick them off individually.

The spearman slashed a gash across Velik’s ribs, right near where the arrowhead was still lodged in the muscle, but he’d overextended to land the hit. Apparently unaware that Velik had let him land the blow, he wasn’t in a good spot to withdraw before suffering a counterstrike.

[Dread Lance] took the spearman in the chest, blowing him off his feet and slamming him into a tree thirty feet away. That should have been a chance for Velik to center himself, but the other two hunters worked flawlessly to cover their downed companion and keep the pressure on.

The swordsman’s approach was covered by a steady stream of elemental arrows, forcing Velik to twist and dodge instead of setting himself to impale the man on the momentum of his own charge. By the time he was ready to set his spear, it was too late. Another silver crescent arced through the air, curving its trajectory in an attempt to score an easy hit.

Velik ducked low, spun once to get a good look around him just in case he’d missed anything coming from the back, and whipped one of the two Fangs of the Wind Dragon that lacked the [Telekinetic] enchantment straight into the swordsman’s face. The man, not caught by surprise, lifted his sword to bat the knife away.

Velik’s spear ran him through, the tip ripping through stomach tissue and coming out the swordsman’s back. With a surge of strength, Velik hoisted him into the air, then shaped the tip into a smooth needle and flung the man off the weapon in the direction of the archer.

His attempt to close in on the archer was foiled, this time by the spearman. The hunter’s chest was blackened and cracked skin, and blood dribbled out of his left socket where an eye used to be, but the man was still in the fight.

Tough one, but he can’t take too much more.

A second later, the swordsman picked himself up off the ground and lurched forward.

Both of them are a lot stronger than I expected.

Velik was confident that he could outlast them if needed, but the fight was almost over now, anyway. Three arrows whistled through the air, coming from behind Velik and striking the enemy archer before he had a chance to dodge.

Let’s see how you assholes like having to dodge arrows the whole time you’re fighting, Velik thought with a savage grin.