Shit was fucked.

As leader of the Roadrunners, Deborah Callahan got reports on every upper-Rank portal that appeared in Phoenix, in addition to sitting on the Inner Council. Every B-Rank, A-Rank, or God forbid, S-Rank portal came in on her phone and the computer screen in front of her.

So did the teams delving into them.

And so, three hours forty-five minutes ago, Deborah Callahan had received a message that told her, beyond any possibility of denial, that shit was definitely fucked.

Kade Noelstra was C-Rank again. And he was inside the portal at the edge of her territory.

It shouldn't have been possible. Core breaks weren't recoverable, and the Spark of Life had diagnosed what had happened to him as a core break. But it was. He was running around, delving B-Rank portals, like a god damn maniac. And so now, Deborah Callahan sat in her sports car, watching the red portal shimmer in the afternoon light. Kade Noelstra hadn't lost at all. But how? How was he still delving? He should be dead, not delving!

It was bullshit.

But it also told her something, and it wasn't about Kade Noelstra. It was about where he was getting his power. Deborah knew the most powerful people in Phoenix. She'd seen the most powerful healer in North America work. If Sarah Cullman didn't have a solution to a core break, then no one on Earth did.

And Deborah had also seen, with her own eyes, people from other worlds. Not just monsters, but humans who spoke no language known to Earth. They'd been plucked from their world by portal monsters. If the monsters could traverse between worlds, then so could people from Earth. So could delvers.

So could Kade.

That had to be the solution. Broken cores weren't the endgame they were made out to be. Humanity just hadn't solved them yet. But Kade had found someone who could fix them, and that implied an incredible amount of power. Maybe even something beyond her rank—or Angelo's—that didn't want to go on a rampage across the Amazon or through Italy. Deborah stared at the portal for another minute, letting its red glow wash over her car. Then she shook her head. Every fiber of her body wanted to get in there and kill Kade.

But killing him was counterproductive right now. He was proof that there were powers beyond Angelo Lawrence, and if he could contact one of them for advice and help, there was no reason that Deborah Callahan couldn't, too. Figuring that puzzle out was the most important thing.

It took three hours before we realized that this portal wasn't going to be quick.

Then it took another hour of pushing hard against a horde of Gemini Demons and their taller, faster Demon Shade variants—a B-Rank monster that couldn't be tanked, couldn't be disrupted, and had to be killed before it found its target—before Sophia coughed twice and went to a knee. "Kade, we have to slow down. I'm out of steam, Jeff and Raul are hurt too bad to keep pushing, and—"

"And if you want a re-buff, you're going to have to wait," Yasmin finished.

I looked at the red-walled room we'd just fought our way through, and the smoking—and in two cases—smoke-made corpses that littered every area that wasn't abyssal pits to who-knew-where. Then I took a look at our team.

Sure enough, they were beat up.

The B-Rank monsters lined up evenly with Jeff and Raul, and even though I could handle them in small groups, Ellen was our only effective counter to their numbers. And even she looked tired. Her aura—the Mana one, not her fear-based one—was still strong, thanks in no small part to her leeching off of Cheddar, Pepperoni, and me. Even the winged serpents looked exhausted, though. Cheddar was barely hanging on; I'd been relying on him for Mana and to help with all the demons, and Ellen had been doing the same with Pepperoni. We couldn't keep pushing.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay? That's it?" Yasmin asked.

"Yep." I took a breath and sat down, letting my own depleted Mana and Stamina start to recover. "This actually answers a question I was having. Why would the GC stage teams outside of a B-Rank portal like this? It's not really because they think a team's likely to fail. If they thought that, they'd wait for a stronger team. Losing delvers to stuff that's over their heads doesn't help anyone."

Ellen's brow wrinkled. Then her eyes widened. "They expect us to win, but they expect it to take too long. This portal is going to break. But why let traffic stay close? And why have GC reps nearby?"

"Because they know when the risk gets too high," I finished. "They'll pull people back as the risk increases, but they'll have fifteen or twenty delvers on hand at the portal break to keep it pinned down."

Sophia stared at me. "You're sure?"

"I'm not one hundred percent sure, no. But that's the only reason to tie up a bunch of delvers out there."

"So, you were pushing us hard because…?" Jeff asked.

I grinned, forcing my breathing to settle down. We had been pushing pretty hard. "Because I don't think they're bluffing about sending in a second team, and I want us to kill the boss and get the B-Rank core—plus whatever else we can pull out of this place."

"And?" Jeff pressed me. I shrugged, but he wouldn't stop.

After a second, I leaned back against the Infernal portal world's cavern walls. "You got me. I also want to push because I think I'm getting close to my B-Rank breakthrough, and I want it. I want it bad."

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I did. The sooner I was B-Rank, the sooner we could really start pushing as a guild. Ellen's extra firepower was noticeable all the time, and even though I had potential for more, the reality was that her rank and her controllable, unique aura set her apart from the rest of us. I could hit as hard as she could, but I couldn't hit an entire room as well as she did unless I used Stormbreak. And I couldn't do that for very long, or very often. It was a finisher. Her openers and filler spells packed that much punch.

I needed that. I had too many battles in my future, no matter how I looked at it. Deborah was out there, and at some point, she'd come for me whether I wanted it or not. I didn't think I'd end up fighting Carter, but it was a possibility. As a Paragon on the Stormsteel Path, I was a target for any monster or delver following it. And, at the end of all of that, there was Eugene, the God of Thunder. I'd have to fight him, too.

So I needed more power, and I needed it both now and without compromising my future growth. B-Rank was a step I knew I could take, and I needed to take it quickly.

The minutes passed, with Yasmin and Jeff talking in one corner of the warm, pulsing room and Ellen, Sophia, and Raul all napping against the far wall. I watched the cavern, my eyes hooded and narrowed, but nothing moved aside from the blood-red patterns on the dark gray walls.

The whole portal felt like it was waiting for something.

So was I. I waited for us to get moving. And, after half an hour of time spent twiddling my thumbs, Sophia finally nodded. "Alright, let's go."

I readied my sword, dropped into a relaxed but ready stance, and kept moving.

Demons came in all shapes and sizes.

There were the Gemini Demons, low-rank monstrosities with two curled horns, six spiked insect legs, and reversed, human-looking legs in the back. They were foot soldiers and swarmers in this portal, but my first encounter with them had been anything but easy. Their dual-bodied shape was challenging to fight, mostly because it took so long to kill both the real and shadow forms.

Then there were Hellbats and Hellpits. The bats and their living, walking breeding towers attacked from all around us. Sometimes, the Hellpits weren't even visible. They were hidden in caves or platforms far off in the abyss. The bats themselves weren't dangerous. They'd get through sometimes, but with all of us at C-Rank or higher, their blades hurt without causing real damage. Sophia handled the injuries, and Ellen killed the bats en masse.

Those were all fine, though. It was the Hunter-Killer Demons that were causing us trouble.

One of them was currently stalking Yasmin. It looked like a shadow made solid, a gray-black blur in the world. Only its jagged, serrated sword—a two-handed cleaver that out-ranged my dueling blade by a good two feet—was solid. And every time the demon materialized for an attack, a wave of crippling anxiousness surged out from it.

It was overwhelming. I couldn't even attack it during the moments it was corporeal. Ellen could—she was doing her best to overwhelm it with her own shadow magic. But the other three of us could only watch as it went after Yasmin over and over, with Sophia patching up our support's wounds between assaults.

And Yasmin herself had it the worst. It had been almost ten minutes since she started hyperventilating, and she couldn't stop. The monster's aura was focused entirely on her. It wasn't fear, just an overwhelming lack of ability to do anything—only to think about it.

"Idea," I said as the monster's blade left another deep gash in Yasmin's back and then faded to nothing. "Traps."

"Traps?" Yasmin asked. Her tanned, brown face was almost as white as a sheet from blood loss and stress. She looked about ready to puke, and tears wouldn't stop flowing down her cheeks. All she could do was shiver in place next to a wall completely filled with spikes. Every surface had spikes—even the non-sharp parts of the largest spikes.

Infernal portal worlds sucked.

"Yep. You can't do anything, and if we keep letting Ellen and the monster race, the monster's going to win. Let's change that. Stand here." I pointed, and Jeff guided Yasmin onto the spot I wanted her even as a shadow grew closer and the jagged blade hovered a dozen feet away. Ellen cast a Shadow Shapes, and it ripped into the monster's incorporeal form. That'd delay it, but so far, it hadn't killed it—or even hurt it.

I started dropping Bindings all around Yasmin. "Okay, Yaz, I want you to do one thing. When the monster shows up, just let your legs go limp and make sure your tongue isn't between your teeth. Otherwise, it'll be more work for Sophia to fix afterward."

She nodded shakily. Everything she did was shaky after ten minutes of being hunted.

Then I stepped away from Yasmin, waved for Jeff to do the same thing, and waited.

We didn't have to wait long. The Hunter-Killer Demon attacked less than five seconds after Ellen's Shadow Shapes faded. Its sword crossed the barrier of paper Bindings I'd dropped around Yasmin. It cut into her, gouging her bicep to the bone. Blood erupted outward.

But the wound didn't bleed for more than a second before Yasmin collapsed, screaming and weeping. She hit the first Binding. It triggered, and E-Rank lightning ripped from her body up the sword and into the shadow-shrouded enemy. The demon hit the ground, too. Bindings activated, pouring electricity into the rapidly diminishing shadow. By the time the traps were done, the only thing left was bone-thin and black, a shape with two horns and limbs that felt like they couldn't possibly hold the massive sword.

I lunged. Ellen used Shadow Boxing. Jeff slammed his shield into the thing's head.

It died almost instantly. Yasmin stayed on the ground, bleeding from her dozens of wounds as Sophia's hands found the worst spots and started fixing them. "Th-thanks. Jesus. No more of that, thank you."

I looked at Ellen. She nodded, and I ducked in close. "Why couldn't you kill it before?"

"It was using its shadow like a shroud. I couldn't even see its body until it was all gone, and all my shadow spells did was stun the shroud while I was casting," Ellen said quietly. "I could have tried lightning, but I was scared of speeding it up or something. We didn't know if it was some kind of anti-magic monster or what."

"Right." I breathed in, then out. In, then out. The stress and anxiety we'd all been feeling were taking their toll. "Well, let's keep moving."

"No, Kade," Jeff said.

"Look, I know you want Yasmin to recover. Sophia's got her. It'll take some time, but—"

"No, Kade," Jeff said again. He pointed down the tunnel we'd been pushing toward at the end of the cavern. "There are two more up ahead. Can you handle two of these at a time? What if they both target Sophia? We're in over our heads here, and we need to wait for help."

I watched him carefully. He looked nervous, anxious—but not supernaturally so. But still…

Then Ellen cleared her throat. "I think Jeff is right. We aren't the right team to handle these. We can't stop them from getting to us, and we don't actually counter them. It's only a matter of time until we lose someone."

Yasmin was still on the ground, bleeding and groaning as Sophia slowly put her back together. She'd been ripped up, with jagged cuts all across her back and chest, shredded arms, and even a single cut across her face. I stared at her for a moment. Then I nodded slowly. "Alright. We'll pull back and let a different team handle it. Five minutes good for you, Sophia?"

Sophia nodded, and I paced near the cavern's safe entrance.

We were close. We had to be close. And I was almost to B-Rank. If we could finish this up, I would be there. But we couldn't. If Ellen didn't think we could handle the monsters, we couldn't handle the monsters.

The team wasn't built for them, and there wasn't a good reason to keep pushing. Money aside, we were going to lose someone.

It took eight minutes before Yasmin was ready to move. Then we headed down the tunnel as quickly as we could, trying to put some distance between us and the Hunter-Killer Demons.

The cavern walls passed quickly, and after an hour, the familiar red glow of the portal outweighed the faint crimson of the walls and the abyss. I hurried toward it.

And the portal world exploded with red light.

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