Chapter 111: Encounter

The third dog dropped them into heat.

The portal opened halfway up the inside wall of a dead volcano. Below them, a lake of slow orange magma turned over on itself and threw light across the whole chamber.

The danger showed up before the fortune did.

Six shapes pulled themselves out of the magma and stood up on the ledge. They were made of cooling rock with fire running through the cracks.

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[ Cinderborn Slagwalker ]

Epic | Level 40

```

"Six Epics." Alice already had an arrow out. "That is not bad."

It was not bad. Logan cleared four of them with two swings of Grimspire Lance, and Alice put the other two down before they finished standing up.

The fortune was in the wall behind them.

A seam of dark metal ran through the rock. It was threaded all the way through with veins of something that glowed faintly gold.

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[ Emberglass Ore ]

[ Rank: Mythic-grade crafting material ]

> Retains heat indefinitely. Suitable for weapons, armor, and ammunition with the Fire attribute.

```

Logan put a hand flat against it and felt the warmth come through his glove.

’Vulkarn is going to lose his mind over this.’ He was already reaching for a storage ring. ’And Maren can load it straight into shells.’

They stripped the seam clean. It took a while and neither of them complained about it.

---

The fourth dog gave them a forest that was mostly underwater.

The portal opened onto a flooded grove. The trees grew straight up out of chest-deep green water, and the light came down through the canopy in thin shafts.

It was beautiful. It also tried to eat them within twenty seconds.

Vines came up from under the water on all sides at once. They wrapped around Alice’s legs before she could move.

"Logan!"

He cut her free with one swing. Then he had to cut himself free twice while doing it, because the vines grew back faster than he could sever them.

’Cutting is not going to work here.’ He backed toward a tree trunk and made himself think instead of swing. ’Find the source.’

Sword Intent found it in about two seconds. Every vine in the grove ran back to a single knot of root under the water at the center.

Broken Chain took that connection apart. The entire grove went limp at once.

What was left behind was worth the trouble.

```

[ Verdant Heartsap ]

[ Rank: Mythic-grade alchemical material ]

> Accelerates growth in living material. Base component for high-grade restoratives.

```

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[ Moonpale Spirit Bloom ]

[ Rank: Epic-grade alchemical material ]

> Restores MP over time when refined. Effect scales with the refiner’s skill.

```

Alice waded over to the nearest cluster and started cutting them free at the stem.

"Thessaris is going to cry," she said. "In a good way. If it can cry."

"Take all of it."

They took all of it.

---

The fifth dog was the strangest one.

It put them on a beach that was not really a beach. The sand was ground-up bone, and the whole shore was covered in the wrecks of ships that had never belonged to this world.

Nothing attacked them for a full minute. That was worse than being attacked.

Then the sand moved, and something with far too many legs came out of it, and Logan understood why all those ships were still there.

```

[ Ossuary Deepcrawler ]

Legendary | Level 40

```

It was fast and it was armored and it did not care about being cut.

Alice killed it with one arrow through the joint under its head. She found that joint by watching where the thing braced before each lunge.

"You are getting scary," Logan told her.

"I am getting observant." She was already scanning the wrecks. "There is a difference. Look at that hull."

The wrecks were full of salvage. Plating that had survived a Legendary crawler chewing on it. Cured hide from something none of them recognized. Crystal cores pulled out of dead machinery.

They filled three storage rings before they stopped.

’Materials, alchemy, ore.’ Logan ran the list in his head as the portal opened to take them home. ’Every production unit on that island just got a mountain of work.’

---

The sixth dog was the one that had been sulking.

It had been sulking since Logan picked a different dog three times in a row. It made those feelings extremely clear before it finally tore the portal open.

"Fine," Logan told it. "You were right. You are a good dog."

It stopped sulking immediately.

Sonic came along this time, because Sonic asked and then kept asking.

"I have a direct line to the island," he pointed out, for the fourth time. "If anything happens back home, I know instantly. You want me there."

That argument had actually worked.

Logan checked his storage ring one more time before stepping through. Two seed pods sat in the front pocket, both keyed to the island courtyard.

’Crush one and we are home in a blink.’ He kept his hand near them out of habit. ’No matter what is waiting on the other side.’

They stepped through.

---

The portal put them at the edge of an island, on a wide shelf of black rock that dropped straight down into open ocean.

The first thing Logan noticed was the dragon.

It lay curled along the shelf about eighty meters away, asleep. It was so large that he had first read it as part of the landscape.

Storm-grey scales. Wings folded tight against a body the length of a warship. Its breathing moved the air.

"Do not," Alice whispered, "make any sudden noises."

"Working on it."

The second thing Logan noticed was the two people floating over the water.

They were maybe three hundred meters out, and they were not standing on anything that touched the sea.

One of them sat on a horse. The horse was in the air, it had no wings, and it was running anyway.

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[ Skyhoof Tempest Courser ]

Rank: Mythic

```

The other one stood on the back of an elephant. The elephant was white, it was also flying, and it was considerably larger than the horse.

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[ Pale Thunder Behemoth ]

Rank: Mythic

```

Both riders had a single horn growing straight up out of the forehead.

’Oniniad.’ Logan had read about them in the guides. ’Horned humanoids. Rare race. Strong ones.’

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[ Rakhan Vurel ]

[ Class: Stormlance Sky Marshal (Mythic) ]

[ Talent: Momentum Ascendant (Mythic) ]

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[ Idresh Kaan ]

[ Class: Bulwark Siege Prophet (Mythic) ]

[ Talent: Weight of Ages (Mythic) ]

```

They had already spotted Logan and Alice. There was no question about it. The horse rider was pointing.