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The explosion probably lasted for only a moment, but it took a lot longer for Rugrim’s eyes to recover from the sheer purpleness that had overwhelmed them. His ears were still buzzing like they were full of subterranean wasps, but after several long (profanity-filled) moments, shapes began to emerge from the purple-tinted haze that had been seared into his retinas. Other colors soon followed, until he finally could make sense of what he saw.

All that was left of the monsters were their heads—still deformed from Tin’s powerful grip. The golem had dropped them at some point since the blast went off, but a massive furrow had been carved through the ground. It was just a bit too wide to properly be called a ravine; yet it was an eerily consistent path of destruction that narrowly missed the road and tore through the woodlands into the distance.

Rugrim couldn’t even begin to guess at how far the spell travelled before it stopped. If it stopped.

“You didn’t tell me you have a battle form! Wow! I’ve heard that only one in ten thousand demons can do that!” Oh goodie, the fey was loud enough that he could still hear her.

Grumblings aside, his hearing was recovering. Tin was quietly checking on everyone, and Steel was screeching and raging against the sky. Which, honestly? That was an entire mood that Rugrim could understand.

“Yes, a combat form. Absolutely. That is certainly what I did and how I moved hundreds of magic points worth of energy.” Origin breathlessly answered. The demon was back in his original form—his clothing somehow not destroyed—splayed out on the ground with a single arm half-raised. It collapsed back down across his stomach a moment later, eliciting a wince from the man.

“Muddy good thing monsters aren’t attracted to light or mana.” Rugrim put the statement out with as much hopeful optimism as he could muster.

“…Dawn?” The golem had frozen in mid-movement.

“Um, let me think. There are quite a few, but in this area…?” The fey turned back to the town guards—that were still just standing there—and shouted. “Hey, there aren’t any nests of stygian slammers in the area, are there?”

“Never heard of ‘em! There’s just hammerheaded slammers!” One of the guards called back.

“Uh-huh, yeah. So, bad news: we are screwed. But hey, at least we know that the educational standards around here are atrocious! Those are the same monster. And yeah, they’ll come running toward any big display of mana.” The woman with the multicolored hair beamed a smile at them, as if she had said something helpful and not at all horrifying.

“Perhaps… they will follow the spell instead of the source?” Origin spoke up from the ground.

He was promptly answered by several sharp snarls—and the noises of beasts crashing through the woodlands were undeniably moving closer.

“Right! Okay, stygian slammers! They have a long, flat head and the flat part is really tough! The sides of the head, not so much and the neck is even weaker. Don’t bother targeting the legs, they’ll recover faster than you’d ever expect. The slammers will try to charge and smash you with their head, so try not to get hit.” The fey once again drew her rapier and produced a whip in her other hand. Once more, she called out to the guards. “Don’t suppose your town found a passion for fashion in the past few minutes?”

“My aunt made me this scarf!” The same ‘helpful’ guard called back, raising an ugly beige and malformed garment with one hand.

“Right, well, we’ll see how many I can kill with no class functions and a fraction of my stats. No pressure.” Dawn inclined her head from one side to the other as she rolled her shoulders.

“The noble D’str, the being that you prefer to call Steel, suggests we return to the town and let them deal with the problem.” The sparking skull announced.

“Pass! We’re not just any travelling party seeking fame and fortune, we’re heroes!” Dawn puffed her chest out proudly.

“It is our mess. We must do what we can to clean it up.” The golem agreed, curling its oversized hands into fists.

“Just give me… eight to nine hours and I can take them out too. Less if anyone has a diamond-tier mana potion or ten.” Origin continued his existence on the ground.

Rugrim had believed his expectations for the party to be low, yet the four had somehow effortlessly slid beneath them. The loamy mage was good for only a single horrific spell. The rogue was willing to just sit there even as a pack of blood-thirsty monsters came at… whatever the stone it was. And the oathsworn wasn’t able to fight at her best just because the town wasn’t pretty enough?! The golem was the only one that seemed to have a head on its shoulders, and its head was presumably decorative!

He took three steps toward the town before he hesitated.

Rugrim Stonesplint was no coward, but he wasn’t a Tunnel Snake—that dream had died more than fifty years ago. He was low level for a sixty-three-year-old dwarf, but what level could the guards of a fading town even have? Leaving the party that had welcomed him along for their travels during their time of need was shameful. But to make scrawny sun-blinded lads die in his stead…

Stone it all!

Rugrim wished he could claim that his resolve brought him bravery. But when he stepped forward, he took the tiniest step of his life. His hand was shaking so much he struggled to dislodge his pickaxe from the straps that secured it. And his other hand was supposed to seize his sledgehammer, yet the mucking limb hadn’t budged!

“Here they come!” Dawn called the warning, just as the monsters burst from the shrubberies and other undergrowth.

The stygian slammers were four-legged beasts that stood almost as tall as the fey. They were covered in coarse black fur that seemed densest around their spindly, puny-looking legs. Yet they ran quickly across the (mostly) open terrain. There were eyes studded along the sides of their long, ungainly heads, though they faded from sight as each beast picked their path and committed—lowering their head to menace the party with the flat, armored plates atop their skulls.

Six of them thundered closer with every step. Rugrim finally had his pickaxe free. Why had he prioritized his pickaxe? Wouldn’t the sledgehammer have been more useful? Not that he had ever fought—let alone killed—a single monster throughout his life. Tunnel breaches were rare and if one ever happened the job of every dwarf was to get out so it could be quarantined until the Tunnel Snakes could clear it.

But there were no tunnels to fall back to. No steel supports to disable. No stone to collapse. It was just open air and a pack of monsters. There weren’t even any Tunnel Snakes to save them.

How the stone did any surface dweller survive past childhood?!

“I will stop the lead three!” Tin launched forward, the golem’s greater bulk shaking the world just as aggressively as the six beasts’ combined fury. There was a hint of uncertainty in the golem’s too-clean tone, yet there was no trace of it in the metal being’s movements.

It never even dodged around the beasts. Instead, it slammed its torso into one monster as it drove its fists into two others. The horrific sound of bone and metal colliding with excessive force rang out, and Rugrim’s attention was stolen by the three beasts that were still drawing near.

He had to do something.

“Foul beasts, you face the wrath of Dawn! I am the Champion of the Spring Fencing Contest, under two hundred division; Keeper of the Pendant of Memories; Guardian of the—hey, don’t ignore me!” The woman side-stepped the charging beasts and struck out with her rapier at the neck of one while her whip lashed another.

From beneath her double-sided cloak, a pair of crystalline wings emerged just as her whip grew taut.

But there was one monster left, charging directly at Origin. The demon tried to rise, but he was struggling. He would never make it in time.

The false gnome was just watching, seemingly unperturbed by the imminent death of a companion.

“Mud. It. ALL!” Rugrim began to move. His pickaxe in one hand, his sledgehammer in the other—he had no idea when he’d even pulled it free, but all that truly mattered was that it was there.

The comfortable weight. The familiar feel of his tools’ steel within his fists.

He still had no silting idea what he was doing though. He wasn’t a fighter or a Tunnel Snake—he was barely even a mage! And even if his magic actually worked, it wouldn’t do anyone any good. It would just get in the way.

But his tools were made of quality dwarven steel. They could do something. But he needed to strike precisely… just as if he was mining from a vein.

He still was.

It was a vein of blood and a harvest of bone rather than gems or metal, but it was still just like mining—first he needed to break through the less important bits. He just needed to be…

-----

[Miner] Functions:

1. Increased Stamina

2. Compositional Assessment

3. Powerful Swing

4. Improved Assistance

5. (Pending) -> Adaptive

-----

Rugrim’s sledgehammer smashed into the side of the monster’s skull, just like Dawn had advised. Bone and furry hide deformed beneath the blow, as the creature stumbled to the side—missing Origin by less than a meter. His pickaxe followed a moment later, piercing through the compromised components and biting deep into the most ‘valuable’ parts of his target.

It fell to the ground, never to rise again.

Rugrim deliberately refused to process that. Instead, he turned to the next target. Dawn had slain one of the beasts, but she was airborne—not that she could fly, the monster was just pulling her by the whip so fiercely that even her fey wings allowed her to glide through the air.

At least she was slowing the monster down. Rugrim reached it moments later and drove his pickaxe deep into a thick vein—okay, technically an artery, but it was the same thing. Dawn nodded at him as she passed by after flexing her muscles hard enough to launch herself forward, using her whip for leverage.

The monster wasn’t dead, but Dawn could finish it. Instead, Rugrim rushed to where Tin fought two of the creatures.

One was dead—the golem-sized footprint that had pulped its torso was proof of that—yet the other two were merely bloodied as they continually tried to crush Tin between them. A clever plan, stymied by how surprisingly deft the hulking metal brute could be. But Tin’s own counterattacks were too delayed to do much good—it wasn’t that quick.

“I’ll take this one!” Rugrim shouted, as he moved to intercept one of the monsters.

“So, you do have the ‘instinct’ Dawn once spoke of. Huh.” Tin turned to face the last.

Rugrim nearly stumbled on the blood that had burst out of the stomped carcass when he tried to dodge around the charging monster, but he managed to still smash his sledgehammer into the monster’s neck as it passed him by. Ideally, he would have preferred to keep a firm grip on his beloved tool, but he still adapted.

He lunged forward, both to recover his balance and to keep his balance. And the next thing he knew, he was on the back of the careening monster, with nothing except a pickaxe in his hands.

The angle was a bit awkward, but he was a miner that had once let another dwarf dangle him by his legs while he freed a large chunk of quartz from the surrounding stone. Awkward was never going to stop him. He drove his pickaxe between the wounded monster’s oversized skull and its back, finding the back of its vulnerable neck with a miner’s precision.

Ah, right. There was a problem with that strategy.

The beast collapsed and Rugrim found himself tumbling through the air, unable to do anything more than curse his own loamy choices in life.