The creature tore itself away from the tree and turned to face him.
Owen took a step toward it and raised his sword.
The creature flinched.
It was a small thing, but he saw it. A minute ago, it had been throwing itself at all of them no matter how badly they hurt it. Now, when he moved toward it, it shied back. When he lifted his sword, it made a harsh, high noise, almost a whimper, and pulled its long arms in front of its open chest.
Its best attack had gone straight through him. And now it was afraid of him.
Owen went in to finish it.
The creature turned and ran.
It crashed back into the trees, its slashed leg giving beneath it every few strides, but it didn’t stop. It kept lurching and dragging itself away through the undergrowth.
Owen went after it.
He made it as far as the edge of the clearing before his body gave out under him.
His ribs caught on the first stride, so sharp that he nearly doubled over. His left arm hung useless at his side, still bleeding. And the ground beyond the trees was a mess of loose rock that shifted every time he put his weight on it. He took a few more steps and had to stop, one hand braced against a trunk, dragging in breath.
Behind him, he could hear the others.
"It’s running," Elias said. He sounded as though he couldn’t believe it. "It’s actually running."
"Owen, your arm," Eveline said. "You’re bleeding everywhere."
"It went through you." Marianne’s voice was shaking. "I saw it. Its arms went straight through you—"
Owen barely heard them.
Through a break in the trees, he could see the creature. It had come out onto a long stretch of open, rocky ground that sloped upward, and it was dragging itself across it. Slower than before. But still faster than he could follow it like this.
Beyond the slope, the forest closed in again, thick and dark.
If it reached those trees, he would lose it.
And it would go on wandering through these grounds, with hundreds of candidates still inside the barrier and no one able to get in.
Owen stopped.
His Blades mastery had reached one hundred percent. The Infinite Arsenal had given him another Master Weapon Class. And he still hadn’t chosen it.
He knew which one he wanted.
In his old life on Earth, before the long years of an ordinary job, he had served in the army. He had never been a sniper, nothing close to it. But he had been trained to use a rifle, and the basics had never really left him.
He knew what a rifle could do to something running away. Something no sword could reach.
He looked at the slope. Open rock, and almost nothing between him and it.
Owen dismissed his sword and opened the Infinite Arsenal.
The list of Master Weapon Classes appeared in front of him, visible to no one else. Almost all of them were still locked. But one had changed.
Firearms.
He chose it.
Sidearms. Scatterguns. Rapid-Fire. Precision Rifles.
Even through the pain, a jolt of excitement went through him. Pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, all of them in the one class.
Later.
Precision Rifles. Sniper Rifle. He skimmed the designs and chose a semi-automatic rifle with a scope, much like the M110 he remembered from Earth.
On the slope, the creature was halfway across.
The rifle formed in his hands.
It was heavy, but not the way a sword was heavy. The weight settled back into his shoulder and his chest, the long barrel reaching out in front of him. His left arm screamed when it took the weight of the barrel, but it held.
And it was already loaded. He could feel it. The rounds had come with it, the same way the edge had always come with his sword.
He could fire it as it was.
But he could make it more.
The dead Goblin was lying at the edge of the clearing, the one he had killed just before the creature arrived. He had never taken its core.
Owen went to it as fast as his ribs would let him, one eye on the slope. He reached into the deep, burned wound his sword had left and pulled the core free.
[Offer this monster core to the Infinite Arsenal?]
Yes.
The core vanished from his hand.
[Property identified: Fire.]
[Select a compatible Master Weapon Class for integration.]
Firearms.
[Fire has been integrated into Firearms.]
He felt it settle into the rifle at once. The same heat he knew from his sword. Just as his blade carried Fire, this would put it into the bullets. And it belonged to the whole class now, not just this one gun. His sword still had its own.
The creature was more than two-thirds of the way up the slope.
Owen raised the rifle and brought the scope up to his eye.
The world jumped closer.
Through the glass, the creature was clear. Its crooked shoulders rolled as it ran, and every time its slashed leg hit the ground, its whole body lurched. Across its chest, the bone gaped open where he had split it.
He found the gap.
His old training came back to him. Breathe. Settle into the stock. Let the weapon rest. It felt familiar, and strange at the same time. This rifle had come out of the Infinite Arsenal, and it was part of him the way his sword was. And this body was nothing like the one he had trained with back then.
The scope wavered. His left arm was shaking under the weight of the barrel, and every breath sent a fresh stab through his ribs.
He let out half a breath and held the rest. The shaking eased, just a little.
He laid his aim on the opening in the bone.
"Owen?" Elias had come up behind him, limping. "What is that? What are you holding?"
All day, Elias had watched him fight with a sword. Now he was standing here bleeding, with a long metal thing in his hands, all narrow barrel and strange angles, that looked like no weapon anyone in Asteria would recognise.
"Is that an armament?" Marianne asked. She had come up on his other side, still breathing hard. "What does it do?"
Eveline said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, Owen could see her studying it with a small frown, the way someone looks at a thing they can’t place.
Farther back, the girl was kneeling beside the injured boy, holding him upright. Neither of them was looking this way.
Owen didn’t turn round.
He didn’t have time to explain. Not the rifle, and not where it had come from. That could come after.
He let Fire flow into the rifle. He felt the heat run through it and gather at the round in the chamber.
Through the scope, the creature reached a raised shelf of rock near the top of the slope. The trees were only a few strides beyond it.
Its slashed leg caught on the edge.
It stumbled.
Its body twisted with the stumble, and for a moment the broken patch on its chest turned straight toward him.
Owen squeezed the trigger.
BANG!