Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

At last, they reached the center of the city, and still no puppet army. Ike frowned, looking around. All the footprints led here, only to vanish, as if something had swallowed them whole. He looked to Wisp for an answer, but all she had for him was a shrug.

"Teleportation array? Storage space?" Ike grimaced. "They could be literally stuffed in one of Brightbriar's rings, and that's absolutely horrifying."

"Yeah. Or hidden somewhere else. We known Brightbriar likes tunnels and digging, and there's a lot of earth between us and the city. Could be lots of room for puppets, vertically speaking."

Ike looked up. A shaft pierced into the ceiling, eventually blocked by something far overhead. "I didn't even think of that."

"Spider thinking. Far superior to bird logic. You have to think in three dimensions, or you're losing."

Mag rounded on her. "Birds think in three dimensions, too. Humans are the only ones locked to the ground here!"

"Hey, hey, hey. Humans conceive of space in three dimensions too, okay? Don't go spreading your weird anti-human propaganda to Mag," Ike complained.

"I haven't seen any proof of that. Also, it's not propaganda. It's spider knowledge," Wisp replied.

"Couldn't decide which half to retort to, so you did both?" Ike mocked her.

"Superior spider mocking technique. I don't have to pick."

"Yeah, yeah. Come on. Let's get moving before Brightbriar looses the giant puppet army on us."

"I thought we were waiting for that," Wisp said.

Ike gave her a look. "Are you suicidal?"

"I dunno. Not that I'm aware of."

"Why would we wait for the puppet army?"

"I dunno, seemed like fun?"

A smile cracked Ike's face. "It does seem like fun. But we should save our energy for challenging Brightbriar."

A second later, he paused. "Unless…"

"Unless?" Wisp asked, tilting her head.

He nodded slowly. "You remember that puppet farm I did, way back when? Stealing the goo and burning it for mana?"

"Yeah, I remember. You were so weak and tasty back then. I almost ate you a dozen times," Wisp said, and then her eyes widened, and she nodded. "Ohhh. I got it."

Ike grinned. "I think we ought to top up before heading to meet good ol' Brightbriar, what do you guys think?"

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"I think that's a great idea, Ike. Some real spider thinking," Wisp agreed.

Mag looked from one to the other, his eyes narrowing. "What are you two talking about?"

Ike just gestured for him to follow, as Wisp shot a spider thread up to the ceiling overhead. They swooshed into the large space. As they'd guessed, there was a 'shelf,' of sorts, built out of the earth, and thousands of puppets lined up silently within, eyes empty, unmoving. Ike didn't hesitate, but threw out his hand, pouring all his energy into a Lightning Palm. A lance of electric power jumped from his hand into the puppets, arcing from puppet to puppet, instantly superheating the goo within past boiling. The first hundred or so puppets' heads snapped back, and black smoke full of mana billowed from their mouths, flying up to crowd the ceiling overhead.

Ike and Wisp breathed deep. Mag glanced at the smoke warily, then breathed in as he caught the other two doing the same. Mana poured into all of them. Ike raced deeper into the puppets. As soon as his aether stores recovered enough to fire another full-strength Lightning Palm, he did, putting even more power into it this time. He focused on the flow of the mana, noting the areas where it snagged, where it bottlenecked, and where it flowed smoothly as he cast the technique. He quietly refined it, widening the bottlenecks, removing the snags, and further smoothing the flows. As the next ranks of puppets burned, he sucked in their mana, then pushed it out into a yet-larger Lightning Palm.

The puppet army was almost boundless. By the time he reached the end of this one shelf, his aether stores were full, and Mag and Wisp looked to be full almost to bursting. Mag fluttered over and perched on one of the puppets' heads, humming a meditative tune to himself as he focused on some internal art. Mana gathered strongly around him, billowing up in pure-black clouds. Ike stared, confused.

Wisp nudged him. "He's advancing to the next Rank. We should back up, so we don't get caught in the crossfire."

"What? It's that big a deal?" Ike asked.

She shrugged. "Can be. Depends on how you set up your magehood. He's clearly got one with significant bursts of power on Tier-up, so he's gonna be going through it. You've given him plenty of mana, so we should just sit back and let him ride it out."

"Nice that he's leveling up now," Ike commented.

"He's been on the verge for a while, couldn't you tell?" Wisp asked.

Ike shook his head. "Wasn't paying enough attention, I guess."

"You should pay more attention," she chided him. "I always pay attention when my natural predators are getting stronger."

"Ah, see, well, that's the difference. Birds aren't a natural predator for me," Ike explained smugly.

Wisp rolled her eyes at him. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, but I know who's scared of spiders, and I'm not afraid to crawl down your back under your shirt when you aren't paying attention."

Ike narrowed his eyes. "You wouldn't."

"I would. You know I would."

"You would," Ike allowed. He nodded at her. "Are you afraid of him? Didn't you Rank up recently, too?"

"Yeah, but I felt impervious with a whole tier on birdy boy. Now we're the same tier. I feel threatened. I feel the need to grow stronger again," Wisp said, baring her hands at the sky.

"Isn't that good? Keeps a fire lit under you. Keeps you trying to grow stronger," Ike said.

"But I want to be lazy. Sit in a web all day and let my powerups come to me. With birdy boy right there, I gotta go out and get my own powerups. I can't fall behind. He'll lord it over me. Can you imagine? That would be the worst."

"Uh huh," Ike said. He gestured across at the other side of the gap in the floor, where yet more puppets awaited them. "Let's go get those powerups, then."

"I don't think I can climb another Rank this fast," Wisp commented, then clapped her hands together in a get-it-done kind of way. "But you know, I've never tried."

"That's the spirit," Ike replied. He wasn't really sure what his Rank was anymore, but he could still use the mana to simply refine his techniques via absorbing it, venting it, and learning where his techniques had weak points, then shoring them up. Whether or not he Ranked up or not, he could still learn a lot, refine his techniques greatly, and strengthen himself regardless. Wisp shot a spider's thread across the pass, and Ike crossed it like a tightrope walker, Wisp following close after him.