A couple more days passed in relative peace and quiet. While Asika monitored the Ataraxia Node and did paperwork to speed up their admission to Cloudscraper Academy - a sacrifice for which Mikayla was eternally thankful - Anza took the two teenagers out to get just a bit more XP before they had to head south.

  It only took a couple of hours of hiking until they found the target of their expedition.

  As they stood on top of the hill and regarded it, Mikayla's eyes widened. "Is that a dinosaur?"

  The Kaiju was tall and lanky, like an emu, but with a long, lashing, reptilian tail and massive jaws that bristled with razor-sharp teeth. It was hunched over, with twitching arms that ended in silver claws. A curved sail rose from its back, splitting the coat of feathers that cascaded across its body, shot through with metal and rimmed with a line of waving feelers. It didn't look quite like the skeletons she'd seen in museums, and she could probably blame the Kaiju Coast for that. But there was no mistaking it.

  "Oh? Whaddya call these in your world?" Anza asked, curious.

  "A spinosaurus," Mikayla breathed. Anza's brow furrowed, but Mikayla didn't notice. "They've been extinct for more than seventy million years. How . . what? Every other Kaiju we've seen so far is a mundane animal hopped up on magic. This is a dinosaur,"

  "Huh. Sounds like you didn't hear 'bout the two kingdoms of Kaijus," Anza eyed Keldryn.

  "It never seemed important," the foxkin defended himself.

  "Aight, well, y'know how Kaijus are Kaijus because they're infected with the Kaiju's Clutch?"

  The Clutch was a magical virus that induced wildlife to grow to colossal sizes and altered their brain chemistry to want to seek out sapients as prey, as Keldryn had explained it a while ago. "Yeah," Mikayla confirmed that she remembered it.

  "Outside the Kaiju Coast, there are still monsters. They're not like normal animals, they're born from unstable Mana flows or something. I dunno, learn about the sky-ence behind it when y'all go to school. I never really cared," Anza shook her head. "Monsters still appear in the Kaiju Coast, but they get infected and turn into Kaijus. Same as how regular animals also turn into Kaijus. I'm guessing you've only ever fought the latter. Mana Apparition Kaijus are weird, they might be three different animals stitched together, or living clouds. This guy's an Apparition, even if he looks more normal than most," Anza summarised.

  "I think you mean science," Mikayla absently corrected as she digested that.

  "Eh? What'd I say?"

  "Doesn't matter," Deciding this was a good chance to field-test Asika's gift, Mikayla pulled her phone out and snapped an Identify at the spinosaurus.

  [STEELSPIKING HI******-]

  Mikayla blinked as the prompt changed while she was reading it, updating the translation into English.

  [STEELSPIKING SPINOSAURUS - TIER 5 - Type: DINOSAUR (Subtype: KAIJU)]

  She winced. Not because she thought she couldn't handle the creature - the rule of thumb was that one Tier equated to five levels, so she was roughly evenly matched. No, she was wincing because her phone only had 18% battery. Asika had not given her a full charge.

  Tucking the phone away, she nodded. "Hey, Keldryn. Do you mind if I fight this one by myself?"

  "Hogging the death points?" he questioned, coming his head.

  "I want to see if I can," Mikayla replied. "Oh, just out of curiosity, in your language are the first two letters of the word 'spinosaurus' H-I?"

  Anza and Keldryn exchanged mystified looks. "Yeah?" the older Ranger shrugged. "H-I-N-O-R-O-L-I-A-N. That's how you spell 'spinosaurus'?"

  Mikayla chuckled. "Hinorolian? The System's doing translation, that's not what I'm hearing," She spelled out 'spinosaurus' for them, since clearly that worked.

  "Spinosaurus. Y'know, I reckon I like that more. Sounds more dangerous," Anza mused. "Get going any time you're ready. I'll keep lookout, just in case there's a nasty surprise," she waved Mikayla off.

  Mikayla nodded, making her way further down the hill so that she would have room to fully deploy the Black Knight. Once she was certain she'd put enough distance between herself and Anza, she raised her left arm, inspecting Flyreh's - her gauntlet one more time.

  She'd already spent the past couple of days obsessively making sure she could activate all of her Cores through the Core Gauntlet. Its Mana channels were different in structure from her old bracer, but once she'd memorised the new layout - and the fact that it was twice as large as the original - it was a piece of cake.

  Mikayla had theorised that using the damaged and corroded antique was good practice for her Mana control, and now that she was using a fully functional Core Controller, she was happy to find that she'd been correct. Her Mana flowed with ease into the Lapis of Black Knight, erupting into a red wireframe. Black, translucent panels wrapped into arumour around her hand, held together with streaks of red. It extended up her arm and formed a pauldron covered in spikes, then manifested a chestplate full of red streaks. A matching gauntlet wrapped around her other arm, and it extended down into leggings that hoisted her into the air atop massive, spiky boots.

  In one hand, she pulled silver light with red threads until it snapped into the shape of her sword. In the other, white light similarly formed into a shield.

  Guiding her Mana with her will, Mikayla reached for the 'dial' built into her Armour Core, and twisted it upwards. She no longer needed Mana Assistance to activate the Goliath function of her Cores, it was simply a matter of Mana and Willpower.

  And Willpower was, after all, her strongest Stat.

  The Black Knight grew. It unfolded upwards and outwards, swelling and stretching, propelling her into the air. Nerves made from Mana filled the inside of her mech armour, but Mikayla rejected them.

  She'd done this before. She knew it could be done.

  Instead of the uncomfortable and invasive feeling of the armour merging directly with her body, her Willpower bent her Mana into her mental image of a high-tech mech cockpit. She forced it to create a chair for her to sit in and controls for her hands and feet to grasp, for the Black Knight's red eyes to become a viewscreen before her.

  This time, the controls almost seemed too crude. There were joysticks in her hands, several sensors that didn't seem to mean anything, and gas and brake pedals that didn't feel like they should be part of a robot. But it was good enough, this was all for her comfort anyway.

  Ripples of red light ran across the Black Knight's chest and down its arms as it finished growing to ten times the height of a normal human.

  Mikayla's eyes narrowed as she saw that the Spinosaurus' head was turning towards her and baring its fangs.

  She was about to lose the drop on it. Just like she had with the Rimeroar Bear, weeks ago.

  But things were different now. "Heel Propulsion!" She channeled Stamina into the Black Knight's feet and kicked off, launching forwards. Every stride carried her more than two hundred metres, leaving craters in the ground with every footfall. It only took four steps before she was within melee range and driving her sword into its side.

  Blood sprayed from the wound, and the spinosaurus howled in distress. Its right-hand claws lashed out, catching the Black Knight in the flank left exposed by her slash. Mikayla flinched away from the strike, ripping her sword out and leaving a bloody wound.

  Less than a month ago, she'd have been horrified by the prospect of doing something so brutal to a living creature. But, after everything she'd been through, she'd grown numb to the brutality.

  There was a small voice in the back of her mind saying that it was even kind of fun.

  While she was regaining her balance and preparing for another strike, the Spinosaurus dug its metallic claws into the ground, and for the first time she noticed that they had thorns growing out of them at odd angles.

  Then spikes of metal erupted from the ground around her, pinning her in on all sides and then delivering a crushing blow to the Black Knight's sternum.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  [HEALTH: 1453/2000]

  After the levels she'd gained fighting the Giant Roc, she'd brought most of her Stats up, including bringing Constitution to a nice, round 20. (Well, the actual number was 16, but with the Schema Lock modifier it became 20.) This mostly meant that she'd only lost about a quarter rather than a third of her Health to that one attack, which was a minor improvement at best.

  On the bright side, it only took two strikes for the Black Knight to break free and square off properly with the dinosaur.

  Her shield came up to deflect another claw strike, and Mikayla capitalised, flicking the tip of her sword upwards towards the Spinosaurus' throat. Unfortunately, her reflexes weren't quite fast enough yet, and it retreated out of range.

  Her sword gave her more reach in melee than its claws did, and they both knew it. So the monster fell back, stomping its claws and summoning more spikes of metal as an impromptu barrier.

  Frowning, Mikayla started working her way around the wall of thorns, only for a stinging impact to slip past her shield and strike her shoulder. "What was -"

  The spinosaurus spat another metallic tooth at her through the gaps in its wall.

  "Oh, a ranged attack. I can do that too!" Dismissing her Sword for a moment, she held up her Shield to intercept another bullet-like tooth and whipped up a Psychic Bolt, chucking it through the same gaps and causing the beast to flinch.

  "Don't forget your Circulation of Stamina, lass," Nocturnus reminded her, which in her new setup manifested as a video feed of the ghost's bearded face on a monitor in her console. "Eh? What is this? Am I a floating head? Let me out, blast it!"

  Mikayla ignored her self-proclaimed mentor beating his forehead against the screen containing him, taking advantage of the spinosaurus' being momentarily stunned to focus on whipping her Stamina into gear. The injury the Black Knight had sustained in its guts was merely an imperfection. Her body, her Armour, knew what it was supposed to look like. She just had to help it put itself back together.

  Rounding the edge of the barricade, as soon as the two combatants laid eyes on each other again, a tooth like a dagger was traded for a ball of mental energy. However, only one of them had a shield. Mikayla took the hit while the spinosaurus staggered again, twisted sideways by the off-centre blow and moving away from the barrier to give itself room to manoeuvre.

  Grinning, Mikayla charged, seeing its exposed flank. "Lass, wait!" Nocturnus tried to warn her a little too late.

  The dinosaur kept turning, and a razor-sharp plane of energy collected around its tail and swung towards her. Mikayla tried to block with her shield, but the sheer sharpness of the strike split the projection in half and cut straight into her gauntlet. Her Shield Core, no longer able to maintain its integrity, fizzled out of existence and left her stumbling away, clutching her injured hand.

  [HEALTH: 958/2000]

  Gritting her teeth, she redoubled her Circulation of Stamina, stitching the Armour's hand back together. Even if her actual hand wasn't injured, it certainly felt like it was. She raised her sword, ready to either attack or defend depending on what the Spinosaurus did next.

  Instead, once she'd refocused on it, she saw that it was putting distance between them and circling around. A carpet of metal thorns filled the ground in its wake.

  It was trying to pin her down.

  "Oh, no you don't," Mikayla made to intercept, but the spinosaurus just retreated into the safety of its field of metal spikes. She stopped herself before her foot could come down on the thorns.

  Instead, she changed channels, dismissing her Sword and channeling Mana into the Cannon Core that she'd taken off Flyreh's corpse. She remembered how he'd used it; he never fired it more than once before swapping to another weapon. She'd learned why when she tested it out; it took too long to cool down for sustained use. Worse, her tests had revealed that just firing it cost 200 Mana Points; expensive compared to her Firestarting Punch or Psychic Bolt, but several times more destructive for the inconvenience.

  So she'd better not miss.

  The Spinosaurus retreated, crouching low, and the thorns around her began to grow, spreading and trying to entrap the Black Knight once more.

  Mikayla didn't mind, because it meant that the monster was staying still. It had gotten accustomed to her focus on melee attacks and didn't realise that she was switching to ranged. And that would be its last mistake.

  The Cannon glowed with the red light of her aura as it charged up. Then it detonated, releasing a burst of energy that flashed across the air between them. On hit, it broke apart and splashed over the Spinosaurus' flank, bursting in every direction like a firework. The monster toppled to the ground, howling in pain from the burns that ran down to the bone.

  Mikayla lowly whistled. The animal lover in her wasn't thrilled about harming the Spinosaurus so viscerally, and she was a little disappointed that the shot hadn't simply killed it outright, but at the same time the results were undeniable.

  The Cannon fell away as she dragged her feet through the field of spikes, taking sweeping steps to avoid getting stabbed, and she paused, looking over the grievously wounded dinosaur.

  It was still trying to get up. Its arms and legs scrabbled at the ground and a beady eye glared at her. Not for the first time, Mikayla wondered; why were the Kaijus like this? Not once had she seen them retreat or surrender. They were capable of strategising and teamwork, so they weren't stupid, but it was as though killing and eating sapient life was their god-given purpose.

  Well. Maybe it was. Asika had told her about the Tier System, the rival of the sapients' Ataraxian System that patronised the monsters. Perhaps, to monsters, slaughter was an act of worship.

  She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than them being unthinking killing machines.

  Mikayla had resolved to test out the other Core of Flyreh's that she was on the fence about keeping. So a lapis glow, shining out of her Core Gauntlet, manifested into a blue-and-red Warhammer in her arms.

  "I don't like it," Nocturnus rumbled as she weighed the weapon in her hands and adjusted her grip. "It is not a knightly weapon,"

  Mikayla didn't disagree. "Well, Flyreh didn't have an executioner's axe," . . Actually, he probably did somewhere in that collection of his. But most of it had been taken as evidence by the Goliath Guard's investigators. The only reason she still had Flyreh's personal loadout was that Anza and Asika had conveniently forgotten to tell anyone.

  She raised the hammer high, inflating its size as much as she could, and brought it down on the head of the Spinosaurus with enough power to turn its skull to mulch.

  [YOU HAVE EARNED XP POINTS FOR KILLING A STEELSPIKING SPINOSAURUS!]

  "Aw. I didn't even level that time?" Mikayla sighed. "I guess I'm not on easy street anymore,"

  "Indeed not," Nocturnus rumbled from the screen she'd confined him to. "I must say, I'm very disappointed. Do you know what you did wrong during that fight?"

  Mikayla ran back through the fight in her head, biting her lip. "I didn't expect it to have a ranged attack and was caught off-guard. And I overestimated the ability of my shield to take a hit," She paused. "Or are you talking about putting you in the screen? I'm trying to structure all this stuff better, practice for when we use the Blessing of Teamwork,"

  "Those are all problems, and we'll work on all of them. But none of them were what I was talking about," Nocturnus shook his head.

  ". . then, what?"

  "You didn't perform any battlecries! No intimidating bellows, no yells of triumph! Not even a single oath! How is the world to know of your awesome fury if you do not proclaim it to the heavens? By the Frank Axe's beard, it's like you haven't learned anything from me! And what is this spineless slump you call a victory pose?!"

  Mikayla just rolled her eyes. That was Nocturnus alright.

  Did I insert this chapter so that we'd have a bit of action amidst a lot of not fighting? Yes. But it's not like this is filler, Mikayla needed to test out the Cannon. And Seres is gonna be super grateful to find out her mum killed 'the entity' from the epilogue.

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