Even from here, I could see it, coming in from the north.

  A dragon. A whole-ass dragon, but where there should have been scales—and that was an indication of how weird things were in Chicago, that my first thought was that a dragon should have scales, not that there shouldn’t be a dragon—there was only steel. Car frames, rail tracks, and even I-beams from skyscrapers, all bent and twisted and welded by the same power that had forced them into the shape of a winged monstrosity.

  I pulled the mech from my inventory, climbed inside, and forced it into a run, pushing north. Asphalt crunched under my feet, and with every step, I closed the gap between the dragon and me.

  And then, it dropped. Like a rock. A hundred-ton missile, crashing toward the Chicago streets and Solemnus Six cliffs.

  I stepped onto the Millennium Park grounds to the sounds of screams, battle cries, and an echoing, impossibly grating roar.

  Rust-Belt Wyvern: Level Ninety-Seven Elite Field Boss (Rank Two)

  Current Difficulty: Impossible

  The sheer mass of metal known as the Rust-Belt Wyvern may take the form of a living being, but its purpose is both simple and singular. Hunt its target. Flush it out. Kill it. Repeat.

  Field Boss: This boss has no dungeon. It stalks part of the overworld instead.

  All-Inclusive: Attacking this boss will alert anyone nearby.

  Level Ninety-Seven.

  A Field Boss.

  That couldn’t be right. It was stronger than even The Nexus, the final boss of the Mycopolis—and that dungeon had been Tier Five. This was a field boss, goddammit, not something lurking in a dungeon. And the Chicago safe zones were supposed to be clear!

  Brambles, slowly fading, pushed back up the cliffs that surrounded my safe zone as the Wyvern roared again. The monster’s massive claws rested on top of a body. I could tell if it had been a man or a woman, but whoever they’d been, they were dead now.

  Dead, in the safe zone I’d given them the go-ahead to use.

  People had been working here. They’d been starting to plow Millennium Park, to turn it into farmland and move toward making Museumtown’s territory, in the eyes of the Consortium, viable. It was a small step in the process, but it had been a critical one. Now, those people were dying as a dragon seemingly the size of a skyscraper tore their half-plowed field to shreds, toppled the outdoor stage Brian had died near with its tail, and knocked trees down with every motion.

  Then the field boss’s eyes—eyes the size of dump truck tires, or even of dump trucks themselves—locked on to my mech. Flames jetted out from a mouth wide enough to swallow the mech like a chocolate candy.

  I opened fire with everything I had. The rail gun and grenade launcher both emptied their magazines. Tiny pinprick holes dotted the Wyvern’s steel face, and a trio of explosions rippled across its front as grenades hit. But the monster barely even flinched. Instead, it roared a third time, stomped on the body hard enough to grind it into paste as it started moving, and extended its wings. The screech of steel on steel was unbelievable.

  Its wings flapped three times, and the gigantic field boss took to the sky.

  The stripped-down rovers in my mech’s shoulders reloaded my weapons. Clunking sounds filled the cramped cockpit as I selected new grenades; the high-explosive kind hadn’t worked. Even as the rail gun came online again, the dragon wheeled in the air and dove straight at me. People screamed around me. Something slammed into the mech’s leg. I glanced down; it was a woman. She was one of the Uplift-path folks, still Level Twenty-Eight in Phase Three. She had no business being on this battlefield, and she knew it.

  “Get out of here!” I yelled, pushing the mech further north even as survivors fled south.

  She nodded, but didn’t move. I groaned. The mech’s arm came out, and the club-shaped fist hung in front of her. She grabbed it, and I pulled her up. “Run! Now, god dammit!”

  I didn’t have time to see if she’d listen. The mech spun, and the first of my grenades fired. Smoke filled the air, and I sidestepped, pushing the mech deeper into the smokescreen.

  Then the grass rocked like an earthquake. The mech lost its footing and slammed into a concrete path, then rolled. I slammed against the cockpit’s armor. Something popped in my non-gauntlet wrist, but I ignored the burst of pain. Only one thing mattered: getting the mech to its feet before the Wyvern found me. I fired a second smoke grenade to refresh the screen. Green-black smog choked the air as it exploded against something solid.

  And the Wyvern’s metal body screeched into the air again.

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  A respite. I let the drones reload the grenade launcher again. The smoke was already starting to disperse, but I pushed the machine further west, into the wind and away from my smokescreen. It’d shield the retreating farmers on their way back to Lake Michigan’s shoreline, but the Rust-Belt Wyvern was so big it’d probably kill them anyway, just by thrashing around blindly.

  That is, unless I gave it something to focus on.

  The moment I broke free from the smoke, I swung my rail gun around. The Wyvern was mid-air, circling the park like it was hunting for something. Two clunks filled the cockpit as a pair of grenades slotted into place under my last smoke screen shot.

  I aimed. The rail gun fired, three quick shots that punched thin holes into the Rust-Belt Wyvern’s body. Even at this range—the thing had to be an eighth of a mile up, or more—it was impossible to miss its bulk. But at the same time, shooting it with pinprick rail gun bolts felt like a mosquito trying to kill a horse. It just wasn’t enough.

  Still, it did finish its wheeling circle and tucked its wings. Smoke boiled from its mouth, and my stomach dropped in my gut as it crashed down toward me.

  All three grenades fired as it passed two hundred yards out. The first detonated harmlessly. Smoke ripped out of it supernaturally quickly, but the gargantuan dragon pushed through the screen like nothing.

  The second two hit it in the face at one hundred fifty and one hundred yards.

  Battery acid splashed across the monster’s lower jaw, melting the outer layer of car bodies and billboard frames. It screeched, and for a moment, I truly thought I’d hurt it.

  Then hundreds of tons of dragon slammed into the ground as I threw myself to the left.

  I hadn’t built any alarms into the mech.

  There hadn’t been space, and I’d reasoned that if the machine was damaged enough for an alarm to trigger, I’d know it was damaged. This wasn’t a submarine or an airplane; it was a cramped, single-seat machine.

  So, as my hearing slowly returned—except for the deafening ringing in my ear—the lack of alarm wasn’t a surprise. The pulsing Charge around the control for the mech’s right arm was, though. It flashed like the visual half of the fire alarm drills we’d had at Cozad Elementary, but bright orange.

  I pulled on the controls, rolling the mech to the side as best I could, but the right arm wouldn’t respond. It was either badly damaged or, more likely, destroyed. I winced; it was the same injury I’d taken fighting the Fireborn Crusader, but at least this time, I wasn’t suddenly helpless. The Voltsmith’s Grasp was still attached to my shoulder, and…

  Yep. The rail gun and grenade launcher were both still functional, although reloading was taking a while.

  I pushed the mech to its feet, favoring my left side. As I turned, the Rust-Belt Wyvern’s head hung less than a dozen yards from me. It roared. Flames boiled behind its iron teeth, each as tall as Tori. Then it twitched suddenly. Not much, just a little.

  Had I actually damaged something? Or, maybe, had its high-impact dives broken parts free?

  It didn’t matter. The mech was mobile, and the dragon recovered quickly from its convulsion. Fire poured from its mouth; trees burst into flames around me, and Millennium Park turned into a fiery hellscape. I fired the rail gun again, three more shots punching into the monster’s mouth.

  It convulsed again. I hadn’t hit it that hard; it had never reacted to my other attacks, and even the battery acid bombs had barely done any meaningful damage. The three pinprick holes I’d just blasted in its jaw shouldn’t have hurt it.

  As the Wyvern leaped into the air again, I put another grenade into its stomach. Steel melted, dripping and flaking as the monster flew. It wasn’t enough. I’d barely scratched the thing, and I hadn’t taken out any of its fighting capability.

  If the fight kept going like this, I was going to lose.

  Tori Vanderbilt had been on her way to the Millennium Park Agricultural Hub—Jessica-Mom’s idea, not hers—when the Rust-Belt Wyvern attacked.

  She hadn’t joined the fight right away, though.

  There’d been a few bosses like this in her MMO days. One had been a fight against a dragon, but not on the ground. No, Kaleron the Great had been a gray wyrm so mighty that the raid wasn’t a trip into his lair to kill him. Rather, the raid was on him. Buildings and cultists had formed an entire city on the gray wyrm’s back, and the raid team had to besiege it to get to Kaleron’s head.

  At least, that had been the strategy for that tier. But two tiers later, someone realized that, with a specific combination of gear, a small party could enter the Wyrmgate dungeon and force Kaleron to land, bypassing the raid and arriving right at the final boss.

  So, when Tori saw the Rest-Belt-Wyvern, her first thought wasn’t to rush into battle.

  It was to fiddle with her gear.

  The Gloves of the Fungal Mat were her first piece. They’d allow her to stack up spells in reserve, and she’d need them for what she had in mind. Three spells, all delayed until the very last moment, to go with her double-casting Skill.

  Then there was Perfection’s Gaze. Its stacking effect would be necessary for what she had in mind. So would the rest of the pieces that did similar things; she’d been working on putting together a ‘boss-killer’ set for exactly this moment. She fiddled with her gear, then, when she was satisfied, she stepped out from behind a burning oak tree and started casting.

  Her first spell was a Pull. Just a simple Pull, at the lowest power she could cast at. She hadn’t had to cast weak spells in a while, but the theory of saving her energy that she’d first practiced against the Knife Crabs in Phase One made sense here. She wasn’t trying to bring down the Rust-Belt Wyvern in one fell swoop, as cool as that would be.

  No, this was going to take a while.

  The thing took off, swirling over a cloud of smoke, but Tori didn’t lose focus. Push. Pull. Push. Pull. Back and forth, keeping her spells coming in waves so the monster barely even shook in the air.

  As the boss crashed down at Hal, she resisted the urge to use her delayed spells early. If she did it now, it wouldn’t be enough. She needed more—more power, more casts, more builders before she used her big spenders. The Pushes and Pulls were starting to move the monster. Not much. Just a little. But enough that she could see the ramp-up working.

  Then Hal rolled to the side, and when he came up in the smoke cloud, his mech was missing an arm.

  Push.

  Pull.

  Push.

  Pull.

  Power swelled inside her. She felt Perfection’s Gaze growing in strength, stronger than it had ever been. Stronger by far than when she’d killed the giant crab at the bottom of the Dozen-Path Descent. She let each spell use a little more energy, then a little more.

  Then, as the Rust-Belt Wyvern dove toward Hal one more time, she unleashed all her delayed spells and the two she could cast at the same time, all at once.

  Five Gravity Wells activated below the field boss—five highly-empowered Gravity Wells.