The world was a screaming vortex of white mist and violet light.

  The Slipstream Drifter pitched upward at a suicidal forty-five-degree angle, its iron hull groaning as Captain Rook fought the atmospheric drag. Directly above them, the Aether-Lung Wyvern closed the distance. The beast was a slate-grey mountain of scale and muscle, its jaw unhinging to reveal a throat glowing with the raw, unstable energy of its Aether-Gland.

  "He's firing!" Tiny’s voice was a thin, panicked shriek, barely audible over the roar of the thrusters.

  The Wyvern exhaled.

  A massive, invisible cylinder of compressed air—a kinetic wind-shear blast—tore through the sky. It hit the clouds beneath the ship first, vaporizing them into a ring of shockwaves.

  "Bank left!" Wanhan roared.

  Rook didn't just bank; she kicked the manual release on the right-side bladders. The ship lurched violently, dropping its right wing and spinning through a dizzying, three-hundred-sixty-degree corkscrew.

  The wind-shear clipped the Drifter’s port side. The heavy ironwood railing shattered into splinters, and the entire ship was slapped sideways by the sheer concussive force.

  Wanhan’s boots left the deck. For a terrifying, silent heartbeat, he was weightless, suspended twelve thousand feet over the abyss with nothing but a two-mile drop beneath him.

  [Skill Activated: Diner Dash (Aerial Correction)]

  In mid-air, Wanhan didn't panic. He used the violent rotation of the ship to his advantage. He kicked off the rising edge of the hull, his Level 9 [Agility] allowing him to redirect his momentum. Instead of being thrown into the sky, he launched himself toward the central mast.

  His left hand caught a heavy copper cable, the wire biting deep into his palm. He swung around the mast like a pendulum, his boots slamming back onto the deck with a bone-jarring thud.

  The Wyvern was less than fifty yards away now, its massive claws extended, ready to rip the "insect" out of the air.

  "Rook! Maximum throttle!" Wanhan screamed. "I need the lift!"

  "You're going to die, kid!" Rook yelled back, but she was already slamming the brass levers forward.

  The Drifter’s over-charged engines let out a high-pitched, mechanical shriek. The ship didn't just accelerate; it jumped. The sudden surge of G-force pinned Wanhan’s boots to the deck, giving him the one thing he needed most: Gravity.

  He had his anchor.

  Wanhan sprinted toward the rising bow of the ship, Volatile Fenrir held low. The blade was a white-hot streak of light in the freezing thin air, its thermal exhaust creating a localized storm of steam around him.

  [Active Skill: Kinetic Discharge Activated]

  The tungsten pommel didn't just flare; it vibrated with a violent, rhythmic thrumming. The Alchemical Ember was feeding on the high-altitude ozone, its pressure gauges in Wanhan's mind redlining.

  The Wyvern loomed over the bow, its massive chest fissures pulsing violet. It opened its mouth for a point-blank execution.

  Wanhan didn't wait for the monster to strike. He reached the edge of the bowsprit, the very tip of the ship’s iron nose, and jumped.

  He didn't jump at the beast. He jumped under it.

  As the Drifter shot beneath the Wyvern's belly at terminal velocity, Wanhan launched himself upward into the freezing void. He was a speck of black wool and glowing steel against the massive, armored underbelly of the sky-terror.

  Time slowed as his [Agility] hit its peak.

  He saw the weak point. Between the thick, Mark III equivalent scales of the Wyvern's chest, right where the Aether-Gland pulsed with light, there was a seam of softer, unarmored tissue used for cooling the beast's internal fires.

  "Burn," Wanhan whispered.

  He swung Volatile Fenrir in a massive, overhead vertical arc.

  KRACK-THOOM!

  The mid-air explosion was blinding. The kinetic discharge detonated directly into the Wyvern's chest. But because there was no ground to absorb the recoil, the physics were devastating for both parties.

  The Wyvern’s massive chest buckled inward, the shockwave shattering its slate-grey scales and rupturing the outer casing of the Aether-Gland. The beast let out a muffled, gurgling roar as the violet light began to leak uncontrollably from its wound.

  The recoil hit Wanhan like a physical hammer. It launched him downward with terrifying force, sending him tumbling toward the white void of the clouds below.

  Behind him, the Slipstream Drifter was already a hundred yards away, its engines roaring as it struggled to pull out of its own high-speed dive.

  "Wanhan!" Tiny’s scream was lost in the wind.

  Wanhan was falling. He looked up, his cloak flapping violently, watching the crippled Wyvern thrash in the sky above him. He looked down, seeing nothing but the endless, freezing abyss.

  He had hit the target. But now, he had to survive the landing.

  The freezing air didn't just rush past Wanhan; it battered him like physical fists.

  At twelve thousand feet, terminal velocity was a violent, deafening nightmare. The wind tore at his clothes, threatening to snap his neck with the sheer force of the drag. He was tumbling wildly, the white clouds spinning in a nauseating blur below, the crippled, shrieking Wyvern shrinking into a grey speck above.

  Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford.

  His System-enhanced [Agility] flooded his brain with cold, hyper-focused clarity. He forced his limbs outward, flattening his body against the wind resistance to arrest his uncontrolled spin. He sheathed Volatile Fenrir with a sharp snick, locking the dangerously hot steel away so it wouldn't scorch his leg in the descent.

  He stabilized, falling chest-first toward the endless white abyss.

  "Rook!" Tiny’s voice was a microscopic squeak swallowed by the sky, but the mechanical shriek of the Slipstream Drifter was impossible to miss.

  High above, Captain Rook didn't try to circle back. She didn't try to carefully lower the ship. She looked over the edge of her console, saw her payday plummeting toward the earth, and slammed the heavy brass yoke as far forward as it would go.

  She killed the horizontal thrusters and vented the alchemical lifting bladders.

  The Slipstream Drifter turned into a multi-ton iron dart. Rook threw the ship into a vertical, suicidal nosedive, plunging straight down into the slipstream to chase him.

  "Are you insane?!" Tiny screamed, suspended in his harness as the deck vanished from beneath his boots, leaving him dangling parallel to the floorboards. "Pull up! You'll rip the hull apart!"

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "If I pull up, we don't get paid!" Rook cackled wildly, the G-force peeling her lips back over her teeth. Her hands flew across the glowing runic dials, violently managing the descent. "Mata! Get on the rail!"

  The blind elf didn't need to be told. She was already moving.

  Despite the ship plummeting at terminal velocity, Mata moved across the vertical deck with terrifying, predatory grace. She grabbed a heavy coil of braided drake-hide rigging line off a shattered cleat. At the end of the rope was a massive, rusted iron carabiner ring.

  She stood on the very lip of the diving bow, her mottled cloak snapping violently behind her. She tilted her head, her covered eyes aimed down into the rushing clouds.

  She couldn't see Wanhan. But she could hear the specific, heavy thrum of his coarse wool cloak flapping in the wind. She could hear the metallic clink of his scabbard.

  "Match his speed, Captain!" Mata yelled, her voice cutting through the roar of the wind. "If you are too slow, the tension will tear his arm from its socket! If you are too fast, we run him over!"

  "I know how to thread a needle, elf!" Rook snarled. She triggered a short, violent burst from the retro-thrusters.

  Down below, Wanhan watched the jagged iron nose of the Drifter plunging toward him like a falling meteor. He didn't try to dodge. He tracked the speed.

  Rook was a madwoman, but she was a genius. The ship shuddered, the retro-thrusters bleeding off just enough momentum to match Wanhan's exact rate of descent. For a surreal, terrifying moment, they were falling perfectly in tandem. The ship hovered just ten feet above him in the freefall.

  "Human!" Mata’s voice cracked like a whip.

  She hurled the heavy iron ring out into the void.

  Wanhan reached out with his left hand. His Level 9 [Agility] tracked the rusted iron ring perfectly, and his [Strength] clamped his fingers around the cold metal like a vise.

  "Got it!" Wanhan roared.

  "Brace!" Rook screamed, violently yanking the primary yoke back and slamming the throttle to maximum lift.

  The Drifter’s engine block howled in agony. The alchemical bladders rapidly inflated, and the massive rear thrusters ignited with a blinding violet flash. The ship violently arrested its dive, pulling up with bone-crushing G-force.

  The slack in the drake-hide rope vanished instantly.

  The jolt hit Wanhan like a charging bull. His shoulder popped, a flare of blinding pain shooting down his bicep as his Level 9 [Endurance] absorbed the massive kinetic shock of the pendulum swing. He slammed hard against the iron-plated hull of the ship, his boots scrambling for purchase.

  "Reel him in!" Rook yelled, leveling the ship out with a shuddering groan of stressed iron.

  Tiny scrambled out of his harness, sobbing with relief. He grabbed the heavy winch crank and frantically hauled the line. Within seconds, Wanhan was hauled over the shattered railing, collapsing onto the oily deck in a heap of shivering wool and adrenaline.

  "You're alive!" Tiny gasped, dropping the crank. "You suicidal lunatic, you actually survived!"

  Wanhan rolled onto his back, his chest heaving as the thin air burned his lungs. He popped his dislocated left shoulder back into place with a sickening crunch and a sharp hiss of pain. He pushed himself up, his eyes instantly scanning the sky.

  "I survived," Wanhan rasped, a vicious grin breaking across his frostbitten face. "But so did it."

  A terrifying, gargling roar echoed through the clouds above them.

  The Aether-Lung Wyvern broke through the mist. Its chest was a shattered, bleeding mess of ruined scales, and the violet light of its Aether-Gland was flickering erratically. But the beast wasn't fleeing. It was enraged.

  It folded its massive wings, locking its golden, reptilian eyes directly onto the Slipstream Drifter.

  "It's wounded!" Mata called out, nocking a black-fletched arrow. "The gland is leaking! It cannot fire its wind-shear, but it is coming for the hull!"

  "Let it come," Wanhan said. He stood up on the shifting deck, his boots finding their anchor. He reached down and drew the dark, superheated steel of Volatile Fenrir once more. "We cracked its armor. Now we finish the job."

  The Aether-Lung Wyvern didn't land on the Slipstream Drifter. It collided with it.

  The massive, slate-grey beast slammed feet-first onto the forward deck with the force of a falling meteor. The heavy ironwood planks instantly splintered into shrapnel. The entire ship violently bucked, the bow plunging downward under the sheer, multi-ton weight of the sky-terror.

  "I'm losing the lift!" Rook screamed from the helm, her boots planted wide as she violently wrestled the heavy brass yoke. The runic engine block shrieked, the violet alchemical light pulsing frantically as the thrusters fought a losing battle against gravity. "Kill it, or cut it off the deck! We can't carry this much mass!"

  The Wyvern roared, a deafening, gurgling sound that sprayed glowing, violet-tinged blood across the deck. Its chest was a ruined crater of shattered scales from Wanhan’s mid-air strike, the Aether-Gland inside flickering and sparking like a broken battery.

  It couldn't fire its wind-shear, but it was still a FATAL-Aero class monster. It lashed out with a massive, scythe-like wing, aiming to sweep the entire crew into the abyss.

  "Down!" Wanhan roared.

  Tiny didn't just duck; the dwarf threw himself flat against the oily floorboards. The razor-sharp edge of the wing sheared clean through the ship's main mast, snapping the thick ironwood pole like a dry twig.

  Mata didn't duck. She moved with the motion of the tilting deck, sliding under the wing's lethal arc. She came up in a flawless crouch, her bone-white bow drawn taut.

  Thwack. Thwack.

  Two black-fletched arrows buried themselves deep into the unarmored membrane of the Wyvern's wing-joint. The beast shrieked, its left wing collapsing uselessly against the railing.

  "Eat slag!" Tiny bellowed, rolling onto his back and pointing his scatter-crossbow straight up at the towering monster. The heavy weapon bucked wildly, sending a spread of armor-piercing bolts directly into the beast's throat. The thick scales deflected most of the iron, but the sheer kinetic impact forced the Wyvern to snap its head back.

  It was the opening Wanhan needed.

  The deck was tilted at a sickening thirty-degree downward angle. Wanhan didn't fight the slope. He used it.

  [Skill Activated: Diner Dash]

  He let gravity and the System pull him forward, his boots skimming the slick, blood-stained ironwood. He rocketed straight toward the enraged monster, Volatile Fenrir hissing in his left hand.

  The Wyvern snapped its massive jaws down, trying to bite him in half.

  Wanhan didn't dodge away. He slid straight beneath the snapping teeth, sliding on his knees across the ruined deck directly between the beast's massive, clawed legs.

  He looked up at the shattered, pulsing violet crater in the monster's chest. The Aether-Gland was fully exposed, the thick Mark III equivalent armor peeled back like a cracked eggshell.

  The Kinetic Discharge was still on cooldown, the tungsten pommel dark and inert. But Wanhan didn't need an explosion. He had a superheated blade, Level 9 [Strength], and the most brutal leverage skill in his arsenal.

  Wanhan drove his boots into the deck, arresting his slide. He coiled his entire body like a spring, staring directly into the violet light of the gland.

  [Skill Activated: Tree Cutter]

  He thrust Volatile Fenrir straight upward.

  The dark, lopsided Mark IV steel plunged directly into the pulsing, cracked Aether-Gland. The sheer, blistering heat of the blade hit the volatile alchemical fluid inside.

  The Wyvern's blood flashed to steam instantly.

  The beast let out a catastrophic, world-ending shriek. Its entire body went rigid, its eyes rolling back in its head.

  "Leverage!" Wanhan grunted through clenched teeth. He twisted the heavy hilt with a brutal, wrenching motion, using the edge of the shattered chest plate as a fulcrum.

  With a sickening, wet tearing sound, Wanhan carved the massive, glowing Aether-Gland entirely free from the beast's chest cavity.

  The Wyvern’s golden eyes faded to a dull, lifeless grey.

  [Target Defeated: Aether-Lung Wyvern (FATAL-Aero)]

  [Experience Gained. Level Up!]

  "It's dead!" Wanhan yelled over the roaring engines.

  "It's still heavy!" Rook screamed back. The Slipstream Drifter was groaning, the iron hull starting to buckle under the dead weight. They were rapidly losing altitude, plummeting back toward the cloud layer. "Get it off my ship!"

  Wanhan didn't hesitate. He yanked his smoking sword free, grabbed the massive, pulsing violet gland—which was the size of a beer keg and humming with raw power—and hauled it out of the carcass.

  "Tiny! Help me push!"

  The dwarf scrambled to his feet, shoving his crossbow into its holster. He ran to the side of the massive, lifeless beast. Wanhan holstered Fenrir, wrapping his single arm around the thickest spine he could grab.

  "Heave!" Wanhan roared.

  Together, fueled by adrenaline and terror, they threw all their weight against the dead Wyvern. The slippery, blood-slicked deck finally worked in their favor. The multi-ton carcass slid sideways, crashing through the remaining ironwood railing.

  With a heavy, grinding scrape, the Wyvern tipped over the edge and plummeted into the white abyss.

  The moment the weight left the deck, the Slipstream Drifter shot upward like a cork released underwater.

  Rook let out a feral, hysterical laugh, pulling back on the yoke and stabilizing the ship. The violent shuddering faded, replaced by the steady, purring hum of the alchemical thrusters.

  Wanhan collapsed onto the ruined deck, his chest heaving, his muscles burning with lactic acid. He looked at the massive, glowing Aether-Gland resting safely beside him. It radiated a deep, beautiful violet light, untouched by the brutal fight.

  "Three thousand gold pieces," Tiny whispered, crawling over to the glowing organ and gently patting it as if it were a newborn child. "Kid, you actually did it. You fought a sky-terror in freefall, and you won."

  Mata stepped over the splintered wood, unstringing her bow. She looked down at Wanhan, the wind catching her mottled cloak.

  "You are a chaotic variable, human," the blind elf stated, her voice holding a rare trace of profound respect. "But you break things very efficiently."

  Up at the helm, Rook wiped a smear of grease and Wyvern blood from her goggles. She looked at the missing mast, the shattered railing, and the massive dents in her iron deck.

  "You owe me a new mast, One-Hand!" Rook called out, though she was grinning from ear to ear. "But that was the finest piece of suicidal flying I've ever seen! Where to next?"

  Wanhan slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. He felt the notification buzzing in his mind. Level 10. He had broken the single digits. He looked out at the endless expanse of the Slipstream Peaks, the sun glaring off the floating glaciers.

  "Back to the docks, Captain," Wanhan said, a true, exhausted smile touching his lips. "We have a bounty to collect."

  Fenrir to carve out that Aether-Gland while sliding down a sinking deck.

  The Loot: Three. Thousand. Gold.

  Next Update: Now they have to haul a glowing, highly volatile monster organ back to the Aethelgard Guildhall. But walking into a room full of veteran sky-hunters with the biggest bounty of the year is going to put a massive target on their backs.