Each battle requiring the full version of his attention and his ability and Magnar's cooperation, and they worked through them with a steadiness that was not easy and was not comfortable but was consistent, which was all it needed to be.
The tenth Diamond class Stone Crawler died in the early afternoon, and Neil stood over it with his arm aching from the bruising that had accumulated and Magnar sitting nearby with a long scrape down his left flank that would heal but that had been earned in the final fight when a Diamond class creature had gotten beneath his guard in a way they had not anticipated.
He looked at what they had accumulated.
The Diamond class gene material was in the containers, ten units worth, dense and rich and representing the last threshold for both of them.
Neil found a flat section of stone away from the territory they had been working in and sat down.
