Read Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3) for Free Online Page A

which had been filled with monotonous extermination of undead swarming the neighboring zones. With all the upgrades to skills and gear—even the worst-equipped member of the clan was still rocking three rare pieces of equipment—this process now resembled a combine reaping a harvest. I had leveled up to one sixty five, and my companions were getting close to one eighty, having long acquired their combat form. As a result, we were dispatching whole packs of undead within two-three minutes. The clan's level had grown to four, and our treasury was overstuffed with all the junk we had been getting while grinding. The smithy in Feator had become our unofficial headquarters, where veritable pyramids of steel bars, silk reels and the like were being produced from the raw materials looted off the mobs. All this will need to be transported to Xantarra and sold, I reminded myself, looking at the strange, vine-covered stone figures towering on either side of the entrance to the catacombs. We didn't need any more of these materials—all my clanmates had already maxed their professions for their level, which presented me with yet another challenge of supplying them all with horses. And mounts were anything but cheap in this world.
    Their acquaintance with combat form had been rather amusing. Iam had been the first to shift, and it had happened while we were fighting a random pack of undead. The demon suddenly exploded in height and shoulder-width, sprouting dark green spikes from his armor that had expanded seamlessly to accommodate his increased body mass. Even his horns had grown considerably, in proportion with the rest of him. The youth didn't even realize what had happened until after the pack had been wiped out; hearing exclamations of shock, he turned to survey his companions' bewildered faces, his eyes emitting a sinister yellow glow.
    "Handsome!" Reece guffawed, incorrigible as ever. Then, shooting a mocking glance at Reena, he commiserated, "Better keep it gentle between the bedsheets from here on to avoid irreparable damage. Unless you want her stuttering for life."
    The young woman, however, paid no mind to the mage, perhaps for the first time ever. Staring at her transformed beloved with unblinking eyes, she approached him slowly and traced a gentle palm across his cheek. Then she turned around to the others and simply smiled, saying nothing but glowing with jubilation. I caught myself smiling back at her.
    Demon combat form lasted fifteen minutes and reset after one hour. Oddly, unlike with males, combat form made demonesses more physically attractive. Even with the quiet and laid-back Hagedia, her facial features took on the hard, sovereign expression of a supreme predator, while her figure—growing more curvaceous in all the right places—invariably drew attention to itself. Or maybe that was just the demonic constituent in me talking...
    "How long do you need, Reece?" I asked the alchemist, hard at work over his portable lab. "Not till dusk, I hope?"
    "About thirty minutes more," the mage gestured toward several dozen tubes half-filled with a murky brownish substance peeking out of special racks. "The bile needs time to turn. Then I'll mix in some wild rosemary extract and it'll be ready for consumption!" he grinned.
    "Spare us the details," Reena frowned. "Or my stomach will be the first to turn," she turned away from the amphibian corpses emphatically, closing her eyes and resting her head on Iam's shoulder.
    "It'll taste like chicken stock in the end, trust me," the alchemist assured her. "Now why don't you make yourself useful and gather some blue moss to help the common cause? Instead of turning up your nose at us peasants..."
    "You're right," the girl sprang to her feet easily, touched her black-haired beau's shoulder, and gave me a questioning look.
    "Go on," I dismissed them. "You have half an hour, no more. Don't go too far."
    "Uh huh," the mage snorted, keeping his eyes on the tube, its contents boiling on