Chapter 74: The Unfettered (1/2)

The Hive’s canopy lit up gold and violet from twenty-one directions at once, and none of it was Logan’s own doing.

Twenty-one Motherships broke into the clearing in a formation too tight to be anything but rehearsed, and the space around them filled instantly with more Spacecraft than Logan had ever seen committed to a single engagement, over a hundred and fifty from each ship, more than three thousand hulls scattered across the sky in a heartbeat.

"There he is!" Someone’s voice cracked bright with triumph across a channel Logan hadn’t been invited to but could hear anyway. "Leon Flanke, dead ahead, and he’s not even braced for it!"

Half of those three thousand carried a Mythic-rank unit somewhere inside their formation, cores of genuine power scattered through a sea of lesser hulls the way stars sit scattered through a galaxy.

"Fuck. Fuck, this is it." Billy’s voice came tight over Logan’s own channel. "Boss, this is a lot more than the last two put together."

Logan didn’t answer right away. He was too busy throwing himself sideways off his own comfortable throne as a spear of green lightning tore through the exact space he’d been sitting in a half second earlier, close enough that the hair on his arms stood on end from the charge alone.

"Everyone off the ship. Defensive positions." He was already moving, Grimlord’s Blade in hand before he’d finished the sentence. "Solveig, Billy, Synthia, you three hold the Mothership no matter what. If that core goes, I’m done regardless of anything else I manage out here."

"Understood, milord." Solveig’s greatsword was already out, eight fresh clones splitting off from him in the same breath.

Billy hesitated half a second. "Boss-"

"Go." Logan didn’t look back. "I’ve got this side. You’ve got that one."

---

Grimdolur Ashveil found him inside the first ten seconds.

The dwarf came in low and fast, twin war-picks trailing dark red energy, and the first strike came close enough to opening Logan’s throat that he felt the wind of it against his own skin before Grimlord’s Blade managed to intercept the second swing.

"Not bad." Grimdolur didn’t sound impressed so much as clinical about it. "Word said you were fast. Guess that part’s true, at least."

Logan didn’t answer. He didn’t have the MP to spare on conversation, not with three more signatures already converging on his position from three separate angles.

Blade Veil Counter!

The veil caught Grimdolur’s follow-up, and the counter’s damage boost carried straight into a cut that opened the dwarf’s shoulder to the bone. Grimdolur didn’t so much as flinch, some kind of passive already knitting the wound half shut before the blood had finished spreading.

’Tanky.’ Logan filed that away and moved on, because moving on was the only option left.

A woman he didn’t recognize came in from the left, ice and shadow both threaded through her own weapon, and this one he didn’t manage to fully clear. The strike opened a line across his ribs deep enough to make his vision swim white at the edges for half a second.

"One down to zero!" She called it out like a scoreboard.

It wasn’t. Grim Siphoning Edge pulled a healthy chunk of MP back into him the instant his own counter-cut passed through whatever power had been coiled in her weapon, and the wound on his ribs, while real, wasn’t the kind that ended anything by itself.

He kept moving. ’Fuck’s sake. They are strong!’

Reaper’s Stride!

However, instead of fear, his eyes just got crazier.

Standing still, even for a second, felt like the actual death sentence in a fight built out of this many angles.

---

The Mothership’s own hull groaned under the weight of an opening assault that made the six-ship rush from Tur’Ni Sian’s fight look almost polite by comparison.

Forty Motherships’ worth of coordinated fire converged on the barrier in the same instant, and Synthia’s defense grid strained visibly for the first time since it had come online.

"It’s holding!" Synthia called it out anyway, sweat beading along her own runes despite whatever passed for exhaustion in something built the way she was. "But barely!"

Solveig’s clones fanned out along the hull’s exterior, greatswords meeting incoming Spacecraft two and three at a time.

Bloodfall Destruction!

A column of crimson light swept a cluster of six enemy ships out of the sky in a single motion, and Sovereign’s Bloodright turned every point of damage his clones had already taken into a shield thickening across his own chest.

Billy tore through the opposite flank in Duskfall Leviathan’s full form, Voidfall Cannon and Unbound Drift alternating in a rhythm he’d clearly settled into somewhere over the last several fights.

"Boss, they’re not stopping!" Billy’s voice cracked with real strain for the first time all match. "There’s just too many of them!"

"Keep the ship standing!" Logan’s own voice came back ragged. "That’s the only job that matters right now!"

Thaeloric Vaen found him next, and Thaeloric had clearly done his homework.

"You favor your left side after a hit lands." He said it almost conversationally, storm gathering thick around one raised hand. "Small thing. Took me a while to notice it."

The lightning that followed came in exactly where Logan’s left side would have been if he’d reacted the way he usually did.

He didn’t. Some instinct older than conscious thought threw him right instead, and the strike that should have ended the fight outright carved a groove through open air instead of through his own chest.

Overgrim Slash!

The dark arc tore free before Thaeloric finished recovering his own stance, catching him across the arm and dropping his guard just long enough for Logan to close the rest of the distance.

Axiom Severance!

The follow-up should have ended it. Thaeloric twisted at the last possible second, taking the cut across his ribs instead of his throat, and retreated fast enough that Logan let him go rather than chase into whatever the man had left in reserve.

’Four down. One left, if the count’s even right anymore.’

He didn’t get long to think about it. Borak Cinderfist arrived from directly above, dropping straight down with both fists already burning.

Kinetic Doom Drive echoed through Logan’s own mind as he read the trajectory, except this wasn’t Billy’s version of it.

Borak’s own strike carried the same principle, momentum compressed into a single devastating point, and Logan barely got Grimlord’s Blade up in time to deflect rather than block outright.

The impact still threw him a few hundred meters backward through open air.

His eyes caught an attack aiming at Solveig, one of the top players clearly recognising his threat, and wanting to end him.

’Don’t you dare!’

Grim Devouring Slash!

He fired it with perfect aim, and caught the trailing edge of the second attack Solveig hadn’t seen coming from his own blind side. Whatever had been building toward Solveig’s exposed flank shrank to half its size and half its threat in the same instant the ethereal edge passed through it, buying Solveig the half second he needed to actually turn and meet it properly.

"Thank you, milord!" Solveig’s voice cracked through the chaos, grateful and fierce in equal measure.

Logan didn’t have breath to answer. He was already moving again, because moving was the only thing keeping him alive at this point.

Every slash carried him distances, every slash either saved him or someone, or eliminated someone.

Still, Mythic units died around him in ways that hadn’t happened yet in this whole match or the previous. Some died trying to protect him, some died to kill others.

One of the Mythic units from the earlier merges took a coordinated strike from two players with Legendary specs at once and came apart in a shower of scattered light before it managed a single counterattack.

Another traded blows with Grimdolur’s own summoned constructs and lost, hull cracking open the same way Tur’Ni Sian’s fleet had cracked open under Logan’s own assault, except this time it was happening to him instead.

’This is real.’ The thought surfaced somewhere underneath the chaos, cold and clear despite everything else screaming for his attention. ’I can feel death lingering.’

He felt the truth of it settle into his own chest, heavier than any of the physical wounds so far. And at the same time, it also strengthened his resolve.

Five players, by his own rough count, had already thrown attacks fast enough and hard enough that a half second of hesitation would have ended the whole match right there. Not one of them had managed it yet. But five was enough. Five meant he couldn’t afford predictability anymore. He couldn’t afford patterns, couldn’t afford habits, couldn’t afford anything that let someone like Thaeloric read him twice.

’Then I won’t be predictable. Not even to myself.’

He let go of whatever restraint had been shaping his fighting style up to this point and let the chaos actually take over.

Reaper’s Stride!

He blinked into the thick of a cluster of enemy Spacecraft that had nothing to do with any specific threat, purely because they were there, and cutting through them meant MP came back.

Grim Siphoning Edge pulled reserves back with every strike that carried real power, and every strike he threw carried real power now, no more holding back to conserve anything for later. Later didn’t matter if he didn’t survive the next thirty seconds.

Frostfire Edge!

A Spacecraft’s pilot went down screaming, frost and flame both tearing through him before he’d even registered the blade had moved.

’SURRENDER!’ Someone else’s voice, cut off half a syllable in.

He didn’t slow down to acknowledge it. Another blink. Another cut. Another enemy Mythic unit caught mid-turn and opened along a seam its own pilot hadn’t realized was exposed.

Every swing of his own blade fed Reaper’s Stride’s stacking speed bonus another increment, and the stacks weren’t resetting anymore, because he wasn’t stopping long enough to let them.

A plan connecting his arsenal of powers formed.

’I can do this!’ Logan’s eyes became deadly calm, but with an intense blaze burning deep within.