Chapter 114: The Start

Chapter 114: Chapter 114: The Start

The battlefield detonated the second the frontline shattered.

KABOOOOM!

Whatever thin line the soldiers had tried to hold vanished on the spot. The troops watching from the rear finally learned what a real monster looked like up close.

Five-meter-tall beasts thundered across the asphalt, claws ripping through parked sedans like wet cardboard.

Their guttural roars vibrating through the concrete canyons.

GROOOOAAAR!

The team of ten didn’t flinch. They simply watched.

Aria’s silver spear rested against her shoulder. Darius rolled his neck with a dull crack. Kael shook out his knuckles.

pop, pop, pop.

In the middle of it all, Felix stood with his hands tucked into his pockets, scanning the flow of the horde.

Aria leveled her spear point-blank. "Clear them."

SWOOSH!

They vanished into the swarm.

A jagged spatial rift tore open right beside the lead beast.

ZRRR-ZZZT!

Mira stepped through the fracture, her fingers flicking sideways as space itself crumpled like crushed paper. The beast’s neck snapped into a folding pocket of vacuum.

CRACK-SHHHK!

Swallowed clean into nothing.

She stepped out on the other side. "One."

Another predator lunged at her blind spot.

SSHHHK!

Mira gave a tiny smirk and opened a flat seam in reality right under its feet. The beast plunged through up to its waist before she snapped her fingers shut with a sharp.

SNAP!

The seam violently compressed, catapulting the creature sideways through two shopfronts.

SMASH-CRASH!

"Two."

Kael sprinted past. "You’re counting out loud?"

"Keeps my head straight," Mira said, dodging a spray of dark fluid.

HISSS!

"Fair enough."

A wall of green-scaled hounds swarmed the intersection, paws scraping the road.

SCRRR-SCRRR!

Kael planted his boots and yelled, "Back off!"

The team parted around him without looking. Kael thrust both palms forward, and a violent torrent of orange fire engulfed thirty beasts at once.

FWOOOOOOSH!

The heat was so savage that asphalt melted into black tar beneath their paws.

"Now that’s how you cook a raid," Kael laughed, teeth bared.

A sharp gust whistled overhead.

WHOOOSH!

Lena dropped from a streetlamp. "Don’t get cocky, idiot."

"I am professional and restrained at all times!"

"You’re an arsonist." She swept her hand downward, catching his raging flames in a spiraling vortex of pressurized wind.

FWRRRR-ROOOAAR!

The fire twisted into a howling fire tornado that chewed down the main street, shredding monsters with razor-sharp thermal currents.

Kael blinked at the glowing wreckage. "Okay. That was pretty slick."

"Obviously," Lena said, landing beside him with a light tap. "Try to keep up next time."

"You could’ve warned me before blowing up my fire!"

"You would’ve whined."

She spun off to intercept another flank, leaving him laughing through the smoke.

Down the street, Ryan stood like an iron statue in front of a charging behemoth. It was four meters of thick bone plating and muscle, claws gouging trenches into the roadway.

SKRRRRR!

"Come get it," Ryan muttered, sinking his stance.

BOOM!

SHATTER!

The impact blew out the windows of the three-story office next to them. Ryan’s heavy shield groaned.

CREEEAK

His boots skidding back half a meter into the torn asphalt. He didn’t budge another inch.

His lips pulled back into a grin. "My turn."

He wrenched his body, snapping the shield upward into the beast’s jaw.

CRUNCH!

The monster’s head whipped back as its front legs left the pavement. Ryan pivoted on his heel and brought the blunt steel edge smashing down onto its spine, pinning it to the street.

THUD-CRACK!

The monster didn’t twitch again.

"Weak," Ryan grunted, scanning the street.

"Next."

A streak of violet lightning sheared through the smoke.

ZZZZT-CRACKLE!

Orion flickered past, leaving afterimages in the air. A bladed hound turned its head a fraction of a second too late as lightning drew a clean line through its neck.

SHING!

THUMP.

By the time the head hit the dirt, Orion was already three paces behind it, sheathing his short blade with a quiet click.

FLASH!

Another down.

FLASH!

Three more severed at the torso.

SHLICK-SHLICK!

Pure speed, zero wasted breath.

"Stop showing off!" Mira yelled across the plaza.

"Can’t hear you over the corpses," Orion deadpanned, vanishing again.

Then, the ambient light began to sink.

It wasn’t a cloud passing over the sun. It was raw Darkness.

VUUUUUUM...

Liora stood isolated in the center of the four-lane crossing, her light-pink hair lifting against the draft. Her pale pink eyes: usually so hesitant, shy, and gentle around Felix, were dead-focused now. Thick tendrils of black mana pulsed across her forearms like living liquid.

HISS-HISSS...

Dozens of razor-clawed beasts converged on her from all four corners, snarling viciously.

GRRRR-ROAR!

Liora didn’t back up. Her mouth curved into a faint, thrilled smile.

"Come here."

They lunged.

BZZT-POP!

She flickered out of existence. A burst of black static erupted behind the lead beast; her fist drilled straight through its shoulder blade.

CRACK.

Before its body hit the deck, she melted into the shadows under its feet, reappearing three meters in the air to bring a darkness-wrapped heel smashing down into its skull.

THUD!

She teleported between every shadow on the ground like a phantom.

SNAP!

A pair of fangs bit empty air; Liora materialized beside the creature’s ear, snapping its neck with an open-palm strike.

CRACK!

She fought like Felix. Short, clean, bone-shattering impacts at point-blank range. But where Felix moved with cold medical precision, Liora moved with pure, instinctual hunger.

She had spent years terrified of this power, terrified that the shadow would swallow her mind. But she wasn’t fighting it anymore.

She had accepted it, along with her desire to survive, her desperate need to stay by Felix’s side, and the fierce urge to rip apart anything that threatened him.

Without the internal struggle holding her back, the darkness obeyed her every breath.

She raised both open hands.

HUMMMMM...

Dozens of pitch-black spears formed in the air above her head, vibrating with heavy mana.

"Die."

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!

THUMP-CRUNCH!

The spears slammed down like black lightning bolts, pinning beasts to the pavement. One injured predator tried to scramble away toward an alleyway.

A thin thread of dark mana snaked from Liora’s fingers.

WHIP!

Drilling at the back of its neck.

The beast froze. Its muscles locked up, shuddering violently as her darkness bored into its mana circuits.

ZRRRRRT!

Liora tilted her head, feeling the energy connect. The beast’s violent urge suddenly snapped, bending entirely to her will. It bowed its snouted head to the ground with a soft thud.

"...You’re listening to me?" she murmured.

The beast gave a guttural roar.

ROOAAAR!

It spun around, and tore into the throats of its own pack with vicious bites.

CHOMP-CRUNCH!

Liora’s eyes widened. "Fascinating."

She flicked her wrist.

Snap-flick

Sending threads of darkness into three more nearby creatures.

Their eyes turned completely black. Without a second’s hesitation, they charged back into the horde, ripping into their brethren in a frenzy of claws and teeth.

SNARL-RIP!

Her affinity wasn’t just raw destruction. It could invade. Corrupt. Suppress. Subjugate.

Liora watched her puppet beasts tear through the line, a breathless murmur leaving her lips:

"So this is what I can actually do."

Felix watched the whole field from the hood of a crushed delivery van.

His senses swept the block like a radar net. Following his latest breakthrough, his perception had broadened drastically.

The standard B-ranks flooding the street didn’t even register as threats to him; their attacks moved like slow motion.

His job wasn’t cleaning up the grunts. His job was keeping the team whole.

Down the block, a scythe-armed beast caught Ryan’s shoulder, tearing through his tactical vest.

RRRIIIP!

Felix was already there. An emerald streak touched down beside the shield-bearer.

FWIP!

"Stay still."

"I’m fine, Felix—"

"You’re leaking blood on my boots." Felix pressed his palm over the open gash. Warm green light surged.

SHHHH-GLOW,

knitting the torn deltoid and sealing the skin in two seconds.

"Thanks," Ryan breathed.

FLASH.

Felix was already gone.

He reappeared behind Lena, clearing a poisoned sting from her calf before she even realized she’d been tagged.

TSSS-CLEAR!

He flashed beside Mira, resetting a twisted ankle after an awkward drop with a dull POP, then over to Orion to stitch a long laceration across his forearm.

ZIP!

Darius didn’t need him. The big man was simply pulverizing everything that entered his radius with heavy earth hammer blows.

WHAM! CRUNCH! KABOOM!

Aria didn’t need him either; her spear was a blur of silver and frost.

SWISH-CHILL!

Freezing lines of enemies solid then shattering them into icy shards.

CLATTER!

Then Felix glanced toward the far plaza.

Seraphina had barely moved three paces from where she had landed. She stood completely relaxed, surrounded by a swirling dome of thousands of compressed water constructs: floating needles, serrated discs, spears, and scythes, each humming with jagged arcs of blue lightning.

BZZZZZT-CHIRP!

A beast stepped into her zone; a single water needle drilled through its eye.

SPLAT!

Five more charged; five lightning blades cut them into neat thirds.

SHLICK-ZZT!

She stood at the eye of a meat grinder, her expression bored, flicking her finger like a conductor leading an orchestra of pure slaughter.

Felix dashed past her, smirking. "A little dramatic, don’t you think?"

Seraphina didn’t look at him, but her lips curled slightly. "Efficiency requires style, Doctor."

With a flick of her hand.

SWOOSH!

Twenty water blades shot forward, turning the entire street corner into a mist of red spray.

SQUIRT-GUSH!

Then, the air went dead.

GONG...

Felix stopped on the roof of a bus, his head turned toward the portal.

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