Arcane Apocalypse ~ 151 - Part 2 (Patreon)

AN: And Part 2 is here, the chonkiest chapter of the three with 5k words! Enjoy. Part 3 is coming the day after tomorrow.

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Mia’s ears twitched, catching the by-now familiar eerie whistle almost entirely muffled under the roar of the oncoming mob. Some of them reacted, their even better hearing probably catching the same sound, and they suddenly went very pale very quickly, snapping out of the strange mob mentality. Some got trampled underfoot, others leapt over their comrades and used them as footholds to bolt towards the nearest building.

A moment later, the artillery shell smashed down right in the middle of the frenzied mob, and before even the explosion could clear, Mia heard a sequence of cracking gunshots. Snipers again, though she couldn’t yet see who they were aiming at, and whether they’d hit. 

The mob-hive mind was now almost fully shattered, giving way to pandemonium, but then the Werewolf King howled, and it was back again. There was no goddamn way that was natural at all; it had to be some kind of mind control. 

“That’s not normal,” Mia said, then her voice took on a hesitant edge. “Is it?”

“It’s strange,” Nikki confirmed. “I never heard of so many different types of beastkin coming under a single Beast Lord … much less one that’s the same rank as them. I can see feline types in there, they tend to be solitary wanderers.”

“These people used to be humans a few months ago,” Camie said. “They were still very new to this, and probably never had to deal with their instincts acting up.”

“Focus, girls,” Helene chided them, and Mia promptly shut up, returning her focus to the battle. 

Camie was probably on the right track, though. New, unruly instincts were put into overdrive when that werewolf twat made his call, and most of the beastkin were probably caught off guard … and then they were suddenly too deep in. It could be like an addiction, once that pack-thing got its claws into you, it was much harder to leave than it would have been to resist the initial Call.

The howl cut off suddenly, coinciding with another gunshot that echoed like a thunder crack. Well, that ought to shut him up for a bit.

Mia started casting, a piercing Arcane Bolt leaping out of her wand with practised ease. She was still hoping for a rout; the mob was in a fervour again, but it seemed a bit strained to her eyes. Maybe if they hit them hard and fast enough, the majority would survive by virtue of having legged it in time. 

She didn’t really aim; she didn’t need to. If ever there was a target-rich environment, this was it. With some luck on her part and misfortune on some beastkin’s, she could hit more than one with a single spell. The one she was using certainly had the penetrating power to go through one or two low-level foes.

She stopped thinking about the morality of it, stopped worrying about anything more complicated than aiming. She didn’t count them, existing between one spell and the next. Draw the mana, select a target, aim, cast the spell, repeat. 

Sparkle was circling around, and Mia was faintly aware of him having eviscerated three beastkin squads trying to set up on nearby rooftops. He kept his distance from the Werewolf King, but that didn’t mean he was just lazing about. Far from it.

Two more artillery shells fell, each exploding with a thunderous boom and killing dozens. The elite guard led the beastkin charge, all of them looking only faintly humanoid and much closer to being full magical beasts than the rest of their kin. Mia tried aiming at them for a bit, but they just shrugged off the wounds her Bolt made, all except for the one she nailed right through the eye by sheer luck.

When the first, most eager ones crossed into her Spirit Sense’s range, Mia took that as her cue to swap spells. Her runic model swirled, runes floating away and others taking their place as the spell circle realigned itself. The next spell to leap from her wand was an Arcane Blast, catching the foremost werewolf, a mangy brown one practically frothing at the mouth, right in the face as it bounded along on all fours. 

Its head snapped back, the chaotic and volatile arcane magic wreaking havoc across his face. Mia heard the yowl of rage and pain and followed up with another spell. This one struck it across the neck, blowing out a chunk of flesh and fur the size of a human head and cutting short the werewolf’s scream, though not its life. Its fellows rushed over the fallen man without hesitation, trampling what shred of life remained within his body to a pulp.

That was one of only a score of Level 10 beastkin taken down. Most of the mob was of a lower level, 6s and 7s mostly, which was impressive with their being hundreds of them, but Mia’s spells had wounded monsters more than twice their level. Even the toughest of them had gone down after only two Blasts to the head.

They had magic-users, probably Elementalists, who chucked elemental bolts of magic at the hastily raised barricades. Bolts of fire, lanes made of water, blades of condensed air and spikes of earth flew, and one crescent-shaped air blade even splashed across Mia’s Shield. The spell anchored to her hand trembled, but the attack had been weak; keeping it together barely took an effort. 

Just ten seconds later, Mia was forced to swap spells again, calling up her Spectral Blade, which took no more than three seconds, but still managed to feel like an eternity. By the time she had it leap out of her grasp and lunge at the oncoming horde, they were less than thirty metres away. 

A towering Lizard-kin was at the front now, and while she — if those lumps on her chest were anything to go by — clearly saw the spinning blade flying towards her, she made no effort to dodge. She only raised a fully scale-covered arm which shone with magic, her serpentine snout curling in what might have been a sneer. 

Mia caught herself worrying at the sight of the woman’s utter confidence in her defences, even considering pulling her spell back before it could shatter. But she didn’t. Instead, she merely flexed her will and preemptively clamped it down on the spell weave in case that confidence was warranted.

It wasn’t. The Blade cut through the scale-covered arm as thick as a tree trunk without slowing, and then did the same to the Lizardkin’s thick neck. 

Huh. That was all Mia could think about before she shook it off. Stupid, overconfident beastkin. The display had a substantial effect on those near enough to see it, and all of them started showing the appropriate level of respect to the pink magical blender under Mia’s control. They leapt out of its way, dodging frantically as Mia swung her hand about and sent the Spectral Blade whistling through the air in a wide arc.

She received another four magical projectiles to her Shield, and a handful of arrows, the scant few which made it through the air magic barrier Lina was weaving above the defenders. 

The earth opened up beneath the beastkin, taking over at the tip of their rough spear formation, sending them falling face-first into something nasty Mark had prepared. They never reemerged, not even the two level 10 werebeasts who fell in.

An arc of lightning struck the ones behind them, chaining to nearly twenty others nearby, all of whom fell to the ground, twitching and convulsing like beached fish. 

The elite recovered before they got trampled, leaping into a frenzied quadrupedal rush. Ten metres separated them from the wall, and Mia, which her brain finally managed to compute. She yanked her Spectral Blade back, bisecting two level 10 Were-bears caught in its path and taking half a dozen limbs besides. 

As soon as it slammed into her grip, Mia kicked off the ground, leaping away from the barricade and saw Camie slipping around her to cover her retreat. A werewolf was the first one over the wall, howling as it pounced on the nearest defender, which — unfortunately for it — turned out to be a pissed-off vampiress. 

The werewolf pounced at her, claws outstretched and guard practically nonexistent. It probably trusted its toughness and, if not that, then its regeneration to handle whatever Camie could throw at it. That was a mistake, as between one moment and the next, the vampire’s clawed hand plunged into the werewolf's chest. 

The beastkin stiffened, eyes widening in panic and agony before it went limp. Camie threw it off to the side and flicked her wrist, extending the claws there until they were the size of kitchen knives and practically brimmed with life-force. 

To the left of her, Mia saw Brent decapitate an unfortunate feline beastkin with an economical swing of his blade. To the right, Clive slammed his tower shield down on a fallen Were-crocodile, crushing its skull into pulp. 

Mia quickly glanced away, taking a few more careful hops further back while deflecting a lucky ball of fire from burning her face off with her Shield. She quickly put one of the APCs between herself and the now overrun wall and swapped her spell back to Arcane Blast, taking potshots wherever she could.

Helene had taken to the air above, and together with Lina, they secured air superiority for the defenders. 

The earth trembled beneath Mia’s feet as a titanic crash rang out, making the entire battlefield pause for a suspenseful moment. Mia tapped into Sparkle’s vision and gasped, seeing the colossal ankylosaurus flat on its stomach, its head buried in the ground. She stared at it in absolute incomprehension … until she noticed the layer of ice beneath two of its left feet, and the potent weave of frigid mana still clinging to it. 

So that’s what Nikki’s been up to. Mia thought, her eyes tracing dozens of beastkin from the flanks breaking rank and legging it into the city like their lives depended on it. Good. Maybe some time away from this crowned loon will do them some good. 

The machine gun atop the APC Mia was using for cover blared to life, spitting a stream of bullets at the approaching mob before cutting off. It fired again in short bursts, firing a dozen bullets with each pull of the trigger. Just regular bullets, though, but that was more than enough for the … chaff.

Mia grimaced, thinking of people as chaff made her feel dirty, but that was what they were being used as and dealt with. 

Seconds crawled by one after the other with dreadful slowness, and Mia spent them all doing her best to support her friends with her spells. Camie hardly needed it; she was a force of nature in the shape of a human, but the others weren’t. 

A regular woman with horns like a ram’s, looking like a satyr out of myth, leapt over Mark’s wall, angling herself to slam cloven hoof first into the unfortunate Dwarf’s thick skull. He was wearing a helmet, but it was made of hardened mud, so Mia was hardly going to entrust his life to it if she could help it.

Mia snapped her wrist to the side at the last moment, averting the spell she was about to unleash on a distant werewolf. The Arcane Blast screamed through the air, catching the woman by the edge of her hip and spinning her around mid-air. She screamed, a sizable chunk of her hips erased by the arcane explosion, but she still landed in a messy roll that saw her surviving the fall. 

Not ten seconds later, some asshole almost got the drop on Lina. Literally. The beastkin was one of those bipedal beastkin looking like a baby elephant standing upright, and seeing as how Lina’s air magic barely did a thing to him, he must have weighed a ton. How he got up to the nearest rooftop, Mia wasn’t sure, but the running start he got launched him on a trajectory which would have ended with Lina turned into a pancake. 

Mia lunged at the girl, throwing her out of the way, her pitiful strength helped along by a wild blast of kinetic force. Without even looking up to see how close the enemy was, Mia turned into her Wisp Form. She felt herself to be dispersed as a stout magical presence crashed into and through her ethereal form, and then she released it.

She popped back into existence, standing right behind the beastkin, who was now buried into the asphalt up to his waist but was still disturbingly whole despite having taken a free dive off the top of a three-story building. 

Mia all but ripped the mana from her Core and yanked it across her energy channels, gritting her teeth as those magical veins screamed in protest. She held the tip of her wand out a mere inch away from the back of the beastkin’s head and set loose an overcharged Arcane Blast. 

A pinkish explosion burst to life, hissing and screaming as the volatile mana tore into its victim’s weak flesh and bones. For good measure, Mia held out her other hand, palm pressing into the crackling arcane magic. She was much more careful with her mana this time, not wanting to strain the channels in her other arm too. Mana poured out of her arm as if it were a leaky faucet, Chaos aspected arcane mana joining the Blast’s dying embers and giving them something of a second wind.

Mia noticed a massive arm flying towards her, a last, spiteful swing from the almost-dead beastkin that would have crushed every bone in her torso had it struck true. But Mia was ready for it; she’d primed her new Subskill, Spirit Blink, holding her mental fist right above the big red mental button that'd activate it at a moment's notice, and that brief glimpse at her imminent death scared her into slamming her mental fist down on it.

Her body discorporated into a wisp of unique magic, then slipped sideways through the veil of reality, skipping along its surface as if tugged by an invisible thread. Mia felt her entire world shift, her Spirit Sense allowing her to catch a brief glimpse of the first pseudo-layer of the Spirit Realm before that same invisible thread yanked her back through the fabric of reality.

She appeared next to Sparkle high up in the air, nearly a dozen metres above a rooftop. 

‘What the-‘ Sparkle jolted beside her, then gravity reasserted itself, and Mia plunged down, a scream of utter fright tearing itself free from her throat. 

She landed on a flat, arcane barrier not a second after she started falling, with nothing more than a soft thud and a pained groan before she scrambled to her feet. 

‘You could have warned me!’ Sparkle said with palpable annoyance, both of his arms extended to hold the edge of the barrier, pouring mana into it to maintain it. ‘Stay still. I’ll get you down in a bit.’

Mia’s knees wobbled, the wind rushing into her face and blowing some of her hair right into her eyes and mouth, just as she felt like the floor dropped out from beneath her. It didn’t, Sparkle was just descending like he was operating the world’s fastest, and most dangerous elevator and Mia just barely managed to stay mostly still. 

The rooftop below rushed up to meet her feet, clearly visible through the translucent pink barrier. A barrier which vanished when she was a metre off the ground, which rather predictably resulted in Mia landing in a crumpled heap, not having expected to brace for the landing at all. 

‘I- thanks,’ she said, biting off the instinctive ‘I hate you’ she would have rewarded Mark with had he done the same. Sparkle might have thought she meant it. “Can you zip down to the floor so I can Blink down there quickly?”

On second thought, he could feel her emotions. It’d have been fine, but Mia shook off the thought, not wanting to get lost on a stupid tangent when she should be focusing.

‘Sure!’ Sparkle said, then flew off without another word, dipping over the ledge. ‘Come.’

Mia took a deep breath and activated Spirit Blink again. She landed a moment later right next to Camie, who looked like she was plotting a parkour course up to the rooftop Mia’d just left behind.

“I’m good,” Mia said, shaking her head briefly to dismiss the slight disorientation the twin Blinks and then the fall from the sky left her with. “Let’s-!“

Mia’s eyes widened as a cold knot of dread coiled in her stomach. The barricade, which had been holding reasonably well when she’d been forced to escape, now had a massive hole in i,t and beastkin were flowing in, the defenders either lying on the ground or fighting while retreating from the onrushing mob. 

At the centre of it all stood a Werewolf towering a head above even the next tallest beastkin; his fur was pitch black, and above his head floated the Abyssal Crown. He was locked in a high-speed, frenzied duel with Brent, whom the other beastkin ignored, flowing around the two of them to attack anyone and everyone else. 

The only thing that kept Mia from outright panicking was that Brent seemed to be, if not winning, then holding his ground. Maybe he even had a slight advantage. 

His longsword spun through the air, its tip always in the way of a lunge, its edge always sliding through flesh after a failed attack. Brent was scoring hit after hit, and never received a single one in turn. He had his foe beat in the skill department by miles, but he didn’t seem to quite have the ability to deal any lasting damage. Meanwhile, the Werewolf King’s every kick cracked asphalt, and every punch threatened to cave in Brent’s chest.

Brent’s slashes can cut through his flesh; he just has to cut off his head. Mia thought, and then Spectral Blade finished forming in her grasp. She threw it into the mob heading towards Mark and Lina, who were taking shelter behind the Dwarf while throwing out her air blasts. 

Camie was keeping the beastkin from reaching Mia, and even the maddest of them tried to keep clear of her. 

Mia’s Ward strained as something struck it. She snapped her head around and found herself staring down the barrel of a pistol wielded by a youngish male feline beastkin. Is that …?

Mia shook it off, yanking her Spectral Blade around. The man’s eyes widened in fear, and that expression froze onto his face as the spinning sword cut off his head.

The roar of gunshots rang over the din of the battle as soldiers opened fire on full auto, spraying right into the mass of onrushing bodies. Mia’s gut clenched as she saw dozens of them get mowed down, but her heart had grown cold to it. She couldn’t see all of her friends; all else didn’t matter.

Helene was still up in the sky, blasting off the occasional chaining lightning bolt, but she was probably reaching the limit of how many mana potions her body could handle. Her Skills were absolute mana hogs. Mark and Lina were fighting together, looking like they’d be fine. Camie was, of course, fine too, and Brent was busy fighting for his life. 

That left … Nikki and Clive. Sebastian, too, she supposed, should be counted among her friends by now. None of whom she could either hear or sense, which made her blood turn to ice in her veins. No, they couldn’t be dead. She’d been gone for less than a minute, and Nikki was supposed to be the most experienced combatant on the entire battlefield. 

Speaking of which, where in the nine hells was that useless Starhaven agent? Mia was going to wring that woman’s neck if Nikki were dead. 

‘Sparkle, find Nikki for me.’ Mia said in her mind. ‘Then find a nice spot nearby where I could escape to if needed.’

‘Got it.’ The Sprite said, and Mia refocused on the battle, struggling to come up with a list of priorities. There were just so many things to do, so many ways in which she could help, so many people she could help. But how? Which option would be the best?

That choice was taken from her as the Werewolf King scored a slash along Brent’s thigh, the beastkin leader’s claw rending through his armour and flesh alike. The man fell to a knee, and Mia saw the Werewolf give a ferocious grin, then start to move almost in slow motion. 

Somewhere above, Mia heard her mother scream Brent’s name, and she could only hope she didn’t do anything stupid … well, not like she could judge, considering she took off at a dead sprint towards the battle while swinging her Spectral Blade around to intercept the Werewolf King before he could reach Brent. But it was a near thing, and only if she could push the limits of the spell’s range a bit further, which is why she was rushing closer to the fight.

Brent himself got back on his feet astonishingly swiftly, considering Mia could see his thigh bone and took up a defensive stance. Not that anyone had the illusion that it’d do him much good. The wound barely bled, and that leg had no right to support his weight at all. Mia chalked it up to some martial arts technique thingy. Good, that’d keep him alive long enough. Hopefully.

Camie kept pace with Mia, claws and the occasional Blood spell lashing out at any beastkin so much as giving Mia a mean look. 

‘Found her.’ Sparkle’s voice almost made Mia stumble and fall on her face from the sheer mountain of relief that crashed into her. Then her paranoia struck again, swinging her mood right back around into icy dread. 

‘She’s not dead, right?’ Mia asked faintly.

‘No,’ Sparkle said, and Mia felt that stupid, paranoid dread evaporate. The whiplash left her with a chaotic mix of rather unwelcome emotions. ‘She is fine. Almost single-handedly keeping that gigantic monster out of the fight, actually. Want me to help her?’

‘Yes,’ Mia said. It would make her lifeline more of a gamble than a surefire escape, but she’d take it. If Sparkle could relieve Nikki of her current task, that could change the way the battle was going. 

Mia’s Spectral Blade whistled through the air, making the Werewolf King halt as if to let the pesky magical construct pass before him. Too bad for him, Mia held it in place, freezing its sideways momentum. Her next step carried the whirling blade another step forward, making the towering beastkin take a step back, appearing more curious than wary. 

He tried to step around it, but Mia kept moving the spinning Blade just so he couldn’t easily slip past it to finish off Brent. Which annoyed him enough to give the spinning blade a careful swat with the back of his hand. 

Mia felt the spell’s anchor woven around her wrist tremble even before the arm met the Blade, so she clamped down on it with her Will preemptively. You. Will. Not. Break! 

The anchor screamed, and the Spectral Blade’s blindingly fast spin was halted for a brief moment. It held, and to Mia’s relief, it was with a sizable margin of error, too. She was pretty sure the Blade was eating through the bones in the werewolf’s forearm at that very moment to boot, which was a result that was both better than she had feared and worse than she had hoped. She was doing damage, but not much. Not enough.

The Werewolf twisted his arm, and the Spectral Blade spun out of her control, the spell anchor worn around her wrist like a bracelet, dragging her hand along with the motion. 

Mia barely noticed it, but others joined her charge, falling in behind her with shouts and roars of defiance on their lips. She did notice it, however, when Sebastian’s aura swept out and covered them all, however. Where had he been? No, it didn’t matter; he was alive and right behind her. That was more important. 

Sandor was already fairly ramped up, sheathed in a writhing armour of his own Rage. Mia knew it granted him scaling regeneration along with a substantial buff to all his Body stats, all of which scaled with his Rage, too. So it wasn’t much of a surprise to see him tear through anyone stupid enough to stand in Mia’s way even more effectively than Carmilla. 

By the time Mia reached the large open circle where the Werewolf King stood, staring at Brent, her Spectral Blade was back in her hand. Five beastkin barred her path, all Level 10, so probably this was what remained of the King’s favoured guards. Four werewolves and one were-bear. 

Sandor crashed into one like a freight train, Camie tore apart another, and Mia sent her Blade through the chest of a third. The people behind her fell upon the last two, quickly overwhelming them with numbers, and then they were there, inside the eye of the storm with the architect of it all.

Mia could feel his presence; this close, it was rather uncomfortable. Not repulsive like miasma, but nauseating entirely differently. It was as if his presence enslaved the mana that dared to wander too close. It wasn’t denial or negation. Instead, it was control, domination. Two words that were often used to describe the Dark element in books. 

But that was all it was. The man underneath it all, hiding behind a Crown and that Werewolf form, didn’t impress Mia. He openly sneered at them, trying to look unbothered, but Mia caught the wary glimmer in his eyes. 

Helene touched down, a large flap of her wings catching her fall as she dropped down next to Brent. 

‘For your information, the beastie is dead.’ Sparkle said. ‘On a related note, I am covered in monster brain juices. Ice girl is coming to help, and the beastkin weaklings seem to be in a rout.’

Mia stared at the Werewolf, who was now alone against the remaining defenders for all intents and purposes. She didn’t check whether Sparkle’s words were true; she believed him. He was alone, against more than thirty Level 10 fighters, all of whom were supremely pissed off. There was no Class powerful enough to let him win against those odds, even with his bullshit magic resistance and monster-controlling crown. 

So then why is he so confident? It rubbed Mia the wrong way. ‘Look for monsters, reinforcements. Anything! This has to be a trap.’

“No demand for me to surrender?” The Werewolf asked, his voice a deep rumble that vibrated with dark amusement. 

“Even death is a mercy compared to what you deserve!” Mia wasn’t sure who said that, but the sheer vitriol clinging to those words surprised her, though it shouldn’t have. 

“So that’s how it is?” The Werewolf asked, his lips peeling back to reveal teeth. 

One of the soldiers shot him in the head, but he managed to twist away just enough to have it draw a bloody line along the side of his face instead of blowing out his brain. The Werewolf grinned, then raised his head to gaze up at the sky and howled.

Mia flinched at the shrill sound, and many of her comrades-in-arms took the howl as their cue to attack. The Werewolf King just stood there, spreading his arms as if to embrace the assault. 

Spells did little to nothing, and while arrows and bullets plunged into his body, they popped back out soon enough as the ridiculous regeneration all werebeasts had got to work. The spells petered out after a long minute; most of the magic-users left looking like they’d bitten into a lemon. 

“How about you surrender?” The Werewolf King asked. “Can’t you see how pointless this is? There is no point in resisting; this city will be mine!”

“I’d die from embarrassment if I surrendered to a guy who talks like the villain of the week from a kid’s cartoon!” Mark shouted, then slammed his mace down into the ground, sending a jutting spike of earth lunging towards the werewolf. 

The werewolf avoided it, growling as he did and then pounced on Mark. Mia put her Spectral Blade in his path, placing it level with his neck. The werewolf tried to duck under it, and Mia twisted her wrist, turning the spinning blade perpendicular to the ground. 

He changed course, kicking off the ground, and suddenly, he was charging Mia instead of Mark. Her eyes widened as the two metres tall wall of furry muscle flew at her like a missile. Attacks riddled his body, tearing away small chunks of flesh, but it was all temporary. Aside from the blast of air that blew one of his legs out from under him right as he was about to step on it. 

The momentum of his charge entirely redirected, he slammed face-first into the asphalt with roughly the same speed he’d been sprinting at Mia with. Camie stepped forward and delivered the mother of all kicks to the side of his head, then leapt away as another barrage of magic and arrows fell on him. 

Sandor didn’t care one whit about that, charging through it all and latching onto the Werewolf's back like a persistent tick just as he was starting to rise back up. He tried to put him in a chokehold, his legs wrapped around the beastkin’s waist from behind and squeezed so hard Mia heard bones shatter. 

The Werewolf King growled in annoyance, then threw himself onto his back, trying to crush Sandor between his body and the ground. The Berserker, or maybe it was Barbarian, weathered it with only a grunt, then grabbed one of his tomahawks and started smashing it into whichever part of the werewolf he could reach.

Mia thought it a waste of effort, thinking it would have been much better if he tried to keep the Werewolf King still for long enough for someone else to lop off his head … then the werewolf yowled in absolute agony, crimson rivulets of blood pouring forth from each far too deep wound caused by the small hatchet.

“HOW DO YA LIKE MY SILVER-EDGED HATCHET, SHITSTAIN? Hahaha!” Sandor roared, laughing like a madman despite the heavy punishment he was taking in return for his assault. “That’s what ya get for getting my brother killed!”

The magical spells hitting the Werewolf suddenly had double the effect, getting closer to what Mia expected to see them do. Right. Silver. Werewolf. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Or anyone else, for that matter?

Mia’s senses blared an alarm, and she nearly retched as dozens of repulsive monster presences defiled her spiritual senses, and to make it worse their numbers were swelling rapidly.

“INCOMING!” Mia managed to scream without throwing up, then twenty of those stupid burrowing Evergreen monsters emerged around the remaining fighters. They all but launched themselves out of the ground, leaving twenty perfectly circular exit holes surrounding the battlefield from which monsters poured forth, waves after waves of them, dozens, with hundreds more waiting impatiently underground. 

The burrowers dipped below the surface a moment later, and Mia realised with a surge of dread that they were charging at the vehicles. One of them reached the closest APC, swimming through the earth close to the surface right underneath it, and unlike other times, it wasn’t using its magic to maintain the tunnel behind itself.

The ground caved in, swallowing the heavily armoured vehicle whole, and in mere seconds, the other APC and two of the Jeeps shared its fate. Atop the Werewolf King’s head, the Abyssal Crown pulsed with magic, a ripple of noxious dark mana spreading out and latching onto the miasmic presences of the monsters nearby and then reeling them in. The burrowers turned around, dipping low and then rising upwards … speeding right towards where the Werewolf King was still howling in rage and pain in equal measure, and the swarm followed, a haphazard mix of a dozen different types of Evergreen monsters ranging from Level 3s up to a single Level 15 one.

“Get it off!” The Werewolf King roared, his rumbling voice an equal mix of pain and indignation, with maybe a tinge of terror. The monsters obeyed, trying to rush past the defenders with a single-minded focus on getting to the Werewolf, which ended up with the majority of them getting cut down like wheat. But not all.

Some made it through, small, goblin-like things made of vines and arms made of twigs. Canine beasts resembling wolves and dogs. Avian things that looked like if butterflies had oak leaves for wings, and of course, the Rank 1 monsters led the charge, an Evergreen Brute paving the way as it barrelled through those defenders who thought they could withstand its charge, throwing them aside and opening a gap in the formation. 

The Level 15 Brute grabbed Sandor by the scruff of his neck, wading through a hail of spellfire and other attacks, then it chucked the man over its shoulder like a child throwing a toy they’d grown bored with. Then it fell over dead, overwhelmed by the focused firepower that descended upon it, but its job was done.  

The first burrower broke through the surface, and the Werewolf King latched onto it, a clawed hand sinking into its flank and yanking him along for the ride as the beast flew over the heads of the defenders. Which left the fighters in a vaguely U-shaped formation surrounded by monsters on all sides, and without their target. Not that the Werewolf escaped unscathed, as everyone who could be sent whatever they could after him in a last-ditch effort to kill him. In the span of seconds, the burrower crossed dozens of metres, and then the Werewolf King was within the mass of monsters, protected. Gone.

Mia’s hands clenched at her sides, but she calmed herself. He’d gotten away … for now. He wouldn’t escape, not after everything he’d done. He couldn’t. They wouldn’t let him.