“Kelvin, if you say what I think you’re going to say,” Zeigler said, massaging his eyes the moment he caught the long look at his aide’s face the moment the radio comm ended.

“Sir, the prisoner broke containment,” Kelvin reported with a straight face, only the slightest hint of a smirk playing at the edge of his lips to convey his amusement. “Again.”

“Did they catch him yet?” Zeigler asked, running a hand down his face. The damnable bear shifter had been amicable enough while it had that pretty little redhead breathing down his neck, answering questions he was asked and sitting still.

Now though, that the girl left and left the slightly deranged man behind in Zeigler’s care, the shifter lost his marbles. If the girl hadn’t warned him that this was likely going to happen, they would have lost him at the first attempt, likely along with a few squads who haplessly tried to stop his escape.

“Yes,” Kelvin said. “Two soldiers are severely injured, but no casualties yet again. They had to use up the last two darts of Etorphine we had. He is out cold, but we can’t be sure for how long. The cell is also ruined, again.”

“Calling dumping him in cement and letting it solidify a ‘cell’ is a bit of a stretch,” Zeigler mused, then shook his head. He would have loved to help the man, as he knew from the reports and interrogation that he’d been one of the few people putting their necks out at the start to help other people, even inviting hundreds of them into his home.

Alas, something broke in him at that betrayal he spoke of, and the man was a danger not only to himself, but to everyone around him. Zeigler couldn’t very well let him just live in the outskirts of town, terrorising the residents and butchering the occasional forester wandering into his hideout.

Though the alternatives were … questionable. He refused to let the man be executed, not only was he clearly insane, he was also a victim. Until he was forced to do it, he would push it back as much as possible.

Plus, the man must have had some good in him still, a measure of sanity under all that rage and hurt. How else could Zeigler explain that over six escape attempts and while severely injuring dozens of soldiers, not once did the man actually go for the kill.

“How long did it take for him to break out this time after he woke?” Zeigler asked wearily, thinking of any possible solution. Could they just … tell him to escape into the deep wilderness and live there? Treating him like some dangerous animal wasn’t the best option, but Zeigler could see no other option with how easily the bear-like man could snap and go on a rampage. “Give him one of the Carfentanil shots when he looks like he’s waking up. Then dump his ass on a truck, make the soldiers drive him out into the deep forest and leave him there. We can’t keep this up.”

“Understood, Sir!” Kelvin saluted, nodding and then turned to leave.

Carfentanil was the sort of thing zookeepers shot rhinos and elephants with to make them pass out, it was ten thousand times stronger than morphine and a single drop of it touching the skin of a human was as lethal as some of the deadliest venoms.

This Lars though, Zeigler had no doubt, would survive it. He was eating through their paltry storage of bear-grade tranquilisers like they were skittles, which should similarly be lethal to humans. The thing that kept bears asleep for a day, barely kept this … thing unconscious for a few hours.

We know everything we wanted to know. He has no more use as an informat, so there is no use investing our tranquilisers on keeping him contained.

Furthermore, Zeigler felt keeping the man would be tempting fate. They’d escaped any fatalities up until now, treating the prisoner with care and only having some of the veteran soldiers all armed with tranq-guns around him.

But Fate was a bitch, their luck wouldn’t last if they tempted that bitch too much.

And those two girls managed to make that Lars so subservient, almost meek. Zeigler scratched at his beard thoughtfully, thinking back on the easy arrogance with which the redheaded girl ordered the towering madman around like he was some housepet. No, not arrogance. Confidence. She knew he wouldn’t dare to hurt her, and yet he is more than willing to test us, an entire damned brigade of career soldiers with tanks and shit.

Zeigler wasn’t an idiot, and he knew that his gut instinct had likely saved his hide once more. He had an inkling that those two were dangerous, and had seen it with his own eyes when they fought that ‘Juggernaut’, but it still didn’t quite sink in.

Maybe it was the fact that they were younger than his own granddaughters, and a head shorter too. It was hard to match the sight of a grinning pink haired girl with the pile of corpses her ‘magic’ made. It was likewise challenging for his aging mind to really come to terms with the fact that a girl the third of his age was that much stronger than him.

At least, what he couldn’t yet internalise, his conscious mind could understand. He would adapt to this changing world, like he always had. He had to get used to computers, mobile telephones and whatnot throughout his life, magic wasn’t all that much of a stretch from there.

I need to keep their lot hidden from Eisenfaust. Zeigler decided. If that moron decides he wants to force one of them to the front line, or worse, if that cunt takes a liking to one of the prettier girls … that might just torpedo the whole damned war effort in Graz when the rest of their group take revenge.

Zeigler’s face hardened, jaws set as he thought of the Brigadier once more. His curses ran out, and his anger ran cold long ago, simmering beneath the surface. He’d raged, cursed and swore all he could years ago while he served under Eisenfaust.

I just hope he didn’t somehow colossally fuck up the war on these monsters.

*****

Mia’s body reacted faster than her mind did, jumping into action the moment the disturbing sound slid by hear ears. Veteran soldiers might have been up on their feet with a gun in hand in a second, alert as hawks as they looked for the danger. Alas, the instincts and muscle memory weren’t there just yet for Mia, and besides, another mighty foe — her blanket — took it upon itself to foil her attempts.

That was how she ended up gracelessly flopping onto the floor, tangled up in a blanket.

Her ears twitched, a shriek of metal and animalistic fury that made her skin crawl coming from outside, accompanied by the revolting feeling of wrongness she came to associate with monsters.

Mia scrambled to her feet, heart racing and eyes still blurry as they tried to wake from dreamland. By the time she managed to push herself up to the window of her room, one facing the front street from the first floor, she still had a tangled blanket somehow wrapped around her right ankle as if it was trying to keep her from leaving it behind.

Blinking the last vestiges of drowsiness away, Mia sent a chunk of mana rolling down her channels and had them readied at her fingertips as she peeked outside. There was nothing there, not yet, but her gaze locked onto a rather diminutive and easy to overlook part of the urban scenery: a sewer cover.

The sounds she couldn’t quite identify before snapped into place, the memory of her watching a swarm of pony sized rats crawling out of a manhole jumping to the forefront of her mind. A few seconds later, which Mia spent assembling her Arcane Blast spell circle and listening to the noises from the sewers growing louder, Carmilla crashed through a window in the back.

Mia almost lost focus, letting out a startled shriek as the glass shattered. Glancing over though and catching a sight of those flowing crimson locks of hair as the vampiress rolled to her feet quickly calmed her down.

She said she’d go out to keep an eye on Lars before I went to sleep. Mia remembered, the memory of last night coming back to her.

“You-” Carmilla started, but Mia cut her off with an “I’m fine.”

A wave of disgust surged through Mia, goosebumps running down her skin as she shuddered. Like always, the monsters getting closer felt like someone was forcing her to drink a bucketful of piss and getting her Cognity up didn’t change that at all, it only made her Sensitivity more accurate and detailed.

Well, more like I can now translate the data my sensitivity gets back into comprehensible stuff, instead of just ending up with a migraine and feeling like I’d eaten dog poop.

“It’s strong,” Mia said, her Spirit Sense focusing in on a clump of intense monstrous energy that was easily distinguishable from the rest of the swarm, which almost melded together into a cohesive torrent of revolting energy. “Stronger than anything we’ve fought aside from the Juggernaut, I’d say … level 10.”

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Mia had fought monsters up to level nine several times throughout the last week, and had become familiar with the intensity of their wrongness at each level. This thing rapidly closing in felt stronger than all of those, though nowhere near as powerful as the Juggernaut had been.

Makes sense, that thing was Rank 1. Level 11.

“Do you want it?” Carmilla asked, coming around to the window. The vampire peered out, her own slightly pointed ears barely poking through her luscious waves of crimson hair as a serious look plastered itself across her face.

“Do I want it?” Mia repeated the question incredulously, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

“The kill,” Carmilla said, glancing over at Mia. “If it’s a really a level 10, then if you could kill it alone, your Quest would finally be completed.”

“Huh.” Mia blinked, tilting her head in thought for just a moment before she gave a resolute nod. She was getting damned tired of that silly quest already, so any chance at getting it completed was a welcome one. “But you kill it if it’s about to break into someone’s house … if it even comes out from the sew-”

The sewer’s cover flew off, and the knee-height monstrous rats came crawling out. Mia shot off a Blast without hesitation, then called Familiar over with a nudge over their bond. It still had a handful of hours of uptime even after all the hours it’d spent guarding her while she slept.

“Go down there, kill anything that gets close to any of the houses,” Mia ordered. “When the big one comes up, refocus on it and keep it in one place if you can. I can’t hit it if it’s running around.”

The cat nodded, then jumped through the open window without hesitation. Not a moment later the oversized vermin shrieked as the arcane claws of the familiar raked through their flesh, opened up arteries and at times pierced skulls. The recipients of the last one’s didn’t scream, merely slumping over, dead.

The corpses worked to distract the swarm, almost half of the rodent’s breaking off from their initial aim of just rushing down the street to consume their fallen kin. Some didn’t even differentiate between the dead rats and the live ones, tearing into their fellow monsters with abandon.

Mia shot off Blast after Blast, considering whether to switch over to a variant for efficiency, but shook the idea off quickly. She felt the big one approaching, she didn’t want to spend precious seconds switching her spell circle back to Blast from the peashooter variants.

“I’m going down,” Carmilla said, giving a last long look to Mia before throwing her legs over the window sill and then hopping out. She landed with feline grace, then bolted off without a moment’s hesitation, crimson claws already forming around her hands.

The vampire ran up and down the sidewalk, ripping off heads and tearing into monsters that got just a little bit too curious about the human scents in the houses. Mia spent about half a minute, just focusing on shooting the larger clumps of rats with well-placed Blasts before someone else finally arrived at the scene.

Brent was the first out, somehow already dressed in full knightly regalia as he stepped off of the front porch, driving his sword through the skull of a wandering rat. Behind him came Lina, remaining in the doorframe as threads of Air magic flowed out of her hands.

Helene shot up into the sky, gliding down the street with two-coloured lightning dancing over her arms. Bolts jumped off of her, onto rats and then to other rats, only stopping after at least ten of them had been fried down to the bone.

Mark came last, ambling out the door below and settling down a few meters before Lina. He dropped his mace onto the ground, then sank his arms into the Earth. Spikes raised out of the ground in a half-circle around the porch, facing away from the house and upwards at around 45 degrees to pierce any monsters dumb enough to rush the mage.

Mia caught flashes of colour down the street, some of the other residents no doubt also joining in on the fun with spells, or magicks of their own. She didn’t pay much attention to any of that, only so much as necessary so she didn’t accidentally blow one of her friend’s limbs off with a Blast.

Which only Brent and Carmilla were in danger of at the moment, though with how fast the vampire was, Mia held little doubt that she could easily dodge one of her Blasts. The spell wasn’t particularly fast, after all. Even Mia could side-step one if she focused hard enough and stood at least a hundred metres away from the source, her increased Agility and Cognity allowing her that much.

Brent, well, Brent might have been in trouble if Mia’s aim was any worse than it was, but as it was at the moment, she didn’t feel any particular need to help out the man. Not out of any malice of course, or worry for missing and killing him, but because he really didn’t need it by the looks of it.

He moved swiftly, not faster than Carmilla or even Sam, but faster than everyone else. He also moved with purpose, taking swift, measured steps to get in position before a precise strike with his sword cut down a monster.

He looked like a blademaster from one of those silly action movies to Mia’s eyes, twirling around with his blade swinging left and right, front and back. He shredded through the monsters, not one of them even getting close to him as he methodically dispatched each coming his way. He kept advancing at a measured pace, his confident stride almost a promise that he wouldn’t stop until the last of his foes fell under his blade.

Carmilla in contrast, had little technique, but she didn’t need it. The few little movements when the girl moved slowly enough for Mia to catch were primal, deadly, coming from instinct rather than thought. Mia would have been worried for her, had it not been for the path of carnage the girl left in her wake, gorey chunks of meaty, butchered monsters marked her passing wherever she went.

Mia returned her focus to the monsters, shaking off her wandering thoughts. Just below, she knew Lina and Mark were doing well, the two of them working as a well-oiled team to kill anything suicidal enough to head their way. When there weren’t any of those, Lina threw her Air ‘Bursts’ and ‘Hammers’ at the closest clumps of monsters.

Flinching, Mia almost instinctively reached up to cover her ears as a screech like claws on a blackboard touched them. She could feel the sound in her bones, in her spine as it tingled in disgust.

The rats crawling out of the manhole shrieked in turn, growing frenzied and hurrying to scramble away from the opening. Some made it, most didn’t. A large, mangy brown form rising out of the darkness bellow. Waves of repulsive greenish mist rolled off of it in waves, and whatever it touched sizzled and melted.

Rats died around it by the dozens as the taller form fully exited the dark tunnel and rose to its full height. It stood on its hind feet, rising to stand at almost two meters. Its lanky, furry body was covered in ragged, dirty cloth and greasy leather. Rodent-like claws held a contraption that reminded Mia of a metallic crossbow while its rat-like head snapped around, sniffing the air with a twitching nose.

A Rat-man? Mia was stunned for a moment, a flicker of doubt rising in her heart. The rats ran from that thing, it also killed rats, perhaps it was an … ally? Idiot. Fucking idiot. It’s a monster!

Mia released her Blast, shaking off the doubt that took hold of her in less than a heartbeat. She felt its presence, that same repulsive wrongness. It had to die. It was a monster. There was no place for doubt.

The thing reacted surprisingly quickly for such a skeletal build, its long sinuous tail snapping out to tie up on of its kin before chucking it to intercept the in-flight Blast. It threw itself to the side, having been a touch slow for a full escape and the smaller rat burst into a million gory bits only a metre or two away from the Ratman.

Its crossbow came up, and only now did Mia catch the bolts it was loaded with. They were made of the same sickly green mist flowing off of the Ratman, but condensed and firm.

Mia dropped with a yelp, not even waiting for the crossbow to fully face her before she was kissing the floor. She heard it fire, the twang of the bowstring releasing, then the hiss of air as the supernatural bolt pierced through it and then … the wall breaking, the thick brick wall of her room sundering as the bolt crashed through it like a wrecking ball. Though thankfully, only a tennis ball sized one, as it only caved in the top third of the wall under the windowsill.

Covering her head instinctively, Mia slid up against the bottom part of the wall that still remained, suppressing screams of pain as chunks of the wall fell on her. Those were going to leave bruises, nasty ones too. Blessedly, the chunks with any amount of more lethal momentum behind them landed further in the room, carried away over Mia by the force of the magical crossbow bolt.

I don’t have the ring. Nor the fanny pack. Mia panicked a bit, her eyes jumping over to the nightstand. The ring was in the first drawer, with her combat knife atop it and the fanny pack hiding under her bed.

Mia startled, feeling a similarly startled nudge from her Familiar. The cat was asking whether she was alright, at the moment hesitating between attacking the Ratman and rushing over to Mia to protect her.

Attack it. I’m fine. Mia thought, trying to somehow push that thought through the bond. She succeeded … probably. The Familiar sent back an acknowledgement a few moments later and a heartbeat later she heard the ungodly shriek of the Ratman.

Mia pushed off of the floor, leaving chunks of bricks and pastel falling off of her as she did. Arcane Blast ready, she kneeled before the ruined window and aimed her palm at the thrashing beast with a very angry pink cat stuck to its face and ripping out chunks of flesh and fur from it.

She let it loose, her gaze locked onto the monster’s chest. The spell circle flashed, then collapse into an uneven projectile that raced off a blink later. Hit it. I need this. HIT!

Mia felt something, an infinitesimal, hair-thin thread of something. On one end of it was her Spirit, but on the other was the speeding projectile she’d just launched. She latched onto it and pulled. She commanded it to curve, to HIT, with all her mind.

The spell obliged her, the Blast, already mid-flight, shifted ever so slightly. Its linear path curved by the tiniest margin, but that was enough. Instead of blasting off a shoulder as the monster moved away in its bid to escape the Familiar’s wrath, the Blast impacted the monster right in the center of its back as it rolled over to its side.

[Base Control: 5 -> 6]

Mia heard the sound she’d grown familiar with. The thrum of the explosion, the crash of the shockwave making itself known and the bloody squelch of the corpse realizing it was missing a head-sized part of its torso. Right in the middle too, with only some chunks of the spine having survived Mia’s spell.

Inside her Spirit, she felt her Arcane Mana Manipulation Skill wounding down, returning to a resting position as exhaustion smashed into her Spirit.

That last stunt, whatever it was, had taken every bit of her Manifestation, Control and Sensitivity to pull off. Only Control went up, but she’d have bet half her kidney that the other two were a stone throw away from doing so too.

It was worth it though, so very worth it. Mia grinned wearily as she flopped onto her back, a chunk of wall poking at her hip and open breeze slipping in through the new hole in the wall caressing her face.

***

[{Newcomer} Introductory (11)] is COMPLETE!

Objective:

* Kill a monster at, or above, your own level in one-on-one combat. COMPLETED!

Reward: A System generated casting focus (Wand of Arcane Focus).

***

Claim reward now?

Yes / No

***