“Feast on lead, suckers!” Minnie yelled while she trained her gun against the horde of zombie-like goblins running up against her. It was shocking how the green skins just kept coming despite bleeding out. Such was their devotion to protecting the Altar.

Old Wheeler’s team manned a set of machine guns, raining bullets into the suffocating crowd of goblins racing towards them. The gap between the two opposing sides was gradually getting smaller and smaller, and Minnie was getting worried. They were greatly outnumbered, even though it was only a fraction of goblins were involved in the battle. However, a fraction of a thousand against two dozen people was still an overwhelming number, and soon they were being joined by more of the remaining.

The gears in Minnie’s mind whirred like clockwork. As if solving a Rubik’s cube at lightning speed, she flipped through strategies, trying to click one into place. Using the Spiritual Link Insigna, she communicated formations and techniques to the rest of her team, multitasking between making sure of their safety and her aim at the horde of goblins.

Justin wrestled a goblin off his back, grabbing its leg and swinging it like a club to hit the other goblins. Letting go of its now dead weight, he groaned as his entire body still ached from catapulting Old Wheeler before joining the fight. The goblins weren’t usually a problem for him, especially since he started training, but right now every swing of his arm shot sharp pains through his body. He fought to remain standing as he was surrounded.

“Jasmine, watch out!” Priya yelled, shooting down a goblin that lunged at Jasmine from behind.

The head of pink hair spun immediately, swinging her large sword and hacking through several stocky goblin necks, burying itself in a particularly large one and getting stuck. Jasmine grunted as she tried to pull the blade out, her vision catching one of Old Wheeler’s men getting dog-piled by the green skins.

The lady who tried to shoot at the dogpile to save him had her entire right rib torn open as a goblin sunk its jagged teeth into her delicate skin.

“Shit!” Jasmine yelled, placing her foot against the chest of the goblin and pushing back to drag her blade out. It was finally released, leaving the goblin’s head dangling with only a strip of skin connected to its body. Rushing over to the pile of goblins, she swung her heavy sword, determined to at least save the man, but as the pile was cleared, she caught a glimpse of the crushed skull belonging to the victim, teeth scattered in the mush of blood and brain matter. Her stomach churned at the sight, and she turned away, receiving cover fire from Priya once again.

Priya slammed the butt of her rifle into the face of a goblin before quickly reloading. She was a long-range attacker and wasn’t supposed to be so close to the fight, but she needed to keep her reckless cousin out of imminent danger.

“I can’t keep up with your suicidal ass, Jasmine! Get out of there!”

Jasmine continued to slash and hack in anger, feeling like she had failed because she couldn’t save the man and woman, unaware that she was rapidly getting surrounded.

“Jasmine, I need you on higher ground right now,” Minnie communicated through the link. “Get out of there immediately.”

But the girl turned a deaf ear to the instruction that floated through her mind. If only she had more cards, she’d be able to tackle more enemies faster.

She’d be stronger.

She’d be more powerful.

Power.

Something that Celes was willing to give Minnie and not her.

It smoldered in her heart like a nasty heartburn, causing her to grit her teeth and grind through the green throng.

‘Why did I have to take orders from Minnie who would always stay in the back and give orders while I did the hard work in the front lines?’ she thought. ‘Why would Celes give her two extra cards without her asking, while I had been begging for one for so long? I was the one who truly needed more cards, not Minnie. Why not me? Was I not good enough?’

Jasmine roared back at the shrieking goblins, their blood splattering against her face as she chopped off yet another head.

Meanwhile, Xia set up base at the window of a debilitating building. Her quiver slung behind her back, she slipped them out with a practiced grace, firing into the crowd of green. She attempted to fire two at a time. One was a hit, and the other narrowly missed Justin who she hadn’t seen earlier. Her eyes widened and she quickly redirected her next single aim. She wasn’t perfect just yet. Her arrow whizzed past the giant warrior goblin.

Old Wheeler wrestled with the warrior goblin. It was a sight to see a four-meter-tall giant having to put up a fight against a tiny red opponent, but Old Wheeler meant business. Having been launched at the warrior, he had successfully landed a two-feet kick against its broad chest, causing the warrior to stumble back.

The giant goblin swung its ginormous battle axe at the pesky human, but Old Wheeler was fast despite his thick arms and legs. The warrior bared its yellow fangs and roared a challenge, and Old Wheeler accepted it with a determined nod and a heavy breath, each exhale a fog of steam with how high he felt his temperature rising.

Without warning, the goblin charged at him with the axe raised high. Old Wheeler braced himself, his fists clenching. When the goblin brought down the axe with a thunderous crash, aiming for Old Wheeler’s head, the man dodged to the side. There was a rush of air as the axe sliced through the space he had just occupied, and the ground where the axe struck erupted in a shower of dirt and debris.

Old Wheeler countered, swinging his fist in a wide arc. His enhanced strength sent the goblin staggering back a few steps, but it quickly recovered, growling in anger. The two circled each other, each sizing up the other’s moves. The goblin feinted left, then swung its axe from the right. Old Wheeler anticipated the move, ducking under the blade and driving his fist into the goblin’s ribs. The impact was solid, but the goblin warrior was unfazed, its thick hide absorbing the blow.

With a guttural roar, the goblin swung its axe again, this time in a sweeping arc meant to catch Old Wheeler off guard. He narrowly avoided the deadly blade as he leaped back, using the momentum to launch a powerful kick at the goblin’s knee. There was a sickening crack as bone met bone, and the goblin let out a howl of pain, dropping to one knee.

Seeing his chance, Old Wheeler moved in for the kill. He grabbed the goblin’s axe arm, amplifying his strength through his natal card ability. With a tremendous effort, he swung his body downwards to twist the goblin’s arm, forcing it to drop the axe. The weapon clattered to the ground, and Old Wheeler delivered a bone-crushing punch to the goblin’s face.

The warrior reeled from the blow, blood streaming from its squashed nose, but Old Wheeler showed no mercy. He landed on the ground with a thud, kicking its supporting foot from under it and sending the creature sprawling to the ground. Before he could recover, the beast of a man had already scurried up the back of its head, dragging the axe along with him.

Just then, his eyes caught a sight that caused his blood to run cold.

A goblin lunged at Natalie, claws outstretched and thirsty for blood.

It happened so fast, but as Old Wheeler watched his daughter, it felt like a heartwrenching eternity.

Just as the goblin’s deadly claws reached her, her husband threw himself between her and the danger, receiving four deep slashes across the chest. Natalie screamed, both from getting a minor injury to the shoulder, and the fact that her husband was bleeding out in front of her. Despite the damage, the man off-loaded his ammo at the goblin and any other that dared to approach them. Some of his fellow comrades hurried over to them, dragging him off to safety.

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Old Wheeler glanced around, finding corpses with familiar remains scattered on the ground as the fight raged.

These were his people…

He could feel his blood literally beginning to boil, blisters inflating and popping against his skin.

This was not enough.

He could not survive in this new world if he could not save his loved ones.

Being special had to be more than this.

The metal handle of the axe rapidly gained a rusty red glow, traveling up to the double-bladed head. Smoke hissed out from Old Wheeler’s palms as he gripped the huge haft. The axe already huge, tripled in size.

With a roar, he lifted the massive axe above his head, then brought it down on the goblin warrior’s head with a resounding thud, splitting it open and frying some of its brain matter with the sizzling heat.

Jumping down from the warrior’s corpse, he tuned into this new technique.

It was if his blood had turned to literal lava, glowing a deathly orange-red under his red skin. His footsteps sizzled against the concrete, baking his footprints into the surface. With the oversized battle axe, he roared out in anger, sweeping the massive red-hot blade across the sea of goblins and slicing through them like butter on a hot summer’s day.

*

Celes had taken a detour before flying towards the priest goblin. Sapphire’s blue flames poured out her majestic beak like a dragon, setting every green skin it touched ablaze. Out of a thousand goblins, only a few had fled, while many gave up their lives for the protection of the altar. If Celes and Sapphire left the two groups to fight against the hordes of goblins with simple gunfire, they may be overthrown by the strength of numbers.

From her position on the phoenix, Celes could see the state of her people on the battlefield. Many of Wheeler’s men were down in battle, and although her team had been receiving sufficient training, they were still struggling to tip the balance of the fight.

Jasmine.

Celes groaned when she found her sister fighting in the depths of the horde, bloodied and sweaty.

Minnie was trying to concentrate her firepower on the goblins in Jasmine’s direction, hoping to clear a path for her to get up to safer ground, but the green skins had found the team’s weakspot and their own nuisance, so many shifted their focus on getting rid of the pink-haired girl with the huge sword.

“Minnie —” Celes’s voice began in Minnie’s mind.

“I’m on it! I just need to get these green fucks out of the way! I don’t think she can hear me!” Minnie quickly cut in, her machine gun spitting out empty shells as she never let up once. Gilly had stuck to her side to help her reload. “Jasmine, I need you to start making your way to me!”

Jasmine gritted her teeth as she heard that, choosing to ignore the linked messages. She was going to make it out on her own and then show her sister that she was ready to own more cards.

A goblin swung its club at her, which she luckily parried with an unintentional swing of her sword, but this left her back vulnerable. Fortunately, Minnie's machine gun struck out eager assailants before they could get to Jasmine.

Minnie was internally panicking. She couldn’t let anything happen to Jasmine, not while Celes had put her in charge. She had to monitor two separate groups, one of which was suffering a high casualty count, and she also had to keep an eye on Celes’s dare-devil of a sister. She was careful not to let her gun’s stray bullets hit Jasmine, meaning that with every bullet she released, she had already calculated its trajectory nanoseconds before.

For a normal person, it would have been absolutely impossible to have such an intense mental workout in such a chaotic scene, but it seemed the Baseless Intuition talent card had actually activated, guiding her mental capacity to blindly spot the bodies of danger and avoid Jasmine.

Celes wanted to save her sister, but from the corner of her eye, she was reminded of the sinister priest aggressively chanting to the skies, cutting its own palm and dripping the blood at the foot of the altar, invoking an ancient spell to fight the adversity.

The priest wanted to perform a Blood-Born Curse.

If she didn’t confront it immediately, it would be a fatal mistake.

Although their gods’ influence was not as significant now as it would be in the future, a Blood-Born Curse was a horrifying dark magic that showed no mercy to both the user and the victims. She had heard about skulls exploding a few seconds after it was invoked. Blood Throne Cultists were well-known for such tactics to ward off enemies, and the Blood Skull Tribe would be no exception.

There was a chance that the curse wouldn’t manifest if the priest’s skill level wasn’t high enough, but she couldn’t couldn’t risk it.

Celes redirected Sapphire to fly towards the priest, determined to interrupt the chilling invocation. She would trust Minnie to get Jasmine out of harm’s way.

Minnie had saved Celes from far worse back then.

As Celes was reaching the priest, she saw the goblin strike one of its own, ripping out the goblin’s heart and offering it to the altar as blood dripped down the priest’s raised arm.

That was when Celes realized this was not an invocation for a Blood-Born Curse.

It was an invocation for a Blood Oath Prison, a catastrophic spell that she had only heard rumors about.

It had been specifically targeting her all along.

She didn’t even have time to think about how this was possible so early into the apocalypse.

It struck her like a bullet and a blade at the same time, straight to her heart. Her dark blue eyes widened in a trance-like gaze as she felt like she had fallen into a timeless abyss.

Like a movie, she rewatched the gruesome deaths and assaults of her loved ones from the future past, unable to tear her vision away. Every single heart-wrenching memory was dug up against her.

She couldn’t save them.

The next scenes showed them in the current battle; Jasmine torn in two, a headless Giselle being stampeded in the fight, Minnie hanging from a spear she had been impaled with, her limbs mauled.

She couldn’t save them this time as well.

In the physical, Celes coughed up blood, limply falling off Sapphire.

The giant bird swooped down to catch her, but the descent was too sudden and she missed, managing to only slightly buffer the fall.

Celes landed on the altar with a thud, scattering the bloody skulls and other gut-churning sacrifice items. She coughed up more blood from the impact, rolling off the stone and falling on her hands and knees. Her blue hair hung down her face like a curtain as she remained slumped, heaving and throwing up blood.

Upon lifting her eyes, it was evident that she was still in a wide-eyed trance, unable to see the reality before her, blind to the mage goblin menacingly walking up to her, its bloodied hands clutching the goblin heart in one and the glowing bone staff in the other.

‘Why was I given another chance if the story would end the same?’

‘What had I done wrong?’

‘I thought of everything… Thought of everyone… And yet…’

Thoughts of despair circled her head as tears ran down her face. Her blood weighed heavy inside her and it felt like she was coughing up needles. Her insides burned and all she had for comfort were traumatic scenes on repeat.

Surely, she would die here.

*

Screee~!

Sapphire screeched a warning at the goblins who dared to come close to the altar before bathing them in flames.

Giselle was the closest to the altar. She wasn’t the best fighter, but she had to pitch in some way. Running from the goblins, who Sapphire thankfully burnt to crisps behind her, she focused on getting to the altar as quickly as possible.

Watching her leader fall from that height and coughing up blood had sent a chill up her spine.

No one had openly said so, but they all looked at Celes like an invincible warrior and leader who knew more than possibly anyone in the entire world because she had lived through the apocalypse before.

Seeing Celes so helpless threw Giselle into a state of fear and shock she struggled to hide, adrenaline pushing her to run faster than the goblins.

Giselle had received a Green Copper-grade natal card, Two-Touch Lotus Healing. It required deep concentration and could demand significant energy drain for complex healing, but it could mend broken bones, and cure poisons and low-level magical system attacks or curses.

But to get to Celes, she had to get through the priest first.