The forest was a cacophony of screams as countless battles raged all around them, Eik’s team only one of many in the chaos.

Eik had already felt his wooden plaque vibrate inside his shirt, but there had been no time to take it out to check. The going through the forest was slow and there was little coherence in the advancement of the forces, teams running to catch up any time they could get away from the constant battles. They hadn’t even made it to the main stage of the Great Raid, yet they had been engaged in dog fights left and right for a while now.

Just as Eik’s team had dealt a death blow to one creature and dashed for the new back line, a large, winged monster sailed in through the trees on their right, maneuvering expertly between trunks and branches.

Its massive wings ripped leaves and twigs to shreds in passing as if they weren’t there. It howled and speared a woman through and through with its beak, hauling her up and away above the trees, her breathless scream disappearing as quickly as the monster had appeared.

“I think there are more of those coming in!” Sonja screamed. The potency of her low level [Bat’s Ears] ability must have been severely reduced in a situation like this where every second was tainted by the piercing shrieks of the dying. She could probably really only sense the approach of larger threats. “Duck! On the ground!”

Several other teams within earshot followed her command as well, throwing themselves to the soft-trodden forest mulch. Deep, chunky snaps of titanic wings announced the arrival of several more of the airborne killers. Cutting gales of displaced air crashed down over the grounded Awakened as the rocs briefly dove down to fetch the unfortunates who didn’t hear Sonja’s warning.

The moment the horrors had passed, everybody scrambled to their feet and ran for the back line of the procession once more. Eik pulled a woman fumbling a spear up by the collar of her undershirt and dragged her to her feet.

The army had stopped their forward march by the time they reached the tail end. “Did we reach the lake?” Michael asked, panting as he came to a stop.

“We might have, yeah,” Eik said, climbing onto Heath’s shoulders to get a better look of the front. “I kind of lost track of time during all the fighting, and with how ravaged the forest is I can’t tell one place apart from the other either.”

“We’ve reached our destination!” a distant voice called down the ranks, the message echoed again and again as it traveled, Heath yelling it back over his shoulder as well. “Eradicate the remaining stragglers!” came the next order down the line.

“Stragglers?” Heath exclaimed, looking back at the ravage of the battle that still raged. Whole swathes of woodland was ablaze, monsters tearing flesh off the bones of murdered Awakened, the stench of tattered intestines hanging turbidly in the air. “How does it make sense to call something like this straggl—”

A flash of white light brighter than the sun above split the midday in half, a thunderous boom shaking the earth like a bomb. Slithering tentacles of lightning crackled out from the impact site, smiting monsters even meters away, frying them thoroughly from the inside out. The earth was charred soot black and smoking, a small crater marking the exact spot where the fatal charge had eradicated a small group of quadruped monsters.

Moments later, Travis Lockwood came gliding through the air, landing nimbly among the last of the Awakened struggling to join the waiting army. A bolt of lightning, presumably the same technique of which he had just demonstrated the terrifying destructive power, began to take form in his hand. An Awakened bison charged in from his left, this one with regular brown fur, followed by a couple of Hectona-4s as well as one of those monkeys with white hair that Eik and his friends had killed earlier.

As it continued to draw in more and more power, the lighting bolt grew and elongated into the shape of a spear, the intensity of the power screaming electrically. At the undeniable difference in power between Travis and the charging beasts, the monkey hurried to dismount and hop away frantically as the B-ranker wound up for a herculean throw, his fingers curling impossibly around the radiant spear of light.

“Lightning Judgment of Tyrannical Ruination!” With a hiss like a firework flying skyward, the bolt pierced the three monsters, reducing them to roasted chunks of meat. The skill didn’t stop there, but continued through and impact the treeline, the impact detonation taking a couple more monsters more with along for the afterlife.

“Did he just… Did he just shout out a technique name?” Eik questioned, not quite believing his own ears. “There’s no way, right?”

“I definitely heard something as well,” Michael said. “But we’re talking about the strongest Awakened on Earth here. It was probably something else, but the electric noise distorted the sound into something utterly absurd.”

Heath nodded along. “That’s what I was thinking as well.”

“No,” Sonja said with tacit confidence. “No, that was most certainly a technique name.” She tapped her ears as if to remind them of her ability.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

They glanced at Travis, who was already preparing another skill, but rather than the spear of lightning, this time the electricity took the form of several small spheres of crackling light. He raised his hand to the sky and sent the balls in five different directions, each of them directed by a finger.

They traveled rather slowly compared to the frightening speed of the spear projectile, but as they came into range of the monsters, rapid, probing limps of death snaked out to take their lives. Visually it was nowhere near as violent, but the slowness possessed its own grisliness.

“I’m so glad he’s on our side…” Michael muttered, his eyes glued to the vicious massacre. The others could only agree. After a couple minutes of continuous assault from Travis, the monsters gradually stopped emerging from the tree line, their numbers depleted or survival instincts urging them to stay away.

Travis Lockwood spun on his heel, turning his back to the battlefield with a face devoid of expression, and Eik could have sworn that the man’s hand came up to furtively flick his long coat out behind him like the cape of a superhero.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Travis called as he walked back, putting his fist in his palm, a twisted grin splitting his lips. “We’ve reached the lake. The underwater titan has already been located and appears to be waiting for us just beneath the surface. This will be a battle for the ages, my friends!” He raised his fist high and the crowd cheered.

This man would likely be the first A-ranker in Forest now that the upper power limit on Earth had risen as a result of the second phase of their world’s induction in to the Unified Mass. The great hero of Forest would lead the offensive against the enemy that threatened their very existence, but Eik couldn’t help but feel a seed of worry in the pit of his stomach.

“Every one of you who will form the protective perimeter and ensure the safety of your friends and families back in forest will be assigned to a section commander. Your section commander will decide where to put each of your teams in order to cover as much ground as possible as effectively as possible.” He watched them to nod, his gaze uncharacteristically intense.

The Travis Lockwood in front of them now was like a different man from the indolent character Eik had observed any other time they met. He leapt over their heads, heading for the front where the other high-rankers waited for him to arrive and initiate the battle.

Soon after, the section commanders, mostly D-rankers in the lower grades, made their way down the rows of Awakened as they divided them among each other. Eik, Heath, Sonja, and Michael were placed under the command of a woman named Christina, whose combat style happened to be focused around archery like Sonja.

“Tie up your hair,” she ordered Sonja as she came by to check on their team. Her own hair barely reached past her jawline. “It’s going to get tangled in your bow string like that.”

Taken aback, Sonja subconsciously stroked her elbow-length hair while she steadily met the D-ranker’s eyes. “It’s already tied in a ponytail and I’ve never had issues with it before. I promise it’s not going to become a hindrance.”

“Did you think it was a request?” Christina asked with narrowed eyes. “If I tell you to do something, then all you have to do is do it!”

Eik and Heath were about get up in her face, but Sonja stopped them. “Understood, ma’am,” she said flatly, readjusting her ponytail into a tight bun that only just touched the nape of her neck.

“Good. Don’t let me catch you letting it down again while I’m not looking.”

“You won’t,” Sonja said, irritation sneaking its way into her voice.

Heath was fuming as the woman left. “What the hell is her problem?”

Sonja just shrugged but it was clear that she was mad.

Christina placed their team on the outermost corner of the perimeter, as far from any action as they could possibly be. Michael seemed immensely satisfied with this arrangement. After about five minutes of waiting at a distance of fifty meters from water’s edge, their link team, the team responsible for relaying any message from command to them, shouted that the battle would commence in one minute and thirty seconds.

There was enough space between their two teams to not interfere with each other’s fights, but also close enough to be able to see and communicate with each other in case of an emergency.

Heath raised his shield and the four comrades gathered in a tight formation, awaiting the launch of the first attack with bated breaths. “Hasn’t it already been a minute and a ha—” Heath begun, but was interrupted by the shrill scream of Travis’ Lightning Judgment of Tyrannical Ruination as it flickered through the air like a projectile from a rail gun in the distance, impacting the water with a booming explosion that spread tendrils of electricity throughout the water.

Seconds later, a colossal serpentine head, size comparable to a large farm house, broke through the surface, the abrupt movement of its large body raising a tsunami that crashed onto shore where all the Awakened waited. Before it could orient itself properly, another bolt of white hot lightning struck it just below the jaw, sending ripples down its skin.

It wailed in pain, the sound digging painfully into their ears, even from more than a kilometer away. Several corpses of monsters were already bobbing lifelessly in the swash of the turbulent lake. The gigantic beast arched backwards, its maw gaping widely as it writhed.

Then it froze for a moment and dove headfirst into the trees where Travis and many of the other high-rankers would have been standing, the volcanic collision sending dust and debris dozens of meters into the air. And as more of its long, winding body followed the head up from the depths, the sheer force of the displaced air disturbed some of the fog further out on the great lake, revealing the shore of an island hidden under the white, opaque blanket.

The lake serpent pulled its head free of the forest with the stentorian crunch of snapping trees and wound its neck up for a second attack. As it dove again, a third bolt of lightning caught it directly in the face but the momentum carried its attack through nonetheless and it slammed into the ground. Once more it raised its head back up and crashed down with the force of a ballistic missile.

Heath’s shield hung limply on his arm as he watched the fight with his mouth agape. The seed of worry in Eik’s stomach had sprouted and bloomed into a genuine oak of terror.

“N-Nobody can s-survive that…” Michael stammered through hyperventilation.

Eik could barely find the clarity to form words of his own, a wide-eyed, silent nod of agreement all he could muster as the mammoth serpent burst the forest apart for a fourth time.