Trapper reached behind her back, detaching something from her pack in a motion that had become smooth as silk through repetition. The instant that her attention was divided, the closest monster rushed in for the kill. It sent mana surging into its claws along the way, completing a skill combo as it closed the distance.

The reaver’s claws spread wide as they came up from below, mana congealing along their length as it activated the second skill. Likely disembowel, given the angle of the attack.

Edge thought that he was about to watch the creature’s black blades carve through Trapper’s guts like a welding torch through a tub of butter, but that was not what happened.

By the time that the monster began its disembowel, Trapper was already swinging her arm back around, gathering momentum along the way. She tossed what she was holding straight into the monster’s path. The mesh spread out in an instant, revealing itself to be some manner of net.

The reaver must have understood what was happening, because it aborted its attack and tried to dodge. But Trapper’s move caught it by surprise, and it couldn’t get away. The steel net enveloped the monster and wrapped tight around its body. The weighed cables pulled its arms down to its side and bound one leg in the weave.

Then its momentum caught up to it, and the creature went down hard.

Edge had thought that the net was merely a restraint. But then he saw that blood was draining from the shadowreaver’s body like a river of ink. When he looked closer, he realized that each of the metal lines forming the net was covered in jagged serrations along their interior. That’s not just a net, it’s bladewire.

It had to be incredibly sharp, because the woven wires sliced into the monster’s body. Every time that it flexed its muscles trying to get out, the bladewire bit deeper still. The monster screamed and flailed as it tried to break free, lacerating itself with every move it made.

But even that wasn’t enough to stop it.

The reaver brought its claws up and one set of talons. It braced all three limbs against the tension of the wire, and then pressed as hard as it could. With a groan of tortured metal, the net pulled apart in a series of snaps as the thin bands were stressed beyond their limits.

The monster cried out in triumph and rose to its feet, ready to claim its revenge. Before it could finish untangling itself, Trapper was standing at its side.

She took aim with her sword and then lunged with expert precision, penetrating the creature’s eye, throat, and chest in three blurringly fast jabs. It didn’t seem to be a skill, but a show of pure technique, leaving Edge in awe of the woman’s ability.

The fiend let loose one final scream and came crashing down a second time, dead before it hit the ground.

During the handful of heartbeats it took for those events to play out, Edge moved to engage the reaver with an arrow sticking out of its shoulder. It had broken away from Riller and Jumo, trying to skirt the battlefield to hit Trapper from behind.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Edge stepped into the monster’s path. He took a swing without using a skill to stop it in its tracks, conserving the last of his mana to land a killing blow. Jumo rushed in and launched an attack from the side, poking another hole in the monster while its attention was divided.

While the two of them engaged the poisoned creature, everyone else focused on the uninjured reaver standing beside Sasha. With three on one, they should be able to dispatch it quickly, then deal with the one fighting the crew’s beasts. This battle is going better than I hoped. We should be out of the woods before much longer.

It sounded good in his head, but the monsters had other plans.

The reaver in front of Trapper broke away in a flash, dodging a pair of Riller’s poisoned arrows in the process. It must have activated a skill along the way, because the monster began leaving shadows in its wake like smoke from a torch, making it hard to track its position.

For a moment, Edge thought that the birdlike creature was using the same rare skill that he had. But then he noticed that the ground was torn and scuffed wherever its talons came down. That isn’t shadow step. It isn’t incorporeal right now.

Sasha jabbed at the monster with her spear, trying to trip it up and keep it from getting away. Her burning weapon only struck its blurry afterimage, allowing the creature to converge on the red beast in time with its kin.

While the other monster attacked from the front to divert both beasts’ attention, the newly arrived reaver sprang. It launched itself into the air, trailing shadows all the while. It landed on Lucky’s back and dug in with its talons, anchoring itself to the space where bear’s rear legs met its spine.

Trapper, Jumo, and Sasha ran to help, but it was going to be a few more seconds before they arrived. Time that Lucky didn’t have.

The stricken beast screamed, bucking and twisting as the reaver on its back leaned forward. It started gouging away with its claws while plunging its beak into Lucky’s flesh time and time again. Blue turned and tried to gore the clinging reaver with her horns. The instant that she looked away, the other monster came charging in.

With one lightning-fast swipe, it claimed Lucky’s left eye. Then it gouged out the right when the beast swung his head back around. Blue let loose a furious roar and drove the creature back with a powerful thrust, wounding the reaver as the hunters closed the distance.

Trapper’s crew tried to help the injured beast, but they didn’t make it in time. The reaver on Lucky’s back leapt off, claws slicing deep into his flanks all the way down. Then it leaned in and went for the kill. Its beak came surging forward in a streaking lunge, adding power and precision to the blow.

The tip landed in the hollow where Lucky’s left eye had been only moments before, sliding through the socket to pierce the beast’s brain.

The reaver pulled out its blood-drenched bill with a savage shriek of satisfaction. As Trapper cried out in horror, the red beast collapsed bonelessly to the grass, dead the moment that the last attack landed.

Blue panicked at the sight of her fallen companion. She broke away from the battle and went running as fast as she could, pulling the cart behind her.

While the loss of the beast was deeply upsetting to the people who knew him, it was only the beginning of their trouble. The pair of reavers let out raucous caws, consuming Lucky’s flesh in a gluttonous frenzy.

At that point, the battle went from moderately manageable to horrifically dire.

The shadowreaver that had landed the killing blow began glowing with a foul purple light. The muscles beneath its feathered flesh pulsated and writhed. Its limbs stretched out, claws and beak growing thicker and sharper.

“Oh shit,” Trapper called out. “Watch out. That monster is about to evolve. It’s going to get stronger and spawn more of the smaller ones at the same time.”

Her crew ran for the mutating reaver with their weapons at the ready, hoping to take it out before it finished its grim metamorphosis. But Edge could already tell that it wasn’t going to work.