I look at the assembled group as we prepare to head out once again in pursuit of whatever beast is coming out of the HLZ.

Except that this time we had an actual shot. With the small progress we made and Alex’s level 100 skill we could probably hold our own much better.

Everyone’s movements after just a couple of outings are almost automatic, except for the new level 88 fighter replacing the one who was killed.

His friend is still here and apparently holding much better than I had expected. Humans are more resilient than most people believe, especially when there is no other real choice.

I’m not sure it’s wise for him to be here, but nobody has the heart to deny him a little vengeance against the beasts and when we finally are making some headway, it just seems unnecessarily cruel to deny him his chance.

This time we have a little more information about the level 140 Lion, but still nothing too exceptional. A couple of weeks poking the HLZ beasts wasn’t enough to draw any solid conclusion.

The hours pass in the flying craft with everyone in nearly complete silence. Something that is not quite the norm, but everyone could benefit from meditating or focusing on the task ahead of us in their own way. The mood however is not somber, but lighter.

That doesn’t mean we are unfocused on the goal. For the first time, we had an actual shot of combating these beasts and that shines with a stark contrast against how things had developed over the last two weeks.

The month was almost ending and if we failed to stop even a single beast there was a decent chance that a good portion of the instance would cut their losses and run. Perhaps not on our village and a few others committed to staying on the instance as long as humanly possible but the weaker and more vulnerable villages were starting to see massive changes.

The estimated thousand people death tool are not just a statistic, each of the people that paid the penalty is a stark reminder of the danger.

“File out everyone.” Says Richard as he settles down the craft near one of the villages in our best estimate of the beast’s path.

I just hope that it focuses on our group, instead of going for the larger and more vulnerable target.

“Two minutes,” Richard calls out

Mana pours out of the batteries in my inner world and I extend roots underground over the connecting line to grow the network around us even further as I pull out more and more of the runic engravings root carpets and rolld them on the ground.

Only the shield powering ones have proven themselves useful. The beast just dodges everything else, but the more I have in place, the more limited its maneuvering options are.

Alex stands with a totally different aura right at the tip of the spear. He doesn’t don an air in invincibility, of someone who will solo the beast, but the power mismatch is slowly fading and I smile as my pupil's Aether current around him gets stronger and stronger.

Everyone has seen him practicing, with not even Greg can pin him down even while using his tats to full effect.

In front of me, the small group is focused enough that for the first time I see their own Aether melding and acting collectively on everyone.

Mine and Alex’s actions in feeding the natural Aether cycles of the village had probably a big impact in allowing the much smaller group to have Aether just coming together like this and I’m positively beaming at what is forming.

I had no idea of what or how long it would take to see the results of this Natural Aether work, but it probably helped everyone train their skills and get mentally aligned with the Village’s spear wielder identity in the interring, so there didn’t seem to be any downside.

A thought strikes me, maybe aligning everyone’s mental state is the entire point of this current of Aether. But after a moment I don’t think that was the only change that was coming in.

Shaking my head I turn to the beast’s path. Finally about a kilometer off I see something. Through the hundreds of trees in that direction, the lion is not very well camouflaged in its path to us and I thank god that it didn’t choose to head to the nearby village. That would have been a massacre.

Each step eating a dozen meters, the lion speeds up impossibly fast in our direction.

I prepare and get Aspen’s help to infuse everything I do with mana and his will. He is not perfectly doing it yet, but he had gotten the hang of it well enough that even the worse of his blunders would at most just not help me. Best of all, he doesn’t suffer from any significant feedback issues given the size of his body, I had seen a few signs of that previously, but this time I will make full use of his capabilities.

Three seconds. Two. One. At the very last instant, I raise the shields up at full power.

The beast’s momentum is broken as its head hits the shield bouncing off in an awkward angle. It didn’t manage to get its paws in position to disrupt the shield in the fraction of a second before hitting it.

Almost comically arcing in the air, I see it twisting its body like a cat and landing on its paws as I successfully hit it with one fireball. Even in the air, it can dodge my attacks…

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I take a look at the state of the mana shield. Though its sheer momentum bleeds off a lot of mana from it, the beast failed to get off a disruption attack so it holds up just fine.

At the head of the place, Alex waits as I lower the shield and let the beast enter the large shield wall surrounding us. Making full use of his improved skill, I finally see the real results that others had been promising me after they watched his sparring and training sessions.

Almost impossible moves follow as everyone surrounds the beast.

The beast is faster than Alex and its moves are even more intricate, but we had come to expect that. On the upside, Alex has more than a score of other fighters and two high level casters supporting him and preventing the beast from fully turning its attention to him.

I stop trying to shoot it with my turrets randomly and just follow the rhythm of the battle. Merlin keeps us his magma balls, given taht they are smaller and more agile. He even manages to get a few glancing shots occasionally.

I pull a constant stream of Mana forming shields in front of the beast's attacks, along with opening portals all around it over and over pushing shield generatos out and powering them to protect the others and limit its maneuvering room even more.

The large shield dome, some twenty meters in diameter around all of us prevents it from leaving and the smaller dome shield protecting just me and Merlin are ready like always. But neither takes any of our attention, what does are the dozens of small and quickly raised shields I form with my own will or the ones powered by the formations in the inner world.

My arms tingle with anticipation for me to really show the improvements in my magical skill in the last few days and with each shield formation, just some 200 mana or so in each, I get more and more used to the beast’s style.

My improvement doesn’t put me in the same class as Merlin, but loads of mana and the recent mental and perception improvements are coming in handy and I was milking it for all that it was worth.

The lion lunges, spins and buckles trying to get a bite at anyone in its range, but the couple times it had even a chance, I always have the two shield layers in place just in time.

They are limited in power during the fraction of a second before the beast’s attacks, even while backed by a silver and copper engraved shield projectors floating mid air. Though even this limited power is enough to stop any glancing blow from the beast or at the very least blunt a full-powered one enough that everyone’s armor manages to handle it without much more than a bruise or a joint twist.

This time, I notice the beast is already as fast as it can with a constant stream of mana as in each and every step it takes. We are pushing it hard enough that it has to pull out all to the stops instead of being able to conserve its mana and stamina for a longer fight. That brings a smile to my face.

“Group two, flank,” Richard almost yells in our ears. There is not enough time for many directions though he often comes up with something to say that is helpful and makes sure that we don’t miss a single opportunity.

The seconds pass until we reach a record long minute without a single serious injury.

I cough a few droplets of blood, from the expected feedback, though it’s much lighter than usual with Aspen’s help and the weaker mana shields the beast is breaking.

The coordination from everyone is unparalleled and everyone is moving almost in concert diving in and forcing the beast to exhaust itself far faster than if it could step back for even an instant here and there.

As the minute mark pass and I judge that its mana should be at less than half and I notice it looking around looking for an escape route. I select Richard on my comm and say.

“Low on mana, trying to disengage.”

Without waiting for even another instant, he says:

“All in.”

At one of the few rehearsed commands for our group, every single one of the fighters activates their best skill saved for a situation like this.

The wind picks up blowing the leaves off the floor, white lights start to emanated from most fighters skin in an almost ethereal change. Everyone lightens their steps and impossible as it seemed our coordination kicks up another notch surpassing even the greatest tandem gymnasts.

Each with a slightly different visual effect, glowing orbs, streams of light, and foggy glows surround the fighters and their spears as they advance in unison.

A shallow cut, then a second, third, a tenth one.

Alex gets a deep furrow in its calve.

Greg elbows its head in a desperate gamble to escape as it charges heedlessly of bing skwered.

Merlin gets a pair of magma balls up its tailpipe.

The friend of the single casualty the last time we fought an HLZ beast clips its paw and sends it tumbling into the center of one of my formations.

Instinctively, I aim the half a dozen fireball turrets in the sky straight at it while pulling my will from every single of the shields and throw my entire being on the freezing formation locking its muscles for an instant. The beast’s momentum keeps its body rolling as everything seems to move in slow motion, but it can’t actively move its body. That makes its movement fairly predictable, and I finally let a smile bloom as six fireballs shoot out, each powered by 500 mana with Aspen’s will behind them.

They all hit it full-on in its underbelly.

A deep howl of pain sends my gut churning from the harm I intentionally caused, but it was what it was. Nature or rather the system had put this beast against us and we did what we had to do.

The fight is over.

Not in actuality, as the beast still lingers for about two minutes even after its entire underside is singed in fire and it has trouble moving with one of its paws. But the end is a foregone conclusion.

I don’t attack it anymore, letting everyone else skewer it while relying only on the shields to protect everyone.

A second paw is injured.

Dozens of cuts along its abdomen ribs, calves and neck. The Lion can’t even protect its head properly. Even after everyone’s skills run their course, they easily hold their own against the injured beast.

Misstep after misstep drives it ever further into a corner, too tired and injured to continue until Greg, with his large frame and well over 200 pounds of muscle steps in putting his entire power behind a single forward spear strike in the exact instant the lion opens its mouth.

The heavy instrument of war ends the fight in a rather permanent fashion.

In a single instant, the beast goes from having a minute shot of escape if not a victory to slumping on Greg’s spear.

“That’s a gruesome business.” Says one of the other fighters echoing my thoughts. Everyone understood the sentence. The monthly attacks were not much better than this but this time we could have let the lion run away. But actions had consequences either way and letting it go might also have let it attack someone else.

It was him or us and I curse the system and the council for their hand in forcing this choice upon us. I could just push with my own goals in mind and take things as they happened. Some were saying that letting Earth fall under the council’s control was not such a bad thing. It‘s not just about control of resources and money. It is about letting these people have power over us, people that forced us to make these choices unnecessarily.

We couldn’t trust them with our lives and the lives of those we sheltered.

We had to take control of our own destiny by whatever means necessary.