Zack Krum’s fingers tingled as he looked up at that stern faced-figure. A breeze tugged at the edge of his shirt. That desperation was back, howling with glee at the sudden threat that presented itself in front of him. And a true powerhouse, no less; someone who had fought against some of the best in Donnyton at one of the large tournaments. If he could prove himself against this man-

Zeta moved first, a blurred incarnation of brass as his modular limbs flipped on themselves. Without any effort, he shifted from a metal humanoid to a clawed metal beast, crouching close to the stone to pounce up at the threat. Yet even as the automaton moved, Huang Li’s arm countered him by drawing his curved sword and unleashing a ray shining light.

Even the speed of it was uncanny. Zack’s pupils dilated. Good thing I got the chance to see it before I tried to tangle it up...

With a domineering clang, that slash overwhelmed all of Zeta’s momentum and pressed it into the ground. Huang Li gracefully raised his blade regarding them all with a cool stare, as though implying that non-lethal attack was the one warning they would be given. The breeze around them began to stir the tension with more vigor.

Yes. Zack’s eyes glittered. This is what I deserve.

“The eye of the moon has become clouded.” The Chimera woman observed into the strained silence. Despite the display of Huang Li, she seemed detached. “No possibility of escape exists any longer.”

“As I said,” Zeta twisted its head around to look at the woman. Its limbs folded back to their humanoid variations, but it stayed with its belly against the ground. “The delightful side of interacting with humanoids is they manage to overturn statistics-”

Zack and Todd, acting with unspoken cooperation, launched themselves into motion. Sprinting like a linebacker, Zack dashed directly for the edge of the balcony to throw himself at Huang Li. At the same time, Todd waved a hand and sent five metal bars and several small pieces of wood spiraling around the cloud-riding man, ready to strike at the first sign of weakness.

Snorting, Huang Li slashed again. The movement was too fast for Zack to follow, but with the prior visual he could at least could see the shining crescent of energy the attack unleashed; even now, this powerful figure was toying with them.

The corner of Zack’s mouth quirked up. Well, let’s make him regret that.

The image of an unassuming old man shimmered into place behind Krum. That man’s hands were tinged with a dim golden right, but otherwise, there were no distinct details in the image projection. After a slow step, the old man stepped forward and superimposed itself on Zack’s body. His hands became faintly gold and he reached out with those hands to seize the slash.

For a moment, Zack missed the fulcrum of the attack. Blood spurted from his left palm as he struggled to find the anchor of its power. Then his Skills activated and guided his force to the correct portion. With a great effort of will, he bent the attack in on itself and managed to shift it. But as he did so, Zack grimaced. The muscles of his arms bulged with the strain. How the hell… he didn’t even manifest an image! Why is it so heavy?!?

In the end, Zack could only heave the slash to the side, barely moving the attack over his shoulder. The strike hummed aggressively, as though it deeply disapproved of its sudden vector adjustment, and then tore up a long strip of the stone balcony on the way to the wall. There, it cracked the stone supports and shattered a several meters of the railing. The passage between the balcony and the interior rooms collapsed.

Underneath them, the balcony shuddered. Thin cracks began to spread out from the place the slash had landed; they would soon fall.

“They simply seem like agents of chaos.” The Chimera observed with that same clinical dispassion. Even while Zeta scuttled across the ground toward her when she made no move to get on her Scrawled board. Zack flicked and wrist to keep his fingers from becoming too bloody and took the last few strides to the edge of the collapsing balcony.

Huang Li raised his blade above his head and the wind began to howl. The whole of the environment seemed to shift. Somehow, as this man moved his sword, the sky above and even the stone of the prison tower whispered him encouragement. A strange emotional resonance occurred, where little wisps of images flew and joined that sword, ready to unleash themselves wherever they were bid. He seemed to breathe in the environment of this place and weaponize it against them.

Todd hadn’t been idle; his fingers danced across the cracking balcony and drew Scrawls so effortlessly he just seemed to wave his hands and the patterns loped of their own volition across the stone. Even as Zack stepped on the balcony railing and prepared to throw himself up, he could feel Todd raise his head and look at his back in silent warning.

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Despite the distance, he could read the meaning in those inert eyes.

Feeling slightly disappointed, Zack planted his right foot as though he prepared for an all-out diving tackle. The old man standing across his body raised his head, his eyes sparkling emerald and releasing trails of smoke. Huang Li’s arms blurred into motion, that horrible sword scything toward him.

Crack!

Zack had looped his left foot underneath the railing so he was dragged down when Todd mobilized the Scrawls and tore up most of the remaining support structure, thereby launching the balcony at the ground. Huang Li’s powerful strike cut sideways, but they slipped right underneath it, hair being blown in every direction by the ceaseless wind.

With blazing eyes, Huang Li adjusted his grip on the sword and guided the strike in curving down after them. He began his own rushing descent. But by that point, Todd, Zack, and Zeta, holding the Chimera woman, alighted on their Scrawled boards and flew down through the hole Todd had opened in the collapsing stone.

The remnant pieces that still bore Todd’s Scrawl twisted themselves and shot upward like bullets spewed from the machine gun, but they didn’t manage to slow down Huang Li at all. The wind pounced on the stone pieces like wolves on a wounded calf and shredded them down to nothing in only a second.

Okay, so trying to grab that strike is probably a bad idea, Zack winced as he hid behind the rubble and prepared for their next move.

The three individuals streaked out from beneath the freefalling balcony just before it crashed into the one below it, spraying them with flecks of stone and dust. Guards leaned out from nearby windows and raised their Mana rifles even as the massive blade of wind curved after them, gathering more and more momentum. The longer it existed, the more frightful Huang Li’s attack became. It expanded and its scope of absorption expanded with it, allowing more of the environment to flow into it and accelerating the dangerous cycle.

As it moved, it drank and ballooned to cover more space.

Already, it began to gain ground on them, even as they zipped through the sky at the highest speed Todd’s powerful Scrawl could carry them without burning through the material. Even worse, just as the first Mana bullets fired by the guards began to necessitate some evasive action, a huge fleet of drones rose up from where they had been lurking amongst the crops. A flock of humming, buzzing, hissing, hulking metal birds with flamethrowers for mouths and missiles for talons took flight. They had likely been gathering since the trio landed on the balcony.

The sky that had previously seemed so clear became clogged with exhaust and metal. These combat-specified war machines made the helicopter-arm variety of drone look like a sweet-voiced request not to trespass.

Zack cheeks hurt from the wild and joyless smile on his face. He could see no possibility to escape, so the only option was to put their lives on the line. A thrill ran through him. Just as he was about to toss himself forward and rip open a path with his own hands, the Chimera woman spoke. “To the left. That small red brick building. A sliver of potential.”

“You must be insane,” Zack spat as he craned his neck around. Their speed and the gale of a slash behind them made communication incredibly difficult. His eyes were wide as he struggled to shout at her while also keeping the formation of the drones in front of him within his view. “We can’t just trust you, who has been trapped-”

But of course, Zeta was weirdly infatuated with this woman and Todd had too much faith in everyone but himself; both veered immediately after she had spoken. Muttering curses about taking advice from monsters, Zack hurried after them. They banked and curved left, the maw of the wind on their heels.

“However,” The Chimera woman looked up speculatively at Huang Li, who neared them more every second. “This is an impediment. One of you humanoids will need to cause chaos to eliminate the certainty of us dying by this wind before we can make it to that building.”

“Ah,” Even above the wind, Zack could hear Zeta’s apologetic tone. “In my experience, counting overmuch on humanoid’s abilities to avoid certainties come with unexpected side effects.”

“You stupid-” Zack snarled even as he pushed his Scrawled board to the limit and accelerated in front of them. The wood couldn’t withstand the energy and disintegrated beneath his feet, but he was there, flying between his friends and Huang Li’s power that sought to sever their path to that innocuous red-brick building. Zack’s eyes widened and the emerald-eyed old man superimposed itself across his body once more.

Maybe if you had kept the scale small, I couldn’t undercut you like this, Zack thought maliciously, as his hands expanded in front of the massive slash. He couldn’t grab it directly, but there were huge flows of those support images surging to make themselves useful to Huang Li. The very environment provided plentiful aid to the attack. And that Zack could affect.

He nudged two of those streams of images aside for just a moment and dislodged them. In the chaotic friction that followed, he tied a brief knot in front of the slash. Wind whipped and eddied, curling in on itself in a small net. The two forces collided and ground against each other with a deafening roar only five or so meters above their heads.

Zeta whipped past Zack first. Then Todd followed behind more sedately, skimming right in front of the blade. He even patted Zack on the back for a job well done and was then gone. The impediment disintegrated.

Going through the motions, Zack produced a scrawled board and stepped onto it. He could feel the Mana beginning to flow, ready to buoy him away to safety.

But he could also feel the shift in the slash because he handled those energy flows. For the briefest moment, he had slowed the attack and the others probably expected that he would have a moment to move when the slash forced its way through. However-

Huang Li’s slash feasted on the flows and jumped a short distance forward using that sudden influx of power. All Zack knew was the noise of howling wind before the attack landed.