“Daniel!” Ven bellowed under the weight of the monster’s scream. “We need to shut that thing up!”

He raised his gun and fired off two shots at the creature, his aim true. Two tight spheres of blue mana burst from his gun. They trailed a path towards the monster’s open maw before veering to the side.

Whatever the nature of the skill it was using was, it possessed both aura and physical attributes.

Ven’s armor blared warning sounds, red lights beeping within it. He silenced it all with a shrug of will and his connection to the suit silenced it.

The creature’s skill had rendered most of the team useless. The mages from Hillview struggled to stay on their feet while Jason struggled to move forward.

Ronda and Kid, the weakest of the current group, weren’t faring any better. If not for the augmentation their suits gave them, they’d have been knocked flat. At Beta rank, their suits helped them fight at the rank of a Rukh. Unfortunately, their opponents were Bishop rank.

Ven replaced his rune blaster against his thigh and drew his side arm free. The weapon sat easily in his hold and he found himself more than happy to have a Knight rank mage in the team. On one side of the clearing, Festus held his own against the blob and the spider, rune shields glowing a bright purple as they blocked off attacks and fire runes glowing a bright orange as they ignited against their targets.

Ven aimed his gun at the shrieking monster, hoping a normal bullet would carry enough strength to pierce whatever wall kept sending his mana shots off. He squeezed the trigger and the monster’s shriek consumed the sound of gunshot so that it was as if he hadn’t fired.

Ven sensed the bullet ricochet off the air more than he heard it and prayed no one got hit.

“Switching to frags!” he announced, letting the message go through his com-link as well as the world beyond his suit.

He reached behind him, even as his suit warned him of dwindling mana levels. He cussed as the compartment he was supposed to pull the grenade from remained sealed shut.

“Come on!” he swore as he struck it. “Now’s not the time!”

[Low power source detected. System malfunction detected], his armor informed him.

“Fuck your system malfunction!” he hissed. “The battle hasn’t even started yet.”

He slammed a fisted hand into it once more and the compartment opened.

“Yes!” he screamed, retrieving a grenade from it.

The frags from the old world required pins be pulled out, but the VHF design was quite different. For one, they designed it into balls with soft blue bands of light. Activation was simple, a button at the top needed to be pushed and the wielder had four seconds to let it loose or suffer the fate of its explosion.

Ven pushed the button without thought, took a fraction of a second to aim, and tossed the frag as high as he could.

“Frag out!”

The grenade soared over the monster as he’d hoped. It shook as the air rippled under the effects of the monster’s scream before landing behind it, tucked calmly between the tree and the creature.

The monster only had enough time to silence its scream before the grenade exploded. The effect was chaotic, fragments of shrapnel flying about without aim and Ven shielded his helmet with one hand and crossed the other over his chest.

His Olympian armor pushed him into the path of a category two Bishop ranker when he was actually a category one Bishop, and the frag grenade he’d thrown was easily designed to pierce the skin of most Bishops. Whether it would work on a category three monster was a different conversation entirely.

But Ven knew enough to understand if he got hit by one of the flying fragments, he would sustain damage. How much damage was information he was unwilling to find out.

With the disappearance of the monster’s shrieking Ven felt the ambient mana settle around them as his team found freedom in movement.

“That’s got to be a technique with a cool down, right?” Kid asked into the com-links as he raised his gun and started firing off shots at the creature.

Each bolt of concentrated mana struck the beast but failed to push it back. Instead, it seemed to do nothing but annoy it as the massive feline turned away from it the way cats turn away from water sprays.

“Got to be,” Ash agreed, a strain in her voice. “No way it’s fair if it’s not.”

Her gun sent shots blazing and Ven had a bad feeling that she was running out of ammo, the mana stone powering her rune blaster, dying out in its chamber. He wanted more than anything to confirm his theory but feared it might dull moral.

“Cool down imminent!” Daniel bellowed.

“How many seconds!?” Ven asked.

Daniel was skilled in both mana and aura and could often tell what was coming before most of his peers or how heavy it intended to be. In special cases where monsters had powerful techniques they could not cast infinitely, he could often predict how long it would take for them to cast it again.

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“No idea!” Daniel answered.

Ven was still cussing his luck when Daniel threw another frag grenade.

“Frag out!” Daniel shouted, stepping forward while the others braced for impact.

A screen of green force appeared in front of Ronda, her shield rune activating at her command as she aimed from its side and continued to fire.

Maybe she wasn’t running out of ammo. Or maybe she was just being reckless. Ven tried not to dwell on it as he saw the dwarf, Eitri, burst forward like a shot bullet.

He wore a metal helmet with a rune Ven didn’t recognized engraved into the forehead, and a vest that completely covered his torso. It didn’t look metallic and Ven couldn’t guess how much help it would serve the mage. Gauntlets covered Eitri’s hand as he darted down the distance and the same combat boots he’d been wearing since entering the forest covered his feet.

Ven wasn’t certain of what the man intended but hoped it was a useful tactic. Whatever it was.

Behind him, playing the ever chosen role of support, Lady Long Legs hurled spikes of molten lava.

The first spike burst against the feline monster’s matted fur, scattering in a spray of lava and the monster turned to hiss at her. Eitri slid beneath it, gaining a clear view of its jaw but was too low to reach it. Regardless, he charged an uppercut.

Ven felt the mana around Eitri and the monster get drawn down to the mage as he continued to fire, the other mages pelting the creature with whatever spellform they could muster up. All the drawn mana pooled into Eitri’s gauntlet to be specific. In a quick moment it shone a bright myriad of colors, sharp and bright.

The monster sensed the disruption as well because it ignored Lady Long Leg’s molten spikes to look down at Eitri. It was too late, however.

Eitri punched up, a comic display of an uppercut when his size was compared to that of the creature. But no one was laughing. With the power brimming from his gauntlet the outcome was obvious.

A bolt of mana struck the monsters jaw in a savage blow. It pushed the monster head up and staggered it to the side. Beneath its jaw a steady stream of smoke spilled and Ven noted the mana burn that scorched its fur. The effect of being hit with concentrated mana with enough force to pierce the skin.

Sadly, a mana burn and a staggering push to the face was all the effect Eitri’s blow could muster up.

When the creature turned its attention back to Eitri, there was nothing but ferocity in its eyes. Ven saw it as deeply as he felt it in the monster’s aura.

“Focus fire!” he bellowed, hoping to save Eitri. “Aim for the head!”

……………………………………….

Eitri’s left hand weighed him down, the gauntlet spent. It was damaged beyond repairs which was the expected outcome. With simple metal he hadn’t expected it to hold out against the amount of force he had made it bear. It wasn’t designed to withhold the power of that much mana but it had, even if for a short while.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t bring himself to appreciate how much it had done in a single moment as a more daunting experience lit up his mind.

He stared up the monster, met its serpentine eyes that were horribly wrong on a face that resembled a jaguar. Its anger was palpable and he felt the full weight of its aura come down on him.

The force of the monster’s aura hit Eitri like a thrown boulder and he fell to his knee as he struggled to keep his core active, revving it like the engine of a particularly powerful vehicle. He feared that should he stop, he would not leave this place alive.

Unfortunately, even with his core as active as he kept it, there was still a miniscule chance of survival.

Then he heard the Olympian’s bellow.

“Focus fire! Aim for the head!”

The creature was lit up with a rondo of colors like fireworks lighting the sky. Eitri felt spells of different mana types with each attack. There was fire and lava, light and gravity, mana that simply burned in his senses.

One of the spells missed the monster and landed near ten feet away from it as the others continued to pelt it in violence. This one was a deep purple and it crackled with purple electricity where it stood affixed to the uneven terrain. Then it burst out in an explosion.

Rather than push him away with the force of its explosion, gravity mana pulled Eitri out from under the creature and towards it.

Eitri let himself get taken.

Once he landed out of the reach of the monster, he turned and hightailed it back to the others.

……………………………………

Madam Shaggy could feel loss on the horizon. As a Rukh mage she was blasting the monster with all the firepower she got, her mana reserves dwindling with every blast. Still, there was no suitable damage inflicted. Every injury they inflicted was nothing but superficial. Only Eitri had done something of note, and it had almost cost him his life.

She had been confident they could face it when they’d walked in and she’d laid eyes on the creature. It had been the same one that had intruded on the remnant of her party. The same beast her and the powers of Hillview had sent scuttling away.

Then it had unleashed its aura and she’d realized just how wrong she’d been. It might’ve been the same monster, but it wasn’t here with the same power. When it used that shriek of its, practically paralyzing every member of the party, fear had burrowed into her bones and reminded her of her humanity even in the beauty of mana. In the short amount of time between when it had been pushed back by them and now, it had grown two ranks.

How?

Worse, as they fought, she was beginning to realize that much of the victory they had managed to scrape out that night had been because they’d possessed a well-balanced team. Abed had been there to provide melee damage. He’d slipped his bulky frame into the thick of it, trading blows with the creature, not that she thought he’d survive such an encounter now. And Big Man Desolate had played his part, distracting the monster with his antics and taking blows no Rukh mage had the right to walk away from unscathed.

Her senses tried to pick Big Man Desolate out now as they fought for dear life and failed, but she knew where he was, where he’d always been.

Big Man Desolate stood off to the side watching them risk their lives as if this had nothing to do with him.

……………………………………..

When the painful sound of shrieking ended and vision returned to the world, Zed pushed himself up with a groan. A part of him had expected not to wake up, or at least to wake up in the jaws of one monster or the other.

Getting to his feet he realized why he was still in one piece.

In front of him, the other monsters seemed to be shaking themselves from equal pain and disorientation. Some staggered as they stood while others trembled, shivering like wet dogs left out in the snow to die.

It seemed whatever had happened had had no allies, only foes.

Abed was already standing tall and strong, his cleaver held out in front of him. There was a slight tremor to him but he looked like a man who held himself together with nothing but rage and hate. If anything, he was the sight of a man with a war cry on his lips. A man on the verge of falling into some drug induced frenzy.

Zed half expected Abed to let out a war cry before charging into the monsters but he didn’t. But someone else did.

“I’ll crush every single one of you!” Chris roared.

Rage filled her voice as she ran forward. The finesse of countless spells that usually accompanied her into battles since entering the forest was long gone. Hers had become the rage of swinging clubs and angry bellows.

Abed darted into the chaos after her, his footsteps a rumble that shook the ground beneath it. He was a silent boulder as he crashed into the monsters and his weapon inflicted as much blunt force damage as it did cutting damage and monsters seemed to die with every swing.

Zed had to admit. The man was a force of his own.