Festus frowned as he deflected an earth attack with a force spell. The air shimmered at the flick of his wrist and the stone spike rising from the ground in its adornment of soft glowing flowers shattered against it on impact.

At knight rank he was vastly superior to most of the enemies he’d come across, but he felt himself on the verge of struggling with the two monsters. Worse, he could feel them growing as they fought, evolving.

They were Bishop ranked but they fought with the weight of something above their rank. If he was to gauge them, he would say they were like Zed’s aura, untamed and disharmonious but well above what should be expected of their rank and category.

It was only a matter of time before one of them advanced into the next category. And if that happened, he would be faced with a category three Bishop rank and a category one Knight.

Those were not odds he wanted to face alone.

He slipped to the side with the speed of his rank, avoiding a spray of web from the giant spider, then raised a shield of force mana in front of him, deflecting the blob’s attack. The monster’s spear like limb struck his shield with a loud clang that reverberated all over the place.

Festus frowned at the impact. It seemed the blob intended on advancing first. That meant it was what he needed to kill first.

Behind him, the rest of the party struggled to stay alive as they faced off against the feline monster.

With the strongest of them being a mere category two Bishop, it was no surprise that they had barely harmed it. In fact, the real surprise was in the fact that none of them had died. A battle like this should’ve claimed at least one Rukh mage at this point.

Watching over the others with his aura sense left a slight distraction in his focus and the one of the spider’s legs found its way past his force shield. Festus acted on reflex and caught the limb before it pierced his side.

“Nasty bugger, aren’t you,” he scowled as he bent the limb with the force of a Knight mage.

He half expected the spider to struggle against his hold while the blob went for an attack from a possible blind spot, but it did not. Instead, its limb broke under the weight of his attack and Festus released it.

There was something worrying about that. The creature barely let out a sound of pain. If anything, what had just happened felt intentional. Like a sacrificial decision. And he didn’t know why.

If monsters were making sacrificial decisions that didn’t bear immediate results, it meant only one thing.

The creature was intelligent.

Festus’ eyes darted between both creatures, a new worry on his mind. If the spider was intelligent, then it was safe enough to assume that so was the blob.

And if the blob was intelligent…

The ambient mana around them trembled. Festus felt a skill before it activated. The spider darted forward, rushing after him. He turned to meet its charge. The blob darted to the side, away from its fight with him, and he knew he had been right to fear.

A loud shriek pierced the air just as it had in the beginning.

Festus felt the weight of a mental attack on his mind as the spider’s massive frame battered into him. He was a Knight mage but mind magic was not his specialization. But it seemed to be the specialization of the creature the others fought so it took him a split moment to shake the effect of its mind attack.

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A split moment was all that was needed.

The spider smashed him into one side of the hedge and the blob disappeared from sight. Festus gathered force mana to him in a spell that brought down the weight of the world on the spider, halting its charge on him and he understood the reason it had sacrificed a limb.

It had all been to buy one more second of time, to buy his attention as all three monsters executed a plan they were not supposed to be able to.

In the battle the others faced, their odds dropped significantly. He felt the others held down by the banshee shriek as they battled for supremacy of their minds while catastrophe struck.

………………………….

Ven coughed. He tasted the metallic tang of blood on his lips. He hadn’t even seen it happen, hadn’t had the time to react.

One moment they seemed to be having the upper hand on the monster that seemed to be protecting the tree, and the next moment his mind had threatened to put him to bed. His only saving grace, as had been the last time the creature had used that terrifying shriek was the mind rune his suit came with, designed to keep his mind protected from mental intrusion.

But whatever skill the monster used was strong, and it took the rune the beat of two seconds to stabilize his mind. They’d always taught them back at VHF quarters that in a battle every second could make a difference and he’d always understood that. But he found himself drowning in that understanding.

Or if he was being honest, drowning in his own blood as his armored hands held onto the limb that impaled him.

A giant blob stood in front of him, appearing as if it had teleported from its fight with Festus in the few seconds of darkness his mind had fallen into. It stared at him without eyes, a massive open maw displaying horrid lamprey teeth gazing down at him like an abyss.

In his stomach Ven felt overwhelming pain. The monster had stabbed through the reinforced mana steel of his armor with its leg and run him through. It was so ludicrous that it was hilarious.

Ven would’ve laughed if he wasn’t in so much pain. Instead, he gave his armor a single command.

“Adrenaline shot.”

[Adrenaline shot administered], a robotic voice informed him.

He felt a small burst of power fill him. It was not enough to save him. He knew that. He was dying if not already dead. But he was defiant, a mage incapable of being a real threat amongst his peers without his armor.

Soldiers were often said to be destined to die in battle, but if he was being honest, he’d never felt death on a battlefield against monsters was how he’d go. If anything, he’d thought it would be against mages, either from a different continent where a different power ruled—they were floating rumors of a possible invasion—or at the bullets of one of the anti-mages. Maybe even the rebellion the VHF had failed to smother at its own gates.

But definitely not at the hands of a monster.

The irony, he thought as the blob’s open mouth came down on his face.

But not like this.

His hands reached into a compartment behind him. As if obeying one last time, even under the weight of everything that had happened, the compartment opened without a hitch. Both hands came away, each holding two frags and he activated one in each hand. It was all the activation he needed as he shoved his hands forward in one last defiance.

He plunged his hands into the creature’s mouth and lost them both as it clamped down on them.

Pain flared through the burst of adrenaline and he buckled under the weight of it.

Ven had spent his entire life in the military. His parents had been soldiers and he’d been bounced from one barrack to the other. He’d moved on to become a soldier and when the existing government structure had fallen under the weight of an early second awakening, he’d given himself to the command of the VHF for a greater cause.

He’d always known his death would be as a soldier.

Rukh mages with a strong enough connection to a mana type were known to hold something of a special spellform designed to give them one last powerful oomph in a fight. An amalgamation of every single hold they had over their specialization for the creation of one more push for victory.

The VHF liked to call it Overdrive.

Having no such connection to a mana type as attribute mages, he and his teammates had no such thing. But his team wasn’t fighting alone.

The last experience of Ven’s life was in the chaotic eruption of mana that filled the air with enough force to strike terror in the hearts of everything living as the mages around him activate spellforms with a greater force than anything he’d felt them use. The Rukh mages he’d led into this battle activated went into Overdrive

But more terrifying was the monstrous aura he felt from Festus, and Ven died to the salutation of a Knight mage’s Overdrive.

At least he liked to think that was the case as the blob exploded in front of him. Fragments of shrapnel went flying in a chaotic burst as four frag grenades exploded and a monster’s head was shredded to pieces.

Ven died in a spray of blood and shrapnel and there was nothing peaceful about it.