Daniel, Kid and Ronda knew their suits were low on battery. Activating the suits at the beginning of the battle had been designed to give them a fighting chance, but that plan had failed. Now, the death of their commander was the only thing that had given them the fighting chance they’d sought. That and the mages switching into Overdrive.

“Frags out!” Daniel commanded, swiftly taking up the role of commander.

Ronda’s gun clicked empty from behind her shield and she discarded it without thought. She reached into the compartment of her suit and pulled out a grenade. She threw it at the monster with all the force her suit could muster.

“Frag out!” she announced.

“All of them!” Daniel ordered as he threw his second grenade. “Frag out!”

The phrase filled their com-links like a disorganized crowd trying to bellow a single chant. The grenades hit the flowery ground without a sound but their explosions shook the earth. Each one blew up on the back of the other and a cascade of explosions followed.

As the feline turned, confused in the chaos of explosions, seeking to keep itself from harm while keeping the mages now brimming with vast auras within its attention.

As each explosion boomed in the air, Daniel backed up, giving another command, one he knew Ven would never have given.

“Retreat!”

“What?!” Kid’s voice filled his helmet in confusion.

“Are you asking us to leave them behind?” Ronda asked.

Daniel’s response was emphatic. “No! I’m asking us to get out of the way of Rukh rank mages who’ve gone into Overdrive. We’ll only get in their way.”

He could feel their displeasure at the explanation of his command and decided to go for diplomacy.

“We’ll stay at the edge of the clearing,” he said. “Protect the exit, and play standby in case they need us. For now, the grenades are the only help we can get. And Ronda, you’re out of ammo, putting you in this fight is getting you killed for no reason, so stand down.”

Before long, all three Olympians were huddled together. Daniel’s large frame stood between them and the rest of the battle as they backed towards the hedge and the path in it that led out.

They stopped there and hoped this fight would come to an end soon.

…………………………………………

Jason’s grip tightened on his sword of light. The handle almost felt like a physical thing, though it was not. He felt the power brimming about it as it continued to power itself with the light mana it drew from the soft glow of the plants.

The mages and the monster were held in a stale mate, waiting on who would strike first despite the mana shots from the Olympians. With so many mages in Overdrive, the Bishop rank monsters seemed to spare no attention for the Olympians. Their mana shots bounced off its fur, leaving nothing but superficial burn marks.

Then the grenades hit the ground and the explosions roared with enough power to level a small building.

As the monster bounded about, trying to keep its eyes on the mages while avoiding any deadly impact from the grenade, the Olympians backed away from the fight slowly. Jason couldn’t blame them for their retreat. They’d just watched the strongest of them die in the blink of an eye. Without a leader, their order and decisiveness would take a blow. Unlike the others, they were not designed to fight without command.

Jason’s hold tightened on his swords when the Olympians were well out of sight and the explosions were dwindling. He braced himself as he drew on the remaining mana he had not powering his Overdrive and cut the air.

An arc of light cut the air like physical sword strikes and shot across the distance. Jason swung the second sword and another arc followed behind the first.

They connected against the monster in a burst of concentrated light that carried a searing heat with it.

For the first time since the fight began, the monster let a pained howl.

It was all the motivation the others need and the color of war filled everything in the bright chaos of Rukh level spellforms.

………………………………

Jason’s attack was the signal to resume the battle, and the reaction of the monster was the motivation that spurred them to win it.

Eitri let out ranged attacks, gun barrels blasting away from cracks in the world. Weapons blasted out of other cracks as if shot from a canon. Anyone paying attention to them would’ve noticed that each one was inscribed at a single rune, each rune different from the other. They gave the weapons attributes beyond simply being sturdy, and they shot through the air in menacing gleam.

Some streaked with lightning while others roared in bursts of flame. One of them was tinged in shadows with effects even Eitri didn’t know. One of them, a Damascus sword had a rune on it that made it weigh almost as much as a boulder. Blasted with so much force, it hit the monster with enough strength to send it flying.

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Of all his weapons, the Damascus sword was the only one that actually pierced through the creature’s fur to embed itself in its side.

Lady Long Legs raised her spear, holding it like a javelin. She threw it with enough force to shake the air but it didn’t leave her hold. Instead, the air kindled around her and bursts of lava shot out, materialized from thin air.

Each burst shot forth like a thrown javelin, lances of burning magma streaking through the air with enough heat to keep a hundred furnaces burning. They struck true and the beast roared again, pain tinged with anger at their defiance.

Madam Shaggy took the initiative as the barrage of spellforms disoriented the monster and raised a cloud of dust and smoke in their wake.

She channeled her control of the sea of fire she stood within, solidified mana’s impact on the world and threw a straight punch. A blast of fire shot out of her fist. It flew as a ball the size of a door and dipped into the smoke cloud.

She didn’t need to hear the monster to know she had struck her target. Motivated, she punched again. And again. And again. Each punch sent a blast of fire strong enough to scorch the earth. Then she gathered the fire about her like a mantle, wielding it like adorned king gracing the war fronts. Fitted in fire, she dashed into the air, shooting out of her domain of fire and came down on the cloud of dust and smoke like a shooting star.

When she struck the beast, everything blew out in a ring of fire. The next moment, Jason was beside her, a beacon of light with swords bright enough to blind the sky.

He moved in with sword slashes and an angry glare. With the smoke gone, they found the monster burned and wounded, a Damascus sword embedded in its side.

The arrogant beast that had fought them without leaving where it stood now struggled to distance itself from them. Arraigned on multiple sides with spellforms and flying weapons, the task was a daunting ordeal.

Magma mana tinged the air, raising the heat levels until fire kindled at the edges of the creature’s fur. Flying weapons left marks and drew blood with each blow dealt. Madam Shaggy left burn marks each time she landed a blow. Jason’s swords of light left marks but didn’t draw blood. They shimmered with so much concentrated heat that the only thing left in the wake of their use was a trail of smoke as every wound they created was cauterized almost instantly as they brought down their fury on the beast.

But the monster did not suffer so easily.

The mana around it answered to it, even if weakly. And despite how weak the mana that strengthened its body was, it was a Bishop rank monster powerfully comfortable in its third category. Its body already bore the force of a battering ram and each time it moved, everything moved with it.

Its paw swung about as if trying to swat a fly and it bounded about as if trying to step on a mouse.

Madam Shaggy conjured up a shield of fire, taking the brunt of its attacks while Jason slipped evasively each time. However, they were not left unscathed. At some point, apparently tired of the mages playing ranged support, the beast struck the ground, slapping one of its raised topography viciously.

To their surprise, a chunk of it flew out and Lady Long Legs realized a moment too late that what came at her was far more than just a chunk of earth.

A slab of a building’s wall, all concrete and cement, shot into her. She held her spear of magma in two hands and held it’s point out in front of her. A shield of magma coalesced in front of her but it was too slow. It was barely the size of a normal shield and the wall coming at her was the size of three men.

She gritted her teeth as she funneled mana into it, trying her best to make it as thick as she could in the small time left to her. She succeeded mildly, but mildly was not enough.

The boulder slammed into her and kept on moving. It carried her with it, flying straight into the hedge.

Eitri didn’t even spare her a glance as she shot past him. Unlike most types of mana, space mana wasn’t so easy to command. Other spellforms were a way of pushing nature past its limit, molding it to become more through will and mana. Space magic, however, was a different command and mastery. It was a perversion of reality, existent in the defiance of physics. It was unnatural. It demanded that the world bend in a way it was not supposed to. Point A did not close the distance between point be very quickly, point A became point B.

It was taking everything that he was, even in Overdrive, just to keep thirteen points of natural defiance running. Even now, he could feel nature acting against him, doing all that it could to close the cracks in space he had created to his armory.

He kept all of them open and firing with more than just mana. He kept them alive with a force of will and an unhealthy drain of mana from his core.

This battle was going to be won or lost. Whichever was the case, he intended to give it all he had.

In front of him, veering away from the massive tree, Jason was a glow of light with blazing swords battling a monster from the depths of hell, while Madam Shaggy was a burst of fire blasting away at the beast.

…………………………………..

Big Man Desolate whistled softly to a tune from a cartoon where a bunch of kids went driving around in a van solving mysteries with their dog.

He worked for his reward, eating away at the heart of the tree with his mana. He remained as calm and motionless as he could while executing his task and continued to whistle along. Hopefully, everything would continue to sense him as harmless.

The tree bark continued to wither under the barrage of his mana and he waited patiently as it did.

The fight continued to rage on around him as the others fought for whatever reason they fought, sacrificing their lives so that he could execute their plan to the limit. Well, it wasn’t their plan more like it was his plan but that was the point of team work, wasn’t it; working together to achieve someone’s goal.

I think you got the definition wrong somewhere, he thought to himself. He shrugged nonchalantly and went about his work.

The heat in the air rose exponentially, and a part of his torn shirt caught fire. He scowled but didn’t bother to put it out. It was going to take more than a little fire to kill him.

Actually, at this point he wondered if even the Knight mage had enough firepower to kill him. There was a suicidal part of him that wanted to try; to test the possibility. The mage was practically done with his fight after all. The monster he was paired against was already at its wits end, fighting to survive where it had once been fighting to win.

Whatever game the monsters had played to kill the Olympian captain, Big Man Desolate was more than certain the blob hadn’t intended to sacrifice itself. The spider hadn’t expected to be left fighting a Knight rank mage alone.

But that was the way of the world. Everything didn’t always go according to plan.

Big Man Desolate paused, halting the use of his spellform. There was only a thin layer of the tree left between him and his prize and he had a feeling removing that layer now would draw the attention of the two remaining monsters from the others.

So he sat down, instead, and waited. Once they were both too weak to do anything, he’d claim his prize and leave.

Everything didn’t always go according to plan.

He looked down at the hole he’d made in the tree and smiled. Well, sometimes they do.