Zephyr Dragos sat on the edge of a building’s rooftop with a few soldiers. Below, three hundred more reptoids were waiting for a signal.

A glue of half a million skeleton soldiers flooded the roads leading to the gate. The nine blue spots had scattered above them. Two of them were fighting at the frontline amidst the explosions. They were undefeatable because of their magic barriers.

Isaac Tremblay and Seth Rayn studied the battlefield from the shadows alongside the road. “If we rush in there,” Isaac warned, “we won’t have any chance of surviving.”

“Not many people know this, but the skeleton wizards can have two different abilities. One is their cursed magic, and the other is the magic type they had before becoming undead.”

The old mage pointed at a skeleton wizard whose cloak he had ripped after hitting her shoulder. “However, that injured woman flying there only seems to be able to use cursed magic. Her magic is much stronger because of that, as her body only needs to manage one type of mana. The skeletons’ cursed magic consists of supplying mana to others, solidifying mana, and producing other skeletons.”

Isaac stood up. “Should we aim for her first?”

Seth nodded. “We know her powers aren’t suitable for one-on-ones. However, she is good at making barriers. You’ll need to defeat her quickly with a single attack. Once you do, I’ll teleport behind the wizard at the gate who’s controlling the most skeletons and kill him.”

“There’s still going to be six left, and that’s not accounting for the reptoids.” Isaac sighed.

“Don’t worry. Once I stop the skeletons from moving at the frontline and you defeat the injured wizard supplying magic to others, this will leave an opening for the army to strike.”

They dispersed. Sneaking by the side of the road, Isaac approached the woman wizard who had made the enormous barrier at the start of the battle.

“All these skeletons look the same. How can Seth tell that she’s a woman?”

He entered a building, climbed up the stairs, hurried along the creaking wooden floor, and opened a window next to a wooden shelve to get a better shot.

He looked at his all-purpose watch. “I have over 150 thousand mana points, so the number won’t even decrease after this attack.”

Seth stood on a rooftop on the other side of the street. He leaned against the city’s concrete wall so it would be easy to teleport behind it and attack his target when it was time.

‘He’s about to fire.’ He spotted Isaac peeking out of the window.

The young mage shut his eyes. “The problem, however, is that using a hundred mana points is already enough for the red magic to get to me. I need to stay focused.”

Slightly further away than Isaac’s target, a tall wizard with black gloves and twenty flying swords held a stern expression. Faint black steam left his large eye sockets and connected to the swords spinning around him. His cloak swung as he shifted his body, unable to rotate his head with his rigid neck.

Opening his red glowing eyes, Isaac leaned forward and brought his arm outside. His sight locked on to the wizard before him.

“I got this!” The mage’s hand glowed.

-Bang!

The beam was well off its intended trajectory. The woman wizard turned around in shock and stopped supplementing magic to the others at the frontline. She formed a barrier around herself.

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Seth was about to teleport when he realized something was off. ‘He missed?’

The DA agent looked at the window again, but it had disappeared, shattered into pieces. The floor had collapsed, leaving Isaac in an office with large windows and fully exposed.

Isaac coughed in his arm. ‘Wait, what’s this?’ He found crimson droplets on his arm. He could taste the blood in his mouth. Looking down, he found a massive sword stuck in his chest and ripping out of the back of his uniform.

A black void was all he could see as his consciousness drifted away. The 15-year-old kid glanced at death once again.

“Isaac!” Muffled, made-up voices called out. In a trance, he looked beneath the darkness and spotted a white glow. The light shortly created images. He was dreaming: fragments of his memory, flashes of his father, Henri; of Alex, his brother; of Aaron and Gabriella, his close friends.

At last, he found himself: Isaac from half a year ago, a happy, naive kid sitting on a rock in the heart of the aspen forest. He felt at home within the white field. The cold calmed him while the wind whispered a soothing melody in his ear.

He wanted to stay, but loud noises revived him from his dream. There were explosions, gunfire, magic, and screams. The battlefield was calling for him.

“They need me.”

His face was empty. The flying sword had left him with a large gap and returned to its owner. Desperate to heal his wounds as fast as possible, red magic gushed out of his injury alongside his blood.

‘Get up,’ he told himself as the wizards gazed at him outside the office’s windows.

An alarm rang from his watch.

[Warning: Significant decrease in mana points detected. Average speed: 102 points per second.]

He pushed himself up. The red magic nullified his pain. The hole had almost closed, and his bones were now operable.

[Warning: Blood pressure exceeding healthy limits.]

He aimed at the other wizard who had attacked him and made a barrier around himself that the flying swords couldn’t penetrate.

The attacker frowned. He interlocked the twenty swords, forming a V-shape shield for himself.

Isaac’s feet rose from the ground as he condensed his mana in his hand. His eyes were burning so hot that he’d have gone blind if red mana didn’t continuously regenerate him.

Stunned, the woman wizard quickly manifested an extra shield to defend her comrade.

-BANG!

The red beam echoed. It broke through the woman’s barriers and clashed against the other wizard’s swords. The skeleton desperately defended, draining all of his mana.

It caused the beam to split, destroying two towering buildings behind him. Noticing this, Seth could only hope that there were no civilian casualties.

The undead wizard was no more. His swords had shattered and melted, his bones reduced to ash.

Seth didn’t waste any time, killing the first wizard at the frontline while everyone was distracted. He quietly withdrew the staff from the wizard's skull.

The mage was about to attack the other wizard when a line of aircraft thundered in the sky. The wizard removed his hood to see better.

They had launched a dozen missiles toward him. The cursed turned around to find the woman good at making barriers. She was preoccupied with Isaac and had already made barriers all around herself.

“Oh no…”

He made his own blue barriers, and the missiles collided with a resounding, repeating boom.

Walking in the air, Seth was in front of the undead cursed. His bones were frail as he opened his eyes.

-Crush

“Three more down. We’ve defeated half of them.” Seth looked at the army of rebels from the Obscure Guild, refugees from the Western Lands, volunteers from the DA and oversees, and avengers from the overtaken Tremblay and Topaz Guilds. Some of the mages and soldiers saluted, others bowed.

They had immobilized a third of the skeleton army. While the two wizards at the frontline died and the others were still far away, some skeletons could still maintain their consciousness, even if it wasn’t on the same level as the wizards. The battle wasn’t over yet.

Zephyr frowned. “That was unexpected…”