Zephyr's scaled hand tightened around his shotgun. The deafening roar of battle echoed around them. Seth was crouching behind a four-seater grey car. The shotgun’s laser bullets ripped right through it.

Despite being at the forefront of this war and well-trained, Zephyr loathed fighting. He didn’t like physical conflicts, always hiding behind a screen or under fake skin. In the past decades, the Seat’s work had been to solidify the government’s presence and abolish resistance passively.

Had his wife been killed because of this war? Zephyr was the one who let her go in Karl City. He felt regret.

Anne Galewood approached two reptoids. She had long knives in each hand and boosted herself with wind magic. Anne cut their necks without leaving them time to attack.

The twenty-three-year-old glanced toward Seth Rayn yet only found the Reptoid King. “We have to hurry.”

Isaac was on the opposite side of the street. He launched multiple spears at the reptoids while making barriers all around himself. A dark fireball almost hit him, but he made more barriers.

“Where did it come from?” He spotted a floating mage with dark, misty eyes roughly thirty metres afar. It was another cursed wizard.

As Isaac was distracted, a skeleton crept up on him. It raised a steel sword above its shoulder, aiming for his back. Isaac turned around but couldn’t move in time.

-Pow!

A large hole appeared in the cursed’s skull. Another soldier had saved him with his rifle.

“We won’t be able to defeat anyone at this rate.” Isaac regrouped with Anne.

They looked around. They had barely pushed back Zephyr’s army. The main factor helping them was their technological advantage: aircraft and artillery. But there were still too many skeletons to count, and their numbers hadn’t decreased enough.

As Seth had tried at the beginning of this battle, they had to eliminate the strongest ones, the cloaked skeletons that were looking down on the battlefield.

“How about this, then? You take on that pyromaniac, and I’ll take on the florist.” Anne Galewood pointed at a second wizard with vines all over himself.

“Okay. Support me with wind magic.”

“Of course!”

Isaac lept over the reptoids and skeletons. Anne went her separate way.

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The flora wizard noticed the wind mage. The female skeleton brought her arms together, and out of the ground sprouted a wall of foliage. It split into vines that attacked Anne like whips.

Anne diligently avoided them mid-air, continuously rerouting her path by pushing herself with wind. However, the vines were now closing in all around her. Even a fly couldn’t escape from such a trap. She pushed wind magic against the green walls to keep a small gap from closing and bolted out hurriedly.

She lept again, stepping on a skeleton’s head. Another wall of plants waited up ahead.

Isaac rammed the fire mage with a red magic shield. Disoriented, the wizard tried to launch a fireball. Isaac caught his arm and redirected his blazing hand toward the florist.

A dark fireball left the cloaked skeleton’s hand and travelled across the street. The greenery was set ablaze, and the florist was at the heart of the fire. Not thinking straight, she grew more and more vegetation to protect herself from the bursting vines catching fire one by one. The vines fell in all directions.

A terrible one swung at the wizard. She made a blue protective barrier, but her cloak ignited. Soon, her own plants had buried her.

She didn’t let out a sound as her bones broiled. Once the black flames had gone away, only a broken pile of bones remained on the pavement.

Anne could finally catch a breath. Recuperated, she reached for her belt and took out a throwing knife. Assisted by her magic, it cut the air and cracked into the fire wizard’s skull.

Isaac pushed the fire wizard off his small floating platform. He looked at Anne again. She was smiling.

“We make a pretty good team!” said Anne as she focused on another wizard.

…

Zephyr had stopped firing at the car with his shotgun. He approached it slowly, trying to discern the soldiers’ expressions. However, no one was paying attention to their fight anymore. Skeletons, reptoids, and the Western Army’s soldiers had dispersed everywhere, all busy fighting. The only ones that did were the soldiers at the back, on towers, operating the far-range weapons and launching missiles.

‘What happened? Did I kill him?’ The reptoid king doubted himself. It had been too easy.

The thought of his wife being dead was haunting him. He controlled his breath, putting all his focus on the current fight.

He was one step away from the smoking vehicle. ‘What if he’s alive? Maybe he teleported away, but where?’

Zephyr looked around. He couldn’t spot him, not in this crowded place. He took one last step forward, kicking the car. The vehicle jumped, flipped, and crashed through a convenience store’s window.

There was no sight of him. Zephyr turned around abruptly, expecting to find him there. There was no one.

He looked up. Only aircraft and missiles. ‘Did he give up?’

A crushing pain ran up from his legs. He tried moving them to no avail.

“What?!”

Seth wasn’t hiding up or behind him; he was under him. His hand pulled Zephyr inside a shadow, dragging him on a rooftop. Seth didn’t let go of him.

‘I can’t move!’ Zephyr tried sending his armour’s chains, but they didn’t launch as Seth had already immobilized them.

Seth jumped out of the edge along with him. The master kept ahold of Zephyr’s leg and climbed on his back as they fell.

“Perhaps a two-hundred-metre drop is enough to kill you.”