Max had to shield his eyes from the explosion as bright light erupted from his grenade, and what looked like a small supernova went off in the middle of the rats.

The item had really been worth its cost. Fireworks were a joke compared to it. The shock wave had sent even Max, who was quite a bit away, staggering a step backwards. This must’ve hurt the rats.

As his eyes readjusted to the light levels, he unfortunately realized that it wouldn’t be that easy.

Even though his explosion had scorched the earth, leaving a huge crater, most of the rats that didn’t stand directly next to the grenade were still standing. Around four or five that stood in direct vicinity to the grenade were nowhere to be seen though. And the rest of the rodents at least had the decency to spot wounds.

“Well better than expected,” Max said proudly.

Indeed it was a better outcome than he hoped for after seeing the attacks some of the rats withstood. Unfortunately, now they were even more angry. As soon as they had gathered their wits again, the mass of rats started charging at Max group with reignited fury.

His friends were ready though, mana darts were already bombing into the midst of the pack, as were a few of bixby’s precious acorn grenades.

They were in no way comparable to the weapon of destruction Max had just unleashed, but they were pretty useful. Especially because some of the rodents still seemed shell shocked from what happened. After seeing one of these acorns explode in a similar, albeit much smaller, manner than Max’s grenade, the rats scrambled over themselves to stay clear of them.

Now the tide was beginning to turn again.

“Mira! Plant bomb!”

Dave heard Max screaming behind him, and knew what was about to happen. Positioning himself with his back towards his friends he faced the group of rats in front of him, trying to hold them at a distance with his spear.

Only a few seconds later, a big boom echoed out.

Dave was prepared for it, his rodent opponents not so much. The rats were rattled, some of them blinded by the light, and all of them shook from the big explosion.

Not for long, but long enough for take to land wounds on two of them, deep enough that he was sure they wouldn’t get up again. At least he hoped so, these rats had proven very tenacious so far.

Somehow Dave felt that the rats they faced here were even slightly stronger than the ones that had attacked their camp during the monster wave. It was subtle enough that Dave wasn’t sure the others had noticed, but with his meticulous nature, he did.

During the wave his Spark skill had managed to at least impair rats seriously, after one or two good hits, they had stayed down. Some of these rats simply shrugged off his Spark though, not without any impairment, but still better than their counterparts.

To Dave that only meant that he had to work harder though. A challenge he was always welcoming. He was a bit worried about his team. He had tried to lure as many rats away as possible, to make their fight easier, but up until now the rats had started slowly getting the upper hand over his friends.

Fortunately Max’s grenade seemed to have turned the tide somewhat, the question was for how long. There were still over a dozen rats left, and those that were still standing and biting, were the ones most dangerous.

His own fight was keeping him too busy to do anything though. Dave had to be constantly on the move. Whenever he stood longer than a split second in one spot, packs of rats started swarming around him, threatening to drown him.

So far he had managed to avoid being overrun, due to his evasive nature, but the damage he had inflicted in return was less than he would’ve hoped for. He had killed only about a third of the pack that was attacking him.

Of course he still had an ace up his sleeve in the form of ‘Zeus Punishment’, but devastating as the Skill was, it would also take Dave out of commission for a while. Back when he had used it against the golem, he had been unconscious for the better part of two hours. He couldn’t allow himself to fall unconscious now and leave his friends on their own.

So instead he shot another Spark, faded away from another biting mouth, and thrusted his spear deep into another rat's side. The squeak of pain was confirmation he landed a good hit, but before he could follow up on his attack, he was forced to circle away again, as the next rat was almost upon him.

It was a dangerous fight. Dave had caught quite a few small wounds so far, nothing too serious, but it was accumulating. He had to fight with near perfect timing to avoid the swarms attacks and land some on its own. Like a tightrope walker, Dave had no margin for error.

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It would’ve terrified Dave before the apocalypse. Even now there was a small part in him that was scared, but there was an even bigger part that was excited. The thrill ran through his body, the adrenaline made his heart pump. He could forget everything and solely get lost in the battle.

A small smile played on Dave’s lips. He was beginning to enjoy it.

“Fuck that hurts.”

“Don’t be such a crybaby, those are all only surface cuts.”

“Feels like tiny paper cuts all over my legs.”

Ryland was whining while Sam was patching him up. They had just finished the last couple of rats and were now resting next to the spawner. Rylands lower body was still covered in tons of small little wounds. His shorts were soaked with blood and under all the dried blood on his legs, dozens of bite marks and scratches were being healed by Sams’s white healing light.

The whole group looked like a cast from a horror movie. They were all wounded and bloody in one manner or another, but as their front line tank, Ryland was the biggest priority to get up on his feet again.

“That was one hell of a fight.” Sarah exclaimed, still out of breath.

“Yeah it was tough,” Max said. “Looked really bad there for a while, but we managed.”

“Actually, I’m surprised it went as well as it did,” Bixby said. He was standing next to the big metal cube that was the spawner. “We started out strong, then it looked pretty bad for a while, but we did it somehow.”

“Well maybe that’s cause we’re awesome.” Mira joked. She had just started participating in the conversation, and up until now her eyes had been a little distant. The telltale sign that she was checking her level ups. Judging by the look on her face, Max guessed she must’ve either gotten a new Skill or had reached an additional effect level with one of her Skills.

Max had seen the same look on Dave’s face quite often by now. He had sat just like this the first few minutes after the fight as well, probably going over his level ups, forgetting everything else around him. Dave and Mira were pretty similar in that regard.

“So what are we going to do with the spawner now?” Sarah asked and turned towards Max.

“Should I break it?” Ryland asked, his and Sam’s attention now turned towards Max as well.

He simply shrugged. “I don’t know. How’s the situation Bixby?"

“Well, I’m looking for a way to breach or open the spawner. But as expected, it's probably only possible as the owner of the Node. I don’t think we can destroy it. So like we feared, we indeed have to open it.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Sarah walked up to the big metal cube. “It looks rather solid to me.” She softly banged her fist against it to illustrate her point.

Max gave her a sly smile. “Don’t worry, we’ve brought just the tool for the job.”

At first they had tried to break the spawner open with normal attacks, but it proved every bit as resilient as expected.

So close to the box, Max could feel the immense amounts of energy stored into it pretty clearly. It made his head spin. He felt similar to when he first saw the Mana Node back in the forest, and was glad the spawner had the Mana sealed away, as if the pure energy would be too much for him.

Seeing that there really was no other way, Max brought out the second tool he had bought for the operation. This one he had been gifted after he had completed his quest of killing ten enemies with only ten attacks. The quest he had fulfilled by facing down literal demons.

It looked like a simple disk around the size of a CD, but made out of black metal, with blue lines forming a pattern on its surface. The disk was heavier than one would’ve expected, weighing at least two kilograms. As Max moved closer with it towards the spawner, the blue lines started pulsing with light.

“Damn, looks like straight out of a sci.fi movie,” Dave said. “That’s maybe the most sci-fi thing we’ve seen so far.”

Max stepped forward and raised his hand to the spawner. He pressed the disk against it, and for a long second nothing happened. Suddenly the disk started pulsing in his hand and the spawner started to give a low hum. It was a noise that made the hair on his arms stand.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Max saw some of his friends taking an instinctive step back. He couldn’t fault them. The sound made his insides scream.

The hum grew more intense and the disk became warm in his hand. Then hot all of a sudden. It felt as if it was pulling Mana from Max himself, forcibly. It was uncomfortable, sending shivers down Max’s spine.

The pain grew. The disk became even hotter and Max’s vision got a little blurry. Time felt slowed down to a trickle. How long had he been standing there?

Suddenly a series of clicks started ringing out from inside the spawner, it sounded like the opening of a bank safe. The heat from the disk in Max’s hand flared up, almost making Max drop it, but as soon as it came it stopped.

A last click ran out from the big metal cube in front of him, and a little lid sprang open, only a hand wide. Max looked down on his hand, feeling empty and drained all of a sudden. The disk had vanished, leaving his flesh reddened from the heat exposure.

As he stretched out his hand towards the spawner, the opening grew wider, now almost big enough for Max to step through. What looked like one big plate of metal making up the side of the cube before, was indeed multiple thousand small ones, they were perfectly aligned and slid away in a wave motion. Almost like a living organism.

A heavy stream of Mana shot out of the spawner. Like a fire hose the blue energy crashed into Max, making him stagger. But it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. In fact he didn’t feel anything other than a soft warm glow around him as the blue light engulfed him.

The Mana filled him up, danced around him and added to his own Mana Shard storage.

It went on multiple seconds, and Max almost felt like bursting, when, without a warning, the stream just stopped.

A series of clicks rang out from the inside of the spawner and a big wave of red energy exploded outwards from the spawner. It passed right through Max and his friends, expanding towards the horizon.

“Well I guess that was the alarm system.” Bixby sighed.

“What. the. fuck. just happened?” Sarah asked.