In the youngest’s attempt to escape the attack that he considered was directed at him, he let go of Eric at the same time that he jumped to the side, leaving him in free fall. And it wasn’t until Eric was in free fall that he himself realized that he had been the target the entire time.

  Time seemed to slow as adrenaline rushed through his entire body. Based on pure instinct, Eric flooded his mind with mana, becoming aware of both the attack and of a way to deal with it. It was a method that, considering his current abilities, would probably be his only chance to escape.

  It’s now or never, he told himself mentally.

  As soon as the idea came to his mind, he immediately began to summon weapon after weapon. He tried his best to influence the way in which the weapons were summoned.

  Up until this point, he had done it in a way that felt natural and that just happened to summon the weapon with the handle already in his hand. Now he needed to summon them facing backward, toward the approaching target.

  He summoned the first thing that he felt, which considering his brief, but recent training, were swords.

  To his surprise, his very desire to summon the weapons with their tip pointing backward was more than enough for it to happen. There was nothing more that was needed, the storage simply responded to his whims, the sword appearing in his right hand, exactly as he wished.

  Eric felt a slight push almost immediately, telling him two things. One was that his idea had been correct and two, that the test subject was closer than he thought.

  With a slight start, he immediately summoned another weapon, also a sword, though a shorter one. Before the sword began to appear though, he felt something begin to dig into his upper back. But there wasn’t anything he could do, so he let it be.

  When he felt the short sword begin to appear on his left hand, this one facing forward, he immediately swung his arm upward so that it would strike the test subject.

  It had been a matter of seconds, maybe even less than a second. His body’s new abilities still surprised Eric whenever he discovered them, and this one had been a more than welcome one.

  When he crashed onto the ground, he scrambled forward, ignoring what he had done and creating as much distance as possible between himself, the test subjects and the three brothers.

  When Eric looked up, finally catching a glimpse of the three brothers, and where he was, he smirked, feeling that it was the appropriate reaction for the occasion. While his expression was confident, his thoughts were anything but.

  Shit! How many test subjects are there?!

  Directly in front of him, where a building wall should have been, there was only rubble, a huge opening and countless obscured figures within.

  This is the secret quest? Who would be able to survive this shit? This seems completely unreasonable. Forget about the secret quest, where is the portal?

  Quest: Rampant tests.

  Objective: Find and kill all the escaped test subjects. Test Subjects 3/3.

  Rewards: Access to next floor, +10 Reward points.

  Quest complete!

  Eric glanced everywhere, forward, up, back, even the ground was a possibility that he began to consider when he caught a glimpse of something shining withing the building.

  It has to be somewhere, anywhere. That could just be some device, or the sun hitting something in a strange way.

  He began to deny reality a bit, the skies were as gray as could be. The sun wasn’t shining on anything in the city.

  There’s no way the System would be so fucked that it would put the portal behind an army of enemies. No, that would just be wrong.

  But reality soon set in. No matter where he looked, or how intensely he wished for the portal to appear literally anywhere else, the portal remained in its original position, directly behind the obscured figures inside the building.

  “Fuck,” Eric muttered with resignation.

  When Eric fully accepted that his situation was closely tied to the dealing of the test subjects, time, which seemed to have stopped for everyone, resumed.

  With an explosive burst, the shield that the oldest brother had constructed by seemingly hardening the very air, shot outward. It not only sent the still firing lasers and projectiles that were heading his way away, but it also tore the ground before him, pushing the test subjects that had begun to approach him.

  Using the very shield as cover, the eldest rushed forward. The shield faltered after a few meters, breaking where it found obstacles that resisted it, specifically, the test subjects.

  While a portion of the shield had broken, the eldest still had enough to cover most of his body, which Eric could now see was way smaller than he imagined.

  The eldest of the three brothers was barely a meter tall, and the best way to describe his physical appearance was with one word, “spherical.” His head was bald and round, as was his torso. Whatever limbs he had were short and plump. And yet, his movement was still incredible to Eric’s eyes.

  When the first test subject resisted the advancing shield, simply by standing their ground, the eldest, while sticking to the shielded side, leaped into the air and with a kick that made the air undulate—No, that’s more like a jiggle, Eric thought—the test subject was sent staggering back.

  While it tried to advance, its movements were off, and soon, its joints began to spark as well as make grating noises.

  “That kick moved some of its internal components,” Eric realized.

  While Eric observed the eldest’s fight, a blur suddenly came into frame, the youngest had joined the battle. He was the complete opposite of the eldest. Like a literal chiseled statue, he was a towering giant of nothing but lean muscle, thin but defined. In his hand was a short axe, its handle barely big enough to fit his giant hands.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  The youngest headed in front of the eldest, completely unafraid of the shots that were heading his way. With a swift motion, he rapidly swung his axe, severing the internal components of his target. Oil started to spill, sparks began to fly, and components fell without resistance.

  The brothers knew their targets and they knew how to fight. They quickly assessed their situation and knew that they had to be efficient with their movements. Time was a luxury that they didn’t have, so they went for the easiest and simplest thing they could do, disable their opponents.

  While the youngest took care of his target, the oldest advanced behind him. At first Eric thought that the eldest had advanced in an attempt to protect the youngest from the incoming shots, but to his surprise, the eldest didn’t stop until he reached his next target. Curious as to how the youngest would survive, Eric observed with surprise.

  Everything that was shot at the youngest failed. That was it, it didn’t matter if it was a bullet, pellets or lasers, they all failed to reach him. They didn’t disappear, curve around him, and there was no malfunction. Every projectile was drawn toward a small sphere that began to orbit around him. Eric hadn’t even seen it being deployed, but there it was, protecting the youngest from the shots.

  Eric then heard a light boom, like a balloon popping. When he turned his gaze toward where the sound came from, he saw the eldest leaping onto the second floor, where most of the shooters were.

  At this point, whatever remained of his shield was a bright neon red that was almost tangible. Then, somehow kicking the air to spin and causing another pop, the eldest kicked his shield. He used the kick to both send the shield forward and to push himself away from the building. While he was still midair, he exclaimed one word, “Release!”

  The shield, which had stretched outward after being kicked, began to light up. In an instant, the lights began to coalesce only where there was contact with an enemy and nowhere else. A second later, all the energy shot out, in the very same form that it had entered the shield. When the mess cleared, the test subjects struggled to stand as they were now full of holes, some vital components having been damaged.

  While it seemed that the three brothers had the upper hand, that was only because they were acting fast and decisively. They were taking advantage of the test subjects’ slow response. But by the time the eldest landed on the ground, the answer to their attack began in earnest.

  ----------

  Crisas had been fighting to keep most of the test subjects inside the building, hidden from Eric’s sight.

  His attacks were wide, mostly used to scare his opponents and dissuade them from advancing. His weapon was a sickle attached to a chain, this gave him more than enough room to cover the entire broken wall, preventing any of the test subjects from exiting.

  The problem was that not all of them needed to exit in order to attack their target. Most of the range attackers were on the second floor, and at the moment, thanks to his brother, they were neutralized, but that still left those on the first floor.

  Crisas quickly noticed when their weapons shifted, their target having changed to his falling brother. With a powerful tug, Crisas brought the sickle back to his hands and threw it with great force toward the ranged attackers. The blade of the sickle became imbued with a hazy red energy as it traveled. When it reached the furthest attacker, the sickle passed through them, solidifying only when the blade was completely inside them.

  Wrapping both hands with the chain, Crisas firmed his grasp as he pulled with all his might. He made a great effort to add a swing to his pull, so that the test subject that he had caught would disrupt the shooting of the others. Luckily, he was able to disrupt most of them.

  But now, he too became aware of their full retaliation and horror began to overtake his expression.

  ----------

  While the eldest had run forward in an effort to take care of the shooting test subjects, the youngest had stayed, taking care of those that had gotten through Crisas initial effort. This was to ensure that his brothers couldn’t be ambushed from behind.

  He more than made up for his weapon’s short reach with his long arms. Every single strike that he made was precise and calculated. Unlike the rough demeanor that Eric had associated with him from the way he spoke and acted, he fought with a certain level of elegance.

  The youngest never delivered more than three strikes in order to subdue the test subjects, his first strike always in their upper left chest. Eric guessed that there was something vital there that made it easy to disable them, but he couldn’t be sure, his attention was divided between the oldest and the youngest, while the one called Crisas was obscured within the building.

  Not many had gotten through Crisas initial effort, but when you summed the few that made it through, with the ones that required more than one strike, it became obvious why the youngest was too late to do anything to help the eldest.

  “Holy fuck!” Eric exclaimed when he too saw the beginning of the test subject’s retaliation.

  ----------

  While the eldest was falling to the ground, his eyes widened when he saw that he was now the target of those who had been ignoring him only a moment ago.

  Panic rose within him, only to quickly die down when he saw his brother’s chained sickle enter his line of sight. Ultimately, it rose once more when he realized that his brother hadn’t been able to stop all of those that were aiming at him. With visible panic, he swiped downward with his hand, keeping it in the same position until he touched the ground.

  A shield that began at almost the same height as the first floor’s ceiling appeared before the eldest, only to crumble after the first couple of shots. The shield was too big to maintain. Against ordinary attacks it would have no problem, but these attacks weren’t ordinary.

  Scrambling to erect and solidify more shields, the eldest began to unleash a flurry of swipes as he backed away. His only hope was that his brothers would be able to help him in some way, but he couldn’t see what they were doing, his attention fully on his defense attempt.

  Seconds turned into minutes and minutes into hours as he began to feel that no number of shields would be enough to save him from what was coming, and he was right.

  He was the first to fail as his shields began to lose strength, every new shield being weaker than the last. Eventually, a single shot was not only enough to break it, but the shield wasn’t enough to absorb the laser, and it just passed through.

  The wound on the eldest’s leg had been bearable, but this one wasn’t. This shot hit him in his lower jaw.

  Instinctively, he reached for the source of his pain, but that meant that he had stopped doing the very thing that had been keeping him alive.

  Before he could even reach his jaw, a storm of projectiles tore his body to pieces. Lasers burned, bullets pierced, and pellets burrowed until they eventually began to tear. One after the other, the flesh became weak and easy to tear by whatever followed.

  ----------

  Eric’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw the oldest of the three brothers being torn to pieces where he stood, offering no resistance.

  His blood began to pump within his veins at an incredible pace, adrenaline once more flooding his system, and his mana began to rampage within him.

  Every single part of Eric was urging him to act. Every single part of him was aware that this was his best chance to survive and escape. Otherwise, he would have to wait to see if other people would get a similar quest and then escape with their help, whether they knew or not. But that would bring its own problems.

  What if they also want the infinite essence that these guys think I have? And from what they said, these guys thought that they had to hurry or that others would steal it from them. That basically confirms that more people are after it.

  Suddenly, his mind made a connection that he hadn’t considered. Now that I think about it, is that what that guy from the first floor wanted? This fucking tower has been nothing but—

  Eric’s thoughts came to a sudden halt when he saw that the test subjects that had already been subdued by the youngest began to act in a strange fashion. Oil had stopped spilling, sparks no longer flew, and the light was returning to their eyes.

  “Dammit. Leave the questions for later. First, survive,” Eric said with firm resolve.