“The fuck do you mean I’m not a mage?” I said.

  “You get up close. You use swords. Fighter stuff,” Kim responded.

  “I have range nowadays. And the swords are just ammo. I fight with my hands in my pockets.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Running doesn’t count-” Shit. I deflected a stray javelin which made it past Kim’s protection, probably on purpose, with my armguard. “Or blocking. I can fucking fly. That’s mage shit. Can you fly?”

  “I haven’t tried and that’s beside the point, you don’t have real spells-”

  Jill’s voice sounded above the din. “Can you idiots focus for two seconds… I can see the end, we’re almost through. Die scum!”

  “Stay in control, remember the hubris,” Elias cautioned her.

  Easy for her to say, she wasn’t bored out of her mind.

  Jill was having the time of her life, power-leveling once again. The idea was to keep her ahead of us to maximally leverage System nepotism. We’d been making our way through the fortress in intervals of quiet marching alternated with cramped corner fights. According to Kwame’s map, we neared the middle area. Mild exploration revealed the occasional room full of various weapons, odd objects and other thingamajigs. We avoided the extremely obvious traps and stayed on course because Elias refused to entertain any deviations from the mission, no matter how much I whined about it.

  Our levels spiked and mine was already up to 147, with the others around a similar benchmark - would’ve been higher too if I wasn’t on stand-by for this wave. According to Carlos, the numbers put me just short of 300 kills and the total gain was high enough to push someone from level 1 straight to 100 and technically beyond. It helped to have a whole crew in tow. No one had gone off the deep end into pure megalomania with the others keeping them in check. Although, Jill turned into quite the maniac not too long ago, constantly shouting battle cries and insults at the Errant. It was a little funny because the counter activations gave her voice a modulated sped-up effect, making her sound like she’d huffed a balloon’s worth of helium.

  The current stream of cannon fodder only flooded in from a single hallway into the open room where Jill executed her whirlwind slaughter. She occupied the center, doing her thing. Elias, Cleo and Noah dealt with the spill-off while Carlos, Kwame, Kim and I picked our noses in the hallway opposite. Fortunately the stat increases hadn’t turned anyone into a twitchy mess. We all had plenty of experience acclimating to sudden improvements, to the point it had become second nature. The lulls in between onslaughts allowed for some hasty practice besides. Our frontliners finished up and we settled down for a junk food meal while Kim scouted ahead with his aura crap.

  He stopped surprisingly quickly. “I think we’ve reached the middle. The hallway ahead zigzags right, then left and exits past two giant statues into a massive space. There’s something inside, upon collision it expanded a haven to cover the entire area and overpowered my probe.”

  “A variant then? Do you think you can maintain our vision up close?” Carlos asked.

  “Probably, it’s hard to determine from here, but I can always pour in more energy and layer everything on top of each other. I won’t be able to do much else though.”

  “Won’t that just turn you into a sitting duck?” I said.

  Noah had a hilarious solution in mind, “Piggyback on me?”

  Kim raised his voice to overcome my laughter. “Fuck you Gabriel, but yes, it should work.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Cleo said.

  Elias thought for a few moments before laying it out. “In general, we stick to the plan for single targets. Jill and Gabriel handle offense. We,” by which he meant Cleo and him, “play defense while Kwame and Carlos stay in reserve to deal with any surprises. Remember, we will lack barriers and a fast physical intercept, so stay on your toes. Especially you Gabriel, do not get lost in the rush.”

  He continued before I could interrupt, “Kim, you mentioned statues – describe them, and any other features including the room…”

  We strategized for a while. Kim extrapolated a similar pentagon shape from his limited observations and the ten meter tall statues probably weren’t there for decoration. Each pair bore an up-scaled similarity to a type of ice soldier. Since the frosty troops liked their combined arms, we fully expected a worst case scenario of five different pairs, although Kim only saw three with varying statue duo’s before getting slapped away. I previously lumped them together, but the infantry was composed of one and two-handed weapon wielding sub-types.

  Elias labeled them mage, centaur, javelin, spear, and pike for the great-weapon wielders. Depending on how things went down, Jill and I would switch focus while he and Cleo held up the variant, or possibly the other way around. If they couldn’t keep it away, Carlos had to assist. Ideally, Kwame nuked with high-magic since he had tons of charges stored, taking care of the additions quickly with it. In a pinch, Kim might spawn decoys for us but he feared it would involve temporary darkness while he channeled. We’d saturate the place with flares regardless.

  After we hashed out some more details, it was time to proceed. A mix of nervousness and excitement accompanied us into the five-sided room. Nothing immediate happened. Elias called a hold just past the threshold. The surroundings were big and mostly empty, aside from the statues, which adhered to the expected pattern. The variant did not however.

  It sat cross legged in the exact center, resembling something vaguely humanoid but equally made of ice as everything else here. It wore crystalline yet flowing robes, akin to an oriental monk, or maybe a toga. Any similarities to human biology ended there though. The limbs and uncovered chest revealed a strange intertwined mess of strings which played with negative space throughout, reminding me of burnt ash in a cigarette. A threading irregular emptiness suffused its form, but the head took the fucking cake and I had to stifle my chuckling. It looked like a blue-white cartoon fireball without any facial features, permeated by the same hollowness, almost see-through at some angles. Yet the impresence formed an odd, haunting expression. I could’ve sworn it was delighted. That was weirdest of all, the universality of body language, like with the outsiders.

  We closed apprehensively, tensing while our supposed prey placed a seven-fingered hand on knee and pushed itself up. It was graceful, it was casual, and it was unnatural. It strolled around, scratching one curve after another with a pointy toe, completing a perfect circle in the floor with inhuman precision before returning back to the middle. It extended an arm, palm upwards, and beckoned us closer. Well, fuck you too. Here, have some ene-

  Elias preempted me, likely alerted by the laser-eye glow of my aim-assist, “Not yet.”

  After we reached the halfway mark, it stomped a foot-thing and blocks of ice sealed all the exits. A wave of darkness billowed out, then halted and finally got pushed back. I wanted to quip at Kim but he was locked in. Colorless flares shot out from all our mages and hybrids, changing the ceiling into a starry sky.

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  Jill dashed forward with me close behind. I set my stored sequence to 20x and auto refill, and then launched a basic blade at her. The timing lined up perfectly and she avoided it in a flash, switching her direct approach to a diagonal chop from the side. Icemonk shifted, narrowly dodging both. In the same motion, it grabbed the shaft of Jill’s weapon, lifted her up, slammed her against the ground and then threw her away, halberd and all. She anchored it mid-flight and dropped on her feet, appearing very pissed indeed. The Errant hadn’t left the circle. Did it even take a step?

  “I’m shifting up to three quarters,” Jill said.

  “Thirty for me then,” I responded and changed my sub-process. It lowered me to two maneuvers or attacks per second, although a second of leeway doubled the number.

  We circled it at opposite ends while Cleo and Elias entered the circle in fighting stances, intending a melee. Elias’ eyes narrowed when shimmering snowflakes appeared out of nowhere, enveloping his frontal arc. Then the two laid into him. Elias’ disintegrating weapon-trails sparkled. What the fuck?

  A snaking hand for each pushed blades away at the flats, pointy feet tripped and shoved them off balance with efficient pushes and foot-hooks. It danced and dodged using minimal movement. Both were handled like children wildly windmilling their arms. The bastard caught Elias overextending and pulled his shield forward, slamming it against Cleo, and then twirled like a ballerina, completing the motion by backhanding her – caught by an ability-spawned hexagon. The maneuver shoved both out of the ring in a tangled mess. Its head turned like it was sparing a glance at Kwame, Carlos, Noah and Kim. Suddenly a giant statue came to life – javelin.

  “Ours!” Carlos yelled.

  “It is barely fighting, let us get accustomed,” Elias said.

  “Agreed, I’m catching up,” Cleo confirmed. That was fast.

  “Gabriel, go help the others while I join the brawl,” Jill suggested.

  Guess I’m the decoy now.

  They engaged in unison while I ran at javelin dude. It reared back and then tossed a frozen stick right at me. Oh shit. A sword yanked me forward and up at an angle, the throw still nearly clipped me. A massive crash resounded behind while another acceleration settled me into true calm. Going too fast, can’t land now. It already prepared another one. The second spearing missed me by a wider margin due to a launch-assisted double swerve. I slammed recklessly into its chest, which knocked the wind right out of me.

  The bounce turned into free fall, but it wasn’t uncontrolled. I faced the oversized popsicle directly and manually fired a flurry of fivefold launches into it, embedding a dozen blades in the center mass of its body, perfectly spaced in a two-by-six height-wise pattern. One of the many coins in my bracer dissipated. Already the cracks spread. “Vulnerable!” was all I managed to scream before a swatting motion forced me to evade away between its legs, and crash into the wall behind it. Fabrics erupted, tying it up to the wall, to the floor, to itself. It struggled. The bindings tore and shredded, but new ones constantly replaced them. Precious seconds passed while Kwame channeled beside it.

  Since they were clearly opposed, there was no reason to assume the Errant operated on the same principles as the System. But hey, what can you do? It wasn’t like we had anything else to go by. The ice auto shield low-magic protected against physical attacks, so we focused on magic against these fucks.

  Fortunately the assumption proved true, a jet of liquid sprayed the giant and pieces dissolved. My patience was rewarded when aim-assist flagged a trajectory which neatly connected cracks to a rendition of the six-side of a die. I fired off a full bar and a cascading shatter marked this one as dead.

  A horse-man came to life in the distance. It began to trot.

  Carlos ran towards it. “Easy, one-two combo,” he said.

  The centaur galloped. “On it,” Kwame said, channeling again.

  Meanwhile, I had a greedy glance at the potential spoils. Hints of icy tendrils reconnecting accompanied the revelation. ‘Lesser awakened enchantment (100)’ Can’t wait to tell Breathless about this. The only option was ‘dispel’, which caused the remaining chunks to waft away. “Loot and dispel or they reform!”

  Carlos returned from his hither and tither sprinting, charging beast still far behind him. “Ready,” he said while taking position next to Kwame, now with both hands behind his back.

  “Same,” his partner in crime replied. I joined them, all three of us lined up. The fight in the middle had become slightly less embarrassing from the looks of it. Noah kneeled in front of Kim in the distance and actually yawned.

  “You sure about this?” I asked Carlos.

  “Absolutely, it should fit your sense of humor.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Can you three stop fucking around and get to work,” Jill yelled. I gave her a thumbs-up as she slipped a right cross, tried to leverage the pole of her weapon against the creatures elbow and got shoulder-checked away for her efforts. Well, it had to take a step to pull that off at least. In fact, it’s moving quite a bit.

  “Watch.”

  My gaze snapped back to the centaur just as a hoof landed. It didn’t rise again. Instead the entire leg tore off at the shin while a faint crackle of consumed energy sounded from Carlos. Two more got glued to the ground. The dis-legged massive monstrosity skidded along while Kwame lanced it with acid. A final series of wraps forced it to a stop, only a few meters ahead of us. Kwame’s high-magic left a gaping trench along its back, but it still lived. I walked forward three steps, pointed a finger and shot a full bar into its face from point blank range, raking it lengthwise. It died, for now.

  “Okay, that was fucking funny. Ten out of ten. I’m inspired.”

  “Told you.”

  “The mage is moving, it’s already casting,” Kwame said.

  “Shit, I’ll go for it. You two prepare the other two first.”

  Carlos motioned Kwame along. “An excellent idea, shall we?”

  The rush of air made me feel like a dog sticking its head out of a car window on the highway with a nearly dislocated shoulder when a 60x launch bulleted me towards the mage. Now this is speed. I felt magic surging even from here. Another coin disappeared. I let go of the sword after a second, continuing my parabolic float while adding another 60 launches to my projectile. It hit one of the cupped hands and blew it clean off, tore through the casters side and jammed into the wall. Whatever the spell was, it fizzled out.

  Adrenaline drummed in my ears, vision tunneling, viciousness rising. In a miracle only possible thanks to a profound high, I stuck the landing perfectly and nostalgically ran past it while dropping four swords into its leg, like spikes. A curve transitioned into a wall run, suddenly cancelled by a sharp angle, back past its other leg, once more nailed with four swords, while I came to a sliding stop right in front of the wannabe wizard. The rush nearly consumed me. A centering moment pulled me back from the brink.

  It waved an arm and dozens of shards formed in a semicircle in front of it. They shot down towards me. Too slow, jackass. Swift penta-launches, each in a different direction, easily evaded the stream of shardshot. Homing but not leading. The last maneuver landed me next to it, aim-assist confirmed a trajectory and a full bar blew out its footing. A still second passed as it fell. I struck the bastard with six fifties in a shoulder, destroying it instantly, along with a coin. Still alive - good, a little more then. Another barrage blew out the other shoulder as well, turning it into a giant living nugget. There we go. Pregnant moments transpired uneventfully. Helpless, perfect.

  I switched between watching my guy and keeping track of Carlos and Kwame. The latter seemed to be doing all the work, with more high-magic in the making. A glimpse during my high-speed jaunt revealed Carlos experimenting with self-launching shenanigans, pulling both of them along on extended strips. My eyes flashed to and fro. Our melees ramped up the pressure, coordinating better and evoking ever greater movements from the variant. Then Kwame hosed both unmoving pike statues with an extra-long torrent, to no response. Great idea, we’re really learning from one another.

  Twelve swords entered the second mage. The duo headed over to the spear statues. I entertained myself by sending a sword into the other javelin statue. It took a bit to find the most promising snipe. Aim-assist factored penetration into it too. Double-bar power consumed a fourth coin and fueled a carefully aimed, high-angle arc. Alas, Kwame blew his load early to slay only one.

  He did it for a reason, which coincided with an insane momentary display of coordinated martial arts in the circle. A perfect storm occurred when Elias anticipated an intercept, nudging it slightly off course with the point of his shield. His actions freed up Jill to poke a different parry aside with the butt of her halberd. While one of Cleo’s daggers was deflected by a palm strike, she carried the momentum and slammed the other into the variants neck, then tore it out through the jugular. This did not amuse the shaolin shitstick, who stomped again. Three diagonal pillars of ice knocked back our combatants.

  All the remaining statues came alive simultaneously and the variant charged Jill’s armored form, leaving the self-imposed boundary.