Kestrel's attacks reached Jay before his opponents' did. Jack's umbral chains rose from the dirt, ensnaring the legs of the guard closest to Jay and wrenching him to the ground before he could swing his axe. Corinne joined next, except there wasn't just one but three grotesque abominations leaping into battle. Her clawed, reptilian arms had doubled in size since the fight's beginning. Jay saw a tiny set of wings sprout from her back before rapidly beginning to grow.

A cloaked guard raised a steel shield up from behind his moko. It might have blocked Corinne's attack, but instead Marko's illusion simply passed through him.

His ally beside him didn't get so lucky.

A sickle-like claw scraped against his chest before Corinne's follow through knocked him to the dirt.

Even though Eye of the storm bought Jay time to observe his teammates, it didn't stop his enemies from targeting him. The guard behind Jay thrust a bronze spear forward from beneath his moko and Jay barely managed to parry it aside. Another thrust came for Jay's head, forcing him to dive backwards to avoid the jet of green smoke spewing forth from the spear tip.

The spearman shed his moko, revealing a set of streamlined bronze armour. Each segment had a glowing green rune inscribed into it, and Jay vaguely recognised the man's face from the footage he'd watched of the Smothering Grasp Alliance.

A gladiator.

Jack sent a coiling black chain towards Jay's opponent. It snaked up his calf but its advance faltered when a plume of sickly green gas escaped from the armour's joints and corroded the links.

Electricity flickered into Jay's arm. His hair stood on end and his fingertips began twitching as he prepared his next counter.

The Smothering Grasp gladiator kicked Jack's broken chain away before advancing on Jay. Jay evaded the first two strikes before countering the third. He didn't deflect or dodge the thrust this time, instead choosing to wrap his hand around the spear's shaft.

Jay clenched tight even as the spear neared his neck. Liquid metal streamed past Jay's fist and towards the spear inside it. Electricity followed. Jay could almost feel it advancing through his opponent's weapon, darting between each atom in its piercing assault.

It coiled around the gladiator's spear, invisible to everyone except Jay, and surged into his runic armour.

His body came next.

Or at least it was supposed to.

Instead of flooding into Jay's opponent's body, the electricity arced off the man's bronze armour and leapt towards the covered cart. The static fuzz vanished and Jay's prickled hairs fell flat as his attack fizzled out.

"Nice try, Lightning," said the spearman.

Jay's eyes shot wide open as he stumbled back a step and released the man's spear.

They've prepared for me?

Before Jay could regain his composure, the canvas covering billowed into the air, revealing what lay beneath it.

In one corner, a metal pillar with three floating rings around it glowed an incandescent red as an arc of electricity orbited it. The bolt shot downwards, charring the dirt beside Jay black while the device cooled back down. Behind the device, six cloaked men stood with bolts nocked in rune-etched crossbows. Another six leapt from the cart and began running towards the three monstrous Corinnes.

But even they didn't truly seize Jay's attention.

The thirteenth man stood in the centre of the cart did.

He stood a head and a half taller than his allies and his moko barely reached his knees. Armoured calves the size of Jay's thighs poked out beneath it. The man wielded a gigantic scythe with a handle three metres long that culminated in a curved blade that hooked around his entire body. Instead of a razor-sharp edge, serrated teeth ran along the entirety of its blade.

Each tooth screamed of violence. Although the blade was polished clean, Jay could already envision the scythe dripping with blood as shreds of flesh sloughed off its steel.

The spear-wielding gladiator stopped Jay from staring too long. He thrust his weapon forward, forcing Jay to backpedal. A jet of corrosive green gas followed the initial strike, Jay evaded that too but a pair of incoming crossbow bolts forced him even further away from the cart.

Of course they were prepared for us…

Jay's eyes flickered between the metal pylon that had neutralised his electricity and the scythe he presumed was the Sawblade that Limitless Ascent were after.

…we attacked them four days ago. Why wouldn't they be prepared?

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Jay glanced at the monolith above him and the ground below as the spearman advanced once again. He could get annoyed at the Smothering Grasp's preparation all he wanted, but that wouldn't change the situation at hand.

Besides, Jay's allies had prepared something too.

KRRRRRRRRK!

Rumbling flooded the air and shook the earth. Fragments of stone erupted from the monolith as the rock that once sealed team Scorpion fell towards the Directorate convoy. Jay's opponent spun towards the disturbance, but he had far bigger issues to deal with. The dirt beneath him sank into one of Yagao's hidden pits, stripping away his footing.

He managed to jump sideways and avoid falling to his death, but by then the damage was already done.

A blur of carbon black hurtled down from the monolith, slicing through the air as she fell.

Carla smashed into the stumbling spearman, ripping away his weapon with her clawed left hand while her right shot for his face. The gladiator barely had time to scream before black talons pierced through his brain and reduced him to mist.

A volley of crossbow fire shot towards Carla but she negated every bolt with a swipe of her arm, the shots clanging off her armoured skin harmlessly.

"Try your best to keep up, Jay," she sneered before running towards the cart.

The Sawblade wielding gladiator intercepted her, knocking her away from the crossbowmen, and the two began exchanging blows.

Jay carved himself some time with Eye of the storm, refusing to rise to Carla's barb. He assessed the battlefield from within it, locating where he was needed most. Eventually, another round of crossbow bolts would force him to move. Jay needed to know where to assist.

Three monstrous Corinnes terrorised the convoy's left flank. Marko's illusions sowed disarray into the Directorate ranks while he himself remained unseen and Corinne wreaked havoc on whoever stood before her. Several crossbow bolts pierced through her scaled bicep yet they didn't seem to slow down her assault.

Behind Carla's duel to Jay's right, Jack faced off against five soldiers at once. Iron chains completely covered his body, encasing him in a seamless suit of chain-mail that deflected away any errant crossbow fire aimed his way. He flung chains from his body at will, flailing them like whips at some opponents and wrapping around their limbs whenever one tried to attack him.

A sixth Directorate guard, hiding behind the shackled body of his ally, leapt towards Jack's back.

Thanks to team Scorpion, he didn't get far.

A hazy bubble of pale blue light engulfed the guard's lower half. His advance faltered as his torso lurched forward. The soldier stared down at his legs, locked in place like they were encased in concrete. Just as Jay realised that the bubbles were Felix's Harmony, a stone fragment shot down from the monolith and pierced through the foot-soldier's ribs.

Yagao didn't stop there. A volley of shattered stone rained down on that front, killing all the guardsmen immobilised by Jack's chains and forcing the rest away from him. Two cloaked soldiers—who Jay assumed were gladiators by the glowing white swords they wielded—charged towards Jack, seemingly unfazed by the Directorate corpses strewn around them.

PI-PI-PI-PI-PI-PING!

A volley of crossbow fire clattered into Ping. Although the soldiers raining down bolts from atop the cart weren't the most dangerous opponents, they could affect every one of the battlefield's fronts.

Jay wanted them gone.

He clutched Ping in both hands; instead of hiding behind her, Jay tossed his shield at the squad of soldiers.

They easily dodged the telegraphed attack, but it wasn't meant to do any damage.

Because just as Jay had played support for Ping in the battle's opening exchange, his shield paid him back by dragging the entire squad's focus in her direction.

Jay leapt forward, hurdling over the cart's edge as he prepared an electrically infused uppercut. He felt the same pylon from before drain the electricity from his punch, yet it couldn't stop his metal knuckles from embedding themselves into his target's liver. The other guards frantically reloaded their weapons, but their bolts were worthless once Jay was already this close. Jay wrapped his arms around one soldier's chest and flung him into two others, knocking all three of them off the cart. Of the remaining three, two had their weapons loaded already. Jay grabbed the third by the wrist, yanking him into the line of fire and charging at his allies.

Two bolts met Jay's skin, but the corpse he hid behind did enough to slow them down.

A crunch behind Jay almost won his attention, but he kept focused on the two crossbowmen before him. One had pulled a short-sword from his waist and pointed it forward. Jay clenched his fist around it, letting the liquid metal protect his palm before the blade sliced his fingers off.

Jay didn't even attempt to use electricity this time, knowing the pylon behind him would negate it. Instead, he wrenched the sword from the man's grip and rammed it through his ally's throat. As the final Directorate soldier screamed in shock, Jay silenced him with a hook to the jaw, knocking him unconscious before his body flailed out of the cart.

Behind Jay, Carla was struggling against her opponent. The goliath—likely a gladiator, given how much trouble he was giving Carla—let the gigantic scythe hover by his side like a orbital aegis while he attacked with a slightly smaller yet similarly enormous great-sword.

Jay took a step towards Carla, but hesitated.

His intuition pulled him short before he fully committed. Jay spun instantly, raising both fists to defend himself but finding nothing.

As observant as he was, Jay trusted his gut more than all his other senses combined. He flared Eye of the storm, desperate to find what had set him off.

Corrine still raged at her opponents, although her bestial strength had finally met it's match. An armoured gladiator with a flail and shield fought her alone. His metal shield clanged each time Corinne's claws smashed into it, meanwhile her clones were nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Marko blinked around the battlefield in tiny bursts, several metres at a time. He stabbed each guard he appeared behind from their blind spot, teleporting away whenever he couldn't misdirect an enemy with an illusion.

Although the fight's circumstances had changed, Jay couldn't see anything too strange there and his eyes shifted aside.

One of the crossbowmen had discarded his weapon and made for the forest. He'd already escaped the battle, and was several paces from the first trees. Jay almost brushed past the frantically sprinting man, but the deserter's flapping moko snagged his focus for a split second.

Jay's gaze drilled past the soldier's cloak and directly at the man's waist.

A familiar light shone from the man's belt; one Jay had seen both in his quarters at the Full Moon Sanctuary and the float displaying the treasures stored in the Directorate vault.

The sage's crystal cast a hazy blue glow on the dirt below, a restless flicker of restrained energy.

How the hell did that get here?

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