Needing to reposition, I pulled back slightly into the treeline. This offered me a bit more cover than the remains of the Village Hall, and years of old-life training slotted into place without fanfare. Habits honed in dark alleys where, as Griff hammered home, you never fought centre-stage if you didn't have to. Where you did your best to shape the encounter and give your enemy the fuzzy end of the options lollipop.

As I stepped deliberately backwards, the branches overhead thickened, and the forest swallowed me up

[System Notification: Passive Trait Upgraded]

Strategic Instinct – Lvl 2 (Passive)

+15% to situational awareness during defensive encounters

Enhanced predictive targeting: increased motion tracking in low visibility

+5% bonus to Group Morale when acting as a Command Node (stacking effect unlocked)

You have officially graduated from 'running away' to 'tactical repositioning.' Well done.

The clearing ahead of me stirred. Rebels shifted uneasily, uncertain. Berker's piggy little eyes swept the treeline like he expected me to sparkle.

"Don't let him escape, you morons?!" he bellowed. "Get in there and kill him!"

The archers came first, knives out, creeping between trunks and fallen branches like they thought they were the dangerous ones. They fanned out in a shallow arc, eyes flicking between roots and shadow, every movement careful but not careful enough. They had no real coordination. Just arrogance and adrenaline.

One broke a little too far from the others, threading between two leaning trees that had grown together like old drunks holding each other up. Coming closer. Closer . . . Too close.

[Aura Activation: Aggro Magnetism – Lvl 3]

Target Acquired.

→ Rage Debuff Applied

-20% Dodge

-20% Endurance

+10% Stamina drain per action

25% chance to misapply Abilities

Cannot voluntarily disengage from target

System Advisory: This one's yours now. Good luck.

The effect hit like a slap. His whole body stiffened as his pupils flared and his mouth twisted into a snarl. His knife trembled in his grip, but not from fear, from unwilling compulsion. This guy really didn't want to attack me. Not alone. Not in the dark. But he had no choice. He charged, blind with the Rage I'd poured into him like kerosene on dry wood.

I let him come. He burst towards me, knife raised, making something between a war cry and a sob. His footing faltered as the Endurance debuff was already fraying his control. I don't reckon he even registered the morningstar until it was in motion.

Welcome to Weighted Argument, mate. Booyah. One swing was all it took.

The head of the weapon caught him just above the clavicle, dead centre, where bone and breath collided. He folded around the hit, knife clattering away and blood pooling thick and fast into the roots of the tree.

"We've got you now, Warden!" Berker laughed, stomping after me like some kind of nightmarish ogre.

Do you know what, he probably had a point. I was massively outnumbered here and, in reality, I didn't have anywhere left to go.

Then a heavy thud cracked behind me, followed by a scream that cut off far too fast. I turned, expecting another archer lunging from the dark. Instead, I saw one of the Rebels lying face-down in the dirt, neck bent at an angle that didn't allow for future plans. A second body was crumpled against a tree trunk, arrows jutting from its back. There's been no time for a scream that time.

I saw another of the archers stumble backwards into a patch of moonlight, raising his knife and then dropping to his knees, with his arm severed at the shoulder. The rest of him didn't last too long either. I thought I could hear the whirr of an axe cutting through the air . . .

For a moment, the Rebels hesitated, or at least what was left of them did. Their eyes scanned the treeline, trying to spot the source of the change in the battle's tempo. But, as far as they could tell, it was just me standing there, bloodied and breathing, morningstar low at my side. To them, it must have looked like I'd done that. Like I'd planned the whole thing and was picking them off like the greatest Predator of all time. One of them shouted something I couldn't hear over the noise, and then they were fumbling with their arrows again, clearly rattled.

Sure. Let them think like that.

Because I knew now that Scar and Dema had picked a team . . .

I wasn't alone. Not anymore.

"What are you doing!"! Berker screamed, his voice trembling with fury. "He's just one man! He can't keep—"

He was cut off by the twang of a bowstring.

An arrow whistled through the air and embedded itself in the throat of the archer to Berker's right. The fat man froze, his eyes widening as he watched his man collapse, screaming.

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Dema.

She dropped to the ground, bow drawn, a feral grin on her face.

"Took you long enough," I gasped, still trying to catch my breath.

Dema winked. "Wouldn't want you to have all the fun. Scar and the rest of the crew are mopping up in the clearing. Figured I'd come give you a hand."

Her eyes locked on Berker, and for a moment, everything seemed to freeze. The last remaining Rebel hesitated, glancing between his leader and the nightmare figures who had, somehow, taken out all of their friends.

"You think one little Huntress is going to stop me?" Berker snarled.

Dema smirked, drawing another arrow from her quiver. "Me, not so much. But him?" She nodded toward me, still panting and clutching my broken stick. "What was it? Twenty-four on one? And now it's two on two. He's a Warden, mate! Me, I'm just here to watch."

"I think what she's trying to say mate, is: 'Who's your daddy?'"

The dark pits of Berker's eyes flickered between us. He seemed to be weighing his options, trying to calculate how this little uno-reverso could have happened. I guess, right now, I was looking like some sort of god-tier monster, and Dema was my deadly, and entirely unnecessary, backup.

"Enough!" Berker said, spittle flying from his bloated lips. "Reinforcements! Kill them both!"

I mean—this seemed pretty bloody unfair. Was the enemy actually allowed to use Abilities of their own? No one had cleared that with me.

A crack of purple light split the air as a portal shimmered open at Berker's shout. Two more Paladins rode skeletal mounts through it, foot soldiers burst in from the right, boots churning up mud, and another archer slid in alongside the last survivor of the massacre.

"Try to hold their attention as long as you can," Dema said under her breath, suddenly all edge and focus.

"So we have a plan?" I asked, sidestepping an arrow that thudded into the bark behind me. "Because if so, now would be a fantastic time to share it."

"Just keep doing what you've been doing," she replied with a grin and promptly shot a Paladin straight through the chest. He tumbled off his mount, screaming, and the horse went down in a heap of hooves and panic.

But then the rest were on us.

Spears and mauls swung wildly, iron crashing into the trees like a thunderstorm. Dema was a blur, a fluid, merciless ball of murder, loosing arrows with an almost mechanical fury. Her 'plan,' as far as I could tell, involved becoming her own battalion.

I'd like to say I matched her brilliance.

I did not.

My attention was halfway through admiring her footwork when a spear came for me. I flinched and raised my arms in a block that had no prayer of working. But the blow never landed, because my feet moved on their own.

The tip of the spear slammed into the earth an inch to my left, throwing up a spray of mud.

[Skill Upgrade: Sidestep – Level 2]

Type: Combat | Defence

→ Increased lateral reaction threshold

→ 45% chance to auto-evade ranged attacks when moving

→ Now applies +15% Dodge Roll bonus vs heavier weapons

→ New Effect Unlocked: \[Momentum Flow]

→ If followed by offensive action within 3s, gain +5% Damage and +5% Impact Force for that attack

System Advisory: You are now 16% less likely to die tired. Progress!

"Okay, great," I said, taking advantage of Momentum Flow to brain the very confused spearman next to me. "But I don't think I've got many more of those left in me…"

Dema was still cutting through them like it was harvest season. But even she couldn't outpace physics forever. The other new Paladin closed in and swung. She ducked, arrow nocked, but the impact jarred through her bow arm. She parried, barely, and stumbled. Her bow spun from her grasp, vanishing into the mud.

And just like that, we were both out of position.

Dema was off-balance, still recovering from the last clash, when one of the spearmen lunged through the gap. He drove forward with his spear like he meant to skewer her into the tree behind. She twisted, but not fast enough, he caught her shoulder and pinned her back, blade tip rising for the finish.

She didn't cry out. Just gritted her teeth and held his wrist, buying seconds.

I closed the gap and slammed the head of my morningstar into the haft of his spear, knocking it wide before it could finish the job. He tried to reset, twisting the shaft back into line, but I was already inside his reach.

Exactly where I wanted to be.

My Rage Debuff took hold, and his body stopped listening to his brain. He jabbed at me, and I took the hit to my thigh. Pain. But I didn't give up. I grabbed the spear with one hand, yanked him forward, and brought my morningstar down on the top of his head, crumpling him to the floor.

"Behind me!" I said.

Dema didn't need much encouragement, dropping back, favouring her leg, blood now soaking into the top of her boot. She slid behind me, retrieving her bow as she did so.

And not a moment too soon. Because Berker was done with all this.

He let out a roar that split the air like a cannon blast and charged, his maul raised high. His eyes burned with bloodlust, and all subtlety was long gone. This wasn't a duel. It was an execution.

Dema fired an arrow straight to the chest, but it pinged off his armour like a stone against a fortress wall. He didn't even blink.

"Dema, we need to move!" I yelled, grabbing her arm, trying to haul her along. She stumbled, though, bleeding heavily. Then she shook me off.

"Run," she said softly, almost gently. "I'll buy you some time."

"You can't—"

But it was too late as Berker reached us in a blur of armour and momentum.

Dema drew her knife, a wicked, sharply-edged thing that looked like it belonged in a ritual, not a battlefield. She ducked under his first swing, and the maul slammed into a tree beside her. Bark exploded and ricocheted around us.

A lesser fighter would've been pulped by the shockwave alone, instead, she cut him, fast and shallow, across the arm. It was cool and all, but the slash barely left a mark.

Berker gave a deep and gluttonous laugh. "Is that all you've got, Huntress?"

Dema didn't answer, slashing at his thigh, looking for a weakness in the plates.

But there was only one outcome here. Berker shifted with inhuman speed for a man his size, and his maul came down. And this time it hit.

The sound was horrible.

Dema collapsed bonelessly, slamming into the ground with a snap that might well've been her back. She slid to the roots and didn't move.

"Dema!" I shouted, but the name barely cleared my throat before Berker's laughter drowned it out.

He turned to me, eyes gleaming and lips curled back in glee.

"You were warned, Warden," he said, dragging the maul through the mud toward me. "Now it's your turn."

I backed away, but in a half-hearted way. This was it. I was done. There was no more fighting, no more dodging. Berker was going to kill me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Berker raised his mace high, grinning down at me with pure triumph. "Any last words, Warden?"

I opened my mouth to try to come up with something pithy, but no sound emerged. My legs felt like lead, my body frozen in place as I stared up at the massive weapon. This was it. This was how I died. Again.

And then, everything stopped.

A shadow fell over us.

Berker froze, his grin faltering as he looked around. I followed his gaze, my heart skipping a beat as I saw her.

Lia.

She stood on the edge of the woods, fully healed, her armour gleaming in the fading light. Her eyes were locked on Berker, and her face an unreadable mask of calm fury.

"I was having the most relaxing nap," she said, raising her giant blade.

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