Rix swallowed hard, memories of the heist still fresh in his mind. That situation had very nearly killed them.

"Can you tell what it is?" he asked Breaker. He didn't know exactly how the man could sense such a thing. Rix himself could feel no change. But given Breaker's strange connection with this Fractured Realm, he didn't question it.

Breaker shook his head. "I can feel the surge in entropy, but I can't tell what it will do. Whatever it is, it won't harm me, but..." he looked at the two of them. "We need to get you out of here."

Rix and Luna nodded simultaneously. They were roughly at the halfway point of the Peak Whisper zone. He didn't know how to assess the scale of such things, but Breaker's expression said it was serious.

They stepped out of their stone ruin. But no sooner had they turned towards the portal than the first Fade arrived. It was long and fast and feline, with an oversized head nearly the same length as its torso. It dashed towards them, teeth like dinner knives gnashing in its jaw.

Luna's opening slash took it cleanly through the side of its head, splitting it at the jawbone with a devastating crack.

The creature collapsed to the dirt.

Luna's eyes widened fractionally. "I know I'm good, but…"

Rix understood. Peak Whisper fades usually took longer to die.

Breaker's jaw tightened. "It must be a horde," he said. "The fades will be weaker, but significantly more numerous."

Luna shot him a half smile. "Sounds like fun."

"It might be. If you survive," the man countered. He was standing up straight, his eyes scanning the area, his head cocked slightly to one side. "It's too late to run. I can hear them massing all around us. You'll need to fight your way through."

"Can do," Luna replied.

She looked to Rix, who gave her a grim nod. He didn't wear his heart on his sleeve quite like her, but in truth, it did kind of sound like fun. So many of their fights were them pushing themselves to their limits, and that naturally meant taking on tough opponents. Rix had fought up a rank several times, but he'd never consciously fought down. Normally, the essence rewards meant it simply wasn't worth it. But perhaps the horde would change that.

Even before they took another step, more fades rushed them, this time from the strange field to their left. They leapt out of the eerie blue crops, built like monkeys, but covered in sharp, chitinous plating, like insects. There were five in the pack, though each only rose to Rix's thigh.

Without a word, he and Luna moved to engage together. Rix lashed out with his staff, a sharp punching thrust that slammed into one of the fade's faces as it leapt for him. He felt bone give beneath his weapon, and the creature went flying back as though it weighed nothing at all, even as he pivoted to dodge one of its brothers, sending it sailing past.

Like the spider fades, this sort seemed to favour great leaping attacks. Perhaps they were the swarmers that the little pamphlet in the library had described.

With their height and build, they certainly seemed like they needed a numbers advantage to overpower their enemies. While Rix had engaged two of the five, Luna was embroiled with the other three. Like him, she seemed to have assessed that there was no need to burn mana on techniques. As one Fade leapt at her with razor talons raised, she hacked it in half at the torso with a single swing, sending black ichor splattering to the ground.

Rix felt a moment of panic as, from behind the pile of rubble they'd been cultivating in, another Fade emerged. This one was larger, at least up to his hip, and it slithered along the ground on eight sinuous limbs, more like tentacles than legs. It was in Luna's blind spot. It rose up, arching its back to expose its belly. Along the entire length of its torso ran two lines of eyes, large and black and unblinking. Rix didn't know what it was preparing for, but he knew Luna wasn't ready.

He yelled out a cry of warning at the same time, thrusting out his hand to fire off a [Sunspot]. With that many eyes, the technique was horribly effective, sending the Fade staggering to one side. Luna spun in surprise, but she quickly adjusted, taking advantage of the creature's disorientation to deliver three quick slashes that left it in pieces on the soil.

"Thanks!" she yelled, but Rix didn't have time to reply. There were still several monkeys left, and two of them had moved to engage him. They leapt in tandem. Such was their synchronicity that they would have struck him at the same time. But like Master Zhen had taught him, he was channelling his style, letting it sit there loosely like a cloud over his mind, and it seemed it had something for such an attack. Gripping his staff between both hands in a central grip, he thrust both arms out before him in parallel.

It wasn't an attack he'd ever used before, but it proved very effective. The movement slammed the staff forward in a straight line in front of him, each end catching one of the Fades in the stomach. Both went flying, their bodies disappearing back into the crop field and, judging by the crunch on impact and the flow of essence, they wouldn't be rising again.

Off to one side, Breaker engaged with another group of Fades. Though nothing visible happened, the pack turned and ran.

On his other side, Luna finished off the last of the swarmers.

"Not that I don't want to fight," Luna said to Breaker, "because I definitely want to fight. But can't you just do that all the time? Make your protective bubble around us like you do when we're training?"

Breaker shook his head. "Each time a Fade comes into contact with my aura, it costs me a little bit. With the normal density of the realm, that's not a problem, but with what's going on here," he gestured around him, "I can't keep it up indefinitely. I can offer some small aid by pulsing my aura on and off to cover your blind spots, but you two will have to do the heavy lifting."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Rix and Luna shared a smile.

And so lift they did.

They pushed back toward the portal. Fades were coming thick and fast. With Rix's heightened senses, he could hear them now too — a chorus of rustling, skittering, and baying from all sides.

They moved methodically, naturally falling into a triangle formation. Fades rushed them from all angles, their numbers such that Rix could barely take in the detail of their morphologies.

He swung low, an arcing sweep that shattered the spine of something black and bladed as it crawled out of a nearby hole. While he was distracted, Luna leapt high, slicing upwards to gut a bat-like monster that had been a moment away from latching onto Rix's skull.

There was a joy in dispatching their foes so easily, their skills sharper than ever before. Most fell in just one or two blows, allowing Rix to save his mana for when it mattered.

The main technique he called upon continued to be [Sunspot]. While calling it "ranged" was a stretch, the fact that he didn't need to be right next to an opponent to use it made it perfect for covering their flanks. More than once, he spotted a fresh opponent preparing to attack from one of their blind spots, but a blast of light bought them the time they needed to deal with the situation.

As effective as that was, it might not have been enough on its own. But they also had Breaker. The man flitted about the battlefield like an insect. Though he caused no actual harm, every thrust of his palm sent a group of Fades running.

Several times in the distance, Rix picked out other sounds — human sounds. It was easy to forget while under Breaker's tutelage that they were not alone out here, but the cries of his fellow Shadow Runners reminded him that this was the sort of event that could kill many.

He briefly considered whether it was worth trying to fight towards the others. There was safety in numbers, after all, but Breaker was their trump card, and grouping with the others would mean losing him.

Beyond that, Rix wasn't sure if grouping was even possible. To do so would require them to move sideways rather than toward the portal. And while the intensity of the battle was enjoyable in its own way, it was beginning to grow taxing. By that point, they'd been fighting non-stop for more than five minutes, and even with his Martial Soul-enhanced body, his lungs burned and his muscles grew heavy.

As they drew closer to the edge of the Peak Whisper zone, the crop fields around them grew denser. Where before they'd been able to keep the space immediately around them clear by moving between rows of crops, now a thick wall of plants blocked their way.

"We're going to have to cut our way through," Rix said.

For Luna, that was easy enough, but Rix's weapon had no native blade. Thankfully, his mana pool was still mostly intact. Summoning [Wind Blade], he began to reap his way forward.

In those tighter confines, Rix felt his heart accelerate. They had no space around them, no visual warning of impending attacks. But he still had his other senses.

"To your left," he called to Luna.

She spun immediately, adjusting her slash to whip out to her side, catching a glimmering, snake-like fade as it shot forward out of the tangle. She carved a long rent along its belly, and the creature collapsed.

Physically, Luna outclassed him in almost every way, but he'd come to realise his senses were one place where he had the edge. She clearly didn't value acuity the way he did. Even having taken a temporary divergence into strength this rank, he was always a step faster to hear an enemy, or feel their movement through the soil. Perhaps she hadn't placed any points there at all. In any case, this was the perfect environment to take advantage of his attributes.

He continued to hack forward, swinging his staff like a scythe in front of him. His ears warned him of an attack from the right. Finishing his swing, he whirled almost 270 degrees, bringing his staff up to block. His weapon met the enemy's — a huge, jagged shard of bone that stabbed forth from the densely packed stalks. The creature that followed it was massive, larger than most in the horde. It moved like a crab on many segmented legs, its two front limbs heavy and sharp, like plough blades.

Though Rix was still using [Wind Blade], this Fade's shell was actually strong enough to resist the brunt of the attack. But he was in the flow of the fight now, his style singing silently in the back of his head. Movements came to him as if he'd done them a thousand times before.

Another block as the Fade tried to impale his chest, then two quick cuts where its front lower legs met its thighs. Off balance, the creature tottered, and Rix wasted no time driving [Wind Blade] through its skull.

With his style in full flight, he couldn't help but hope that this would trigger the rank-up. And a rank-up did come, but it was not what he expected.

As they cut their way free of the crop field and pushed into the jungle that bridged the gap between the High Whisper and Peak Whisper zones, Rix engaged two enemies simultaneously. They were long and limber and vaguely humanoid, though they moved as though they had no bones to speak of, their bodies whip-like and elastic and their skin a strangely beautiful iridescent blue.

Dashing to his left to engage one, he thrust out his palm to blind the other with the [Sunspot], and felt the familiar mental alert click over in the back of his head.

[Sunspot has ranked up to Mid Rank]

So startled was he that he stumbled momentarily, giving the closer fade an opening to land a wide raking cut on his leg, but his mantle flared, dispersing most of the damage, leaving him with just a shallow gash. With [Wind Blade] still humming, he ducked under its follow-up, dropping to his knees to jam that magical edge into its guts before pivoting back up to decapitate its brother just as its blindness wore off.

On one hand, he desperately wanted his style to rank up, but on the other, any improvement was a good improvement. He'd have to check the technique when things calmed down.

Which, as it turned out, was soon. After slaying one more group of fades, Breaker's pace slowed.

"I can feel the entropy ebbing, and we are outside the worst of it now."

Rix sucked in a deep breath, relishing the opportunity to let his heart rate settle. On a fight-by-fight basis, those had been some of the easiest battles he'd experienced since becoming a Martial Soul. But Breaker had been right — the sheer weight of numbers had been nearly overwhelming. He sported relatively few injuries, but his body ached fiercely.

Luna's expression showed similar exhaustion, though her smile was wide. "Now that's how you kill fadeborn."

With such a frenetic pace, Rix hadn't had time to check what they'd actually earned. He called up his system display.

[Essence: 7%]

Those were some impressive gains, considering he'd started the day at 0%. He hadn't yet had the chance to see what his earn rate was now that he'd hit Peak Whisper, but it would be slower again than last rank. He'd lost track of how many fades he'd killed, but it had to be over 100.

"Why is it that during an entropy event like that, the fades are so much weaker?" he asked Breaker.

He gave a wry smile. "Some of the machinations of the universe's dark side are hidden even from the truly powerful."

With the adrenaline fading, Rix realised the man looked visibly drained. His posture was slumped, and his skin red and slick with sweat.

"Are you okay?" Rix asked.

Breaker nodded, though it was a heavy gesture. "As I said, in my current state such combat drains me." He sounded vaguely disgusted by that fact. "This has happened to me before when I've overexerted myself. I suspect I will need to take some days away from our lessons periodically to recover, but I shall survive."

"Of course," Rix said. "Now that we have our exercises, we'll be able to manage on our own occasionally."

Safe from the horde, they parted ways. While there was still dive time left, they were both exhausted, and Breaker said the density of fades would still likely be higher in the area they'd left behind.

On their way back towards the portal, they encountered a few other Shadow Runners, all of whom looked even more dishevelled than they did. Nobody knew if there had been any losses, but all had had to battle for their lives.

It wasn't until he got back to his cell that he remembered he had something to check. [Sunspot] had upgraded. He called up his System display.

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