"Fay, down there. Don't let them touch you. Pull their eyes." he commanded.

Radeon slid the bison down to the ground in a hard, controlled drop. Fay stepped off at once.

Qi rushed through her arm and flames erupted along her whip, bright and hungry.

The horrors noticed and surged toward her, true moths to flame, wings dragging as their mouths opened and closed in wet anticipation.

Fay ran. The movement technique Radeon had given her made her light as a ghost, feet skimming the earth.

Her body slipped through gaps that should not have existed. She pulled the swarm after her, dragging their hunger away from the fleeing miners.

Radeon fired as he watched. His bullets took fatal shots by any sane measure.

Antenna. Proboscis. Compound eyes. Chitin split. Blood sprayed in dark strings.

Not a single gu went down. Through his sight he saw the reason.

It was not normal regeneration. It was the existence of the moths themselves. Their flesh was woven with false immortality.

Threads that kept them alive despite impossible anatomy. Only a few things could counter immortality.

Causality was one, and Radeon had it. He changed tactics.

Radeon drew threads of misfortune through his devouring arts, letting the misfortune stain his qi, then fed it into every round.

A hundred shots. He severed legs. He punched holes through torsos.

The moth things kept coming. Five hundred rounds. Still nothing.

After the thousandth shot, his target convulsed. Wings shuddered.

Something inside it twisted, warping all at once. Then it exploded.

Radeon did not waste the opening.

He dropped the bison low, reached down, seized Fay, and yanked her up in one brutal pull.

The moth mouths snapped where she had been a heartbeat before.

"Help me reload," Radeon said, handing him a ten-thousand-round magazine.

Fay did not know how it worked, not truly. She only saw the indentation along the cabinets and understood it as an answer waiting to be used.

She fitted the mouth of the magazine into place. A fast whizzing sounded, tight and hungry. Then a click.

The reload finished on its own. Radeon shoved another smaller magazine into her hands and took the bigger one back.

He snapped it into place with practiced speed.

Fay wanted to impress Radeon this time, to mend her blunder from the bandit camp.

"Master, let me return to the fight," she pleaded. "Let this disciple take one."

No questions asked, Radeon threw Fay toward another corner of the bison's platform.

The swarm followed her again, drawn by heat and motion as if they could smell fear.

Radeon counted them with his eyes. Thousands.

Bullets worked, yes, but he had not forged them to be wasted in a shower against creatures this large and stubborn.

Each round demanded time. That was the cost was too high for Radeon.

He patted the bison and dropped down. Sword in hand, he closed the distance.

The swarm surged toward him, wings scraping dirt, mouths opening along limbs and belly.

Radeon's eyes shimmered as he searched for weakness, not in the body alone but in the pattern.

Joints. Wounded chitin. Malformed tentacles.

Misfortune flowed into the blade. Radeon dove.

Tens of mouths lunged for him, snapping and sucking at the air as if they could pull his vitality out by force.

He let the blade plunge into the mass of it and followed the line where the flesh joined at the corners of those mouths.

The oral commissure repeating like a filthy pattern. Steel traced it.

Then he turned his wrist and tore the line open into a single huge gash.

The mouths shrieked together, wet and furious.

Radeon did not let it live long enough to learn.

He poured qi along the edge until an aura blade formed, then cut straight through the moth in one horizontal stroke.

The body split in half, and the pieces fell apart without mercy.

'This is a pointless drill. Too much effort. Better to make it look good.' he thought.

Killing these horrors gained him nothing. The mine still crumbled. The blight still woke.

Not wanting to linger. He flicked his hand. Needles shot up toward the bison's horn and caught.

Thread tightened, and it hauled him back in a single sharp pull. His feet left the earth before the mouths could find him.

Radeon flew to Fay and snatched her up into the air.

"Mas... Master. I could not even make a dent," Fay said, her gaze lowered, shame tightening her throat.

"Fay. Listen. Those aren't mere beasts. They came from beyond the stars." Radeon stated.

Fay stood stunned. Stars were only a myth to her and everyone in this realm. Their sky held no stars, only smoke and darkness.

Yet in that moment, she felt something vast moving behind everything, as if heaven itself had chosen a course.

Now they were only being dragged along its grooves. This was bigger than her, bigger than anything she had ever thought.

The stakes pressed in until her lips pursed on their own, tight with fear and the heavy burden of responsibility.

"We're not saving the world. Don't overthink it. If it sleeps, eats, and takes a shit, it dies. Remember that," Radeon said.

He let the bison swing back toward the rear of the fleeing miners.

The line had left a trail behind it. Food bundles. Spare clothes.

Even old carriages dragged into place and abandoned when they slowed the run.

They had listened. They had believed. He brought the bison down a few dozen meters away and watched.

At the back rode the older men, the ones who had not run first. They carried the weapons.

Swords, spears, arrows bundled in rough sheaves. The smell of strong alcohol reached even this far, letting Radeon take a whiff.

He knew what they were up to. The miners were numbing themselves, ready to dance if death demanded it.

When they saw Radeon, they only gave small smiles and brief nods.

He nodded back. As he looked at the valorous men, a bolt of inspiration struck him.

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