The transport doors hissed open, and Nathan stepped into the nightmare scene before him.
Ashwick was burning. The morning sky, which should have been painted in pale dawn gold, was suffocated by oily black smoke and a blizzard of drifting embers. On the eastern horizon, the Tower of Ash loomed as it normally did but wirhna different look. Its black spire was fractured, bleeding erratic, strobing crimson light as it vomited a ceaseless tide of horrors from its base.
Packs of Ember Hounds tore through the village streets, their molten jaws leaving trails of liquid fire across thatched roofs and wooden porches. Above, Cinder Bats blackened the sky, their wings raining sparks as they primed their bodies to detonate on contact. Below, Magma Serpents breached the scorched earth, their semi-liquid bodies liquefying the soil and carving through the village foundations as easily as swimming through water.
In the center of the inferno, the villagers of Ashwick were fighting to survive.
Nathan’s [Hunter’s Insight] activated, flooding his vision with a blinding array of tactical data. Enemy trajectories, civilian heat signatures, structural collapse warnings, and spreading fire lines all layered over his sight. It was a suffocating amount of information. There were too many fronts, too many monsters, and a rapidly shrinking window to save anyone. But Nathan breathed through the noise. He had learned to distill chaos into strategy. He knew how to wield his party.
"Helena!" Nathan’s voice cut sharp and clear over the roar of the flames. "Take the sky! Coordinate the evacuation and push the villagers toward the western hills!"
Helena was already in motion. With a deafening shriek of static, her Thunderbird launched from her shoulder, its brilliant blue feathers casting harsh, crackling light as it spiraled into the smoke. "I’ll clear the airspace and mark the route!" she yelled back. She wasn’t a frontline combatant, but her C-Rank Thunderbird was an apex predator in the sky. It was exactly what they needed.
Behind her, the volunteer Climbers from Celestial Peak fanned out. They weren’t high-ranking elites, but they didn’t hesitate. One immediately cast a barrier to shepherd a family toward the hills. Another dragged an elderly man from a collapsing porch, while a third locked shields with an Ember Hound that had cornered a child.
Nathan turned to his vanguard. "Garrett, lock down the northern perimeter. Nothing gets into the square. Dillon, aerial sweep. Keep those bats off the evacuation line. Elise, take the south and freeze the serpents before they undermine the houses. Mirko, Kuro, with me. We’re pushing to the inn."
"About time," Mirko declared. In a flash of brilliant green light, she shifted into her armored humanoid form, her heavy D-Rank sword sliding from its scabbard. [Impenetrable Fortress] flared to life, casting a protective green aura over her skin. "This Knight shall clear the path and crush the weeds. It is what I was forged to do."
Understood, Kuro murmured, melting seamlessly into the smoke beside her. Her daggers reflected the ambient firelight, gleaming with dark intent. The inn is the anchor point and Marta is the priority.
"Then we don’t stop moving," Nathan said, nocking an arrow.
The party splintered. The defense of Ashwick began.
Garrett slammed his boots into the scorched floor at the northern edge of the village square, gripped Volcan with both hands, and became an immovable object.
A pack of twelve Ember Hounds charged him. They were starved and frenzied, their rocky hides venting plumes of volcanic heat. Behind them, the earth violently ruptured as a Magma Serpent surged to the surface, its molten scales glowing white-hot. It was significantly larger than the variants they had fought inside the Tower. The forced collapse hadn’t just released them; it had driven them rabid.
"Red! Hold the left flank! Do not let them circle!"
Red didn’t bleat; it charged like a battering ram. The Mad-Sheep’s wool rapidly hardened, locking together into dense, impenetrable crimson plates. It caught the lead Hound mid-lunge, the sickening crunch of stone echoing as Red’s horns shattered the creature’s ribs and sent it bowling into two others. The beasts scrambled, jaws snapping wildly at the hardened fleece, but Red was already pivoting. Its four black eyes tracked a Hound trying to slip past the perimeter, and it mercilessly trampled the creature into the dirt.
Garrett stepped into the fray, sweeping Volcan in a massive, horizontal arc. KRAK-BOOM. The thermal pulse erupted from the mace, a blistering wave of kinetic heat that caught three Hounds at once. They didn’t just die; they vaporized mid-leap, their rocky bodies detonating into harmless clouds of ash.
From his blind spot, the Magma Serpent lunged—a massive blur of dripping slag and killing intent aiming straight for his exposed ribs.
Garrett didn’t flinch. He planted his back foot, the cobblestones cracking under the torque, and swung his entire body weight into the counterattack. [Impact Strike] met the serpent’s skull. CRUNCH. The sheer concussive force buckled the earth beneath Garrett’s feet. The serpent’s head caved in entirely, its massive body instantly losing cohesion and slumping into a pool of rapidly cooling slag.
But the horde didn’t stop. Another pack of Hounds crested the ridge, flanked by two more serpents churning the earth. Garrett adjusted his grip on Volcan, the molten veins of the weapon matching the furious heat of his own blood. He didn’t have the flashy elemental magic of Elise or the blinding speed of Dillon. He had a Legendary mace, an armored sheep, and the bloody-minded refusal to take a single step backward.
"Come on!" Garrett roared over the flames, slamming the head of Volcan into the ground to send a warning tremor through the earth. "I’m not moving! Do you hear me? I am not moving!"
Red let out a guttural, challenging bleat, squaring up beside him. Together, they held the north.
Whole Dillon, owned the sky.
With a deafening crack of static in the air, his Storm Striders launched him upward from the square, Cloudy spiraling around him in a tight, protective cyclone of static. The airspace above Ashwick was a chaotic minefield. Flocks of Cinder Bats swarmed by the dozens, their wings leaking fiery trails, their swollen bellies pulsing with volatile mana. If even a fraction of them reached the evacuation route, it would be a massacre.
"Cloudy! Gut the center! I’ve got the stragglers!"
Cloudy’s answering shriek was pure electricity. The serpent unleashed a chain of static discharge that carved through the sky like a divine whip. CRACKLE-BOOM. The lightning linked through the densest cluster of bats, overwhelming their volatile cores in a millisecond. A dozen of them simultaneously detonated, lighting the smoke-choked sky in violent blooms of orange and gold. It was a deadly fireworks display, raining harmless ash down onto the fields.
Dillon didn’t wait for the smoke to clear. He triggered [Flash Step], bypassing gravity entirely to materialize above the surviving flock. [Thunder Edge] roared to life, encasing his katana in jagged, blinding arcs of lightning. He plummeted through the swarm like a guillotine blade. His sword carved through three bats in a single, fluid stroke, while the ambient discharge stunned two more. They spiraled out of the sky, convulsing, and detonated harmlessly against the dirt roads below.
Out of the corner of his eye, a stray bat broke formation, folding its wings into a steep dive. Its target was a fleeing family, a mother dragging two children by the hands, sprinting desperately toward the hills.
Dillon’s eyes widened. The Storm Striders flared, burning mana in a violent burst of speed that blurred his physical form. He crossed the distance faster than the bat could fall, intercepting it mere feet above the terrified family. He twisted mid-air, putting his own back between the civilians and the monster.
[Quick Draw] flashed. a singular, perfect line of silver light.
The bat’s core was severed in half. It dissolved into a shower of harmless sparks just inches from Dillon’s face, the kinetic force of his landing kicking up a cloud of ash.
"Keep moving!" Dillon barked, landing in a crouch as he looked back at the family. "You’re almost at the tree line! Don’t look back!"
The mother gave a frantic, tear-streaked nod, tightening her grip on her children as they scrambled up the incline.
Dillon stood, rolling his shoulders as he looked back up at the black, churning sky. More bats were swarming, drawn by the noise and the light. He grinned, the adrenaline drowning out the heat.
"Cloudy! Round two!" he yelled, the ozone crackling off his blade. "Let’s show them what a real storm looks like!"
Cloudy snapped her jaws as the air around them hummed with a lethal voltage as they launched back into the fray.