Chương 134: Universe, You Owe Me One

The serpent hit the line first, and it hit like nothing Ant had ever fought before. It didn't slow down for the first body in its path. Raven's people scattered as best they could, but scattering wasn't the same as escaping a creature that moved that fast, and the serpent went through the nearest of them, Rare-grade shield and all, before anyone had time to shout a warning worth hearing. It kept moving toward the second before the first had finished falling.

Ant recognized her a half-second too late to matter, one of Raven's ten from the crest of the hill hours ago, a face he'd catalogued without a name attached and never gotten the chance to fix that.

"NESSA!" Someone screamed it, one of the other patrol members, and the name meant nothing to Ant and everything to the sudden, sick lurch in his chest. It meant something to Mahkir too. Recognition hit Ant through the bond hard enough to make him stumble a half-step, arriving right behind the horror, and for one terrible moment he understood exactly why.

The girl who used to sneak him scraps of dried meat when nobody at HQ was looking, always pretending she hadn't, always leaving before he could do more than nose at her hand in thanks. The girl who'd scratched behind his ears without asking permission the first week he'd been back from the tournament, unbothered by his fame, treating him like he was just an animal who might like it, which he had. She'd laughed the first time he'd let her lean into it instead of pulling away. She wasn't laughing now.

She wasn't doing anything now, and the serpent had already moved past her toward whatever came next. There was no time to grieve her, not yet. Right now there was only the fact of her not moving, and the thing that had done it still moving, and Mahkir standing over what was left of her with something building in him that Ant had never once seen reach this far before.

Mahkir moved before the system caught up to him, a lunge at the serpent's retreating tail that connected with nothing but air and burned a full second he couldn't afford to lose. He didn't seem to notice. Ant had never seen him fight like that, wasted motion, no calculation in it at all, just raw want aimed at a target that had already moved on. System notification. The voice's register didn't change at all, flat and clinical even here. Emotional Control triggered. Kithren entering berserk state.

All attributes +20%. Mahkir's fur went dark at the edges first, a faint curl of smoke lifting off him as the heat under his skin finally broke through to the surface. His eyes went from amber to a flat, banked coal-red, and the growl that came out of him didn't sound like anything Ant had heard from him before. It came from somewhere lower than his throat, and it didn't stop when he drew breath again. Ant didn't think. He reached for the bond and threw the door open all the way. Attribute Sharing.

System notification. Attribute Sharing active. Combined pool established for three minutes. The numbers arrived whether Ant wanted them mid-fight or not, and for once he let himself actually look. Strength: 117. Agility: 148. Magic: 131. Endurance: 115. HP: 226/226. Mana: 365/365. Higher than anything he'd carried into a fight before, higher than the tournament, higher than any vortex clear.

His muscles answered faster than his own thoughts could finish forming, and he could hear his own heartbeat clearly over everything else happening on the field. It wasn't enough. He knew that immediately: the serpent moving toward Priya's position hadn't slowed down at all, and the heavier one behind it hadn't either. They were still both stronger than he and Mahkir were, even combined. His hand found the greaves without deciding to.

Roulette, he thought, and then, before he could talk himself out of it, remembered the last time. Minus five percent, everything, right when he'd needed it most, a gamble that had failed him instead of paying out. He'd treated it as a debt owed to him ever since, one he'd never expected to actually collect on.

"The universe owes me one," Ant said, out loud, to nobody, and triggered it anyway. 666 Roulette activated. Outcome: +40% to all attributes. Duration: 3: 00. The world went sharp in a way it hadn't been a second earlier. Every sound on the field arrived separately instead of as noise, every motion visible a fraction of a second before it finished. Ant felt his own legs take him forward faster than he'd ever moved, and Mahkir matched him stride for stride, both of them running on the same borrowed fire now.

One of the Rare handlers from the reserve broke toward him, sword already raised, and Ant covered the ground between them before the man had finished deciding on an angle of attack. He didn't stop for him. He didn't need to. A shove with the flat of Soul Render sent the man sprawling into the mud, out of the fight entirely, gone before he'd registered what had actually happened to him. No human still standing on that field was going to slow Ant down tonight, not without a Kithren doing the real work for them.

Every threat left that actually mattered wore scales or claws now. Strength: 164. Agility: 207. Magic: 183. Endurance: 161. HP: 316/316. Mana: 511/511. Three minutes, the voice said, quieter than usual. Use them well. Ant didn't answer. He was already moving toward the serpent, and for the first time since it had broken from the tree line, it looked, for one single heartbeat, like something that might actually notice him coming.

Soul Render met scale and didn't skid off the way it had against everything else on this field. It bit. Not deep, nowhere close to deep enough, but it bit, and the serpent's head snapped toward him with something that might have been the first genuine surprise it had felt all day. In the same breath, the heavier one arrived from the other direction, mud churning under a stride that shook the ground with every step, and Ant found himself pinned between the two of them with no clean way to face both at once.

Mahkir took the heavier one on alone, flame trailing off him in a sheet rather than a spark, buying Ant the half-second he needed to turn fully into the serpent's next strike rather than get caught looking the wrong way. This is what an Epic actually is, Mahkir said, breath ragged even through the bond, even now. One of them, we could actually beat like this. Both at once is a different problem entirely. I know.

The serpent came again, faster this time, testing the new speed it had felt in him a moment ago, and Ant found himself reading the strike before it fully committed, Soul Render already moving to meet it. He caught it on the flat rather than the edge, a jarring impact that traveled up through both arms at once, and used the deflection to put himself half a step to the side rather than square in front of the next strike.

It was a trade, nothing more, his own reserves for a few more seconds of not being dead, and he had no idea yet how many of those trades he had left in him. Behind him, Mahkir met the heavier one's charge head-on rather than dodge it, claws raking a channel of fire down its flank that made it scream in a register Ant felt more than heard. It staggered but stayed upright, nothing short of a killing blow enough to put something that size down, and Mahkir hadn't landed one yet, not with everything he had.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. The two of them worked the fight in opposite directions without needing to discuss it, Ant absorbing the serpent's speed while Mahkir met the heavier one's weight, each of them keeping the other alive for exactly as long as their own opponent allowed it.

Ant felt Strength he'd never had access to before answer the threat without needing to be asked, Soul Render meeting the serpent's next strike and actually holding the line rather than being driven back by it, all while some distant part of his attention stayed locked on Mahkir fighting a second monster of the same grade only a few strides away. For a stretch that felt both endless and nowhere near long enough, Ant understood something he'd never quite let himself believe about the gap between grades.

Rare had been hard. Rare had nearly killed people he loved more than once. This was a different order of danger entirely, and even stacked three skills deep, even pushing harder than either of them had ever pushed before, splitting themselves between two Epics at once meant they were holding rather than winning, and holding was taking everything either of them had left to give.

A Rare, some low, quick-footed thing with a mottled hide built for ambush rather than a straight fight, broke off from harrying Raven's position and came at Ant's flank, fast enough that the old him would never have seen it coming. This him did. Soul Render took its foreleg off at the joint before it finished closing the distance, and the second strike, thrown before it hit the ground, finished what the first one started. XP +310. The number barely registered. There wasn't room left for anything but the fight.

Priya's voice cut across the noise, high and frightened in a way her earlier bravado had never let show.

"Ethan, whatever you're doing, keep doing it!" He didn't have breath to answer her. He didn't need to. Whatever she'd seen change in him and Mahkir, she'd understood enough of it to know it was the only thing keeping any of them alive right now, and that was all she needed to know. Ant knew better than she did exactly how little time it would last, and knowing it wasn't going to feel any better than not knowing had.

Marcus's hawk dove between Ant and a second Rare closing from the left, buying half a second that Ant used to finish the first opponent rather than start a new one, and Ben's Talonstrike screamed overhead a moment later, driving another Rare wide of Raven's exposed side. Priya had planted herself over one of the wounded, refusing to give ground even as a fourth Rare tested her guard twice and came away both times with nothing to show for it. None of it was enough to change the outcome on its own.

All of it together was the only reason anyone was still standing. Ant caught motion in the edge of his vision a half-second too late, one of the smaller Rares breaking off toward him at a low angle he hadn't accounted for, and only Attribute Sharing's stolen speed got him turned in time to take the strike on his forearm rather than his throat. Ant HP: 271/316. A real hit, the first he'd taken clean since the buff stack, and it hurt exactly as much as the number suggested it should.

The heavier one caught Mahkir across the ribs a moment later with a blow that would have ended the fight outright a few minutes ago, and even boosted, even sharing everything Ant had to give him, Mahkir went down hard enough that the ground shook with it. Mahkir HP: 201/316. The number felt like ice water down Ant's spine.

"MAHKIR!" I'm up. He was, barely, claws already digging back into the mud, flame guttering and then catching again along his jaw. Don't stop. If you stop, we both go down. There was no argument in it, no room for one, just the flat fact of what would happen if either of them let this pause even for a second. Ant didn't stop. He couldn't afford to.

He put himself between Mahkir and the next strike, took the impact on Soul Render rather than his own body, and felt the shock of it travel all the way up through his arm and into teeth he hadn't realized he'd been clenching. The serpent circled rather than pressed, patient now in a way it hadn't been at the start, and Ant understood with a cold certainty that it had started treating him as something worth being careful around rather than something to simply run through.

He reached for a skill he hadn't touched all fight, mana pouring down through his own palm rather than through Mahkir's collar, and Flame Fist caught along Soul Render's edge in a line of white-orange heat that hadn't been there a second earlier. The next strike he threw wasn't just steel anymore.

The serpent recoiled from it in a way it hadn't recoiled from anything else all day, scales blackening along a shallow line that would have been nothing on a lesser creature and was, on this one, the first wound it had actually registered as a wound. It didn't slow it down for long. It was still alive, still coming, and no amount of fire was going to change that on its own. Somewhere behind him, Raven's voice rose above the chaos, hoarse and desperate in a way he'd never once heard from her before today.

"We can't hold this! Ant, we can't—" Ray's voice answered before Ant could, ragged but still fighting to sound like itself.

"Then we don't hold it, we survive it! Practically synonymous!" It didn't, not really, and everyone on that field who still had the breath to think knew it. Raven had two Rares circling her now, Shrike bleeding from one wing and still refusing to land, and the only reason she hadn't already gone down was that neither Rare wanted to be the one that closed the distance first.

Ray fought beside her with Striata's claws doing most of the real work, blood running from a cut above his eye that he hadn't found the second to wipe away, still shouting numbers at odds nobody was in a position to appreciate.

The serpent had already turned back toward Ant and Mahkir, done testing the rest of the line now that it understood where the real threat stood, and the heavier one was pulling itself back up from the ground where Mahkir's last strike had actually staggered it, slower to rise than it had been a minute ago but rising all the same. Roulette: 1: 12 remaining. Attribute Sharing: 1: 02 remaining. The voice's update came unprompted this time, and Ant understood exactly why it had decided he needed to know.

Attribute Sharing had gone first. It would run out first too, and when it did, the combined pool split back into two separate, smaller ones whether either of them was ready for that or not. Sixty-two seconds. Sixty-two seconds against two Epics that weren't tired the way he was, weren't running on borrowed numbers that were already counting down toward zero. He didn't have a plan for what came after those seconds ran out beyond the one word he'd already given Priya back before any of this had started: hold.

Mahkir threw himself back into the heavier one's path rather than wait for it to fully rise, catching it half-upright and driving it back down with a strength that hadn't existed in him three minutes ago, flame pouring off him bright enough to turn the mud around them orange. It roared. It didn't get back up as fast the second time.

The serpent used the distraction to come at Ant from an angle he hadn't guarded, and only pure reflex, stolen speed answering a threat his conscious mind hadn't fully registered yet, got Soul Render up in time to turn what should have been a killing strike into a glancing one instead. It still hurt. Ant HP: 238/316. He didn't have breath left to react to the number beyond noting it and moving on.

The sentence never finished, because that was the moment the hillside behind them erupted with new sound, hooves and wingbeats and a roar that didn't belong to anything already on this field. Ant's head came up on pure reflex, half-expecting one more thing to go wrong, and instead saw three towering Kithren crest the ridge at a dead run, each one the size of a house, moving like the ground owed them the space. Andy. Garrick. Natalia. And behind them, smaller and faster, an arrow already nocked, Rebekah.

Hexa hit the ground first, and the sheer weight of the landing sent a tremor through the mud that Ant felt in his own boots from thirty feet away. Ashclaw came in low and fast on Garrick's command, aiming straight for the Rares still worrying at Raven's position, and Cindermaw's roar alone was enough to make the nearer of the two hesitate mid-lunge, buying Raven the half-second she'd been fighting for since the fight opened.

Rebekah's first arrow took a Rare through the eye before anyone else had even registered she was in range. Three Epics, Mahkir said, and for the first time in three impossible minutes, his voice cracked open into something that wasn't fear. The serpent's head turned toward the new arrivals, and for the first time since it had broken from the tree line, it hesitated. Attribute Sharing: 0: 31 remaining.

"NOW!" Ant screamed it with everything he had left, because thirty-one seconds was nothing, and thirty-one seconds was also, suddenly, enough. Andy didn't wait for an invitation, and he didn't go for the nearer target either. Hexa surged past Ant and Mahkir both, straight for the serpent, and Ant understood why a half-second later: that build, that speed, the exact way it coiled before a strike. Sunclaw.

The same Epic that had decisively beaten Hexa at the tournament, four strikes to nothing before the bell, a loss Andy had never once mentioned since. He wasn't here for rescue duty. Hexa hit it with everything that loss had built up, and for the first time all fight, Ant watched a strike land with enough force to actually knock an Epic backward rather than merely stagger it.

Natalia followed a half-step behind, Cindermaw's flame meeting the heavier one's flank from an angle it hadn't accounted for, and between one heartbeat and the next, the math on that field tipped from a fight Ant had been quietly losing to one that might, possibly, be survivable after all.