Deacon bolted forward, twin short swords burning more intensely as a result of his emotions. The Carnifex Ghoul shrieked in challenge and launched itself at him like a freight train. Steel met bone in a fiery clash. Sparks flew. The ghoul's claws came down, to which Deacon twisted, parried, then drove a sword into its ribcage.
The ghoul roared in his face and threw him to the concrete with all its weight. Deacon gritted his teeth as he felt his shoulder slam into the concrete and did his best to keep the loud crack he heard from out of his mind. Rolling on his shoulder, he used the momentum of the ghoul's throw to spin back up and sever one of its forearms at the joint.
Behind him, Esmerelda whispered a spell under her breath, and a glowing arcane ring flared behind her.
"Spirits of wind and wrath, I call upon thee – Pierce!"
She thrust her palm forward. A whip of air, sharp as glass, cracked out and struck the Wretch Binder, slicing through its chest mid-chant. Its spell shattered, but it hissed and redirected its attention to her.
"I got you!" Jass shouted, spinning her glaive in an arc and slamming it into the Bloodhound as it lunged toward Esmerelda. The beast yelped, bone fracturing under the blow, but it didn't stop.
It twisted upon itself and wrapped itself around Jass' torso like a constrictor, fangs snapping inches from her face. With a grunt, Jass struggled to pull it away from her face with her physical strength, but with the help of a spear of stone that she conjured to pierce through its stomach, it stilled for a moment. And that moment was all she needed to yank it away before impaling her glaive straight through its side and into the dirt.
"Magic, bitch," she muttered, remembering a line Deacon had said back when she first met him and he set himself as top dog in class C. She'd quite liked it.
The Gnome Ironback charged, shield raised.
"Esme, move!" Deacon shouted.
She leapt aside just in time as the Elite barreled through where she had stood, demolishing two server racks. Arcane shields flared briefly around her legs as she skidded to a stop, still standing.
"Could use some help here!" she yelled.
Deacon, breathing hard, ducked under another wild slash from the Carnifex Ghoul, then screamed as he drove both blades, crossed, in a blazing X into its throat. Fire exploded outward as its head split open in a geyser of burning blood.
It collapsed with a wet thud, staining his leather boots a dark, murky red.
*[Carnifex Ghoul – Elite Mutant Lv 6] has been slain – XP has been given.*
"One down!" Deacon barked, his leather armor covered in blood as he ripped out its Beastcore and stuffed it inside a pouch.
"Two!" Jass roared, planting her boot on the writhing Bloodhound's back and ripping both her glaive free in a spray of dark gore and its Beastcore, tossing it to Deacon, who pocketed it as he rushed toward the Wretch Binder.
Raising both its hands to the sky, the Wretch Binder leaped away from Deacon's dual stabs at its midsection.
With its mouth stretching far too wide, it chanted in a gurgling, insectile tongue, and glyphs spiraled across the floor. Half a dozen mutants around it, both beast and human, froze mid-charge and began to change.
Joints cracked and reversed. Skin hardened into plates. Some grew extra mouths while others grew extra limbs.
"Shit, its mutating them even further," Jass breathed.
"Kill it before it finishes!" Deacon roared as he cut through the mutants blocking his way.
Jass threw her glaive like a javelin.
It shot through the air, spinning in a deadly spiral, but the Wretch Binder was faster. One of its arms whipped out and caught the glaive by its shaft, its fingers curling around it like metal clamps. It hissed, lips peeling back to reveal teeth that didn't belong in any human mouth.
It pulled.
The glaive flew back toward Jass like a slingshot.
She barely ducked in time, the glaive scraped her cheek as it embedded in the wall behind her.
"Ah fuck!" she shouted. "It has Telekinesis!"
Esmerelda's lips pressed tightly against themselves as she reached into the pouch on her belt. She drew out a dark violet square crystal that the spirits had guided her to take on Day One.
"Dropping a Disruption Hex Crystal," She announced. "Clear away."
The air shimmered as she threw the crystal in an arc above the Wretch Binder. Mid-air, it cracked, releasing a burst of ethereal chains that wrapped around its body, binding its arms to its sides. Its mutation chant stopped, and the glyphs under the lesser mutants flickered and broke.
"Kill it now!" Esmerelda shouted as she struggled to keep the hex active.
Deacon didn't need to be told twice as he tore through the mutants in his path. The Wretch Binder shrieked and tried to break free, but Esmerelda's hex held fast.
Deacon slid beneath one of its flailing legs, rose behind it, and jammed both swords upward into its lower back. They punched through its ribcage and out through its chest, but Deacon didn't stop there. He dragged the blades down, spraying black blood on himself.
*[Wretch Binder – Elite Mutant Lv 5] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
It leveled up?... Ah fuck.
"Watch your ten!" Jass shouted, retrieving her glaive just in time to slice through one of the enhanced mutants now charging her. Its jaw had split down the middle into mandibles.
It shrieked as it lunged, and Jass countered with a twisting uppercut slash that bisected it, spraying blood all along the side of her body. She grimaced as he felt the blood soak the left side of her face and get on her hair.
The others lunged at them, two flanking Deacon, one bounding toward Esmerelda.
Esmerelda snapped her fingers, and a flame ward burst around her feet. The enhanced mutant was mid-air when it hit the barrier and ignited like a torch.
Deacon ducked under a claw swipe and used his momentum to flip the creature over his shoulder, slamming it headfirst into a server unit with a crunch. The second one bit into his shoulder armor, he grunted and drove a blade through its sternum, holding it there as its eyes dimmed.
Jass moved like a cyclone. Her glaive became a blur, each motion clean, practiced, brutal. She dispatched three more before she finally caught her breath, planting the blade into the floor to steady herself.
"Still got one," Esmerelda said, eyes flicking toward the last Elite who stood, watching them in silence as they dispatched the three other Elites.
But now its yellow eyes locked onto Deacon and charged.
"Move!" Esmerelda shouted.
Deacon rolled aside just as the Gnome Ironback plowed through the spot where he'd stood, reducing server racks to sparking rubble. It swung its shield like a hammer, crashing into the wall and cratering the reinforced concrete.
"New plan," Jass muttered. "We can't brute force that shield. We need to outmaneuver it."
"I can distract it," Deacon said, eyes flicking toward Esmerelda. "You and Jass will kite it while also trying to find its weak spot or a way to get rid of its shield."
Esmerelda already had another spell charging between her hands. The air around her began to shimmer as it began to saturate in her mana.
"You don't gotta tell me twice," she said, grinning as she began to cast a barrage of Wind Arrows.
The Gnome Ironback turned with heavy steps, prepping for another charge.
And the trio moved in perfect sync.
***
Rami Dole was mid-incantation when the hairs on his neck suddenly stood upright, and he wasn't the only one who felt this way, as several of the cadets crouched beside him on the roof of a half-collapsed parking structure, similarly frozen.
"…You feel that?" one of them muttered.
Rami didn't answer. His gaze was drawn across the ruined skyline of Seattle. This was where his family claimed their roots to be. He found the old house his ancestors had spoken of. He'd found everything inside it to be exactly as how his ancestors had said it to have contained.
The talismans, ritual books, the angel feather, everything.
Oh, how he couldn't wait to report the news to his head of house.
… but that would have to wait, as he had a Floor Boss to kill.
A boom echoed across the city like the launch of a cannonball from a cannon.
And then… silence.
Until a massive, clawed hand tore free from the tower's peak, blackened bone and molten muscle scraping metal and glass like nails on a chalkboard. A second arm followed, its elbow adorned with jagged spikes, each one steaming with mana. Then came the head, snarling, twisted, and inhuman.
"By the System…" an Archer whispered as his eyes glowed light green.
It dragged itself fully out, coated in layers of bone armor and fungal covered flesh. Its spine split open as it rose, sending plumes of steam into the sky.
A roar erupted from its chest.
Glass shattered across blocks. Dust and rust peeled off every old-world surface in a ten-mile radius.
And that's when the real slaughter began.
A dozen cadets moved cautiously through the broken streets near the ruined tower, weapons drawn, eyes everywhere, except the one place that mattered.
Above.
With a shriek of steel and stone, the Floor Boss tore free of its prison at the tower's peak, dragging its grotesque body up and over the edge. And then, without warning, it launched itself down.
It hit the ground like a meteorite from space.
The street caved in under its weight. Pavement rippled. Cars flipped. Shockwaves flattened everything in a two-block radius.
The cadets below didn't stand a chance.
One was impaled on a jagged, obsidian-colored claw, lifted into the air, then hurled against a crumbling wall with a wet crack. Another barely got her hands up to cast a barrier before a bone-scythe arm cleaved her in two, her glyphs unraveling into sparks mid-air.
A few fought back, both out of reflex and out of desperation.
Frost spells shattered across its shoulder. A mana rifle bolt hit square in the jaw, slightly singeing its mask-like skull. Three enchanted discs sliced at its flank, but they barely sank into its hardened flesh.
The Floor Boss didn't stop.
It reared back, chest glowing, and unleashed a mana-infused roar, a taunting shockwave of hatred and hunger. The buildings nearby buckled.
Across the city, mutants froze.
Then, one by one, they howled in return.
From rooftops. From sewers. From the rubble. Thousands of warped voices answered, bound by instinct to the apex predator now risen.
The Floor Boss had made its move.
And the city turned into a flood of teeth, claws, and death, all of it rushing to serve their king.
***
Deacon drove his blade into the twitching corpse of the Gnome Ironback, twisting until the last spasms stopped. Blood hissed where it met the mana-imbued steel. His breath came in ragged pulls, the afterburn of the Lesser Beastblood Tonic still crawling through his veins like fire.
I have about two minutes left before it runs out of juice, Deacon noted to himself.
"That makes all four," Jass muttered, dragging the blunt end of her glaive against the concrete, cracking mutant skulls as she limped back into formation beside them. "For a level four, this guy was tough."
*[Gnome Ironback – Elite Mutant Lv 4] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
Esmerelda nodded, her palms still glowing faintly, the protective shield around them flickering into nothing. "Yeah."
And then… the ground shook.
A tremor, subtle at first, similar to how a subway deep beneath the earth would feel if you were atop of it, but that tremor grew.
Then the sky roared.
All three froze. Deacon's knuckles went white around his hilt. Jass dug her heels into the dirt, and Esmerelda slowly turned her head toward the largest tower in the city, her eyes narrowing in response.
From across the city, a deep, impossibly loud roar ripped throughout the ruined city.