For a full, agonizing minute, the interior of the antiquated M4 Sherman was a cacophony of frantic cursing, clanging metal, and the sweat-stink of pure panic. The rookie crew, who had fired their main gun exactly once in their lives, fumbled with the heavy, cumbersome ordnance. Their hands, slick with nervous sweat, struggled to coordinate the loading sequence in the cramped, oily darkness. Breech block, propellant, projectile—each step felt like an eternity. Outside, the world was ending in a symphony of gunfire and screams; inside the steel belly of the tank, time stretched and warped around their incompetence.
Why bother aiming when the world outside was a seething mass of targets? It was a question of instinct, of a wastelander's ingrained drive for maximum efficiency. Every shell was worth a small fortune, a piece of irreplaceable power. Their simple logic dictated that such power should be spent on the biggest, most threatening targets—the hulking, muscle-bound brutes that led the charge, whose very presence seemed to suck the courage from a man's soul.
With a final, desperate heave, the shell was seated. The gunner, peering through the archaic scope at a landscape of leaping shadows, settled the crosshairs on a lumbering behemoth that was swatting men aside like toys. "On target!" he yelled, his voice cracking.
"Fire!" the commander screamed.
The tank shuddered violently, not with the familiar, contained thumpof its main gun, but with a deeper, more visceral convulsion. The entire thirty-ton frame rocked on its suspension like a startled animal. From the muzzle erupted not just flame, but a disproportionately large, angry fireball that lit up the night. The 76mm shell screamed away.
It struck true. The high-explosive projectile connected squarely with the charging brute's torso. For a split second, the creature was a stark silhouette against a blossoming sun of orange and black. Then it ceased to exist. It didn't fall; it disintegrated. A wet, crimson mist sprayed outwards, followed by a shockwave of concussive force and shrapnel that scythed through the packed ranks around it, dropping a dozen more infected like rotten wheat. The effective kill zone was impressive, a gory clearing roughly two hundred square feet in diameter.
A ragged, desperate cheer went up from the nearby defenders. Inside the tank, the crew whooped with a mixture of terror and elation. They had done it! They were warriors!
Any professional artilleryman witnessing the shot would have felt his blood run cold, not with fear of the enemy, but with horror at the act itself. The shell they had fired was not standard tank ordnance. In their ignorance, they had loaded a naval round, scavenged from some forgotten armory. The distinction was critical: naval shells, designed for extreme range, were packed with a more powerful propellant charge. Firing it from the Sherman's aged, pitted barrel was like asking a grandmother's porcelain teacup to contain a grenade blast. The pressures involved were all wrong, a brutal fist hammering a tube of metal already fatigued by decades and rust.
The gun was a time bomb now. The only question was how many more shots it would tolerate before the breech exploded, turning the armored vehicle into a coffin of white-hot shrapnel. But no one in the camp, from the desperate commander to the celebrating crew, possessed this knowledge. And even if they had, the calculus of survival would have remained the same: fire, or be overrun.
Michael, meanwhile, had finally wrestled the 'Demon-Slayer' armor into action. The powered exoskeleton whined in protest as it took its first clanking steps from the back of the truck, hydraulics hissing. The first thing he saw through the reinforced viewplate was the Sherman's spectacular, gory fireworks display. A surge of fierce, wild hope shot through him. "The gunner in the tank!" he bellowed over the external speakers, his voice metallic and distorted. "Whoever you are, that was beautiful! You get first crack at the rewards when this is over! Rocket teams, stop gawking! Fire! Grenadiers, to the berm! Light them up!"
He turned the armored suit, its movements still somewhat jerky under his novice control, and stomped towards the crumbling front line. As he moved, he triggered the twin 12.7mm heavy machine guns mounted on the suit's arms. The sound was deafening, a continuous, ripping roar that drowned out all but the largest explosions. Tracer fire etched brilliant red lines into the darkness, stitching a wall of lead across the no-man's-land.
The infected, with their unnaturally tough, leathery hide, were not immune. Where the massive rounds struck, they didn't just puncture; they excavated. Fist-sized chunks of flesh and bone were torn away in sprays of black ichor. A creature might take ten, twelve, even fifteen hits before its structural integrity failed and it collapsed, but the sheer volume of fire from the walking weapons platform was catastrophic. In a thirty-meter arc before Michael, the infected charge faltered, then stalled, piling up in a writhing, shrieking heap of mangled bodies. It was as if a tidal wave had smashed against a concrete sea wall.
Between the tank's occasional, earth-shaking blasts, Zak's roaring, berserk rampage with his girder-club, the chattering of multiple machine guns, the frantic rattle of assault rifles, the thwapof crossbows and the thunkof hurled axes, and now the sudden, whooshing trails of rocket-propelled grenades, the main defensive line—dubbed 'Position One'—somehow held. The bodies of the fallen infected began to form a low, gruesome berm of their own, making the footing treacherous for those behind. The defense, for a fleeting, desperate moment, seemed to be solidifying.
Michael, however, felt no relief. His mind was a cold calculator of consumption. Ammunition counters flickered in his helmet's display. The heavy machine guns would overheat, their barrels warping. The rockets were few. The tank's miraculous shells were not infinite. This was a spending spree with a fast-approaching bankruptcy.
He never got to finish the grim math. Before the ammo counters on his own suit's guns had even drained halfway, a new, piercing scream erupted from the radio receiver strapped to his shoulder inside the cockpit.
"Behind us! Something's in the camp! Oh god—its speed—it's impossible!"
Michael wrenched the suit's upper torso around, servos whining in protest. The view through the rear-facing cameras made his blood freeze.
He moved with a grace that was obscene. A white man in middle age, dressed in an immaculate, if now slightly dusty, black three-piece suit, complete with a waistcoat and a neatly knotted tie. He cut through the rear areas of the camp—the supposed safe zone—like a scythe through grass. His movements were a blur, a series of dashes and pivots that defied the eye. He didn't fight; he harvest. As two conscripts lunged at him with their makeshift steel spears, he simply flowed between them. A hand flicked out, fingers extended. The men stumbled, then fell, their heads tumbling from their shoulders a moment later, faces still locked in expressions of determined fury.
The warning had come from a veteran Guardsman. The man had reacted with admirable speed, bringing his assault rifle to bear and emptying half a magazine on full-auto at the apparition. It did precisely nothing. The suited man—the thing—seemed to lean, twist, and sway just ahead of the bullet stream, each motion economical and unhurried. Not a single round grazed his fine wool suit. He didn't even bother to kill the guardsman. Instead, as if annoyed by the distraction, he darted towards a higher mound of earth where a sniper team was positioned.
A cry, cut horrifically short. Then another, from a different direction. The suited man was moving with methodical, terrifying purpose. He was surgically removing the camp's eyes—the snipers and lookouts on elevated positions. Michael, his heart hammering against his ribs, pushed the throttle to its limit. The suit lurched forward, its guns traversing, trying to lead the blur. He fired, the heavy rounds chewing up the ground, shattering a makeshift barricade, but always a fraction of a second behind, a few inches to the side. The snipers scrambled, threw themselves from their perches, but it was like mice trying to flee a hawk. A third sniper, a grizzled veteran from the original base, died with a hole clean through his chest and back.
Despair, cold and slick, coiled in Michael's gut. This thing could pick them all off, one by one. It was a predator they couldn't touch, couldn't even see clearly. In that moment, he hated his own weakness with a ferocity that stunned him. If he were a Level Five, a Level Six… if he had realpower, not just this borrowed metal shell…
The slaughter was interrupted by a figure who stepped directly into suited man's path to the next sniper's nest. It was Captain Liu, his weathered face set in a grim mask. He held his rifle steady, firing controlled, futile bursts. "Over here, you pretty bastard!" he roared, his voice rough with defiance.
The men in suits altered his course without breaking stride. He was upon Liu in an instant. A contemptuous, casual flick of the wrist. Captain Liu's rifle fell silent. He staggered, a hand going to his throat, where a fine red line appeared. Then he fell.
But as he fell, a grim, satisfied smile touched his lips. His other hand, hidden by his body, released its grip on four pull-rings.
The men in suits, already turning to his next target, was ten feet away when Captain Liu's body disappeared in a sudden, concussive whumpof sound and light. Four grenades, strapped to his chest, detonated as one. Shrapnel and cloth shreds peppered the area. Suited man was thrown forward, a slight stumble marring his perfect poise. His beautiful suit was torn and scorched across the back. More importantly, the blast wave had rattled him. His preternatural speed faltered, just for a heartbeat.
It was the opening Richard the half-elf needed. He had been waiting, an arrow notched on his powerful bow, his breathing stilled. He had no magical, armor-piercing rounds left for his rifle. But he had this. He drew the bowstring back, past his ear, further than any human could, the wood groaning in protest. His face paled, and the veins in his arms stood out like cords. A faint, silvery glow—not true elemental power, but the very essence of his life force, his qi—coalesced around the arrowhead. With a final, agonized gasp, he let fly.
The arrow left the bow with a sound like a thunderclap. It was not a physical projectile; it was a bolt of concentrated will and stolen vitality. It crossed the distance in a streak of pale light.
The men in suits, still recovering from the blast, twisted with that impossible speed. But he was a fraction too slow. The silvery arrow took him high in the thigh, punching clean through with a spray of dark, almost black blood. He let out a hiss—the first sound of pain or annoyance he had made—and clutched at the wound. The glow from the arrow sizzled against his flesh, causing him to shudder. His speed was halved, then halved again. He was still faster than any man, but now he was within the realm of the conceivable.
Richard slumped against a tire, his bow clattering to the ground, his face the color of parchment. He wouldn't be firing another shot today, perhaps for weeks. The cost had been immense.
But he had bought a chance. A fleeting, blood-soaked, brutally expensive chance.
Michael saw it. He saw the suited monster limping, his elegant facade shattered, his invincibility broken by sacrifice and a desperate, magical shot. The cold despair in his gut was scalded away by a white-hot rage. This was the moment. The only one they would get.
Gritting his teeth so hard he thought they might crack, Michael slammed the throttle forward. The armored suit's engines screamed in protest as he charged, a ten-ton knight in mechanized plate, aiming to crush the king who had dared walk among his pawns. He would not waste the opening bought with Captain Liu's life and Richard's spirit. Not if it killed him.