A group of three came over to Ben.
Their leader, a bulky man in his mid to late thirties with a massive war hammer as his weapon, nodded to him.
“What is this Protectorate you were speaking of?”
Ben pointed at the Protectors and the emblem on his chest. “It is a community we have been building. The systems help us with infrastructure and in turn we jump on missions for them. This is the largest so far but we have done many for them.”
The second guy in the group was a lot leaner and had a katana-style sword at his side. “And where did you get all this fancy gear?” he said with a slightly envious undertone.
“Our community does not just comprise fighters but people from all walks of life. Some have chosen to build on their crafting perks and have become quite good at what they do.”
The last member of the group was a tall woman with short hair and multiple knives fixed to her belt.
“Do you think you are the most powerful of us?” she asked, her tone challenging.
Ben laughed. “I don’t know and I don’t care. The only thing I care about is getting out of here with everyone alive.”
“Good,” their leader said, “then we are aligned. We are also part of group one.”
Ben nodded to them and tried to make his way towards his mother when he saw movement on the right side of the plateau.
One of the scouts, not from the Protectorate, came running back towards them. Ben jogged in her direction.
“What have you found?”
The scout, a woman barely out of her teens, though slightly out of breath, reported succinctly, “One Draknik, about five hundred meters that way,” she pointed slightly up the mountain.
“What can you tell me about them?”
She grimaced in disgust. “Humanoids, at least two meters tall, pure muscle, four arms. Most importantly, they are Tier 2!”
Ben frowned. He should have asked the group how many of them were Tier 2, but he doubted that there were many. He knew that his team was very close, but if they hadn’t made it yet, then it was unlikely that there were many others who had, even though these were the strongest people on the planet.
They had a ratio of five humans to one Draknik. He hoped that would be enough to cover the gap in power from Tier 1 to Tier 2.
He nodded in thanks to the scout. “Hold for one minute then lead group two to the Draknik. Afterwards, continue the scouting and connect with the others who roam the area.”
He turned towards the assembled fighters. “We have found one. The good news is that it’s alone; the bad news is that it’s Tier 2.”
There was murmuring and some uncertainty, but these were not beginners. They were either trained by Barry and others in the Protectorate, or they had fought their way to the top of humanity independently and in that process certainly fought many creatures more powerful than themselves along the way.
“Group two,” he nodded to Cass and Sebastian, “you’re up. Good luck and remember if you have any wounded they are to come back here. Follow your scouts and make sure that none of the Drakniks make it out of the area.”
“And you? You’re just going to sit here and do nothing?”
Ben couldn’t see who from within group two had yelled at him, but it didn’t matter.
He smiled and pointed up the volcano, where the SEALs and Michael were coming back down. “Group one has other plans. Now, move out!”
Cass and Sebastian looked apologetically at him and then directed their team to follow the scout.
Ben turned to the SEALs and Michael and walked towards them to learn what they had found.
Joe’s report was succinct. “We found a camp close to the peak. Twelve Drakniks, all Tier 2. My [Threat Assessment] tells me that they are more dangerous than anything we have ever fought so far. Another three in the caldera, likely conducting the ritual, but inaccessible for us due to heat and intense smoke.”
Ben nodded slowly. “Is anything besides a straight-up assault on the camp possible?”
Michael spoke up. “Only backstabs in the context of an assault, nothing more.”
Joe agreed. “The area is barren, few places to hide. It requires powerful perks to evade detection. To prevent fighting uphill we can flank and then approach on their elevation. That in combination with ranged and stealth is probably the best we can do.”
“Okay, let’s do this.” Ben clapped his hands and turned towards the group of fighters waiting for his decision.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Everyone, listen, we’ve found fifteen Drakniks—twelve in their basecamp, plus the one on the right. That means sixteen out of twenty are accounted for. Group three,” he looked towards the young man he had appointed to lead them, “head out to the left, link up with your scouts, and take out any you can find. Once you have taken out all of them, join us.”
As the group left, he continued, “If there are any among you who have strong stealth capabilities, please step forward.”
Two men, one in his mid thirties, the other easily ten years older, stepped forward.
“Great, you two will accompany the SEALs and Michael. You will go up and right and backstab the Drakniks in the group of twelve once the rest of us, who will go up and left, launch our assault. We need everybody who has a ranged attack to go all out from the very beginning. Allison will call out targets – we’d rather take out a few than wound many who will still be combat capable. We will position people with taunts in a semicircle away from our stealth fighters. Jamal will coordinate, please reach out to him. Frontliners, the Drakniks will likely be more powerful individually than we are, we need to swarm them and take them out quickly, I suspect time is not our friend here. Any questions?”
Ben saw some concerns in people’s eyes but it seemed like the plan was widely accepted.
When no one spoke up Ben nodded to them. “Let’s head out!”
As Ben looked back, only Barry and his team remained with the healers.
They marched quickly up the mountain, with a slight tilt towards the left, and Ben could feel the heat of the volcano increase with every step. The air also grew even worse, making some of their group pull clothes over their noses.
At the height that Joe had indicated earlier, they stopped and people got into the formations that they had discussed earlier.
Another explosion rocked the ground on which they stood before they could make any move. Fortunately, the lava bombs soared above them, but the air got even worse.
According to his understanding, the Drakniks’ camp was around the next corner, about two hundred meters ahead.
When it looked like people were in position, Ben signaled the approach and got into a slow jog that he believed everyone should be able to easily sustain.
As he rounded the corner he saw their enemies for the first time. They had light blue, rubbery skin, stood more than two meters tall and had no visible ears, nose, or hair on their almost perfectly round heads. Instead they sported needle-like teeth and white claws. The scout had said they had four arms; that was only partially true. Beyond two more or less regular arms, they had two appendages growing out of their shoulders. They were much slimmer than their heavily muscled arms and ended in pincer-like hands. Lidless purple eyes completed their appearance. They wore no armor nor weapons, seemingly relying on their bodies for defense and attack.
Draknik. Void-Born. Tier 2.
The moment they rounded the corner the Drakniks’ heads whipped in their direction.
The man with the intricate staff that Ben had noticed earlier was the first to fire off an attack. A thunderous lightning blast detached from the staff and hit one of the Drakniks full on. They were blasted from their feet, a hole in their chest.
Maybe this would be much easier than Ben had thought.
More mages and archers started to launch their attacks. He heard his mother trying to coordinate targets as best as she could.
The Drakniks roared and every one of them formed shimmering oval forcefields between themselves and the incoming attacks. While some started to flicker after having blocked especially intense attacks from the humans, none failed.
The ranged attacks were ineffective.
Ben yelled his command to close the remaining distance for the frontliners – just to be interrupted by the Drakniks bringing their shoulder appendages together in front of them, where the air seemed to condense and, after a second or two, bolts of force formed and streamed towards his troops.
Shields were raised, people dodged, but nonetheless he saw people fall.
He renewed his call to attack and ran forward. Not at his full speed as he didn’t want to disrupt their tenuous formation, but fast enough to close the distance to the Drakniks in seconds.
Some of the creatures tried to form a second force bolt, but fortunately it seemed as if not all of them could or wanted to. Ben also noted that even those that tried took longer to form the force bolts than the first time.
They were not perfect.
Just as he reached his first enemy, being able to move through their force shields unmolested, he heard Jamal’s taunt, and others followed.
His opponent’s eyes flickered for a fraction of a second to the side, not much, but enough for Ben to attempt a slash from left to right – the first with his new axe.
The Draknik seemed to sneer and blocked his attack with the pincer of his left shoulder appendage, and seemed briefly stunned from pain and surprise as Ben’s axe cleanly carved through the pincer, dropping half of it to the ground, blue blood spraying into the already smoke-infested air.
Ben felt intense fighting commencing all around him and Jamal and one other fighter joined him against his opponent.
The Draknik had already recovered and his three healthy appendages attacked in a flurry of motion not just Ben, but also the other fighter. They seemed to be able to direct them independently. Ben ducked and weaved, trying to find an opening. He went back to the basics.
Stand. Breathe. Defend. Defend. Exploit. Enter. Strike.
His strike landed, was blocked, but left another nasty wound.
But they did not escape unscathed. He heard the cries of pain from around him and the fighter by his side, whose armor was lacking, was bleeding from a wound on his left arm.
Behind the Drakniks, he saw Michael and the others emerge for their surprise attack. Michael’s and one of the SEALs’ [Backstab] landed, but the others were detected before they could attack. Nonetheless, the strike had taken out two Drakniks, at least after the follow-up strikes.
Nine left.
Ben did not know how many casualties they had on their side.
One of the Drakniks shouted in their guttural voice – a language that [Multi-Lingual] apparently could not translate.
Movement amongst the lines was the result. It seemed that some of the Drakniks tried to disengage from their fights.
Were they fleeing?
Jamal landed a strike on their opponent, but his axe did limited damage.
Ben saw his mother’s roots trying to grab some of the disengaging Drakniks, but they were too weak.
The SEALs, fighting as a team, were awe-inspiring – but they lacked the ability to deal substantial damage in a direct confrontation.
They needed to make progress.
He had wanted to save it for later, but he activated [Strength of the Protector], then, accepting the hit that came with it, he stepped into his opponent’s reach, shoulder first, then abruptly accelerated into a spin, rammed the leading elbow under his opponent’s arm, and cut deep into the side through the created opening with his axe.
The Draknik sagged to his knees, and Ben ended the fight with a top-down slash on the Draknik’s head.
Eight left.
No, seven. One other seemed to have succumbed to whatever the humans had thrown at it.
Brief elation was drowned by concern as he saw five of the Drakniks come together, ignoring the attacks around them, joining an appendage each above their heads and after a split-second a shockwave exploded from that point.
But it did not move the air, no dust was blown up, no piece of clothing moved. Instead, it hit their minds like a truck.
Ben foresaw their doom.
