Twenty seconds until the cannons could fire again.

  Adarin launched himself off the ground toward the barricade—toward where the mages had their little dugout.

  He barreled through soldiers and corpses alike, a wooden avalance forcing his way up the barricade—five enemy mages spread out just beyond. The moment he reached them, his world exploded.

  A bright flash—then pain. Half his legs were ripped off the top of the wooden barricade as soil and splinters of wood erupted to one side. It felt like getting hit with a flashbang.

  He frantically reordered his combat space until he located the mage. Two hands outstretched, pointing at him like they were cradling an invisible bomb. Another spark of white energy began collecting between them. Some sort of fucking explosive attack.

  Adarin shot out a Rootwhip on reflex.

  He assessed the situation while he moved in for the kill. Five enemy mages. Mr. Bright was in the back. Another had hands wreathed in fire. Two women were radiating that strange blue shimmer indicating defensive techniques. And the last—large, muscular, bare-chested, holding a greatsword with on hand. In his other hand: liquid gold. He pressed it to his chest, and it spread across his body like molten light.

  Invoker. Living weapon. Johan’s warning echoed: dangerous melee casters, hard to kill.

  Adarin’s next few Rootwhips lashed out toward his targets.

  He dashed sideways to avoid the Pyromancer, who was already closing in with her burning hands. That might actually fuck my body up.

  The fire wasn’t orange or yellow. It was white—hovering at the border between blue and violet. Incandescent.

  And for the first time, Adarin figured out how their defensive spells worked.

  Not shields—point defense. The two women flicked their hands, launching blue globules that burst against his Rootwhips midair.

  The shimmer reformed around the women instantly, a second skin of protection. Fuck.

  Then the Invoker was on him. Two fast steps. Sword raised overhead. He brought it down like a cleaver. Adarin snapped one of his legs up in defense, angling it to catch the blade from below.

  The impact was brutal. It carved two handfuls of Living Wood out of his leg—but the angle was enough. The sword deflected, cleaving into the ground.

  Another white flash. The spark mage had cast again.

  But to Adarin’s surprise, the Pyromancer and the Invoker stumbled and blinked in disorientation, shielding their eyes. Realization hit. Those idiots have never fought together before.

  Adarin smirked and launched another volley—four Rootwhips toward the two defensive casters, one straight at the Pyromancer’s head.

  Timer: fifteen seconds.

  The ploy worked.

  The defensive shimmer was spent countering the attacks aimed at the support mages.

  The Rootwhip hit the Pyromancer straight in the throat. But instead of the squelch of wet blood—crack. An amulet around the Pyromancer’s neck shattered like glass, and a new shimmer formed instantly around her, blocking Adarin’s hit before it landed.

  The retaliation followed with the inevitability of a runaway train.

  A globule of liquid fire shot straight at him.

  He barely dodged in time—and an unlucky zombie behind him went up like a torch, flailing in silent agony. Too close.

  Adarin checked the time again. Only two seconds had passed. Thirteen seconds left. Shit. I really am saying that too much these days.

  One of the shielding mages slashed her hand sideways—Adarin’s world went white. His sensors overloaded wherever the beam seared across him.

  Laser strike. Or something similarly good at killing sensors. Even more fuck.

  A quarter of his optical combat sphere went blind. The damaged sectors screamed for reconstruction. He recalled the goblin Shaman’s acid. Not again.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Adarin cursed, his face contorting into a rictus grin of rage and elation.

  Yet, before he could formulate a battle plan, the Invoker was on him again—greatsword flashing with short, controlled hacks and thrusts. It carved into his frame. The manipulator he had blocked with earlier splintered like sapwood under the blade. The fourth strike took it off.

  Adarin scrambled backward—just in time to see the Pyromancer closing in from the flank. A torus of flame spun around both her hands, elongating into something like a deadly hula hoop his spectrometer confirmed his worst fears: gamma ray emmisions—a miniature fusion plasma ring. He could feel the heat even from here.

  She closed the distance. His skin began to sear. There was no pain for Adarin. Only the alert of structural damage. Not that pain would’ve stopped me.

  He spotted reinforcements spilling over the fifth barricade out of the second gatehouse—pikemen and musketeers, advancing in formation, cutting down the undead.

  ‘Liora. Get ready.’ He sent the message over the noospheric link.

  Another glance at the timer.

  Nine seconds.

  The Pyromancer and Invoker closed on him from both sides.

  Adarin did a rapid scan of the battlefield: churned-up ground littered with corpses. Undead trying to regroup. Mages yelling. Pikemen and musketeers forming up—tight formations, well-drilled.

  He wasn't spared their less than amicable attention. A few dozen pikemen closed in on him instead of the general melee. Some fucking sergeant is taking too much initiative. I hate thinking enemy subordinates.

  He realized it just as a volley of bullets slammed into his frame. Only a few penetrated more than a couple centimeters, but the metal lodged inside him, grinding against wooden muscle fibers, stiffening his movements. I'll get pinned and slaughtered.

  Adarin growled. Fuck this.

  He braced—then launched himself with all the strength left in his legs straight into the rear position of the mage formation.

  The one with the bright spell, crouched low in the dugout, barely had time to gape.

  Adarin landed on him with both feet. One leg sank deep into the man’s chest cavity.

  First down.

  He roared—rage distorting his voice—as the Pyromancer and Invoker scrambled down the barricade after him. The Pyromancer was fast, hands burning with his spinning torus of white flame. The Invoker crouched, preparing to leap.

  Adarin didn’t wait. He unleashed a continuous stream of Rootwhips at one of the two defensive mages.

  The first five were deflected.

  The sixth was parried as well.

  But the seventh—less direct and on an oblique angle—got through. A whip struck her shoulder. Blood splattered, and the woman screamed.

  The eighth lash was aimed at her forehead. It carved a long, deep wound.

  Within a second, her face was soaked in red. Head wounds bleed hardest. I remembered that from knife training. Go for the scalp. Disables vision.

  Five seconds.

  The pikes reached him.

  The Invoker descended from above—like a basketball player coming in for a slam, but with a sword the size of a small coffin.

  Adarin whirled—legs and Rootwhips thrashing, fending off the advancing ring of spearpoints.

  Another laser blast—he lost 17% more of his visual feed. Blinding, searing, disruptive.

  Pikes locked him in place.

  Three seconds.

  Strike by strike, the Invoker carved into Adarin’s torso. Another leg gone.

  Two seconds.

  Another slash arced toward his last limb. The blade dunk in deep, jarringly colliding with his computronium core.

  And then—‘Guns are ready,’ Devin said, dry as ever.

  Somewhere in the distance, the artillery rumbled.

  Adarin felt the Invoker plant his hob-nailed boot on his chest, trying to extricate the greatsword embedded deep in his body.

  Adarin twisted—defiant—even now. Refusing to give the bastard a clean pull.

  Then came the sound: the rising whistle of incoming death. The whoosh of air displaced. The panicked screams of men.

  The world erupted—cannonfire Adarin had bought precious seconds for. Earth and splinters rained as the barricade disintegrated.

  The shockwave shattered his world. He felt a daze overcome the clarity of his thoughts. What just—?

  He replayed the moment in his visual memory buffer. A cannonball had grazed one of his legs.

  The fire had been focused on him. Good call. I'll need to praise Devon later.

  The Invoker still stood there—sword still buried in Adarin.

  But his torso was missing.

  The man collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

  The Pyromancer had been impaled—an arm-length wooden splinter jutting from her gut. She was screaming, trying desperately to pull it out, covered in blood.

  The two defensive mages had retreated to the barricade in the last meele—bad move. They’d been buried by its collapse. One hand still stuck out of the rubble, twitching. The other woman lay on the ground nearby, a pool of blood soaking the dirt beneath her skull.

  The pikemen? Gone. Torn apart.

  Only the Bright Mage still stood—hands glowing, eyes wide, sparks dancing in his palms.

  He looked around. Alone. Disoriented. A fortuitous survivor.

  He hesitated. Adarin didn’t.

  Two Rootwhips lashed his throat, knotting tight. The mage clawed helplessly as his windpipe collapsed and his spine cracked.

  He dropped like a sack of meat.

  Adarin dismissed the whips and turned.

  Down the alleyway, battle still raged on one side. On the other, artillery had reaped its toll.

  ‘Liora. Now commit the reinforcements.’

  But then—Liora said something over the link that made Adarin’s mouth go dry.

  ‘No.’

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