[Fireball], [Fireball], [Fireball].

  I did it on instinct, the three balls of fire emanating in front of me giving me the feeling of standing in front of the open door of an oven. They were no bigger than the palm of my hand. I was hoping this was one of those cases where size didn’t matter. I pushed my palms out, like I was pushing the fireballs away, directing them at the oncoming stampede that were now running up the hill towards us, though they hadn’t started charging yet. I was sure they would when they got hit by the fireballs.

  My actions left the rest of them no choice. Not that we really had one anyway. Even had we turned and retreated, have you ever seen one of those nature documentaries of bovines charging? It would be touch-and-go whether we’d cover enough distance to get away before they got tired.

  Carmen calmly set herself down beside me. Her hunter class passively allowed for any ammunition she was using to scale in damage to her rank. Davies and his team set up similar to Carmen, to my other side but they weren’t hunter classes. From what I understood, they were waiting for the scientists to determine an optimal path before they selected abilities.

  My fireballs struck two of the bulls towards the centre of the formation, the fire dissipating into the air, leaving behind singed fur, but the bulls continued on. The two that had been hit were a little slower though – clearly, they were hurt. I sent out another three fireballs at those two and placed a [Gravity Circle] and a [Frost Circle].

  Both had a 2.5 metre radius now, which wasn’t much against the sub two hundred metre line of deranged animals coming at us, but you know what? Every little helps. The effects were more powerful now, three bulls being stopped in their tracks on the [Gravity Circle], the cows behind them smacking into their backs. A similar thing happened with the [Frost Circle], the three slowed enough that it caused issues for the cows behind that began to try to run around them. The two bulls in between my circles fell as the fireballs struck, but the cows and sheep and deer behind them showed no remorse, stamping on the charred remains as the large mass were full-on charging at us.

  Carmen, sitting near my feet to steady her aim, fired a short burst at the furthermost bull to the right. Three rounds whistled through the air, and when they hit the bull she had been aiming at, it fell, crashing into the ground in a flurry of torn grass and dirt. She moved onto the next target to it left. Aimed. Fired. Three more rounds. One more kill. She would be using [Hunter’s Mark], increasing her accuracy and the damage of her ammo. It also allowed her to see through stealth or invisibility, though that wasn’t a problem here.

  The five men to my left, as well as Kian and Charlotte were also thinning the ranks on that side, though they were using a full mag, sometimes a mag-and-a-half for each animal they were dropping. I continued firing out the fireballs, slowing down the beasts to left and right where I could, and the others were picking up on my circles, and taking down the affected prey, but none of it was slowing down the charge, their hooves thundering across the ground, soil being thrown up in their wake, clouds of dust following them ominously.

  They were running at us in lines of twenty, stretching all the way to the bottom of the hill, but as they closed the distance, between us we were knocking down the front lines, but their sheer numbers would eventually overwhelm us. Kaelyn was standing beside Carmen, waiting to get involved but the beasts were still too far for her melee abilities to be of much use. From the corner of my eye, I could see the other teams to the south running towards us, hoping to cover the distance and come to our aid, but they would be too late. It would be over long before they got here.

  I threw out more fireballs, but no more circles. I had set the reset point back at the house before we set out earlier, but my mind was on another solution. Last night I had created a construct that was ten metres wide. The line of bulls and stags and their female counterparts that followed behind was about twenty metres wide and stretched further back maybe seventy or eighty metres. That was maybe a bit too ambitious, but if I could stop the first one or two rows, then my team could take care of them.

  “Carmen. Kian. Swap sides. I’m gonna try something, and if it works, I need Kaelyn and Kian to take care of the right side. I mean. It’s gonna work, but I need you two on this side.”

  They didn’t question it, stopped firing, and crossed behind me before setting about their business again. Davies and his team didn’t stop firing, the gunfire loud in my ears. Carmen was getting particularly good at this, and with her and the other six on my left, I felt confident in trying to slow down at least three quarters of the line. Kian and Kaelyn would need to take care of the rest that came at us.

  “Charlotte, you need to get on this side as well so you can heal them.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  She crossed over and then I looked out over the stampede that were close enough that I could tell one from the other instead of the coloured mass that seemed to writhe as one. I focused, willing those familiar anchors with the threads between them and I pushed myself, creating a rectangular construct ten metres wide and as tall as the oncoming onslaught. The rectangle only had four anchor points at the corners about twenty metres from where I was. There would be no storing mana here for some effect later. I pushed the anchor points out further – first, another metre, then two, then three, then five until I made it stretch across the entire area that I needed it to cover, encompassing the entirety of the stampede. They were close to it now. A few metres at most.

  My breathing was ragged. Sweat beaded on my brows. My arse cheeks clenched like I was in prison. The others continued their gunfire, the bullets echoing through the spring air, bulls and stags dropping, whilst the ones behind crushed the fallen. The dust from the hooves thundering across the ground looked more like a low-lying brown cloud with how close they had come.

  There was one last thing to do to complete the construct. I mirrored the rectangle and placed that closer to me, mere feet from where I stood, so now it was a three-dimensional rectangular prism.

  I reached out to as much mana as I could handle, forcing it into the construct I had made, pushing as much of the turquoise threads as I could through one of the anchor points, forcing it through the threads connecting it to the others and when the rectangular edge was full, the entirety of the inside of the construct was filled with turquoise, waiting for the first row to enter.

  I stood there, arms out like I could physically stop the stampede, but I was steadying my body against the surge of mana that flowed through me into my construct. I could feel a little pain in my legs, niggles in my hips. A small trickle of blood from my nose.

  The beasts at the front hit my spell and as they passed into the turquoise mana-filled prism that only I could see, they slowed, maybe to a tenth of the speed that they had been running. They looked like they were trying to wade through viscous liquid. There was a moment’s hesitation from the team firing, but they adjusted. Gunfire roared through the air and…also slowed as the bullets hit the construct on the side closer to us.

  I concentrated. Focused the mana to only slow the stampede and not the bullets. It was like commanding an invisible army, as the mana conformed to my will, the turquoise mana that filled the whole cuboid peeling back and applying only to the stampede as it entered the other side. As the mana pulled back, the bullets immediately flew at the speed that they should be and at the other end, every bull or stag or sheep that entered had a thin turquoise sheen applied to it and for as long as they were in the prism, they slowed.

  My right leg buckled with the effort, but I held the construct. The mana poured through me like a raging torrent. A long dormant volcano that had suddenly erupted, channels of magma forcing its way to the exit. Sweat poured from me. I could feel my clothes drenching like I was taking a shower. But I needed more. A final effort. A final push. I extended the construct further so it would pull more of the beasts in.

  “Kian. Kaelyn. You’re up,” I said through gritted teeth, every word a struggle. “The rest of you. Try not to hit them.”

  Kaelyn and Kian both sprang into action charging to the right of the pack. Both were melee, so they needed to get close. Charlotte ran after both of them. Kaelyn was stronger, better-trained, so hopefully she’d be able to look after herself without taking significant damage. Charlotte would keep Kian alive through whatever damage he was about to take.

  Davies and his team also moved, further to the left, walking closer to the construct. They wouldn’t be affected if they walked into it, but I could see they were angling themselves so they wouldn’t hit the other two, as well as moving further down. They could see the toll it was taking on me to keep the animals slowed and they were moving to take full advantage of it whilst they could.

  Carmen remained where she was, calmly picking off the ones down the middle, as Davies’ team cleared the left side, and Kian and Kaelyn cleared the right. Kaelyn ducked and weaved between the slowed beasts with a flash of silver and wherever she walked, an animal fell. She danced amongst them on the right, and any she missed was picked up by Kian, using [Charge] to close the distance before he hit them with his [Iron Fist], an ability that did extra damage for a few seconds. He’d be able to reapply it for as long as his own mana held out. Charlotte stood further back, eyes focused on the both of them as she played her support role.

  I was barely able to breathe.

  I didn’t know how long it had been, but the stampede was being thinned out. The stags and the bulls were all but gone, with a few realising what was happening and trying to divert to left and right but being caught by my team.

  I just needed to hold on a little longer. Carmen continued shooting calmly. A burst of fire. Another cow in the middle down. Another burst. A sheep keeled over. Every now and then, she needed to reload, flicking the old magazine away as she jammed in the new one.

  I was down on my knees now. The torrent raging through me was slowing. It became a river, then a stream, then merely a trickle. I blinked my eyes furiously, opened myself to the mana around me, trying to draw more but it wasn’t possible. My arms ached like I’d been lifting several tonnes of weight. My legs felt like they were being crushed inside a vice. I couldn’t hold on. I took one final look at the stampede. There looked to be more now than when we started. No, wait. My eyes couldn’t focus. I was seeing double.

  I let go of the mana. Stopped channelling.

  Then I felt myself reeling forwards, the grass accelerating towards my face. I couldn’t even put my arms out to stop myself. As I collapsed, my eyes rolling in my head, consciousness slipping away, I heard a crackle of Captain Davies’ walkie talkie and the worried voice of one of the scouts.

  “Sir. You have to come and see this.”