Len stepped out onto the rocky ledge where their tunnel had emerged. The exit sat roughly half a tree's height above where the mountain's slope settled into the flat lands of the northern to forest. Rick's precision with their trajectory was impressive - they'd come out just meters above the natural ground level.

  Always been good with map.

  They were now on the northern side of the stained mountain range, inside the nation of Halem.

  The land was rich in resources but weak in power from other groups fighting them constantly for those same resources.

  He knew that the further north one went the warmer it would become, th forests turning into a jungle after a certain point.

  Len's expression turned grim as he looked at the massive crater he could see from here.

  tAt its center, a dungeon entrance thrust upward into the sky like a monument. The ground around it practically hummed with power - pure mana stone, more concentrated than any deposit he'd ever seen. It was purple in color. The dense crystalline formation caught the sunlight, sending rainbow refractions dancing across the scorched earth surrounding the impact site.

  Through his mana sight, the entire crater blazed like a beacon. The raw energy radiating from the stone made his teeth ache. He'd seen his share of mana deposits over the years, but nothing approached this scale.

  It was as beautiful as it was dangerous.

  That was why sentries had been posted and the soldiers were on alert.

  With that much mana the wildlife at the very least is bound to have been corrupted.

  Below, the civilian engineers broke down the stone blocks that had been hauled out of the tunnel into gravel. The crushed rock would create a gentler grade for the train's eventual descent toward the dungeon.

  "Blocks coming!" someone shouted from inside the tunnel.

  Len turned as stone blocks started to emerge from the tunnel.

  Isendia Engineers were making a flat area around the mouth of the tunnel, a defensive position. Rick directed operations there, his hammer striking rhythmically as he shaped the landscape.

  They'd reversed the extractor at the back of the train to make more stone blocks to support construction.

  Blocks were tossed out and used to reinforce and build out the defensive structure around the tunnel's exit.

  Len was halfway between the growing defensive position and the growing gravel hill.

  He caught a block with practiced ease, the weight-reduction enchantments making the massive chunk of rock manageable.

  "Passing!" Len called out, tossing the block down the line of workers. The human chain stretched from the tunnel mouth down to where Joe Xinta and his people were working.

  Block after block emerged in steady succession. Len's arms moved in an automatic rhythm - catch, pivot, pass. The repetitive motion let his mind drift to tactical considerations while his body handled the labor.

  Engineers hit the rocks, cracking them into gravel that grew the hill that would make the slope easier on the train.

  Everyone pitched in outside the tunnel. After days underground, the soldiers and engineers attacked their tasks with renewed vigor. Even Christina, who typically stayed with her engines, helped sort materials for the construction effort at the entrance of the tunnel.

  "Good to see sky again," Peter called out as he passed another block down the line.

  "Got that right, feels like harvesting season with everyone joining in," Len said.

  The atmosphere was lighter than it had been in days. People joked and chatted as they worked, their voices carrying across the mountainside.

  "With the new enchantments they should be pulling in the hravest around now right?" Peter asked.

  Len frowned, pursing his lips. A week at the dungeons, maybe two, then half a week here? "I think they have another week or so to go."

  "Think we could take two weeks?" Peter pleaded.

  Len chuckled and smiled. How many times had he wished for just one more harvest with his family?

  A screech ripped through the air imbued with magic, causing several workers to drop their blocks and clutch their heads.

  Len's vision blurred momentarily as the sound reverberated through his skull. His hand moved instinctively to his weapon as his mana sight latched onto the birds diving towards him from the mountain. "Five o'clock high!"

  The bird's body was about the size of a deer's torso. Its once white and brown feathers were a mangled mess of colors, mangled skip and warped flesh.

  He pulled the spitter safety off as he brought it up to aim into the sky, leading a bird he'd picked out and pulled the trigger, the gear turned and the round shot off into the sky.

  "Mana mutated!" Len yelled as the seven eyed, four winged bird of twisted chaos.

  High acceleration, faster, less arc. Len adjusted his rounds onto the bird's path.

  Two of his rounds slammed into the bird.

  The rounds detonated within the creature, causing it to exploded as Len shifted to his next target, another bird dying in his peripheral.

  Len led his targets, releasing a burst of rounds that stitched across the creatures.

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  He and Rick were reaping a deadly harvest, remains of the birds dropping around them.

  "Guns high!" Rick roared, his shout imbued with mana.

  Len's spitter gun cracked repeatedly, each shot finding its mark. The birds exploded in bursts of organic and inorganic.

  Other spitters entered the fray.

  "Lead your targets, you don't need much!" Len yelled.

  "More coming from the slopes!" Rick called out.

  "Covering left side!" Len turned to watch from seven to twelve. "All civilians back into the tunnel!"

  "I got right Squad two and one with me, three and four support Len!" Rick yelled.

  Len caught an engineer who tripped, grabbing their clothes and pushing them towards the tunnel as he kept firing with the spitter in his other hand.

  "Get to cover!" Len shouted at the stunned workers as he continued firing. More birds wheeled overhead, their screams growing louder as they dove toward the exposed humans below.

  Len fired another burst, his movements smooth and practiced from countless similar encounters. These weren't the first mana-mutated creatures they'd faced, and they wouldn't be the last. His spitter clicked empty, he flicked the empty magazine out as he pulled a fresh one from his leg pocket and shoved it home with practiced efficiency, muscle memory taking over.. The rounds clink-ssh feeding into the weapon.

  A warped bird unleashed a blast of wind that struck the ground near Peter. The earth where it hit bubbled and twisted, rock transforming into something that looked half-melted and wrong. The corruption spread outward like ripples in a pond.

  "Watch the spells!" Len called out, putting two rounds through the bird's center mass. "Don't let that mana touch you!"

  "Get out of here lad up to the tunnels!" Len yelled as he reaped death from the beasts, their power becoming his. holy shit just how strong are these fucking things?

  Another wind blast warped a tree, its branches contorting into impossible shapes as the corruption took hold.

  "All civilians are in!" Rick's voice carried across the battlefield. "Everyone below the defenses, fall back to the tunnel entrance now!"

  Len waited as those below him ran past before he ran after them.

  The birds wheeled overhead, their unnatural screams growing more frequent as they dove to attack.

  "Joe!" Rick bellowed. "Get a stone wall up at the tunnel entrance! We need cover!"

  "Man down!" Someone yelled.

  "Get a medic over there! Everyone else keep fucking shooting!" Len barked, the old NCO within him boomed forth. Len stopped atop the flattened ground taking out birds that were gathering mana for attacks. That shit was bound to fuck up someone.

  "Once the lower positions clear, we'll concentrate fire from the tunnel!" Len shouted to his squad. "Move in squads, maintain overlapping fields of fire!"

  Birds were diving in droves.

  A man grunted.

  "I got him!" Someone yelled, grabbing them and hauling them away.

  The sky was getting shaded with all the flying fuckers.

  Just like old times, Len thought, his finger steady on the trigger.

  "Squad Three, fall back!" Rick ordered, maintaining his position to cover their retreat. "Squad Four, prepare to move on my mark!"

  Len unleashed a blast of lighting with his hand not holding down the trigger.

  It branched through dozens of the creatures, dropping them from the sky as his weapon went dry.

  "Reloading!" He yelled, ejecting the magazine and slapping a fresh one into place.

  "Squad four move!" Rick yelled.

  Len slapped in a fresh magazine and fired up at the sky again, letting loose with lightning blasts.

  "Four squad is back, Rick, Len pull back!" Simmons barked.

  Len released his trigger and turned and ran, Rick was ahead of him as they booked it for the tunnel. A stone wall had been made from fused stone blocks, soldiers fired over it, thier spitters angled at the sky.

  Len swerved to the left and then to the right as corrupted wind blasts struck the ground, tearing it up and transforming it.

  Rick went through the opening between the walls. Len raised his spitter, holding it by the pistol grip, barrel pointed at the sky as he ran into the dark safety of the tunnel.

  Someone cried out, another hit from the attacks.

  "Len you check on those hit with the corruption, I'll sort out things here," Rick ordered.

  "On it!" Len jogged to where the wounded were piled up ahead of the extruder, medics working on them.

  Len reached the makeshift casualty collection point where five soldiers lay writhing on stretchers.

  Their wounds light up with power that shone like a beacon to his mana sight, the corrupted mana trying to spread through their bodies.

  "Stop! Don't use healing magic!" Len grabbed a medic's wrist as she raised her hands to cast. "The corruption will twist any healing spells into something lethal."

  The medic jerked back, eyes wide. "Then how do we-"

  "Cut out the affected tissue first," Len pulled his knife. "The corruption spreads through the flesh. We need to remove it before it can take hold."

  He moved to the first soldier, examining where corrupted wind had caught his arm. The skin around the wound had already begun to warp and bubble.

  "Hold him down," Len ordered. Two medics pinned the soldier's shoulders as Len pressed his blade against the corrupted flesh. "This is going to hurt, but it's better than the alternative."

  The soldier screamed as Len carved away the twisted tissue with practiced precision. Purple ichor oozed from the wound as he worked.

  "Once the corruption is removed, flush it with regular healing potions," Len instructed, reaching for his pack. He pulled out a red vial. "We don't want to give the corruption more power to work with."

  He demonstrated, pouring the potion over the cleaned wound. The bleeding slowed as the flesh began to knit together normally.

  "Remember - cut out ALL the corruption first. If you miss any, it will spread again or they will have to fight it instead of healing properly," Len moved to the next patient.

  "I am power!" A man yelled, grabbing the throat of the nearest medic.

  Shit. Len ran over and punched the wounded man in the face, his eyes rolled back as Len flipped him over and carved out the three ragged lines of corrupted mana in his back.

  He pressed his knee to the man's upper back, keeping him pressed into the gravel ahead of the train as he yelled out in pain.

  Len took the man's healing potions and poured them on his own wounds. He slumped against the ground.

  "What was that?" Tomkins, the medic who had been working on the man asked, holding his throat.

  "That my dear Tomkins is mana corruption. You get too much mana and don't control it, then it will start to control you. Makes you crave more mana, more power and drives you insane. Hopefully he doesn't remember that, its like a drug, nasty and insidious. Make sure to keep an eye on him and warn his family and unit mates. He's going to be doing body tempering once we get back to make sure he has control over himself.

  The flesh that he'd cut away had warped the gravel it fell upon but was dissipating, the mana equalizing with that of the environment.

  The weapons fire from the tunnel entrance slackened. Len pulled out his half used magazine, moving it to his mostly empty pocket with the empty magazine and reloaded a fresh magazine in as he walked over to the leadership huddle with Simmons and Rick.

  "Well looks like the locals are none to happy to see us on this side of the mountain range," Rick said. "How they looking?" He raised his chin towards the casualties.

  "Some nasty hits, though gut the corruption carved out of them. Should recover with time. Seven of them out of the fight and two civvies," Len said.

  "Nearly a complete section then," Simmon said. "We'll have to rejig things around."

  "So what's the plan?" Len asked.

  How do you feel about a night operation?" Rick asked.

  "Fuck," Len shook his head. Rick's grin grew wider