I didn’t waste ti.
My blade was still humming from the last strike,still trembling with leftover death mana. I forced it back under control and poured in more.
Deeper.
Thicker.
The pure black coat wrapped around the glass edge... then slowly shifted.
Death peeled away like smoke.
And corruption took its place.
It oozed up from the hilt like tar being dragged from so bottomless pit. The blade didn’t glow it dripped. Thick, viscous droplets slid down the edge and hit the stone with sharp little sizzles.
Each drop evaporated the ground into dust before turning into nothing itself, leaving behind tiny circular scars like the earth had been bitten by a very rude acid.
It looked incredibly cool.
It also slled like soone was cooking rotten soup inside a volcano.
I stepped toward the Boss Bastard, who was still collapsed on its side, legs refusing to cooperate thanks to the sixth stance screaming "No legs for you!" inside its skull.
The wolf saw coming.
Its eyes widened.
It tried to crawl backward.
Emphasis on tried. Its legs twitched like cooked noodles being asked to perform ballet.
"Don’t look at like that," I said, lifting the blade. "You started this. I was just standing around being extrely handso."
I drove the corrupted sword straight into the side of its neck.
No flair.
No dramatic swing.
No fancy stance.
Just a good old-fashioned stab.
The wolf’s scream ripped through the cavern so violently my eardrums vibrated like they were trying to crawl out of my skull and escape.
Its entire body convulsed beneath , muscles spasming, fur puffing up, claws carving trenches in the stone as it tried to fight the corruption tearing into it.
I held the sword steady with both hands as the corruption pulsed outward, that murky liquid aura sinking into the wolf’s veins like a plague discovering new playground equipnt.
"Yeah, that’s about what I expected," I muttered as the wolf’s eyes rolled back.
Another pulse.
Another convulsion.
Another scream pitched so high even the demons two empires over probably felt spiritually offended.
Then...nothing.
Not a whimper.
Not a twitch.
Not even a dying breath.
Just a giant ten-ter corpse with its brain fried like an overcooked egg.
I exhaled, flicked my wrist, and the corrosion peeled itself off the blade, evaporating into a hiss of black mist.
"That," I said to absolutely no one, "is why you don’t play fetch with ."
The wolf did not respond.
Which was good.
Because if it did, I absolutely would’ve scread louder than Kent waking up from a nightmare.
I stepped back, twirled the sword just to look impressive for my nonexistent audience, and let out a satisfied sigh.
The Boss Bastard was dead.
Tragically dead.
Beautifully dead.
And honestly?
I was proud of myself.
Corruption always did make things so much simpler.
I turned around to check on my group.
And...wow.
Saying they were getting their asses handed to them was an understatent so severe it should’ve been illegal. Like calling a dragon "a slightly warm lizard."
Kent was the first disaster I spotted.
He was teleporting around the battlefield like a gremlin on twelve energy drinks, flickering in and out of existence with frantic bursts of space mana. Every ti he blinked into existence, a new bloody cut appeared sowhere on his body.
His opponent? Perfectly fine.
Not even ruffled.
The wolf looked more annoyed than threatened, as if Kent were so particularly persistent mosquito.
And then I noticed the rest.
He wasn’t fighting one wolf.
He was fighting three.
Plus one dead one he must’ve taken out earlier, because Kent, for all his questionable brain cells, did have bursts of competence. All four wolves were snapping at him from every angle, jaws wide, claws flashing, bodies lunging with lethal precision.
Kent dodged one bite by teleporting upward, only to reappear right between the jaws of another.
He yelped.
Actually yelped.
But he was smiling.
Eyes blazing with excitent, adrenaline pouring off him like steam. He wasn’t fighting for survival.
He was having the ti of his life.
"Of course you are," I muttered.
Then my gaze shifted.
Annalise.
She was... slightly less of a disaster.
Not by much.
But still.
Four wolves circled her in a tight formation, while hundreds, literally hundreds, of glowing blue strings floated around her like angry hornets waiting for the command to kill. Annalise’s movents were precise, sharp, and honestly pretty elegant, but her expression ruined it all.
She looked annoyed.
Deeply.
Professionally.
Spiritually annoyed.
One wolf lunged for her throat.
The strings reacted instantly.
They converged into a blade mid-air, slicing across its snout and sending the beast stumbling backward with a howl. But another wolf charged straight through the opening, aiming for her legs.
Annalise growled.
Actually growled, like she was the monster here.
Then snapped her fingers, threading her strings into a temporary shield that blocked the attack, but the force still sent her skidding backward in a shower of sparks and stone chips.
She was holding her ground.
Barely.
And she looked like she was going to file a complaint with the universe’s manager any second now.
"Fantastic," I sighed. "Everyone is thriving."
And then there was...
Nora.
Oh stars.
Nora was not fighting like a princess.
Nora was fighting like a natural disaster soone had foolishly tried to place inside a human body and failed to contain.
Five wolves surrounded her. Three more lay dead around her feet bodies burnt, frozen, cracked, or sliced open by forces that did not look mortal.
She stood in the middle of it all, grinning like a maniac.
Truly my kind of girl(never tell Belle I said that).
Ice coiled around her left arm, fire danced over her right, starlight shimred under her skin, moonlight wrapped around her legs, and so kind of solar flare flickered in her eyes.
She didn’t move so much as glide.
One wolf snapped its jaws at her.
She stepped aside.
Light exploded.
The wolf’s head didn’t explode, but it absolutely regretted existing for the half-second it still had one.
Another lunged.
She caught it by the fur, froze it, kicked it with a burst of moonlight, and sent it skidding fifty ters across the cavern like a furry bowling ball.
She was laughing.
Full, unhinged laughter that echoed between the cavern walls.
She wasn’t struggling.
She wasn’t surviving.
She was enjoying herself exactly the way I tended to reckless, brilliant, and a hair’s breadth away from being a war cri.
I exhaled.
"Well," I said, hands on my hips. "This looks like a job for soone extrely handso, incredibly overpowered, and definitely smart enough not to let the group die."
Which ant .
Obviously.
But before stepping forward, I took one last look at all three of them,
Kent giggling through blood loss,
Annalise trying to murder the concept of inconvenience,
Nora cackling like a cosmic chainsaw
and I couldn’t help it.
I smiled.
This was my team.
Chaos incarnates, all of them.
And they were mine to save.
Ti to farm aura.
The scene was set.
Kent was still teleporting around the wolves like a caffeine-fueled squirrel, his energy radiating the sa manic chaos as always. The wolves, clearly fed up, were getting faster, more coordinated, but still, they couldn’t keep up.
"Hey, Kent!" I called out, my voice laced with the kind of playful nace you’d expect when I was about to do sothing really stupid.
He barely glanced my way, but I knew he heard . He was still grinning through the blood on his face. "What now, Seb?"
"Need a hand?"
Kent teleported to the left, narrowly dodging a wolf’s jaws. He was getting surrounded, his teleportation timing just a hair off. He was so close to being overwheld it was almost tragic.
Almost.
Instead of joining the fray directly, I simply nudged Kent in the right direction, by launching a small wave of death-infused sound his way.
The force was subtle. Enough to send the closest wolf skidding backward, giving Kent an opening to tear a slice in one of its legs.
Kent blinked. His grin only widened. "Oh, perfect. Thanks, buddy!"
Before I could even smile back, I was already moving.
I darted forward, slamming into the largest of the three wolves surrounding Kent. In a split second, I sheathed my sword, letting my energy build.
With one hand, I grabbed the beast by the throat, lifting it off the ground. The wolf thrashed and howled, but it had already been reduced to nothing more than a punching bag for Kent’s teleportation.
"You owe a drink, Kent!" I shouted over my shoulder as I casually tossed the wolf into the air.
He didn’t need an invitation.
Kent appeared directly underneath the flying wolf, scythe gleaming like a silver cot as he cleaved the beast in half before it could even land. The remaining wolves hesitated, shocked by the quick defeat of their friend.
The whole thing took seconds.
"See? Told you it’d be easy," I said with a wink.
Kent just laughed. "Don’t get cocky, Seb, we’re not done yet."
Of course, I was already turning my attention elsewhere.
Annalise was still handling her own ss. She had four wolves circling her now, but the sa strings she was using to bind them into submission were rapidly multiplying and wrapping around them like a spider’s web.
Each wolf’s attempts to break free were futile. One tried to lunge at her, but she simply yanked a string, sending it flying into the air, its montum stopped cold by another string weaving in front of it.
She was annoyed as hell, but it was beautiful to watch.
I grinned and stretched, cracking my neck.
"Annalise, you’re looking a little... tangled up there," I called, pretending to sound concerned.
She rolled her eyes, sending an ice-cold glare my way. "You have zero room to talk."
"Well, you know," I said, starting to walk toward her. "How about I beco your sword?"
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