“There!” Gibby’s voice shrieked from a second-story balcony, his face contorted in a mask of hysterical rage. “The murderers! Kill them! Kill them all!”

  The silence of the garden died a violent death. From every stone archway and hidden path, armored guards flooded into the moonlight, thirty-five of them, a sea of steel and polished crests. Above them, five mages in velvet robes stepped onto the stone balustrades, their hands already glowing with the sickly green and violet hues of offensive spells.

  “Formation!” Joshua roared. His heavy plate armor began to hum, and for a fleeting second, his eyes ignited with a brilliant, golden radiance.

  He didn't wait for them to reach us. He grabbed me by the waist, his gauntlets sinking slightly into the soft, compressed curves of my thighs, and with a grunt of primal effort, he launched me upward.

  I soared through the night air, the wind whistling against the nanoweave of my suit. My body, engineered for this level of kinetic stress, remained fluid and flexible. As I arched over the garden, Eren’s hand flicked. A shimmering rift opened in mid-air, and the massive weight of the Widow’s Kiss tumbled out.

  I caught the .50 cal rifle with a satisfying clack of obsidian against steel. I landed on the roof of a stone gazebo with a feline grace that sent a ripple through my frame; the suit’s vacuum-seal fought to contain the momentum, my bodies physics emphasizing the heavy, feminine sway of my body as I hit the tiles and slid into a prone position.

  Below me, the garden turned into a slaughterhouse.

  Joshua slammed his shield, Dawnbreaker, into the concrete. The impact was cataclysmic; a shockwave of golden energy rippled outward, shattering the stone and sending the first line of guards flying like ragdolls. Any who managed to scramble through the debris were met with a clinical, bone-shattering crack to the helm.

  To his left, Alan moved like a ghost. He pressed a thumb to a hidden blade, cutting his palm and flicking a spray of blood droplets into the air. They hung there, suspended by his mana, acting as localized anchors. He froze the entire garden floor in a heartbeat, the grass turning into a treacherous mirror of ice. With a Fracture Step, he blurred through the crowd, appearing behind targets and driving a dagger into the gaps of their gorgets before they could even find their footing.

  Eren was a whirlwind of gravity and stone. She planted her Dandelion Staff, and suddenly, the very air around the approaching guards thickened. They began to move in agonizing slow motion, struggling against a localized gravity well. High above them, portals snapped open. Massive boulders, scavenged from the garden, plummeted through the rifts, crushed the slowed guards with the relentless weight of physics.

  I tapped a command on my forearm. The matte-black surface of my suit shimmered, my Adaptive Camo bleeding into the dark grey of the gazebo tiles. To the mages on the balcony, I simply vanished.

  Target acquired.

  I peered through the high-powered glass. The first mage was mid-chant, a fireball forming in his palms. I squeezed the trigger.

  BOOM.

  The .50 cal round erased him. The supersonic projectile tore through his magical barrier like wet paper, turning his torso into a red mist that painted the balcony behind him. I cycled the bolt, snick-clack, and moved to the next target.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  Within five seconds, the balconies were silent, save for the sound of headless corpses sliding against stone.

  “Infantry clear!” I shouted, my voice a resonant, commanding purr that carried over the chaos.

  I pivoted the bipod and began the "turkey shoot." I didn't need to aim for the heart; at this range, the Widow's Kiss turned heavy plate armor into shrapnel. I slammed fire into the dense cluster of guards trapped in Eren’s gravity wells. Each shot was a thunderclap, the micro-explosive rounds turning the Earl’s elite guard into a chaotic pile of jagged metal and discarded limbs.

  Through the smoke and the thermal bloom of the carnage, I caught a glimpse of movement near the mansion’s main entrance.

  A man stood there, leaned against a pillar, seemingly indifferent to the massacre. He was unshaven, a half-spent cigarette dangling from his lips, his hand resting lazily on the hilt of a battered, heavy broadsword. He wasn't rushing in. He was watching us, watching me, with a weary, professional gaze that made the sensors in my suit prickle with a different kind of warning.

  The smoke from the garden massacre hung low, thick with the acrid scent of ozone, burnt silk, and the iron tang of forty dead men. Even for us, the sheer scale of the carnage was jarring. We stood amidst the ruin, Joshua’s armor splattered with gore, Alan’s blade dripping, and Eren’s tail twitching nervously as she surveyed the piles of discarded steel and flesh. We hardened our hearts; there was no room for hesitation now, especially not with the aura that was currently radiating from the mansion’s portico.

  A lone figure stepped into the moonlight. He moved with a lazy, rolling gait that didn't match the lethality we felt pouring off him. He was unshaven, a half-spent cigarette dangling from his lips, looking more like a man heading to a tavern than a battlefield.

  "Name’s Ivan Vondstein," he grunted, the smoke trailing from his nose. "And honestly, I don't give a damn about, "

  I didn't let him finish. I wasn't here for a monologue. I shifted the Widow’s Kiss, centered the crosshairs on his chest, and pulled the trigger.

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  BOOM.

  The .50 caliber round shrieked through the air. In any other scenario, his torso would have been mist. Instead, Ivan’s hand moved in a blur of battered steel. There was a high-pitched ping and a shower of sparks. The supersonic bullet stopped; it fell to the grass in two perfectly clean, molten halves.

  He hadn't even dropped his cigarette.

  "As I was saying," Ivan continued, his voice gruff and weary. "I don't care about the useless guards, and I especially don't care about that annoying brat on the balcony. But I do care about the fact that you're making a mess I’ll be blamed for, and that messes with my debts. And I can’t afford to have my debts messed with."

  "Daddy! Stay safe!"

  A young girl in a plain maid’s uniform leaned over a third-story railing, her voice trembling with terror. Ivan’s eyes, previously cold and dissolute, softened for a fraction of a second as he glanced up. On the opposite balcony, Gibby looked down at the mounds of stinking bodies, his face pale and twisted in horror.

  "Formation!" Joshua barked.

  Ivan moved. He was an S-rank blur. He slammed into Joshua’s shield with such force that our tank was driven back five feet, his boots furrowing the manicured lawn. Alan lunged in with a Fracture Step, but Ivan simply caught the blade on his hilt and tossed Alan aside like a bothersome insect. Eren’s vines and gravity wells snapped upward to claim him, but his sword work was methodical, a rhythmic dance of steel that sliced through the magical restraints before they could even tighten.

  He was a mountain of a man, but when I fired another round, he showed a flash of superhuman effort, twisting his body mid-stride to let the projectile graze the air where his ribs had been a millisecond before.

  "Now!" I signaled.

  Joshua charged again, his eyes glowing gold as he threw his entire weight into a shield bash. Simultaneously, Eren slammed her staff down, manifesting heavy rock boots directly onto Ivan’s feet to anchor him. Alan flicked a blood-coated knife as a distraction, aiming for Ivan’s eyes.

  I cycled the bolt and fired a specialized smoke round. It impacted directly in front of Ivan's face, erupting into a thick, grey cloud of obscuring chemicals.

  Through the chaos, a high-pitched shriek tore through the garden.

  "Sir Ivan! You better win this fight or else Elara gets it!"

  Gibby had scrambled across the balconies. He was now behind the maid, Ivan’s daughter, holding a jagged hunting knife to her throat. The brat’s hands were shaking, the blade nicking her skin.

  Ivan froze. The smoke cleared just enough to show his face turning ashen, his sword arm wavering as he looked up at the hostage. His focus was gone; the warrior was replaced by a desperate father.

  I didn't hesitate. I didn't care about the maid, and I certainly didn't care about the "honorable" duel. I pivoted the Widow's Kiss away from the S-rank swordsman and centered the high-powered optics on the center of Gibby’s forehead.

  The crosshairs settled on Gibby’s forehead. My breathing slowed, the Valkyrie unit’s internal stabilizers locking my frame into a rigid, perfect platform. There were no feelings here, I only felt the tactical necessity.

  BOOM.

  The recoil of the Widow’s Kiss was a violent, upward surge that the suit’s hydraulic servos absorbed with a sharp hiss. The micro-explosive round deleted him from the balcony in a cloud of crimson mist.

  His body slumped, the knife clattering harmlessly away from Elara. Below me, Ivan Vondstein stopped. Stopping his rage from boiling over. He simply exhaled a long, shaky cloud of tobacco smoke and sat down on a stone bench, his battered sword resting across his knees. He looked up at his daughter, his eyes wet with a relief that overshadowed the carnage around him. He was done.

  But the night was far from over.

  The heavy iron gates of the mansion gardens groaned open. A gilded carriage, flanked by a small army, rumbled into the torchlight. Earl Thaddeus Braeburn stepped out, his silk robes dragging through the grass, only to freeze as his son’s headless torso dropped from the balcony, landing with a sickening thud just feet from his boots. The Earl’s face went from aristocratic arrogance to a mask of pallid, trembling horror in a heartbeat.

  "Kill them," Thaddeus whispered, his voice cracking before rising into a shriek. "Kill every single one of them! Ivan! Do your duty!"

  Ivan didn't even look at him. He just flicked his ash onto the manicured lawn.

  "Fine!" the Earl screamed. "Knights! Advance!"

  The first wave of twenty knights surged forward, their heavy plate clanking as they navigated the maze of topiary and the forty corpses already littering the ground. We moved into a desperate defensive circle.

  "We’re in trouble," Joshua muttered, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His shield was dented, and golden light flickered weakly in his eyes.

  The fight was a brutal, grinding slog. Another twenty knights flanked us from the shadows of the hedges. Joshua took the brunt of the assault, his armor finally failing as steel found the gaps. I watched in my HUD as his Bp dipped, blood slicking the golden trim of his plate. To my left, Alan let out a sharp cry as a knight’s longsword pierced his thigh. He collapsed to one knee, desperately swinging his blade to keep three more armored attackers at bay.

  Eren was stumbling, her dandelion staff shaking in her hands. She had portaled so many knights into the river that her mana was clearly bottomed out. She was pale, her cat ears pinned back in exhaustion.

  I was a blur of obsidian and fire. I held the Widow’s Kiss in one hand, firing from the hip at point-blank range, while my other hand worked the Glock, barking rounds into any knight who got too close to Alan. The barrel of the .50 cal was glowing a dangerous, cherry red, the heat shimmering against my cheek.

  Then, the Earl played his final card. "Release the slaves!"

  Thirty warriors, lean and scarred, were driven forward by overseers. They wore heavy iron collars that pulsed with a cruel, jagged light. They didn't want to fight, but the magic forced them toward our right flank.

  This is it, I thought. The 'oh shit' moment.

  I had one .50 cal round left in the chamber. I ignored the knights closing in and zoomed my optics toward the Earl’s carriage. Hidden behind the silk curtains, Thaddeus was clutching a familiar object: a large, lacquered box etched with silver runes. The master control.

  I shifted my weight, the nanoweave of my suit straining and shifting with a "jiggle" of high-impact movement as I pivoted on the gazebo roof to find the angle. My predatory focus narrowed until the world was just the box and the crosshair.

  BOOM.

  The final round shrieked across the garden, punching through the carriage’s wooden frame and obliterating the lacquered box in a shower of splinters and sparks.

  The effect was instantaneous. All thirty slaves staggered as the magical weight vanished. One by one, the heavy iron collars snapped open and fell into the dirt. They looked at each other, seeing the lash marks on their arms and the fresh freedom in their eyes.

  The confusion lasted only a second. With a collective roar of suppressed rage, the thirty warriors turned. They didn't look at us. They looked at the knights and the Earl who had held their leashes.

  "For freedom!" one of them bellowed, and the slave warriors charged back into the fray, now fighting as our vanguard.