Lightning sparked. Blood burgeoned. Vandre’s attack went off spectacularly. He hadn’t expected it to work out that well so easily, but it had. He was growing stronger, bit by bit, battle by battle, even when the stingy Weave chose not to recognize it with a rank-up.

  Vandre could see it in the way his Aetherblood came out easier and easier the more he kept using it. He could hear it in how his black lightning thundered into being with merely a fraction of the effort he had spent when he had first discovered his Aspect of Aetherblood and its Lightning Affix.

  He felt it in the way his mana connected to the dots of liquid crimson with nearly imperceptible strands of the same colour, glimmering like threads of light thinner than the sparse hair his head had been cursed with.

  And they all helped fight back the beasts that the Blight Swarm was invading his home with.

  If he hadn’t trained, he would never have been here. If he hadn’t taken advantage of his opportunity, just as Cultist Ross had used his—and there was absolutely a need for a mindset shift to see what had happened to him as an opportunity—then he wouldn’t have been here, right now, fighting with everyone else. Making use of his growing strength.

  “Hold the line,” Vandre yelled at a group of nearby humans trying to hold back one of the claw-handed, jagged creatures that moved far too quickly despite its terrific size. “Don’t let your shields drop!”

  He could barely hear himself over the general din of the extended battle. It wasn’t just his ears. Every single sense felt both magnified and dampened. His sight, his hearing, even his ability to smell. The war on his body included the war on his senses too.

  The humans did their best to comply. They just had to hold on for a bit while Vandre dealt with the bugs facing him. A horde of stinging monsters about the size of his chest was harrying and harassing a different section of the people he had found himself assisting. He had smashed into the flying annoyances and started casting Aetherblood immediately.

  Vandre, and the rest of the defenders, were all lucky to have received that moment of reprieve thanks to Cultist Ross. The brief window they had gotten to rest and recuperate—to regain belief that yes, the Blight Swarm would end no matter how relentlessly it attacked them—had been invaluable.

  Without it, without that display of impossible power from the man who ostensibly led them all, things really might have already deteriorated to defeat.

  Which was why Vandre was fighting desperately to make that count. Why he was determined to take out one monster with every hit of his magical, sparking blood. And he was succeeding too. He didn’t have to worry about hitting Silver—which he probably would by the end of this whole war—because his Aspect was effective enough as it was.

  That changed when he finally got around to tackling the huge claw-handed beast, though. It had been wrecking the defenders. A few human corpses lay at its feet. Vandre had taken too long with the smaller ones. Well, not anymore.

  Except his sparking blood barely tickled that thing. Where the lightning had scorched the smaller insectoid monsters, burned them alive and leaped from one to the next in a powerful chain, this one was barely affected. A splash of blood against its shoulder created brief sparks of jagged darkness contrasting wildly with its spiky carapace.

  Then the monster was whirling towards him, its claw swinging far too fast. Vandre wasn’t even aware of the pain as he was hurled through the air, his torso collapsing entirely as he crashed into a pile of thankfully monstrous corpses.

  Vandre got a hold of his screaming self as quickly as he could. The regeneration had kicked in the moment he had gotten injured. Now, as he forced himself back to his feet, his innards rearranged themselves back into their proper order. Painfully, sure, but he had done well to get used to the agony of forced healing.

  More importantly, he couldn’t waste time. Bastard Swarm monster had flung him away with an almost lazy blow.

  Even aside from the humiliation, he couldn’t believe he was letting his team down. He was letting the defenders and all of Ring Four down too. Screw that claw-handed beast to the bottom of the Pits. In fact, Vandre was going to send that thing there himself.

  He roared and rushed the monster down. It had taken even more lives while he’d been down. He felt his mind turning blank with rage. Even more death was absolutely unforgivable.

  Vandre flung himself at the creature. It tried to flick him away like he was the insect here. Not if he could help it.

  It didn’t matter that a part of his ribs got crushed by the impact. Vandre had managed to grab onto his opponent. Now, he was drawing up more of its blood, throwing it up in a fountain of devastating lightning over and around him.

  The monster tried to shake Vandre off. It was so strong. Vandre refused to call himself a fool for taking on something like this, for believing his experiences with the Blight Swarm so far meant he could take on any of them. Cursed Pits, it was now starting to make sense why Cultist Ross was gone for so long. These things weren’t easy by any means.

  Vandre hung on. His body was getting pummelled by the monster’s other arm. But as long as his heart was safe, Vandre was safe.

  And as long as he was safe, he wasn’t going to stop until he had killed the monster out of sheer persistence.

  One of the things he had learned while training with the others and with Cultist Ross was that there was always a way. Things would open up. An opportunity would either appear or would just need to be carved out from nothing. Defeat wasn’t inevitable.

  After all, Vandre had fought and occasionally overwhelmed Ross himself after all. Well, with the help of his fellow Scarthralls, sure. But that was the thing, wasn’t it. There was a way.

  Always.

  [ Ritual

  Ritual Established: Ritual of War. You have performed 1 [Major] Ritual of War.

  Reward: All Iron-ranked Aspects and Attributes raised by 10 ranks, all Silver-ranked Aspects and Attributes raised by 5 ranks, and all Gold-ranked Aspects and Attributes raised by 2 ranks for every battle encountered for the next 1 hour and 5 minutes. All negative auric effects negated and all boon effects and buffs boosted by 1.2x for the same duration. ]

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Newfound might surged through Vandre’s every limb and muscle like he had just been injected with liquid mana. He even forgot to breathe at the sheer strength rippling along his muscles and magic sparking in every single corner of his body.

  The ritual… the one Cultist Ross had tried to create before the start of the real war… it was finally working!

  Vandre’s body was misshapen, battered, bruised, broken in too many spots, and hardly even recognizable as having been human once. The pain was indescribable. Threads of darkness had ripped through him while the monster had continued pummelling away.

  Yet, through it all, he had never relaxed his grip. Now, he was being rewarded for it.

  With a scream driven as much by the sheer agony riddling his body as it was by the new magic-fuelled determination to claw victory from the jaws of defeat, he twisted and ripped. The monster’s arm started shuddering, then tearing, before separating off the creature.

  Vandre fell away with the ripped-off limb, and then he was yelling at the remaining defenders.

  “Attack! Kill it, now!”

  Just like Vandre, they were clearly buoyed up with the Ritual’s buffs. Just like him, they were far stronger than before.

  With a roar that drowned out all other noise, the defenders slammed into the Swarm. Where the monster had been able to bash aside their spears and torches before, now it was perforated at several spots with the spears sticking out like needles on a cushion. Torches set it aflame. It was bashed around and sliced up, dripping gore everywhere.

  The Blight Swarm beast tried to lash out in the little ways it could while missing an arm and wounded all over. Those black threads emerged again, and its other arm whirled around. But in moments, the seemingly unkillable threat fell. They were all done.

  Vandre roared out with all the other defenders in their triumph. His blood sang, his heart turned thunderous.

  They could fight back. They could—

  Someone screamed to his right. A man had gone down to a strange creature wrapped in black threads, a shelled monster that had thick, living tendrils bursting out of its cracked carapace to attack any of its targets. The others stabbed in and managed to kill the monster, but not before the poor woman had passed away from the wounds mangling her body.

  That wasn’t the only issue. More enemies were arriving, and Vandre was a little shocked to see just how much the Blight Swarm was pelting in their direction. Creatures were raining down from the dark sky. Hamsik and the Anymphea were both busy fending them off.

  Which meant Vandre and his fellow Scarthralls and everyone else on the street just outside the temple were on their own.

  He clenched his fists. That was fine. The Ritual had finally worked. With the new power turning his blood into a river of endless might, Vandre wasn’t going to let himself be overwhelmed. A quick look confirmed that nearly everyone else felt the same way. Wounded, tired, haggard though they all were, they were determined to repel these blasted monsters.

  So, they did. Vandre unleashed a storm of his Aetherblood, dark lightning sparking everywhere. People screamed. Not in pain. No.

  These were the screams of a raging defence against the seemingly endless horde attempting to destroy everything and everyone that they all loved.

  Vandre shattered monster after monster, slowly becoming blanketed in gore. His senses were turning numb. All he saw were dark, insectoid beasts that he needed to kill. All he smelled was offal, wastes, blood, and spilled innards. All he heard was shrieking and screeching. All he breathed was the air drenched with sweat, and fear, and pain, and the continuous will to survive.

  And it still wasn’t enough. There were just too many of the freaks. A fathomless sea of the Pits-cursed creatures just kept coming and coming, bent on nothing but total obliteration.

  Even with the Ritual’s buffs, Vandre was flagging. The casualties were piling up. The screams were receding, but that was bad since more screams meant more people alive in the area. They were all suffering, dying, driving their bodies to tortured brinks.

  “We have to keep going!” Vandre shouted.

  “For how long?” Lujean asked. They had come together at one point. Vandre hadn’t even seen his older friend join the fray by his side. “We can’t keep this up!”

  “We have to—” Vandre gasped, hurting, healing but still in pain from an injury. “We have to survive. We have to make it through this. Any way we can.”

  Lujean didn’t exactly look encouraged by that, but Vandre could hardly offer anything else. They were being ground down here, and though he was happy to be ground down if it meant beating back the Pits-cursed Blight Swarm, he understood most people would like to survive enough to actually enjoy the victory.

  They’d just have to keep going until they no longer could. Whatever happened, giving up wasn’t an option.

  “Wait,” Lujean said, suddenly alert. “What’s that?”

  Vandre followed Lujean’s pointing finger until he could see it too. A new glow was headed in their direction, one that was very different from the constant blackness that the Blight Swarm brought with it.

  “Is that… another of these monsters?” Lujean asked.

  “No… it can’t be…”

  Despite Vandre’s answer, he didn’t blame Lujean for coming to that conclusion. The thing headed into the battle did have the appearance of another monstrous member of the Blight Swarm. But rather than a solid creature, this was more like a glowing ghost, an image constructed of hardened strands of mana overlaid onto a more corporeal core. A familiar core.

  Vandre shook his head disbelievingly, voice strained with amazement. “That’s—”

  “Cultist Ross!” Lujean finished in the same tone.

  Their leader had returned, and he had done so with a vengeance.

  He had smashed into the rear lines of the monsters. All the creatures that had been swarming the temple and heading to kill the defenders were now forced to turn and face the new threat from their back. A threat that was impossible to ignore. Impossible to stop.

  The air seemed to burn around Cultist Ross, crisping and sparking as it converted into pure energy driven by his mana. He tore through the creatures, big and small, with every motion. It didn’t matter if he was swiping with his hands, kicking with his legs, or just ramming his body directly at a monster. They all got broken upon contact with that impossibly furious carving of energy into the shape of the very monsters around them.

  Amazed as Vandre was at the sheer onslaught, he wanted to yell at the rest of the gobsmacked defenders to get their act together and start supporting Cultist Ross. But that was going to prove very hazardous.

  Wherever he went, wide swathes of the ground cracked around him to float up. Then they fired in ripping, stony storms into the monsters.

  If any of them got too close, they’d be eviscerated as well.

  Then there was the obliterating heat. The longer Vandre spent in one location, the more he realized Cultist Ross was washing the entire neighbourhood of Ring Four with growing warmth. Sweat started beading on Vandre’s temple. Sweat he hadn’t felt in ages, ever since he had become a Scarthrall. He hadn’t even known he was still capable of sweating. This was insane.

  Of course, the heat was the most intense around their leader himself. It turned into little explosives, every single burst shattering monster and after in sprays of burning gore. Even in the midst of the chaos, Cultist Ross clearly possessed enough presence of mind to not let any of his fury reach the temple.

  Once again, Vandre could only shake his head at the display of sheer power.

  He had known from the moment he had met Cultist Ross after returning from the guards’ prison that there was something different about the man. Something special. A quality unique to him that Vandre hadn’t seen in anyone else yet.

  It wasn’t his kindness and care that he had shown for everyone on Ring Four that had drawn Vandre to the man. Nor was it his competence at handling the cult and developing Ring Four itself. It wasn’t even his determination, his grit, or even his frankly meteoric growth—especially considering the context that he wasn’t even from this world.

  No, what drew Vandre to Ross Moreland was the sheer inevitability that embodied everything he did. He wasn’t going to be defeated. He wasn’t one to be stopped for long. He was the storm rolling over a continent, the wind that climbed over mountains, the end that came for everything that threatened to stand against him.

  He was the sun that forever rose over the horizon.

  An orb of a very different kind of darkness to the one the Swarm employed cannoned through several monsters, disintegrating an entire line of the beasts. Cultist Ross yelled out a cry that while incoherent was still filled with the fury of the indomitable.

  And Vandre shouted along with him. As did the rest of the defenders. It was time for them to show the Pits-cursed Blight Swarm that Ring Four was the wrong place to mess with.