It was not quick. The thing's mind was a fortress of pure, screaming combat instinct. It thrashed against his will, a wild animal in a trap. Its body, even broken and drained, followed suit. A gauntleted fist snapped up, catching David in the ribs. He grunted, feeling something swell. Okay, not a cuddler. More a screaming gym bro on six pots of coffee. Noted.
“I don't have time for this.” He muttered
For a second, elite's struggles turned frantic, then weak. Its demonic energy flooded into him, a raw, angry power that made his own feel tame. Mara was taking its life, and he was taking its power. Teamwork. It's a beautiful thing.
He felt his control snap into place, absolute and final.
David’s eyes swept over his team. Corbin had finally managed to stop leaking everywhere, but wasn’t getting up anytime soon—his face the color of old newspaper. He’s about twenty minutes from being a very heavy rug. Evans was upright, but just barely, swaying like a drunk from the pain. Rhea’s floating junk was wobbling, and she looked like she might fall over if someone gave her a push, but she met his eyes, still willing to continue. Jamie was a sack of potatoes lying in the grass, and Son was down for the count, minus a hand. Well, we’re not winning any beauty contests. But we’re all still breathing. Mostly.
David took in the scene. His new pet ninja was running on empty, needing a serious shot of demonic energy to be useful. He sent it a burst of energy, feeling his reserves slightly dip as its back straightened, the creatures filled with empowering energy. Just over a dozen hobs and imps were still out there, fourteen, looking twitchy, with one archer left. Half of the useful people were about to face-plant, and he had no clue if their constitution stats were high enough to keep Corbin and Son from bleeding out before he could get the healer. And with the other hobs at the plane still grabbing people, he had maybe a minute before they realized their main squad was gone and took the only healer with them. Okay. New plan. Let's see how fast we can clean up this mess.
"Rhea, see if you can cinch their wounds shut with your Tug. Like tying off a leaky bag," David said. He knelt by Corbin. "Hey, Tummy Ache. Dump all your points into Constitution. Just become the hardest man to kill for a little while. Press down on it and don't move."
He felt the thrum of Corbin's life through their link, faint but steady. Okay. He's not going to cash in his chips just yet. Good. One less fire to put out.
"Alright, we're about to find out your zombie limit," David said to Mara. "Start with the strong ones." They ran to the elite pinned under the bus-sized warg. David got close, breathed in its demonic energy with his Energy Affinity, and let his Battle Sense guide his spear. He stabbed where the pinned elite would try to dodge, punching through its chest, eye, and mouth in quick succession. Mara resurrected both the elite and the warg. "The wargs will be a little weaker," she said. "Their levels were too high." David pointed at the archer elite Corbin had killed and an injured adult warg nearby he quickly moved to kill. "That one too. The third warg must've run off." When she tried to summon the fifteen dead imps, only one shambled to its feet. Six max. One colossal, two elites, two wargs, and one very sad imp. Not bad. "Let's go stop some kidnappers," David said, turning toward the plane wreck.
Eleven of them remained standing, including the new thrall and six undead. Three were down; Corbin, Jamie, and Son. They had eliminated sixteen of the enemy. We're in the refurbished monster business now. Trade-in value is terrible, but it beats being dead. Only fourteen hostiles were left. The situation was no longer hopeless.
David looked at his personal elite thrall, it was beaten and badly bruised, and he could sense a profound confusion, and simmering, subdued rage targeted at its previous allies, courtesy of his orders. The alien mind was his. The feeling was wildly different from Mara or Corbin—this thing's thoughts were all sharp edges and killing angles. Weird. Later.
They advanced on the wreckage. An elite hob stood guard at the entrance, more of its kind gathered below. David's eyes tracked three wargs. One had an empty net. The other two were carrying live cargo. One net held two people. The other held three, and he spotted the healer among them. There's the objective. The mobile med-bay.
He looked at Rhea. "Can you get both nets?"
"Maybe," she replied, her voice tight with strain.
"Right one first."
Her eyes questioned him.
"Trust me," he said. "They'll die if you don't." The left net has strangers. The right net has the only person who can stop everyone bleeding from becoming lawn decorations. This isn't a complicated decision.
Rhea's focus shifted. The telekinetic field suspending Corbin, Son, and Jamie gently lowered them to the grass. Two of the bone javelins orbiting her snapped forward, severing the ropes on the right-hand net. Captives tumbled out. The warg reared in shock. A third javelin flew but went wide. The second warg spun, impaled, howling, as the freed people scrambled for their lives.
The hobs saw them. They saw David's group, their wounded, and the shambling undead forms of their former comrades. The enemy line wavered, then broke. They retreated, leaving fifteen imps behind as a rearguard.
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David felt confident. He had a vague, action-movie understanding of military operations, and he was pretty sure that losing half your forces in about thirty seconds was considered a bad day at the war camp for the other guys. Nothing makes you rethink your life choices like seeing your former coworker shambling toward you with empty eye sockets.
The Elite Hob raced into the imps surrounding the healer and her fellow captured, a whirlwind.
David, Mara, the injured Rhea and Evans, plus their six undead adult wargs, hobs, imp, and Colossal, tore through the enemy imps. It was a straightforward slaughter, but there was just too many of them. It was not like taking one or two at a time.
The fight against the imps was a draining process. It was a monotonous grind of small-scale violence. Rhea’s telekinetic control was unraveling. A bone javelin wobbled in the air. It thudded into the earth three feet from its target. Her shoulders slumped with a deep exhaustion. "I can't keep this up," she said. Her voice was thin and frayed. She looked ready to lie down in the chaos.
Nearby, Mara had slid down the leg of the undead colossal. She sat hard on the ground. She stared blankly at the chittering swarm. "I'm drained," she stated. The words were flat and final. "There is no more power to draw."
They are hitting the wall. Rhea is about to short-circuit. Mara is running on a dead battery. If they quit now, Corbin turns into a corpse and this whole fight was just a really loud, bloody prelude to a total failure.
David saw the collapse happening in real time. He batted a leaping imp aside with the shaft of his spear. He didn't have the energy for a long speech. He shouted to Rhea, his voice cutting through the screeches. "Fall back! Your job is to be a cork! Use your Tug on Corbin and Son! Just keep them from leaking!" The relief on her face was immediate and profound. She gave a sharp nod and stumbled away from the fight line.
A groggy, high-pitched voice cut through the noise. "Whoa! What is happening? Is that a zombie hobgoblin? Why is it on our team?"
Jamie was pushing himself up on his elbows. His eyes were wide with a mix of terror and excitement. He pointed a shaking finger at David's elite thrall. The thrall was methodically stomping an imp into the dirt. Kid picks the best possible moment to wake up. Just in time for the weirdest part of the tour.
David looked at his new undead crew, then back to Jamie. This is a Freaky Friday scenario, sort of—just with more corpses. Their elite team is now my problem.
"They're on the payroll," David yelled back. He didn't stop moving. He sidestepped another imp's lunge, portals in quick succession snapping shut, bisecting it in two—blood and guts steamed across the grass as it still screeched, David stamped on its head with a energy infused boot. Hard—brain matter spilling in a wide spray. "Your ice was looking pretty flimsy before your nap. You want to hit the next level, now is the time to make a bigger snowball." He then turned his head. He looked toward Evans, who was leaning heavily on his sword. He clutched the dagger buried in his collarbone. "Evans! Go get the healer! The one our new guy is protecting! Don't shoot him!" He pointed at his thrall. The thrall was standing guard over the freed healer, its presence keeping the remaining imps at bay.
Evans gave a grim nod. He pushed off the tree and moved. He reached the healer, a young woman named Chloe. She was shielded by the dutiful thrall. She immediately placed her hands on his collarbone. A soft green light emanated from her palms. The dagger worked itself free. The wound sealed shut beneath it. The color returned to Evans's face. He led her back to the group.
Chloe went straight to work on Corbin. David immediately lessening the Demonic energy in Corbin so the healing could even work. She then moved to Son. Her healing energy stemmed the tide of their injuries. As she worked, David, his thralls, and a now-reinvigorated Jamie finished the last of the imps. Jamie was enthusiastically summoning larger, more aggressive blocks of ice.
The sudden quiet in the clearing felt heavy, a fragile bubble in a world that had just tried very hard to kill them. David looked at the scene. Chloe was still working, her hands glowing over Son's mangled wrist. Corbin was breathing easier, the deathly pallor receding from his face. Jamie was staring at his hands, a look of pure wonder on his face as he flexed his fingers, probably feeling the new strength of whatever new level he had reached. He looks like he just won the lottery. Kid doesn't realize the prize is a front-row seat to the next disaster.
David walked over to the last colossal he’d left alive, and ended it with a few stabs and open portals, its usefulness expired.
[You have defeated a Hobgoblin - Colossal Variant Lvl 10]
[You have defeated a Hobgoblin - Colossal Variant Lvl 8]
[You have defeated a Hobgoblin - Elite Variant Lvl 12]
[You have defeated…]
[You have defeated…]
[Lvl 6 > Lvl 7]
[Lvl 7 > Lvl 8]
His eyes scanned the tree line, the silence from the forest feeling more threatening than the earlier screams. This was a probe. A test. And we aced it a little too well. They had been lucky. The hobs had split their forces, operating on bad intel, thinking they were rounding up scared civilians. They had no idea he could turn their best fighters into his personal bodyguards.
They know now.
The thought was a cold stone in his gut. The next group wouldn't come in two neat, manageable chunks. They wouldn't be trying to take prisoners. They would come with everything they had, and they would be aiming for total annihilation. They would know about his thralls. They would know about Son's laser fingers. They would know about Jamie's ice and Rhea's telekinesis. Mara’s undead. We just showed them our whole playbook, and they have a perfect memory.
So we need to rewrite our playbook.
Without hesitation, he dumped all of his free stats into demonic energy. Moving forward, killing quickly would be far more important than dying slowly—he already had heat energy for that. He needed more capacity, larger portals. More thralls. Better skills.
A war was coming. This little skirmish, as brutal as it felt, was just the opening move. And now the roles were reversed. He was the one in the dark. He knew nothing about their real numbers, their command structure, what other horrors they could field. Do they have spellcasters? Siege weapons? Flying things? I have no idea. We're sitting in a clearing next to a giant 'kick me' sign.
Jamie needed to be able to summon walls of ice, not just blocks. Son needed more stamina, more power. Rhea needed to be able to hold her focus under pressure for longer than five minutes. He needed... he needed a lot of things. A bigger bag of tricks, for starters. He had barely even scratched the surface of what his energy was capable of.
He needed to level up. The enemy knew his face now. They knew he could turn their elites into personal bodyguards; they had seen the laser beams and the ice walls. They had walked in blind, and his group had given them a free demonstration of their entire arsenal. They wouldn’t make that mistake twice. The next group they sent wouldn’t be trying to capture them. It’ll be a dedicated extermination squad built from the ground up to counter every single thing they just witnessed. My current skills are a good start. My portals create openings, my energy lets me hit harder and move faster, but "a good start" isn't a guarantee against an enemy that's done its homework. I've barely scratched the surface of what's possible with this demonic energy; it feels like I've been given the keys to a sports car but I'm still puttering around in first gear. To survive what's coming, I can't just be the guy who surprised them once.
I need to be the guy who can surprise them again, and again, with things they couldn't possibly have prepared for. I need to destroy them. Raze the forest. I need to dig deeper, push harder, and unlock everything this System has to offer.
I need to level up my everything. More thralls.
Infiltration.
He needed intel.