Lucas is facing barracks, demons and the empire…

  The battlefield had stopped making sense.

  Demons were tearing into anyone that moved. Lucy was laughing like a lunatic on the front line, yelling, “Aye! That DUNK sings sweeter than rum!” and her hammers were singing against demon skulls, and the barracks were still spitting arrows and fireballs into everyone. It wasn’t a war anymore; it was a blender.

  “Don’t let them bunch up!” Lucas shouted, his voice raw from smoke. “Mages, spread! Healers, behind the—no, behind!”

  Someone nearly tripped over a dead player's inventory drop, stumbled into his line of sight, and he shoved them aside just as a stray bolt scorched the cobbles. The heat brushed his cheek; the smell was instant; burnt hair and iron.

  Lucy’s roar carried from ahead: “Ho ho, baldies! Dmitry’s school reunion or the demon’s ball? Me hammer’ll give ’em a new shine: dents an’ dents! Rimebreak, swing true!” Both of her hammers came down with a crunch, sending up a spray of black ichor. The demons barely noticed half the hits; they just kept swinging.

  The Rimebreak formation, if it could still be called that, was folding in all directions. Demons from the barracks. Traitors from the gate. Friendly fire from panicked archers. Every spell was a gamble.

  “Barracks fire; north wall!” someone yelled.

  “I see it!” Lucas barked, eyes darting. His mana sense flared; runes lighting up behind the enemy. “Nuala, bubble right! Lisa, burn the gaps, no wide spells! We’re boxed in, not baking bread!”

  He moved as if he’d been doing this for years, adrenaline erasing the hesitation that used to choke him. The commands came out clear, clipped, his. Mages shifted, bubbles flared, the chaos bent ever so slightly into something resembling order.

  Then another arrow storm hit. Wood shattered, magic flared. Someone screamed.

  Lucas didn’t stop. Couldn’t. “Focus the demons! Use them for cover! Let the Altandai guards or the empire waste their mana on them first!”

  Sparks surged around him, drawn to his pulse as if they could feel his momentum. For the first time since the fight began, he wasn’t following someone else’s orders; he was the voice others looked to. Somehow, the madness listened.

  Wind mages shifted formation, their gusts slicing incoming arrows out of the air with audible snaps. Battle mages stepped forward, fire and stone and lightning turning the front ranks into a meat grinder. Healers huddled behind summoned barriers, their restoration beams flashing like camera shutters.

  Lucas stood in the middle of it all, shoulder throbbing, lungs burning, but grinning anyway. “Lightning mages! Prepare your best spells!” he bellowed, and the air prickled in response.

  Then he spotted Nuala again; annoyingly composed even with smoke curling around her face. “Nuala!” he yelled over the din. “Splash the traitors! Make them wet!”

  She blinked, incredulous. “That’s not how physics works—”

  “It does today!” he shot back.

  Her expression screamed, this idiot, but she sighed, flicked her wrist, and turned to her squad. “All water mages… make it rain on the idiots!”

  The answer came in a chorus of runes. Moments later, shimmering orbs burst overhead and released heavy sheets of water. It crashed down across the traitor lines, soaking armor, banners, and half the square.

  Lucas felt the surge in his fingertips before his brain caught up. “Alright then,” he muttered, sparks crawling up his arms. “Let’s see how not-physics feels.”

  He thrust both hands forward and finished the last rune of [Shocking Big Zap].

  The name was stupid… some kid was the first to find the spell, but the spell itself didn’t care. Power detonated from his palms, a pulse of blinding blue that tore through the soaked cobbles and jumped from body to body.

  The air went electric, literally.

  Crackling arcs ripped through armor, danced across puddles, and turned the front line into a twitching, sizzling mess. Screams blended with the sharp ozone hiss as health bars plunged.

  Other lightning mages saw it and joined in, bolts chaining through the water like a living net. The air stank of smoke and burning mana. For a wild, impossible moment, the traitor formation broke. The traitor line wavered. Then broke. Lucas saw it in their faces… the moment they stopped fighting to win and started fighting to survive. “Push!” he screamed, and for once, everyone listened.

  Lucas’s heart hammered in his throat. It’s working.

  Then came the hiss; the angry, rolling hiss of heat. Enemy fire mages raised their staves, flame blooming across their line. The puddles steamed, smoke curling upward.

  “Seriously?” Lucas groaned.

  Lisa’s laughter came before he saw her. “Let me help you!” she yelled, eyes wide and gleaming, her staff already burning like a star.

  “Lisa—wait—”

  Too late. She slashed her arm through the air, and a wave of fire roared past him, feeding the steam into a white wall that swallowed the square.

  Lucas ducked, coughing, the entire world reduced to hissing heat and crackling light. Somewhere in that fog, he was still shouting orders, half instinct, half madness, but people were moving.

  The fog broke in patches, steam thinning under the sunlight until the battlefield came back into focus. What had been a boiling storm of light and screams now felt hollow, as if sound itself had burned out. The puddles hissed. The dead players left behind equipment, and some of the poor players were stealing the stuff.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  And then Lucas saw it. Movement… retreat.

  The traitors were pulling back. Armor clanked, boots splashed, orders barked. The entire front line folded in on itself, turning tail toward the city streets.

  At their head walked a man who looked far too casual for someone commanding a retreat. Early twenties, maybe. Dirty blond hair sticking to his forehead, that kind of face that said I’m not even trying, and a grin to match.

  “Back, Empire! Regroup!” he shouted, voice bright and clear like this was some kind of field trip.

  Lucas squinted. He didn’t know the guy, but something about him set off alarms. Was it his confidence, that easy stride? Lucas was about to yell a question when Lisa’s voice cracked across the square first.

  “Brian! What’s this?!”

  Her tone wasn’t anger so much as heartbreak in disguise. The kind that didn’t quite know whether to shout or break.

  Brian turned, still wearing that half-sorry, half-smug grin. “Forgot I have a gig at Nathanco?” he said, shrugging like he’d skipped study group instead of switched sides in a war.

  Before Lucas could process that, one of their rogues darted toward Brian, blade flashing. Brian’s smile didn’t even fade. He shifted, drew his sword in a single fluid motion… and reality stuttered.

  Steel clashed. The rogue blocked the swing cleanly; except an afterimage finished it. A second strike, delayed but perfectly timed, sliced into the man’s side. The rogue stumbled back, HP bar chunked down.

  Lucas froze. His brain caught up a second too late. That move—

  That was Lunaris’s move.

  Lucas blinked at the chat flashing in the corner of his vision, part of him almost laughing. Of course she’d call murder and class stealing important.

  Lisa wasn’t laughing. She raised her staff, her pout trembling between fury and guilt. “I wouldn’t tell you about us!” she yelled, voice cracking again, and flung a streak of fire his way.

  Brian ducked under it with absurd ease, embers scattering harmlessly behind him. He straightened, still smiling. “Sorry! Talk to you at school! Still friends?”

  Lisa hesitated… then huffed, lowering her staff. “Yeah... traitor!”

  Brian’s grin widened just before he turned away, his retreating silhouette lit by the dying flames around them. The Empire troops melted into the streets after him, leaving only the hiss of cooling stone and the faint buzz of Lucas’s mana still fading from his fingertips.

  He exhaled, realizing his hands were shaking. Great. First demons, now relationship drama. Totally normal war.

  A new ping lit up on Lucas’s HUD.

  His pulse skipped. Dmitry or Lola not answering was bad news, maybe catastrophic, but he shoved the thought down where it couldn’t reach him.

  One crisis at a time.

  The Empire flank was gone. Brian and his turncoats had taken their mess of troops with them, leaving only the demons spilling across the square and the barracks still stubbornly manned. The garrison soldiers, NPCs, kept fighting with eerie precision, volleys disciplined, their losses final. No respawns or second tries.

  Lucas forced himself not to think about it. This was war, and they’d chosen their side.

  The demons, though, were everyone’s problem. With the last of them having stopped pouring from the rift, the red glow beneath the barracks faded, leaving dozens, maybe hundreds, already loose across the square. Black skin with bald heads gleaming, blades dragging behind them, voices a weird mix of words he failed to recognize.

  “Mages, refocus!” Lucas shouted. His throat was coarse, but command came easier now, instinctive. “Left side, target demons! Right, suppress the wall! Don’t give the garrison a breath!”

  Lightning cracked.

  Fire arced.

  Water hissed into steam.

  The air became an orchestra of destruction, spell after spell hammering into the demonic front. Some beasts burst apart under concentrated volleys, their bodies dissolving into black mist. Others pushed through, wings unfurling, claws gouging stone.

  “Keep steady!” Lucy’s voice thundered from ahead, both hammers raised high, her coat torn, her grin fierce. “Let our masts tremble and our blades call out like sirens! Rimebreak, make their hearts stagger!”

  The cheer that followed rolled like a wave through their line. Warriors advanced, shields interlocked, stepping over the fallen equipment. The mages behind them hurled spells in perfect rhythm, their light painting the smoke in violent color.

  A demon lunged, impaling one of the frontliners, but was instantly crushed under a coordinated strike… a hammer from Lucy, a spear from a knight, and a searing bolt from Lisa that reduced it to smoke.

  Lucas’s eyes darted across the battlefield, reading the flow like a current. The demons were thinning. The barracks wall was cracking under the constant barrage. For the first time today, the impossible looked winnable.

  Lucy pivoted, raising her left hammer toward the looming gate. “Scamantha gifts, now!”

  On cue, shadows peeled from the flanks. Rimebreak’s rogues, light-footed, masked, and grinning, darted through the smoke, vials flashing in their hands. They planted them along the gate’s hinges, doorframes, even under the portcullis lip. Each potion glowed with unstable mana, fizzing like bottled storms.

  Lucas saw one rogue trip, catch herself, grin wider, and still make it out before the last vial hit the stone.

  “Fall back!” someone shouted. “Get clear of the blast!”

  The rogues scattered, diving behind barricades and rubble. Lucy raised her left hammer again, waiting, eyes locked on the gate. For a moment, the square went quiet… just the hiss of dying demons, the rumble of spells fading. Lucas could feel the charge in the air, static crawling across his skin, a storm about to break.

  Then the potions went off.

  The explosion wasn’t fire so much as light… blinding, white-gold, rippling outward in a shockwave that punched through the gate like paper. Wood splintered, metal screamed, and the entire archway disintegrated into raining debris.

  Lucas ducked instinctively, shards pelting his cloth armor. When he looked up again, the barracks gate was gone.

  The Rimebreak army cheered, ragged but loud, the sound echoing off the square’s walls. Lucy planted her right hammer in the rubble and roared, “Rimebreak! The portside is ours!”

  Lucas exhaled, half laughing, half gasping. Smoke and mana haze burned his eyes, his spark-stained gloves trembling from adrenaline.

  They’d done it. Somehow, through betrayal, demons, and chaos… they’d actually taken the damned barracks.