Heroes shuffled behind me as the ground rumbled with the approaching horde of monsters. My heart hammered with anticipation at this fulcrum between the forces of light and those seeking to smother it. In the chaos to come, I would lose myself in well-honed instincts and swing my weapon without the minor worries scraping at the edges of my awareness. Such petty concerns had no place on the battlefield.

  The tide of flesh had the wan look of the void touched, creatures foolish or unfortunate enough to live near masters so alien that looking upon them renders lesser heroes insane. An inky darkness had consumed their eyes, and black veins crawled along their faces. Where they had been drained too severely, the flesh warped into bubbling cancerous masses that struggled to compensate mundanely for the lack of MP.

  I agreed with Ironclad’s assessment. The monsters from this portal would provide no good materials and their meat would be foul. This fodder was only good for combat. That would do.

  When the charging hooves, claws, paws, and chitin were close enough, I sprinted toward the line and ducked under the goring attack of a gorgon-triceratops. Its snake heads spat venom at me as I wove around the creature. My armor hissed as the caustic liquid tried to melt through.

  Once past the creature, I planted my foot, turned, and swiped my glaive at full strength. Most warriors would have reinforced the ground with their aura and increased the friction of their boots so that they could cut deeply into their foe. In a horde situation, I opted for an entirely different tactic.

  The swipe sent me flying backwards, deeper into the swarm. I twisted in the air and slashed at the giant I aimed for. His eyes exploded in black ichor, and his skull caved in before I hurtled another direction. As I landed, I hooked the neck of a dire shadow-tiger. Its vertebrae snapped in changing my direction enough to dropkick a drake while the tiger’s body rolled over a dozen other monsters.

  My blows weren’t doing as much damage as they could, but keeping my aura close and allowing my strength to fling me about let me act as a chaotic wrecking ball through their lines. A far less unified charge hit our first defensive wall and was easily funneled through our killzone. The towers glowed with purple energy and a diamond prism formed above each of their crenelations. They spun gently and fired purple lightning at the weakest foes within range, vaporizing them instantly.

  I continued flinging myself through the monsters as my fellow heroes were swarmed. With grim acceptance, I waited for them to buckle, for the lines to fall apart. In large engagements like this, I could only do so much. Inevitably, the monsters would prove greater than my allies. I could slaughter the enemy army down to the last, and the battle could still be lost as my army was routed and the objective overrun. The desperation and doom only made me fight harder.

  Right before my mind could slip into that cold place of invincibility, all my companions found inner reserves of strength. Lars deepened a trench and repaired a hole in a wall before forming extra rock into a great maul and flattening the nearest giant crystal spider. Vanya buried arrows into the hearts of larger monsters before drawing a red arrow. She launched it into the ground between a dozen monsters. The heat leeched out of them as it flowed into the arrow. Once the glowing shaft was surrounded by ice sculptures, it exploded and sent frozen shrapnel deep through the enemy ranks.

  As all the heroes pulled out a special trick, I remembered where I was. This was Aspiration. The best of the best went here, and in this era of dual powered heroes, all my allies were far mightier than before. Humanity had turned the tide of the war and was gaining ground.

  Surrounded on all sides, I briefly forgot that this hope had come at the cost of my growing irrelevancy. The bright feeling filled my chest as I tossed a T-rex into a four-limbed Endless Maw and rolled through a squad of skeletons. The maw turned its two-dimensional body on the incoming projectile and pushed the dinosaur through with its too flat limbs. When those appendages touched the T-rex, it looked like lines were drawn on the beast's body. Static and viscera exploded around the creature as it converted its prey.

  That shouldn’t be here. An Endless Maw was easily tier 4 without any limbs. The portals to lower-dimensional universes roamed the world, looking for mass to stave off the inevitable heat death of their reality. Limbs implied the collective civilization of that universe had begun to understand how to better interact with ours. Like many spirits in the middle tiers, it required a very specific method to banish.

  I cleaved wide arcs to make space as I backed up and surveyed the battlefield. Observer-possessed remains, an air elemental, a gluttony demon, a walking worm hive, an obsidian drake, and a star-cursed construct babbling unintelligible secrets: all were enemies far beyond tier 3. Maybe the towers were extraordinarily effective at dismantling such monsters, making the situation tier 3, if not the foes.

  Regardless, I needed to fall back. The nigh invincibility of my well fed armor mattered little to opponents like these. If I flung myself into an Endless Maw by accident, I doubted I would survive a second trip since no genie still owed me a favor.

  The Observer whirled its eye to my retreat and flowed so fast behind me that it might as well have teleported. An Observer’s eye always looked like your own eyeball or vision equivalent organ. It was entirely intangible by all known means. Translucent green tendrils sprouted from the eye around a soldier’s body that was nothing more than bits of armor, a few bones, and a couple short swords. Most of the armor and bones were bundled under eye, except for a pair of boots, which it stood with.

  It stabbed at my armor a dozen times. My aura gathered around my feet to prevent the blows from sending me flying. If I wasn’t as strong and as durable as I was, taking the attacks would have shook my brain until it was jelly. The strikes still caused my vision to blur and my stomach to vibrate.

  I rolled through the monster and grabbed at its core. An Observer couldn’t do anything without its host's body and possessions. It deftly dodged around me, keeping its items from my grasp. A blind backswing of my glaive caught its helmet and ripped it out of the creature.

  The thing’s eye remained fixed with mine as I backed into our defensive line while parrying the ever faster series of attacks. My companions had abandoned the first wall, leaving me to back through the perforated path as other monsters rushed at my flanks. Before I had to accept an Observer attack to deal with a dire wolf, Vanya planted an arrow in its head.

  Firearms cracked through the air as other crafters shot around me. Not all of them were perfect shots, so a few slugs struck the back of my head and knee without piercing my armor. On the balance, their help relieved pressure on me. I only had to let two slashes through to disperse a carrion ooze.

  Those slashes did leave deep grooves in my chestplate that weren’t repairing. My exchanges with the Observer had been draining the energy my glaive stole to prevent the weapon from shattering. My time was running out. A more desperate tactic was required.

  I lunged, letting the Observer bite a blade into my left shoulder and forearm to bat a hand through its core, scattering armor and bones everywhere, reducing it to boots. Before the Observer could rip out its blades, a tower decided it was the weakest creature in range and zapped it.

  A little bit of the purple lightning arced through the blades into me as the Observer shifted higher on the color spectrum until it burst into ultraviolet light. By the time I shook off the residual shock, the obsidian drake was upon me.

  With my right hand, I braced my glaive vertically against the creature’s extended jaw. My left arm hung useless with its wounds and couldn’t aid my block. Careful management of my aura let the creature slide me backwards without barreling me over completely. Deep in its throat, I heard the shattering of glass as it prepared an obsidian breath attack.

  This is going to suck. Other drakes were easier to manage. This variety was fast enough and had teeth sharp enough to dismember me if I ran away. I had techniques around that problem, but most required two hands or a more open area that wasn’t clogged with lesser monsters. They flowed around our tangle and nipped at me when they could.

  I closed my eyes and turned my head to take the tide of obsidian on my helm. Larger chunks of the glass punched through my scale mail into my guts and joints. After the extended battle, my aura failed to fudge sufficient leverage, and the breath weapon sent me tumbling.

  Gore and perforated bowels filled my nostrils as the drake’s attack did far more damage to the monsters behind me, creating a soft meat-pile for me to land on.

  Everything hurt and my will was failing. Two mid tier monsters back to back in conditions this unfavorable was a tall ask. Yet still I fought.

  I rolled to a sitting position. Should my limbs fail, I would move anyways! Blood seeped from my wounds and crystals dug deeper into my flesh as I shifted to my knees. Should my spirit break, I will drive the shards into our foe’s eyes! Lifting my wooden foot and pressing on it took a force beyond muscle. Should I fall, I will rise! I am Exemplar!

  With a roar, I stood and headbutted the charging drake. Its skin shattered from the blow, causing it to rear back and flop to the ground, concussed. My own heroic skull remained firm from the numbing collision.

  “Examplar, catch!” A blurry uniform tossed a glass bottle to me. I caught it with my right hand and flicked the stopper off with my thumb before chugging the brilliant red ichor. Vitality pulsed through me like a relieving breeze on all my wounds as the fiery liquid burned down my throat. I ripped the blades and glass shards from my wounds, letting the magic seal my myriad of injuries.

  A woman standing by the alchemist leaned over to him and said, “I didn’t know your potions were that effective.”

  The charitable student shook his head. “They normally aren’t.”

  I understood his confusion. The effectiveness of magic—both monster spells and items—increased as your shade grew. This included enemy offensive attacks and friendly fire from your fellow heroes, but your durability increased enough to more than compensate for the enhanced effect. Most Aspiration students were around ~15%, so the student’s potion was nearly five times more effective on me.

  With renewed strength, I grabbed the drake by the horns and spun it around until I let go and it flew into the Endless Maw encroaching on the friendly alchemist and his companion. They both dove for cover as the Maw devoured the drake. Before it could finish, a tower shot the drake and the resulting blast destroyed both of them.

  As I scanned for my weapon, Lars sauntered up and handed it to me before guarding my right. “What warrior loses their weapon?” he drawled sarcastically. He was covered in rock armor with a large stone shield on his left arm and a hammer made from gems in his right.

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  “I am the weapon. The rest are tools,” I replied.

  A blind woman with a katana appeared to my left and said in a melodic voice, “An odd perspective for a Crafter to have.”

  Rather than respond to that fair criticism of the discordance of my perspective with my path, I decapitated a charging raptor. The three of us worked together as a retreating wedge down the path around our walls. We cut, slashed, stabbed, and smashed the lesser creatures as they came.

  Vanya led a squad of archers and gunslingers into flanking positions on the walls and cleared more of the chaff. In the heat of battle, their prejudices were set aside to follow her experience.

  With the monster numbers thinning, the towers took down the higher tier monsters before they could get to my group. We were still driven back to the sixth defensive wall. Both of the professors stood at our backs and watched with impassive expressions. Ironclad went so far as to file her nails. In all likelihood, they would let the monster rush out the portal and storm the halls. They were not here to protect us.

  I held the line. My companions rotated between three sets of two as I kept up the slaughter. The occasional potion from an ally replenished my stamina, and my glaive drank deeply from my foes. All the cracks and damage in my armor repaired themselves until I was fresher than when we started.

  Many heroes mentioned minutes of battle feeling like hours. I had spent so much time in conflict that I had grown used to ‘battle minutes’. Those ticked by until the piling corpses threatened to create ramps over our fortifications. Before that became a serious concern, one of the students on a wall shouted, “Turtle!”

  A cold sweat trickled down my spine. No one called out regular turtles or even dire turtles with that level of alarm. I told the resting backline to cover me and leapt atop a wall.

  I sighed in relief. “Thankfully, it is a baby one!”

  The other students tilted their heads at me in confusion and pointed to the creature filling the canyon from side to side. Dragon Turtles were just large alligator snapping turtles. Their sharp beaks and spiked shells looked truly monstrous with their abyssal coloring, but their appearance—if not size—was entirely natural. While technically spirits, zoologists suspected that some of the native creatures swam into space and learned cosmic mysteries before returning to Earth. Such creatures were wise and strong in both limb and magic. They were only below Titans on the food chain.

  This infant, on the other hand, was merely incredibly strong and not humanity’s doom. The void of this realm had stripped it of its magic and intelligence. In fact, I had a suspicion about its purpose. “Focus on the smaller monsters! Ignore it.”

  I hopped back to my formation and continued to fight the smaller monsters. The mighty reptile soon destroyed our first wall, but the flood of monsters had not increased. No other creatures followed in its wake.

  A few students began to panic as the second wall collapsed, but many of my peers had begun to suspect what I did. While it made me lesser, I enjoyed not being the smartest person in the room. Humanity had no chance if my current self was the limit of excellence.

  As the next three walls fell, the monsters slowed to a trickle and the towers picked off more of them. To contribute, I had to mount a wall and throw rocks. I really needed to carry range weapons. My embarrassment at my tier 1 gear was foolish. It would serve until I made replacements.

  When the Dragon Turtle approached the final wall, I was the only one standing on it. No other monsters were remaining and the towers had turned off. The creature crawled until it was only a few meters away before snapping at me.

  I punched the beak and for several instances, I thought I might win the exchange, but my aura failed, and I slipped from the battlements to land with the line of students.

  Once the Turtle had demolished our final defense, it roared and began to back away down the canyon. As I suspected, the creature’s role was to clear the field of defenses. We weren’t supposed to fight it.

  Ironclad clapped. “Well done! You did not need my help at all.” She paused before continuing. “I lied. That was a tier 4 wave.” Well, that explains the mid tier monsters.

  The crowd cheered at their accomplishment. None of us begrudged more glory. The professor let us bask in it before silencing us.

  “Remember. Delaying a monster means it is not killing your allies. Winning a battle comes after surviving it.” She turned to Gyro. “I have no more to say.”

  Gyro then dismissed class, allowing us to drag ourselves back to our dorms.

  When I returned, Nyla, Derek, and Riena were watching drones beat each other up on a TV Riena had installed. I slunk into the kitchen and flipped the switch to clean it and myself before tossing my glaive into my room. Unfortunately, Riena’s drones had prevented any useful materials from spawning while I was gone.

  As though called by my concern, the woman twisted from the couch and locked eyes with me. She nodded and went back to the show. I had the sense that I could expect more foes in my room going forward. Our empath’s abilities were improving rapidly.

  I didn’t need the renewed bond to hear Casimir scribbling in his room and be reminded of my promise. After closing my door, I stripped and changed into a casual white T-shirt and shorts before binding my hair into a ponytail. The Healer would be offended if I wore armor in the dorm while he was home.

  Lacking casual slippers, I walked barefoot to his room and knocked.

  “Come in,” his muffled voice came from the door.

  I creeped it open. “Do you have a moment?” Casimir’s room was lined with shelves filled with fantasy novels and videogame cartridges. They framed the window around his room showing the 4th year’s fighting below. A headset lay on his bed next to his tablet. On his desk, a stationary tablet was mounted with its own hardlight keyboard. In retrospect, I should have suspected that the illusionist fed his imagination, as odd as the frivolous hobbies seemed to me.

  He rolled his eyes and threw his pen on the open notebook. “Fine.”

  I closed the door behind me while taking in his anger. What could have pissed him off so much? “Oh, you already heard.”

  He sighed. “You’re a named hero. When people learned that you already did the inverse of what I’m doing, they came running to tell me about it.”

  As biting and sharp as his fury seemed, I got the distinct impression it was pointed elsewhere. “But… you’re not mad at me for not telling you.”

  “Duh. Once I’m through enough elixirs, I won’t want to talk about it either. People don’t really understand the draining numbness that comes from hating your own body.” He grasped at the air. “It’s like drowning on dry land, right?”

  I shrugged. “The depressive episodes were leading to riskier behaviors that lowered my overall combat prowess. A hero needs to be true to themself. My legend could only grow so far while hiding.”

  Casimir’s eyes narrowed. “Your voice is calm, but I feel your pain over the bond.”

  “Yes, my growing inadequacies have been troubling me, but—”

  He waved his hand. “No. Maybe you’ve been hurting so long it seems normal to you, but I haven’t seen you do one relaxing human thing this past week.”

  “I’ve been able to remove that need through restorative meditation techniques. I understand your concern, but I’ve moved past it.”

  “But you haven’t. There is a deep misery running through you that—as a Healer—I need to be concerned about. We’re responsible for more than just physical wounds.”

  I wasn’t unaware of what he was referring to. Battle fatigue had claimed many of my companions over the years. Most went out in blazes of glory. A few attempted to retire to less active roles, but the war comes for us all. While Casimir’s worries were valid, they weren’t for one such as I. “The greater the hero, the greater tragedy. It’s a natural part of our evolution.”

  He shook his head. “Be that as it may, I’m prescribing nightly team bonding exercises, more commonly known as ‘hanging out’ until—.”

  Why would we simply ‘hang out’ when there were dungeons to clear, monsters to slay, and humanity to save? Those activities were fun and benefitted everyone. I needed to change the conversation. “None of this was why you were mad.”

  “That…” Casimir grimaced as the Healer persona dropped and the heat reentered his eyes. “These teams are supposed to be arranged to guarantee the best possible survival rate, but… they put both of us together, the only two students like us in our year. What if they shoved two undesirables into the same team so that they would bother no one else?”

  “Possibly. With my previous companions, our unit cohesion suffered greatly after I…” Words failed me for second. “After they chose to be small minded...”

  The light on his desk flickered as his own aura flared. “I hate how important others make this for us. My life shouldn’t be defined by an initial misconception. Because you’re right. It does fucking matter when making these teams because too many are bothered by it. I’m a badass wielder of vampiric shadows. I’ve caused wars between monsters, danced with dryads, and beaten the demon lord Kars’ithif at his own game. I was this close—” He pinched his fingers. “—to earning my own name.”

  “Aye… With so many forces threatening to destroy humanity, I cannot grasp why so many care about matters irrelevant to them.”

  Casimir sighed and held a fist out to me. “Humans can make it so hard to fight for them.”

  I rapped my knuckles with his. “If they were easy to help, then the deed wouldn’t be worthy of song.”

  “Ha! Well, I better make sure you comply with your treatment. These anatomy manuals will be there in the morning.” Casimir rose and gestured to the door.

  The insistence that I waste time aggravated me. While he meant me well, I didn’t need this. I had been through far darker times and had come out the stronger for it. But… he had just started on the Healer’s path, and I couldn’t undermine his authority in these matters without hurting our team.

  “Come on. It won’t be that bad.”

  I didn’t need them. I didn’t need anyone. I didn’t miss my old friends, the way we joked, the history shared, my companions who could pull me out of my head.

  Casimir held up his hands. “Easy, Mari. It’s a bad wound, but it’ll mend. Calm down and breathe.”

  What was he talking about? I glanced down and saw light bending around my aura, a wasteful display of power. If I wanted to pass out, I could briefly make my hand invisible. Pushing down the embarrassment of this tantrum, I closed my eyes and meditated until my mind and breathing settled.

  “Exactly like that. Keep that up and let’s go.” He opened the door and guided me out of his room, which I didn’t need. I memorized the layout and could walk it blind. Despite that, I didn’t shake him off. No one had ever been this concerned about Exemplar since she was 10. Someone giving a shit was nice. After he led me to the top of the stairs, he whispered, “Alright. Open your eyes and let’s act like we haven’t spent our youth fighting for our lives.”

  We walked into the living room and joined our team on both ends of the couch. Casimir sat next to Nyla while I alighted by Riena. Something was wrong. They weren’t bothered by the way I was sitting, but it drew their attention as different. I glanced between us and only noticed their poor posture and reliance on the backrest. None of them were ready to lunge to their feet in case of an attack.

  Their concerns were wrong, so I focused on the shared entertainment. The drones competed in a form of sport combat with heavy restrictions, which seemed utterly pointless. The monsters had no rules, you needed to bring everything you had against them. Hmmm, but Crafters could think in terms of industry and scale rather than personal power. An efficient and effective use of less resources would contribute more to the war effort than a singular magnum opus. If I looked at the contest through the lens of trying and testing more experimental design decisions, then I could see the appeal.

  I doubted I would ever veer too much into dronework. My only edge in crafting was my skill with my hands. The farther I strayed from that, the closer I was to an unpowered Crafter. Drones and mechatronics were useful for near sapient behavior without needing to make an artifact. Such intelligence would only make my weapons harder to control.

  Zencha settled into my lap and made a series of beeps. Its heat radiated from its metal spherical body into my thighs. I looked to Riena for guidance on how to handle her creation. She pulled on my shoulder. “My drones are patrolling. There are no monsters in the dorm, and Derek can shield all of us instantly. You can relax.”

  All of them wanted me to do it. They glanced occasionally at our conversation.

  “You’re safe now.” Her word had extra meaning to it and wiggled into my mind. I considered prying the influence out, but it came from a friend who cared about me. As I settled into the couch, Riena’s eyes widened in horror. “No wait, I didn’t mean to do that. How do I undo it?”

  I smiled at her. “I let… it… happen.” A yawn consumed me. “I could… have stopped it… but I didn’t want to…” It grew hard to focus on the TV. All the lights blurred together. “Some part… of me… knows… you’re right.”

  For the first time in years, I closed my eyes and went to sleep.