The air split with a shriek as space itself bent and tore.

  Rare-rank dimensional gates, known to players as dungeon entrances, ripped open across every battlefield with a deafening crack of space tearing. The vortexes swirled violently, crackling with unnatural light as shrieking wind tore through the air.

  Zzzzrrrshhhh!

  From them, monsters surged forth.

  Each starting town faced its own threat. In Stellar, it was goblins, small, wiry creatures shrieking with high-pitched cackles.

  Kiiiik! Kriiieek!

  Their jagged daggers gleamed as they poured out in frantic, unending waves.

  On the northern front, the player formation held firm. Five tanks stood at the vanguard, backed by sixteen swordsmen, ten mages, and three priests.

  And at the center of it all stood FireFlame.

  “Buff me! Now!” he barked.

  The priests flinched, then scrambled into action.

  “Y-Yes! Light Barrier! Defense Up!”

  “Speedy Up!”

  “Attack Enhance! Critical Surge!”

  One by one, every enhancement spell they had was piled onto FireFlame.

  “Go!!”

  With a shout, FireFlame surged forward alone. As per his earlier orders, no one followed. The tanks and swordsmen held their positions, giving him the open space he demanded. Mages and priests stepped forward only slightly, just enough to stay in healing and casting range.

  Frostina remained still at the rear, arms folded as she observed.

  “Hmm… Is that a coincidence?”

  “Without any official command, they’re grouping like teams, each tank paired with three swordsmen and two mages.”

  Well, almost every group. One formation still lacked a second mage, hers.

  Each tank used their Taunt skills, drawing goblins toward them like baited predators. The swordsmen struck down any drawn-in foes, while the mages targeted goblins that slipped past or remained outside the taunt radius.

  It was almost organized.

  Almost.

  It seemed the sudden quest announcement earlier had subtly nudged them toward coordination, even while following FireFlame’s demand to stay out of his way.

  And while the three priests had initially cast all their buffs on FireFlame, their better instincts eventually took over. Now, they were spreading out their healing to teams that actually needed it.

  At the center of the formation, FireFlame fought like a spinning blade. Alone but highly buffed, with a level higher than anyone else, he cleaved through goblins faster than the rest combined. His strikes were clean, aggressive, and deliberately flashy.

  Meanwhile, Frostina remained motionless, her white robe swaying in the rising battlefield wind.

  Cryssa, floating nearby in her ghost form, flailed in visible panic.

  (“W-What are you doing?! Why are you just standing there?! H-He’s already in first place on the leaderboard!”)

  Frostina let out a long, unhurried sigh.

  “Geez. Alright, alright.”

  With measured steps, she moved toward the incomplete formation, the one still short a mage, and quietly took her place at its rear flank.

  Her first plan, to let the others break away from FireFlame’s command, had only partially failed.

  The moment Frostina took position behind her team, a shift in the air followed.

  She opened her tome.

  Its cover, stitched with Cerberus hide and bound with magical threads, began to hum faintly. A pale blue symbol flared to life across its surface: a delicate snowflake inscribed within a circle of runes, glowing with quiet menace.

  The tome hovered in the air.

  “Let’s start with the simple one…”

  She raised one hand, palm open, and whispered.

  “Ice Spear.”

  With a soft hiss, a pale-blue shard materialized in the air. The spear hovered for a breath, its body crackling with cold energy. Then, with a flick of her wrist, it launched.

  Psh!

  The spear pierced the skull of a charging goblin.

  It didn’t stop moving.

  The creature’s legs continued for two more steps before the body collapsed in silence. Frost coated the edges of the wound, glittering faintly in the morning sun.

  The players near her paused, caught off guard by the sheer headshot precision of the spell.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  But Frostina didn’t stop there.

  She turned a page.

  Glacial Shot.

  Three bolts of icy energy spiraled forth from her hand, striking another trio of goblins before they could reach the tank’s shield. They collapsed mid-sprint, frozen solid, weapons clattering to the ground.

  Again, the spell required no chant, just intention, image, and control.

  And her control was flawless.

  The apprentice-forged tome continued to glow faintly with each cast, absorbing the data of every kill. Its magic responded to her as if reading her will directly, the frost symbol pulsing faintly between every spell.

  One by one, the goblins fell.

  Freezing Pulse.

  Shatter Spike.

  Frost Latch.

  Each cast was simple, basic magic by this world’s standards, but in Frostina’s hands, they became one-hit executions.

  The tanks held the aggro. The swordsmen slashed down weakened goblins. But the moment any monster strayed beyond formation, or targeted a mage, Frostina struck it down without hesitation.

  With each one-hit-kill, her name climbed. Now she was second in the Kill Count and Total Damage leaderboards, both in local battlefield and global, just below FireFlame.

  Cryssa’s voice rang beside her.

  (“He’s still ahead?”)

  “He will go down soon.”

  As soon as she said that, the air trembled.

  Without warning, the dungeon entrance pulsed, and the goblins surged.

  The flow tripled.

  Where once they poured out in scattered clusters, now they flooded the field in organized waves. But it wasn’t just their numbers that changed.

  These weren’t just dagger-wielding grunts anymore.

  Goblins with shortbows emerged behind the frontlines, loosing crude arrows from a distance. Others appeared with crooked staves in their claws, muttering guttural chants before launching small but vicious fireballs that arced high into the sky.

  The battlefield shifted.

  What was once controlled formation began unraveling.

  Someone shouted.

  “—Incoming spells!!”

  “Where’s the cover?!”

  The first wave of fireballs struck.

  BOOM!

  Explosions rippled through the ranks. Tanks buckled under the blasts. Mages who had been safely casting from a distance were suddenly scrambling for cover, some catching arrows in the arms or legs as they ran.

  And at the center, still alone, FireFlame roared, voice cutting through the panic.

  “BUFF ME AGAIN!! NOW!!”

  The three priests, startled, threw their hands up.

  “Light Barrier! Heal! Area Heal!”

  “Defense Up! Heal! Area Heal!”

  “Heal! Area Heal!!”

  Bright rings of magic swirled around FireFlame again. His wounds mended. His body shimmered with protective enchantments.

  His sword carved through flesh, blood arcing across the dirt with every swing.

  Krraaakh! Gyiiiek!

  The goblins’ shrieks turned to gurgles as they fell.

  But the cost was steep.

  With the priests’ focus locked solely on him, no one else was healed.

  The other teams began to falter.

  One tank collapsed to a barrage of arrows.

  His swordsmen fell seconds later, two of them burned, one pinned to the ground by a goblin's jagged blade.

  A scream echoed from the right flank as another formation crumbled under pressure.

  The field was breaking.

  And FireFlame was surrounded.

  The goblins closed in on all sides. He cut them down, one after another, but for every one he killed, three more replaced it.

  “HEY! Mages! Burn these things off me!”

  But none of the mages turned toward him.

  They couldn’t.

  They were too busy trying to stay alive, firing off desperate spells, shielding themselves from arrow volleys, watching their lines collapse around them.

  All except one team.

  Frostina’s.

  She hadn’t moved from her position. Her white robe fluttered slightly in the rising wind, untouched by fire or blade.

  Her tome glowed, its pages turning of their own accord.

  She raised her hand with a flick of her fingers.

  “Ice Barrier.”

  A solid wall of frost erupted around her team, one arc above her, and on each other's team, forming a partial dome that shimmered in the rising light. Arrows clinked harmlessly against it. Fire spells struck the ice, sizzling into a cloud of steam.

  Thup-thup-thup!

  Ssssshhhh!

  Inside, the teams stood untouched.

  “Y-You protected us?”

  The nearest mage whispered, eyes full of disbelief.

  Frostina said nothing.

  She simply turned the page again.

  The tome pulsed.

  Icicle Bloom.

  From her outstretched hand, a flurry of ice exploded into a ring of spears that struck the encroaching goblins, not killing them outright, but staggering them back. The timing was perfect. A second later, her teammates launched their own attacks, picking off the disoriented monsters.

  She didn’t steal their kills.

  She preserved them.

  Another spell followed.

  Glacial Echo.

  A pulse of freezing magic swept through the crowd of goblins pushing toward a panicked mage team nearby. Their enemies slowed to a crawl, legs frozen, movements dulled.

  The mages looked up, stunned at the sudden reprieve.

  One blinked, then immediately unleashed a firebolt into a goblin’s chest. Another cast Wind Lance to knock a second back.

  Frostina watched quietly.

  She wasn’t farming kills, she was stabilizing the field.

  Giving them room to cast, survive, and fight back.

  Of course, she didn’t help FireFlame.

  If she was asked to, then she could make a simple excuse like he was too far from her range.

  But no one could spare a thought for him, they were too busy just trying to hold the line.

  And then—

  “Arghhh!”

  FireFlame screamed.

  A fireball struck him in the side. An arrow pierced his leg. He swung wildly, but his buffs had faded, and no new ones came.

  His priests were already gone, burned, cut down, or overwhelmed.

  Kriiiihk! Gyiihah!

  Three goblins lunged, shrieking as they piled on. His final roar vanished beneath snarls and steel.

  “NO—!”

  He vanished beneath them.

  A bright flash marked his fall, his body scattering into motes of light.

  But no one noticed. No one had time to care.

  The war raged on, and everyone still alive was busy with their own fight.

  The leaderboard changed.

  FireFlame’s kill count and total damage had paused.

  And top players from other battlefields were still climbing, rising past him, pushing him off the leaderboard entirely.

  As for Frostina…

  She now held the #1 spot in Kill Count, Total Damage, and somehow, even Damage Taken.

  And yet, the war was only just beginning.