Mia felt slightly startled at the surety with which that last thought came. Duty. She never really liked having it, but right at this moment it was what kept her running straight towards the Major and not out into the wilderness.

  It was … calming, in a way. There was no doubt, no uncertainty, just a simple purpose. A clear plan, and guideline for the future.

  ‘Do your best to kill the monsters, but don’t die trying.’ Summed up what her instincts, her blood was whispering in her ears nicely. It resonated with her, that she was still putting herself firmly in first place, but wasn’t to be callous with the lives of others either.

  It was good; it was right. Maybe not to others, to some it would still be too little if she merely just ‘gave her best’. But it was right for her, and that was all that mattered. Asking for more of her would have been greedy, preposterous. Did the beggars ask for your entire monthly paycheck or just a few bucks?

  That’s right, they asked only for what could be freely given without inconveniencing their benefactors. The weak who either couldn’t or wouldn’t protect themselves had no right to demand anything more of her, even if she only had her power because she had been extraordinarily lucky. Luck was a skill too, though Mia guessed the only luck involved in getting her own power was when one of her ancestors managed to get laid with a Fae.

  Does that make me a magical nepobaby? Was the idiotic thought running through her head as she slid to a stop before the hunkish, oily grey-skinned man that was Major Waters. The man was looking at her, dark amber eyes staring without much emotion as the two fins he had for ears flapped against his neck. Pretty sure ‘Waters’ is a new nickname. Was that woman trying to get me beaten up by giving me some mocking nickname soldiers had for the Major?

  “Hi, Major. The Rift Guardian is coming,” Mia said, wasting no time with the no-nonsense Merman that looked like he snacked on pufferfish and wrestled with sharks for fun. “I’m guessing it’s at around level 15. It’ll take a whole lot of firepower to kill, it has freakishly fast regeneration. I’ve seen it heal back from getting its brain aired out and pulped once.”

  “I see,” the man said, his amber eyes that had only the deep abyss surrounding them instead of the white sclera Mia was used to, bore into her own unnervingly. He gave a nod, satisfied with something he must have seen in her own eyes. “Go back to your post then. I’ll organize a coordinated fireteam. Try to time your attacks with our own, the signal will be an air horn. Now go!”

  Mia did so, turning already as she gave a brief nod to the man as he started shouting orders for various people to come to him and form a squad. Mia had to zigzag between onrushing soldiers and barely avoided crashing into someone three times with the dead sprint she was going at.

  “Sorry!” Mia shouted, spinning around the woman, carrying a crate of something in a hurry. She only stopped for a moment to stop the cursing woman from falling on her ass and getting crushed under the weight of her crate and then she was off again, eyes roving the increasingly harried masses for her friends.

  She spotted a mane of crimson hair and put a bit more power into her legs. Carmilla turned, giving her a slight smile and around her stood the rest of her party along with Avery. The roguish blonde looked a touch beaten up, her clothes worn out and dotted with spots of dirt and blood as she stood there with her arms crossed.

  “Hi! Hello, Avery, thanks for coming!” Mia greeted, looking around and counting to make sure everyone was there. Even Brent walked over and Helene too came down from the sky, though Mia had no idea how Carmilla had managed to signal the latter. “Let's go? The Major is organizing some fireteam or another to attack together when they blow an air horn, so we should be up on the walls if we want to hit the damned thing at the same time. Oh! And Avery you have something with more range than your punches … right?”

  “Hah,” Avery laughed a little, then grinned. “Nope.”

  “Well, shit- I mean we’ll make it work!” Mia nodded, glancing over at Brent for help. How had she ended up in her impromptu leadership position, anyway? He should be the one doing the planning part of things.

  “If the Troll doesn’t die from the concentrated volley, we might have to go out and finish it off in a melee,” Brent said, rubbing his chin. “You’ve seen the man throwing those balls of fire on the wall, right? Do you think you can do more damage in a melee than him?”

  He was looking at Avery, and the girl just huffed at the questioning look, blowing a lock of dirty blonde hair out of her face.

  “Sure I can,” she said. “My fire is much denser and I can make it go into the fuckers I hit, not just wash over them like a lukewarm shower as the guy up there is doing with his little candlelights.”

  “Okay, so we go up and shoot what we have at the monster at the signal,” Mia summarized. “Then ‘ride out’ to finish it off if it survives and looks beatable. Objections?”

  “Who goes out?” Lina asked, arms crossed as she looked towards the wall with a frown. “I am just about as dangerous to that Troll as a hairdryer. No point in me going, is there?”

  “You could keep the rest of the horde off of us,” Mia said. “You are awesome at crowd control. I say we all go.”

  “Objection,” Helene said. “Surely just shooting the monster from the walls would be enough. There are dozens of mages here working together, maybe upwards of a hundred. No need to put ourselves out there. That’s suicidal.”

  “Agreed,” Mark said. “Don’t be stupid.”

  Brent and Carmilla just shrugged, while Avery looked a hint miffed. Likely because she was going to be fiddling her thumbs along with Brent if they didn’t go anywhere.

  “Oookay? Let’s vote then,” Mia said, looking over the group. She didn’t think going out would be overly risky once the Troll was down for the count and only in need of finishing off. With her Familiar, Lina, Carmilla and her Amulet, she herself felt pretty safe, and she felt the others would be too, but alas, their team wasn’t an autocracy. “Who’s for going out to finish off the Troll if it doesn’t die from the barrage?”

  Mia raised her hand, and Avery mimicked her with an amused look.

  “I’ll refrain from voting,” Brent said, crossing his arms.

  Carmilla looked uncomfortable, but she too raised a hand after some consideration.

  “Okay, that’s three for and the rest of you aside from Brent against?” Mia asked. Helene, Lina and Mark nodded. “That’s three to three. Uhhh, what now? We should decide quickly.”

  Mia glanced to the side and saw people running up and nudging regular soldiers away from the spot on the wall right where the Troll was heading.

  “I suppose then I’ll decide,” Brent said, sighing. “I say we stay. Just shoot at the thing so it can’t get up while we wipe the rest of them out. We only go down to confront it if it somehow gets over or through the wall.”

  “If it gets through the wall, we should run,” Lina said, earning a nod from Helene.

  “No time,” Mia said, hearing the first group of goblins crash against the wall, trying to crawl up the side of it by clawing into little crevices and cracks. “The Troll is going to enter firing range in a bit. We’ll see how fucked we are once the salvo lands and then we can decide whether to run, alright?”

  With a round of nods, they rushed up the wall and managed to weasel their way into somewhat good spots.

  They made sure to remain as a single group though. Lina had her magic spread out to shield them from ranged attacks, Mark moulded the palisades to rise up and thicken while Avery and Brent just sat down and readied should they be needed.

  Mia, Carmilla and Helene were the ranged heavy hitters of the party and so they were the ones near the front.

  Looking for their target, Mia easily found it. The Troll rose out of the green sea of goblins like a titan among ants. Even the hobgoblins only reached up to its thighs as it lumbered on.

  The reason they all had the time to organize a fireteam and argue was made clear as Mia watched the towering monster lazily walk towards the wall. While the rest of its kin ran around his ankles to rush the walls like headless chicken, the Troll just strolled with big, slow steps as it dragged its gigantic ivory club behind it.

  At the speed it was going, Mia could have out jogged it.

  The fire still burned, more widespread than ever before. Fireball-guy had been hard at work, spreading a veritable inferno that ran parallel the walls and stretched out for at least fifty metres.

  The goblins rushed through it without a care, some getting barely a burn while others fell and screamed as their flesh melted off their bones.

  They had hobgoblins by the dozens, and for every five of them there was a shaman too. Mia also caught what she suspected were the male counterparts of the ‘Jade Beauty’ they’d seen lead a group of goblins not so long ago.

  The Orcs weren’t many, just a dozen in a vague circle around the Troll, but they were outfitted in gleaming steel armour from head to toe that was only dented and bloodied in a few places.

  “Do we know anything about those Orcs?” Mia asked, squinting at them. The one she killed too fast to show any particular talent for anything beyond some middling skill in organising its troops.

  “They can each use a Skill like Berserk,” Mark said, and Carmilla just nodded off to the side. “And they are less dumb than the gobs, also, they are big fuckers and strong too. All that muscle isn’t just for show, but they aren’t all that tougher to kill than a human bodybuilder would be in a steroid-rage.”

  “Stellar,” Mia said, eyeballing the distance. She guessed the Troll still had about a half a minute before it entered firing range for the other mages. “Should I pop a few of them while they are just strutting down the street like peacocks?”

  “No,” Brent said before anyone else could. “Don’t alert the thing of the danger it’s strutting right into. The Troll might be dumb as shit, but even it would notice that if a bunch of its friends die right next to it then it’s in danger.”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “Right,” Mia said, sounding sheepish. She turned to the officer-looking soldier not far from her. “When are we firing?”

  “When it crosses the 500 metre mark,” the man said, glancing at Mia dismissively before returning to staring into a telescope. “It’s at about 800 metres at the moment, at the speed it’s moving at … half a minute.”

  “Thanks,” Mia said, turning away from the man and back to the rest. “You heard that, right?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said, sounding sour. “Thought I might help out, but I can’t send even just a pebble that far with enough power.”

  “Same,” Lina mumbled. “But I'm out either way. Even the hobs sometimes shrug off my attacks now.”

  “Well, we can fiddle our thumbs together then,” Avery snickered, her head laid back against the parapets as she stared up at the sky.

  “Mom, Carmilla?” Mia asked, glancing at the two. “You can hit at that range, right?”

  “Yes,” Carmilla said simply.

  “I should be able to,” Helene said, frowning. “I can get off at most three bolts that far away. Then I’ll need a potion or rest.”

  “We have potions,” Mia said, glancing over to the side where Mark’s pilfered backpack of mana potions was. It was filled with empty vials, but she could see at least a handful still filled. “Alright. Get ready and be careful.”

  They nodded, faces grim as they looked out over the parapets that slowly shifted under Mark’s careful application of mana. The dwarf was scrunching up his face, beads of sweat pouring down his temples as he did something to the wall that was clearly beyond what he’d initially done to build them up. Mia guessed he was reinforcing it, or something of the sort.

  She watched the Troll, that three metre tall mountain of muscle. It had leathery green skin caked in mud and grime, but what was most eye-catching about it was its disproportionately small head with large, floppy ears. It was like someone cut the head off of a goblin, and grafted it onto that gigantic monster.

  It looked silly, comical even and the only reason no one was laughing at it was the clear lines of fresh blood running down its chin and the older, drier blood caked onto its ivory club.

  Mia really hoped that was monster blood, especially the one trickling down from its chin and onto its wide, barrel chest.

  She almost sighed in relief when it idly swung its club about, as if bored and sent at least six of its lesser kin crumbling in various states of paste-ness.

  It reached down with overly long arms and grabbed one’s detached arm before starting to nibble on it like it was a grilled chicken leg.

  She knew it didn’t mean a human arm or leg hadn’t once been in the place of that green skinned limb, but it calmed her somewhat that the blood coating the monster now was of monster origin.

  “600 metres,” the officer called out, his voice raised in a way that had everyone shutting up and readying. He still stood a few metres away from Mia, staring down his telescope when he spoke again. “550 metres. Be ready to fire on the signal!”

  Mia felt mana fill the air, the nearly a hundred mages now all likely closing in on level 10 all readying their strongest spells. The air vibrated with power and every colour in the world seemed to be just a touch more vibrant, just a little more alive, just a bit more … real.

  Mia herself couldn’t use her strongest spell, that being Arcane Blast, since it had a maximum of a 100 metre range. So instead, she went with the piercing Bolt and decided to go for sending it right through the monster’s brain.

  That should at least disable it.

  The smaller goblins crashed against the walls below, screeching and still burning but couldn’t reach the top even as they tried to claw up. There was always someone up on the walls poking them with a pointy stick, and goblins weren’t exactly the tough sort, not even at these higher levels so they obediently died and fell down in bloody heaps when they got poked hard enough.

  Mia ignored them entirely, her heart beating out of her chest as her gaze locked in on the bored, dumb mug of the Troll chewing messily on the fresh meat of its kin. Her ears strained for the moment, she reacted the nanosecond the air horn blew.

  Her spell was ready, mana up in her fingertips for the last half a minute. She didn’t bother to use the wand; she felt it weakened her spells, if only by a tiny smidge, but she wanted this spell to be the strongest it could be.

  GO! HIT! Like she’d done once before with the Ratling, she tried to push the spell forward with her will, not satisfied with merely casting it and letting it do its job. She wanted more; she wanted it to fly right through the monster’s head and kill it on the spot.

  Her spell shot off in a pink blur, tearing through the air with barely a sound and travelling the half a kilometre distance in half a second.

  The Troll’s head snapped back, and Mia saw a burst of blood. She dared to hope for a moment, then almost smiled when it stumbled back a step.

  Its head snapped back into place, an eye missing and hatred burning in the other. Then the other spells reached it, and the monster was buried under a cavalcade of magical death.

  It was like a firework to Mia’s eyes and a storm to her senses. Fire, Earth, Air, Arcane, Darkness, Light and even more esoteric elements Mia couldn’t name blasted into the monster with skills and spells of their own.

  It got buried underneath, its form entirely shrouded. Mia watched, mentally beating herself up for aiming at the thick skull of the monster and not for the much more squishy heart inside its fleshy chest.

  If the monster thought its glare would faze her, it thought wrong. Lars, the werebear, had a much more terrifying glare, with madness mixing with primal fervor in his eyes, as did the Boarling Rift’s damned Guardian. The eyeless, yet somehow hateful, gaze dripping malice had woken Mia up at night more than once.

  This troll was just big, dumb, and strong.

  With nothing better to send into the fray, Mia shot off another five piercing Bolts vaguely towards where she felt the monster’s presence with her hyper focused Spirit Sense.

  Helene next to her sent her third bolt of lightning off, a veritable beam of it as thick as Mia’s wrist. It thundered and crashed, overpowering the sound of even the military’s heavy artillery exploding as it broke the sound barrier.

  Carmilla, though, stopped firing after sending off an initial Blood Lance and a Blood Bolt and instead waited with the next Lance at her fingertips and her eyes narrowed in predatory alertness.

  Mia remembered seeing the beam of crimson light going right through the monster’s chest, so if it wasn’t dead yet from that, it was likely writhing in pain just like Lars had been after getting hit with the spell.

  “That’s barely enough for one more,” Helene whispered and Mia glanced over to find three entire vials of mana potions empty between her fingers. “Oh, well.”

  A nearby mage caught what she’d said too and looked aghast at the ashen haired woman. If Mia remembered correctly, the female mage was one who used little shards of rock that she shot off at … middling speeds.

  “One of those damned potions recovers half my mana!” She sounded offended on behalf of the potions. “Are you drinking it wrong or something?”

  “Hold fire!” “HOLD FIRE!” The order rushed down the wall, each officer shouting over the deafening sounds.

  The mages slowly, reluctantly dialled their attacks down until only a few of them were throwing attacks like all of them wanted to be the ones who shot off the last spell. Fireball-guy won that petty competition, proving to be more thick-skinned than the Water mage who’d kept throwing lances of muddy water at what Mia guessed was the Troll along with him.

  “Check for life!” An order came from somewhere and while it wasn’t directed at Mia, she startled and got to work. She barely had to tap into the data her Spirit Sense was giving her to know the answer.

  “It’s alive!” She shouted, a second voice repeating her own words a few seconds later. Looking over, Mia saw a tall blonde woman in military uniform with a pair of graceful elven ears poking out from under her braids.

  “Resume fire! KILL IT! KILL THE DAMNED MONSTER!”

  That was all that had to be said, all the magic wielders went back to throwing magic after magic at the bloody heap, helplessly twitching in the distance among the charred remains of its kin.

  Mia, though, felt her spells wouldn’t be doing much good when all those others didn’t manage to kill it. They’d need to get its heart and burn it to ash for the monster to die for certain … and to be able to get close enough to do that, they would have to clear out the chaff.

  *****

  Greg watched them, binoculars held up to his eyes as he laid flat across a three-storey building’s rooftop. He saw her, that pink haired little whore and that fanged monster next to her who left him and his friends battered and broken in a pile, discarded like garbage.

  His hand inched towards the back of his hip, towards the handgun tucked in there. He halted the movement. They were too far away anyway, plus … was this really what he was doing? Considering killing girls half his age?

  He shook his head, a scowl slipping onto his face. They weren’t human, they weren’t ‘girls’, just monsters with a thin veneer of humanity. Just monsters that were better at masking it than the small, ugly green ones rushing at the walls.

  But they were once human. A part of him whispered, a dumb part. Whatever they might have been once, the System’s magic turned them into monsters. Killing them was no different from gunning down a ‘Goblin’. And what if the System just brought out the monsters they’d always been? What if it just pushed it onto the surface, made it apparent?

  Faeries, Vampires, Werewolves and the lot were always evil in the folktales, and that had to mean something. Maybe there was more truth to those stories than anyone could have ever thought.

  Still, it would be stupid to kill them now. Don’t get him wrong, he will kill them. He will protect his fellow humans from them, but not when they were fighting other monsters.

  Better the monsters kill each other than us. He thought inwardly, keeping his binoculars locked on the line of ‘mages’. His heart trembled in fear at the power they wielded. Unearned power, unnatural. I had to go through months of weapons training and psychological tests to be allowed a simple pistol and these people just got artillery level ‘magic’ without any trouble, without any checks or restrictions.

  They were dangerous, wild, and unstable. Greg couldn’t trust them, nor the ‘beastkin’ with their weird instincts and needs. Who knew? They could get a taste for human flesh and then what would happen?

  He scoffed.

  He knew unstable lunatics when he saw them, and those two girls wielded far too much power, and were far too dangerous to be allowed within communities of normal people.

  “Greg,” one of his friends whispered. “We should go, the army guys started patrolling around and going up buildings with those bigass rocket launchers.”

  “Fine,” Greg said, throwing a last, distasteful glance towards the wall and the cavalcade of colours rippling about before it. That’s the sort of power no mortal should wield.

  There were normal Classes too, Greg knew, he had one after all: Accountant. Those people just chose their own damnation, reaching for too much power. Those monsters.

  Greg felt a shiver go down his spine, remembering that pair of crimson eyes staring at him like he was a spot of shit stuck on a boot.

  No recognition, no respect, no fear.

  I’ll show them they are not invincible just because they got magic. I’ll show them they should still have fear.

  Actions have consequences, and if the damned army can’t bother to punish a pair of magical girls for aggravated assault, then I fucking WILL.

  He had enough like-minded friends to make that a reality, and he was sure he could find more people with some sense in them. Perhaps even among the ranks of the army. No, those two ‘girls’ would just be the first step.

  Have to do it smart. Let the damned freaks do the dirty work of killing the monsters for us. But we can’t let them grow too strong. We have to kill them before that. We have to. For the sake of humanity.

  Nearly growling, Greg and a few of his friends quickly slipped out of the building. He watched them run, limping and grimacing from unhealed wounds or still fractured bones.

  The healers couldn’t be bothered to heal them all up to full, not when they had to save their damned mana for mages and the other combatants protecting the wall. It made Greg’s blood boil as he watched them. Yes, he was going to show them that they weren’t as powerless to oppose them as they might have thought.

  As that resolve crystallised into a vow to himself, Greg felt the feeling of helplessness, that revolting dread skulking in the back of his mind, that feeling of not being able to do anything about anything starting to fade.

  He might not have the power to handle the hordes of goblins, but he had a trusty handgun and like-minded friends. Greg could handle this. He could bring about some change, he could take back some of that elusive control fate so ruthlessly ripped out of his grasp. It calmed him, helped him focus.

  For the first time since the apocalypse started, Greg had a clear purpose and the power to accomplish it, and he wasn’t going to let anything him stop until he saw his purpose realised.