When the next wave was nearly upon him, Barry stopped shoveling food into his mouth and got to his feet with a tired groan. He had no idea how long he'd been fighting for. The memories of constant combat had long since faded together. It felt like stepping in and out of a dream, except that his exhausted muscles were in too much pain for him to be asleep.

He did know that the beasts were growing in strength with each wave. The creature that was rushing at him now was a real abomination, kangaroo legs leading up to what he thought might be a gorilla's torso, with wicked curved blades instead of arms and a head that was mostly a large maw, completely covered in a layer of bone.

They should be around the medium to dark yellow threat level. If he let this wave pass, they'd almost certainly slaughter the entire settlement. They depended on him.

He easily sidestepped a wild lunge from the first beast and bisected it, ducking under the next slash while letting his momentum carry him into another series of spinning slashes. He leapt back to avoid getting bull-rushed by a wall of the beasts, then sent an illusion to draw them to the left while moving around and killing them from the back.

Barry lost himself once again in that deadly dance, dodging and spinning and slashing until he looked up and saw the next wave was still far off. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he looked back to confirm that the east and west were clear, so he moved into a jog to check the gates to the south.

There were cheers from the battlements as he passed, which brought a smile to his face. At some point, civilians had replaced fighters up on the wall, and they followed him around. Perhaps they'd learned that any flank where he was fighting would be clear of monsters. Either way, they cheered and clapped whenever he finished a wave, shouted encouragement when he collapsed down to the ground from exhaustion, feeling like he'd never get up anymore.

After fighting through the night, he'd been having thoughts of simply leaving and letting the settlement handle the rest. He'd seen enough faces come and go that the odds of his family being here were tiny, so why shouldn't he just move on?

But then, as he fought through a line of bipedal beasts, he'd spotted a young girl up on the battlements. She'd looked at him with admiration in her twinkling eyes, then said to her mother that she wanted to become a dancer just like him when she grew up.

It was such a small thing, but he had to fight back tears when he heard it. Right when he wasn't sure he still had any humanity left in him, those innocent, kind words had touched him to his soul. It was enough.

Even if it was just that little girl up there and nobody else, it would be enough.

***

Dericka watched in a daze as the man transitioned from long, sweeping cuts into more compact stabbing motions. He was about to be surrounded, but she already knew not to feel worried. Predictably, he disappeared with a flash of light and an explosion of sound, once again reappearing behind the beasts to take them out with casual ease.

Around her, people cheered him on. It was obvious to anyone that they would have long since been overwhelmed and slaughtered without the help of this savior. The man brought hope.

But all Dericka could see was mistakes.

They'd decided to invest in things like poisoned arrows, heavy bows, weapons, armor. Most of the one-use items had already run out midway through the first day. Clearly, even that had been a mistake, when the power of a single individual with enough Value could be enough to stop multiple waves.

They should have chosen a few heroes and trusted everything to them.

She should have investigated better before scheming to push out Russo and his soldiers.

She should have never taken the risk of asking Kobe to sabotage those Quests.

At the very least, she should have told Kobe the truth.

Those and so many more mistakes echoed in her mind, even as people died around her. Despite the circumstances, the news was spreading. People had begun glaring at her, like she was to blame for all of this. She might end up as a pariah if they even lived through this.

That much, she could live with, but the cold looks from her former Party members felt like an icepick through the heart. She'd only ever wanted to care for them and protect them. It seemed like no matter what she did, they only saw the outcomes and not her intentions.

When all of this would be over, when all the mistakes would be laid bare, then what would she have left?

A horrible scream of pain from below shook her out of her musing. How long had she been standing here staring at the battle? She should find somewhere to make herself useful.

Pushing through the crowd on top of the battlements, she slowly made her way to the stairs. The whole area was packed with people fleeing the beasts that kept coming up from the ground below. She had to carefully slide past a row of people, leaning into their bodies to avoid losing her balance and falling off the edge of the battlement.

A glance down revealed chaos. Jakob was trying to herd builders together, shoving the large individual containers that served as living spaces and offices together to form a single, elevated platform. As she watched, four of them pushed against the sides while two more men lifted the bottom up to reduce the friction. Despite it weighing several tons, they managed to slide it over to the next container, but then a massive centipede crawled out of a hole and got one of the men in the leg.

Kobe responded to the shouts, making what had to be a magnet-powered leap to cover the length of several barracks. A metal ball preceded him, cracking the centipede's carapace, before Kobe landed with his spear first, pinning it to the ground.

Tasha was flying over the barracks, directing a handful of floating needles to stab down and kill the remaining moles that were assaulting people in the narrow corridors between containers. People let out hopeful cries for help as she passed overhead and she would swoop in like a superhero to paralyze or kill the beasts with her poisoned needles.

Look how far they'd come. Even if they wanted nothing more to do with her, she felt proud of them.

A deafening screech like a giant's nails scraping a chalkboard drew her gaze up as she put her hands over her ears. At least two dozen large shapes were circling far overhead, their silhouette revealing wide, leathery wings and long, pointy snouts.

"Are those fucking Pterodactyls?" someone shouted.

The ripple that went through the crowd caused someone to bump into her, and with her hands occupied there was nothing to hold onto. With a sickening lurch in her stomach, she fell down into the town, her vision tumbling until everything went suddenly black.

***

Tasha wiped vomit from her lips with the back of her sleeve. Her eyelids felt heavy as she scanned her surroundings for beasts, the colors blending together as bright lines danced across her vision. It was getting harder to see clearly, forcing her to depend more on her sense of force and momentum to steer her attention to threats.

The maximum recommended dosage of Extract had been exceeded two days ago. She'd barely taken any wounds, but the drug was attacking parts of her body now, making her sicker by the hour. But if she stopped taking it, she'd lose access to her only weapon. No choice but to crawl deeper down that dark hole and hope that she came out alive on the other side.

There were plenty of burrowing beasts that needed killing down in the town, and there were a number of large birds circling above, too high for her to see, but she could hear the horrible screeching and feel their momentum coming down towards them in a spiral. The problem was, she kept running out of PE.

Blasts of sound far up ahead made her crane her neck to look up again, and she thought she could see the clouds dispersing.

"Am I imagining this?" she muttered to herself.

With the sun now shining through, the cluster of huge birds became clear even in her messed up vision, and once they finished their descent, it would be trouble. But then a series of distortions appeared in the sky over the birds. Through those areas of blurred sky, the sunlight seemed to collect and beam down as a laser. Six lines of light burned holes through the gigantic wings and a dozen birds lost control of their flight and began crashing down. Others screeched and turned away from the deadly distortions, dropping to continue their approach from a different angle.

It had to be him again. With shaking arms and a drawn out, rattling breath, she pushed herself up to be able to see over the wall. She could feel him fighting there. He never seemed to tire, nor run out of PE. As she watched, he was just finishing off the last of what she thought was a wave of deer with electricity arcing between their metal antlers.

"H- Hey," she tried to call out, following an impulse, but it came out as a rasp and turned into a coughing fit.

Clearing her throat and wiping her mouth, she tried again, louder this time.

"Hey! How are you-" she had to pause to cough again. "How are you not running out of PE?"

She didn't think he would hear over the incessant noise of people shouting and birds screeching, but the young man turned his head, his eyes easily finding her. He didn't say anything, only tapping the thing on his back. Then, as he turned to the nearby corpse of a deer, it simply disappeared.

What kind of magical device was that? She had to squint for a long while, waiting for the moving lines and colors to stabilize, until she realized with a gasp that she'd seen it before. It was a mobile MAFT. They had to have some of those.

"Kobe! Kobe, we have to find-"

Tasha turned around, looking for her partner in crime. They'd both been fighting off the beasts in town and dealing with the same problem of PE running out.

There he was, swooping down on an unsuspecting centipede that was nearly as wide as a man and twice as long. He must have found some heavy armor, now wearing gleaming pieces of metal around his torso and legs, including heavy boots with metal soles that he used to smash into the beast. With a loud crunch, he cracked open its defensive plating and quickly stabbed his spear through into its head.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Then, he was off again, easily clearing several barracks in a single jump. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, one of the birds swept down with blinding speed and Kobe only narrowly jerked out the way. Its claws clipped him and he went spinning down, impacting one of the barracks with a loud metal thud.

"Shit!"

Tasha made to run down, but her knees buckled and she stumbled, holding onto the wall for support. Another centipede was already making its way to Kobe, but it was out of range. She cursed again, having no time to doubt herself.

Grabbing hold of her own bubble and pulling it up, she had a horrifying moment to regret her decision as she flew through the air, jerked forward and up from her center of gravity. Then she had to frantically correct her course and slow her descent. She was sick immediately after landing, some of it splattering on Kobe's shining boots.

The sound of a hundred sharp claws scratching against stone had her twisting around and swiping her arm through the air, the centipede flying into a barrack wall. But it wasn't enough to kill it. Her eyes landed on a chunk of rock that she levitated over to her, then bashed down on the centipede's head right before it could lunge at her. When that still wasn't enough, she kept bashing it up and down, up and down, until all that remained of its head was broken carapace and green pulp.

She never saw the bird that came in for the kill, soaring down lightning-quick, but she felt it. That dangerous speed was like a bright flare to her sense of momentum. All she had to do was pull that huge bubble down and then she heard the crash behind her, the beast's bones breaking as it dug a furrow through the ground.

Kobe was bleeding from his head. Where did they leave those Fixer Uppers? And she needed a MAFT too. They'd moved the healing station somewhere, but where? Her tired, addled mind couldn't remember.

She dumped another 400 Value into PE Capacity, giving her enough to float herself up - much slower this time - and gain a better vantage. Not far to her right, there was a large group of people, huddling together in fear on top of a series of barrack-containers pushed together. It had been meant to shield them from the moles and centipedes, but now it seemed like they were on a serving platter for the monstrous birds, crying out as they looked up fearfully at the sky.

Another one was coming in fast, she only just managed to swipe her arm down in time, making it crash into the side of the barracks, shaking the whole construction hard enough that the people huddled on top stumbled and fell.

It was only when she brought herself on top of those barracks that she realized it wasn't a bird at all.

"We're up to freaking dinosaurs, now?" she muttered, shaking her head, then blinking at the group of people. There was a Fixer Upper that wasn't being used, so she floated that over.

"Do you have any MAFTs here? The mobile ones?" She called out.

"Yes, Miss Carrie, we have three here for re-supplying ammunition," a young man called out.

Tasha ignored the nickname and brought one Fixer Upper and two MAFTs back, the items floating beside her as she flew back to Kobe. She got him hooked up and then put her attention to the MAFT, finding that she could claim it as her own.

Before she could figure out how to make it eat dead beasts, the ground shook beneath her feet. There was something moving down there. It felt-

The ground erupted twenty feet to her left, a massive grey form reaching up before slamming into the ground. It was some kind of worm, covered in thick, grey plates, with a maw large enough to swallow her whole.

Her mouth went dry and she took a few steps back, until she was standing right up against Kobe, still unconscious on the ground. Lifting a jagged piece of rock, she shot it at the worm with a flick of her hand, but it just burst into pieces against its tough hide. The beast squirmed, turning towards her.

"That's not good."

***

Dmitriy was busy slaying the husky-sized moles when he saw Dericka fall down from the battlements.

"Get onto higher ground!" he cried out to the people he was protecting, before crushing one final mole with his mace and racing over to where Dericka had gone down.

He sprinted through a corridor of black barracks, catching a beast with a wild swing, then barreled out the other side with his shield lifted high, quickly taking stock of the situation.

Dericka was in no immediate danger, but there was yet another group of five beleaguered by two centipedes, so he swerved to the right and jumped. He slammed the bottom of his shield down onto the first centipede, holding it in place and finishing it off with a single bash of his mace.

The other one lunged at him and he was forced to take the attack on his wrist before knocking it away with his shield. Its next predictable attack was easily crushed by a downward swing of his mace. Another minor flesh wound to join the countless ones he'd already taken.

He turned to see a mole running for Dericka's limp body, so he angled himself to her and activated [Accelerate Self], zipping back to Dericka to quickly dispatch the mole.

The other group was already hurrying off.

"Wait!" he shouted, but they didn't stop running.

A scream brought his attention to the right. Yet another group, but they had spears and it was just a single mole-

KREEE

A huge flying beast was coming in fast, about to hit that group. Without thinking, he jumped, accelerated and struck out with his shield. The impact knocked the beast aside, saving the people, but its grasping claw caught him by his shield arm.

With a violent jerk and a stab of pain along his arm, he was pulled along with the beast, dropping his shield. He was about to activate [Anchor] on himself, until he saw that the claw was piercing straight through his wrist. He tried hitting it, but didn't have enough leverage for a good strike.

So he tossed his mace onto the beast's back as it flew, dumping enough PE into [Anchor] for a triple activation. Immediately, it buckled, nearly folding in half, letting out a desperate screech as it went down.

Dmitriy came down hard, a sharp pain in his ankle followed by the crushing weight of the dinosaur pushing the air out of his lungs. He pulled the claw out of his wrist, crawled out from under the thing, then bashed his mace repeatedly into its skull.

Panting, he looked for his shield, seeing that more of the damned beasts were coming down onto the town. As he grabbed it, he caught a glimpse of Tasha somehow fending off a gigantic worm with invisible punches while a groggy-looking Kobe got to his feet, leaning heavily on his spear.

He cursed, wanting to help them, but to his left, another centipede was fast approaching. With another activation of [Accelerate Self], he flashed back over and went to crush the centipede with an [Anchor] empowered smash of his mace, but he stumbled, his ankle flashing with agony when he put pressure on it. The centipede got him in the leg, managing to cut through his armor and skin with a nasty bite before he pulled it off.

It was only when the heavy, spiked ball crushed the giant insect's head that he noticed the blood squirting from his wrist. With a curse, he tore a piece of fabric off his shirt and wrapped it around, but no matter how tightly he pulled the knot, the bleeding didn't stop at all.

"Body too tough?" he muttered, hastily looking for something else.

Tearing open the fabric covering his armor with his teeth, he pried out a long piece of metal wire, wrapping and twisting it tight around his wrist like a vice. Finally, the squirting stopped, though some blood was still seeping out. He would need a Fixer Upper, but people were still in danger.

When he looked up, a dinosaur bird was diving straight at him, another not far behind. Scrambling to get his shield in position, he activated [Anchor] on himself and leaned forward, angling the shield to deflect the force. Still, the impact had him stumbling back as the bird crashed into a wall.

Desperate, he threw up a [Reflect Momentum] right in front of the next diving beast, the slowing effect taking hold immediately, costing the bird precious elevation as it flapped its wings in confusion. Repeating his trick from before, he threw his shield up this time, waiting until it was right above the beast before bringing it down with [Anchor].

As soon as the beast crashed into the ground he leapt forward and crushed its skull.

He got slowly back up, favoring his left leg, mace and shield hanging low, blood flowing from various wounds.

"Could use a little break," he muttered to himself as he shook his head against the dizziness and scanned the sky for more of the dinosaur-birds. It seemed clear for now. There were still vulnerable people around, but it looked like most of the burrowing beasts had been taken care of.

Then, there was a brief rumble before the ground exploded in front of him, another massive worm rearing up, revealing a huge round maw lined with long, curved black teeth.

With a grimace, he spat blood onto the ground and once again lifted his mace and shield.

***

A deep rumbling woke Dericka up. She held her hand in front of her eyes to ward off the light, trying in vain to lessen her splitting headache. For a brief moment, she heard only the quiet dripping of blood and a man's heavy breathing, but then the rumbling came back, followed by an explosion.

Blinking against the light, an image finally coalesced that made her shoot up from the ground.

"Dmitriy!"

The man was facing off against a worm many times his size. Even from behind, she could see blood seeping from his many wounds through the holes of his tattered uniform.

"Go, Dericka!" The man growled as he braced himself but was pushed back by the gigantic worm. "Run to safety!"

She fought her instinct to run, not wanting to leave him behind. He pushed the beast aside, managed to dodge its next lunge by somehow flashing lightning-quick to the side, but the beast simply turned to her instead.

Dericka flinched back, expecting to be swallowed alive, but Dmitriy rushed in with that same speed, pushing the beast's front away from her. .

"You need to get out of here," he said between heavy breaths, "right now."

She could hear the exhaustion in his voice, see the resignation in his eyes. This was not what he looked like when he expected to win.

"No. Not you, too," she said quietly, tears running down her cheeks. "Anyone but you. I've already lost the rest, but-"

A heavy blow from his mace finally seemed to hurt the creature, causing it to thrash and speed up. It caught him from a bad angle and he was thrown to the side, tumbling until he came to a halt against a container.

Once again, the beast turned to her, and now finally she ran. Dmitriy flashed in again, without his weapons this time, grabbing the beast's huge curved teeth and pushing it back to keep from being swallowed alive.

"I won't let anyone die this time," he grunted.

The worm curled up and then pushed, ramming Dmitriy against another barrack wall, the man letting out a cry of pain. Somehow, he still held on.

"No!" Dericka cried. "It's not too late! Just come with me!"

The man looked pale, blood flowing freely from his arm and legs. But something changed as his eyes unfocused for a moment, and then he began to push the beast back.

"You know," he said, glancing at her with sad eyes, even as the worm struggled to eat him. "I didn't actually grow up in a forest. I had a normal childhood in the city. I never hunted, not before I was a teenager." He let out a strained grunt that may have been meant as a laugh. "I certainly never fought a bear with my bare hands. Those were all lies."

He shook his head.

"I was weak and too foolish to realize it."

He grit his teeth and growled.

"But not anymore."

He took a step forward, pushing the worm forward and down.

"Go now, Dericka."

Already, there was a pool of blood around his feet, but still he stepped forward. Another step, then one more, his veins standing out in his neck as every muscle in his body bulged with the effort.

"GOOOOOOOO!" He roared at the top of his lungs, and then finally Dericka ran.

There were sounds of footsteps behind her, metal scraping against stone, more rumbling. She ran to the stairs, face full of despair as tears streamed down her cheeks. Only when she reached the stairs did she look back. The worm was gone, but she could feel it digging underground.

"Don't give up Dmitriy! You can still win!"

"What do you think I'm doing?" he said with a bloody grin, ducking down as he placed his shield under his feet and firmed his grip on his mace. "Protecting everyone is how I win."

The worm exploded up, maw opened wide, launching Dmitriy straight up, high into the sky. His eyes were determined as he reached the apex of his flight, then pointed his mace and shield straight down as he braced himself.

And then he was gone.

In one violent motion, the worm folded in on itself all the way down to the stone ground which blasted out into a crater. The creature burst and deflated, a mass of grey gore flooding out of cracks in its side.

She knew Dmitriy would be lost somewhere in that pile of hide and gore. And as she fell to her knees on the stone steps, hollow gaze turned to the ground, she knew that he wouldn't be getting up again.

She was all alone now.

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