Chapter 401: They Are Damn Good
Cassian’s eyes swept over the three of them before settling on me.
He let out a long sigh, gave a small shake of his head, and said, "Hurry up and grow stronger than me so I can stop being afraid of you."
I couldn’t help but laugh at that.
"All right then, we’ll head in first," I replied.
He gave a short nod.
I took a deep breath, reached out with my senses, and connected to my summons. My thoughts brushed against theirs like threads pulling tight, and I passed my orders directly into their minds.
"I have only one command for all of you," I told them. "Go all out. Kill as fast, and as much, as you can."
Silver was the first to react. His piercing screech tore through the air, and with one powerful beat of his wings, he launched himself forward, vanishing into the first level of the Alpha Zone.
Knight stepped up beside me, a low rumble building in his chest. The shadows around his feet thickened, swallowed him whole, and in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Lyrate was last. She shot me a sideways glance, her expression unreadable, before her form broke apart into shimmering fragments and scattered into the forest.
Once they were gone, I pulled up the progress window for my quest, the glowing text hovering before my eyes.
[The Executor carries the burden to execute the First Order. Execute 10,000 souls that are in defiance of the First Order.]
I checked my progress: 935/10000. I still had a long way to go and hopefully just this one base would be enough for that.
My wings beat slowly, keeping me aloft in a lazy hover just above the treetops. The first level of the alpha zone was mine now, mine to hunt, mine to cleanse.
Except I wouldn’t be the one doing most of the killing.
Beneath me, my summons had already begun.
I saw Silver first. His wings flashed through the dark gaps between the trees, and then his screech ripped through the air, sharp and piercing, like metal scraping against glass. The weaker abominations below froze, their twisted bodies twitching at the sound. With a strong flap, Silver aimed down at them.
A crimson glow gathered in his beak, growing brighter and brighter until it burst out as a wide crimson beam.
BOOM!!
The beam spread even more before it hit the ground, wiping out the entire horde in an instant. Trees shattered, the undergrowth burned away, and the ground itself was torn open.
Silver gave another screech, turned sharply in the air, and fired again at another horde. The second blast left nothing behind but smoking earth and broken remains.
My perception then moved to Knight.
Knight moved differently. I could barely track him from above using my eyes, just a shifting shadow between tree trunks.
I’d send a mental whisper: Two ahead, left of the stream,
and he would answer with the sound of death. A blur of darkness would slam into a target, and then silence... until the next kill.He didn’t waste energy on theatrics; each strike was calculated, precise. I caught glimpses of him sometimes, his fangs glinting before they sank into something’s throat, or his claws dragging down a twisted torso. His kills left no survivors, and no noise lingered longer than a heartbeat.
Lyrate was different again. Where Knight killed quietly and Silver struck with brute force, she moved like the forest itself was on her side.
I’d catch flashes of her pale form darting between the beams of sunlight breaking through the canopy, her single sword glinting in hand but never striking.
When I spotted a cluster of six abominations crawling along a fallen log, I sent her their location through our link. She didn’t hesitate. Her body blurred, and in the next instant, she was standing right in the middle of them.
The ground under her feet rippled like water then sharp spikes shot upward, punching through skulls and chests, lifting each abomination into the air like grotesque trophies. None of them even had time to scream before going still.
My Psynapse stretched wide, touching the minds of my summons like threads. Whenever I felt a disturbance, an abomination’s erratic movement, the ripple of their twisted energy, I passed it along. My words were clipped, simple, and sharp.
Right flank, three incoming.
Silver wheeled in the air, dove, and smashed straight through them. Feathers and gore painted the ground.
Underground, moving fast.
Knight melted into the earth’s shadow. A moment later, the muffled crunch of bones confirmed the kill.
Four, north. Big ones.
Lyrate’s eyes flashed and then trees moved to cut through the creatures.
The abominations here were weak, none over level 100 and they died as quickly as they appeared. But there were a lot of them.
As the killing sped up, screams began to echo through the forest. Grotesque growls, roars, and screeches filled the air.
Silver tore through a line of them, his talons flashing with each strike. He didn’t just kill; he destroyed. Wings slammed into trunks hard enough to splinter them, toppling trees onto fleeing creatures. I felt his satisfaction ripple through the bond, he loved this.
Knight hunted with cold efficiency. Through our link, his heartbeat was a steady, unshakable drum, untouched by the carnage around him.
If I marked a location, it was only a matter of seconds before silence claimed it. He slipped through the forest like a phantom, melting into shadows and reappearing behind his prey.
His claws sliced through spines with surgical precision, his tail whipping out to shatter skulls. When he didn’t strike directly, tendrils of living shadow erupted from the ground, wrapping around abominations and ripping them apart in bursts of gore before dragging the remains into nothingness.
Lyrate was pure precision. Every move she made was meant to kill fast and clean. Her blade never faltered, and when her path was blocked, she would simply liquefy and reform somewhere else.
A group of abominations tried to surround her once, circling with jagged teeth bared. They lunged and the crimson mist surrounding her shot up into the air, split into spears, and rained down on them. All six dropped before they even understood what had happened.
From my vantage point above, the battle unfolded like a deadly dance. I moved with them in a way, following their paths mentally, guiding them when needed.
Time blurred. I didn’t need to swing my staff or unleash Essence. Just my presence, my commands, and my summons’ skill were enough to turn this place into a graveyard.
The screams of the abominations grew fewer. The ground below was a patchwork of torn foliage, broken trees, and shattered bodies. The smell of blood was heavy now, almost choking.
By the tenth minute, the battle had become more like a cleanup. The larger groups were gone; only stragglers remained.
I marked them as soon as I sensed them, sending Knight to finish those that were too quiet to detect otherwise. Lyrate took down the last few ones slicing through their reinforced limbs as though they were paper.
Finally, I scanned the entire first level with my Psynapse. I stretched my senses out until every tree, every shadow, every patch of soil was accounted for. Nothing moved except my summons.
Fifteen minutes. That was all it had taken.
I checked the progress: 2700/10000