Chương 16: Adapting

Almost as one, the Eaters turned toward Val. She had one pressed against the side of a car, her fist buried in its chest. She let it go and it slumped sideways, sliding down the door panel. Then the Eaters were moving, scrambling over hoods and between bumpers, converging on her position. To his right, Sumi fired. The blast went wide, clipping the edge of a car roof and dissipating. Enzo raised his hand and tracked the closest one, an Eater charging in from Val's left.

"Bolt." It caught the Eater in the side of the head and slammed it into a sedan, before falling to the ground. Enzo held his breath, watching, counting heartbeats. They'd learned from experience that headshots could kill both types if the damage was severe enough to destroy the brain. The problem was that cultivation-types could survive what should have been fatal head wounds, their bodies running on reinforced muscle and mana-saturated tissue apparently requiring only minimal instructions from the brain.

Manipulation-types were more vulnerable, more reliant on the organ that housed their magic. The Eater didn't get back up. Val was already in motion, sliding across the hood of a car and meeting an oncoming Eater with an explosive strike to the chest. It folded. Two kills in the first seconds of the fight, and she hadn't slowed down. To his right, Sumi fired again. This time she connected, catching an Eater heading in her direction square in the stomach.

It doubled over, momentum carrying it forward a few stumbling steps before it dropped to its knees. Enzo heard feet slapping pavement from the other side of the van. Close. An Eater burst into view, rounding the bumper a few meters away. Murph lunged, jaws snapping shut around its knee, and the Eater's charge turned into a stumble. Enzo stepped forward, raised his left palm, and thrust it toward the creature's chest.

"Spear." Hardened mana lanced out, piercing its chest dead center. The creature's eyes glazed over, body already slumping as its mana center failed. The van's windshield exploded as an energy blast tore through it. Enzo threw up a hand in panic, shattered glass spraying across the side of his face, and flung himself to the ground behind another nearby car. He landed on his bad side, and pain, sharp despite its familiarity, tore through him. For once, he maintained hold of his cane.

Murph was still snarling and dragging at the dead Eater.

"Heel, Murph," he managed through gritted teeth. She gave one last violent wrench, then released it and padded back to his side, muzzle dark with blood. Her tongue swiped across her nose once, twice, then she sat and looked up at him, waiting. Enzo struggled to his feet, keeping low, and peered through the sedan's windows. Looking for the Eater shooting at him. To his right, he could hear Sumi, her voice sharp and rhythmic as she fired spell after spell.

He caught a glimpse of an Eater rushing her position, arms raised in front of its chest like a boxer with its guard up. Another blast slammed into the far side of the sedan. The impact rocked the car, and he ducked, pressing himself against the door panel. Sumi would have to handle herself for the moment. He shifted along the length of the car, still trying to find it. Through a cracked window, past two overturned vehicles, he spotted the Eater with its telltale purple glow pulsing around its head.

Enzo rose, arm reaching over the roof. It was right at the edge of his range. He closed his left eye, taking a heartbeat to line up the shot. Then another.

"Bolt." The Eater opened its mouth, and the blast vanished between its jaws. He dropped back behind the car. His shot had been dead accurate, but it hadn't mattered. At maximum range, it had all the time it needed to respond and consume the spell. Enzo shuffled to the next car, keeping it between himself and the Eater. Pain lanced up his right side with every step, but he clenched his jaw and kept moving. To the side, he saw Sumi put a blast into the guarding Eater's face just before it reached her.

It dropped from view, and she changed targets. Ahead, Val was locked in combat with two Eaters between a pair of vehicles. She caught one with a backhand strike, and fire erupted from her fist on contact.

"Fire Burst!" The Eater's head came apart. Blood and grey matter sprayed through the air, painting the side of a car. The second Eater slammed into her back, driving her forward into the side of a car. Before she could turn, another one clambered over a nearby hood and threw itself onto the pile. All three went down in a heap behind the vehicle, out of his sight. Val's voice rang out, strained and furious.

"Reinforce!" Enzo froze. She was too far away, with too many vehicles between them. He couldn't reach her. Couldn't see what was happening. Another window exploded somewhere to his left as a blast missed him, and something cold washed through his thoughts before the panic could take hold. He reached down and grabbed a handful of Murph's fur, pulling the dog close and staring into the pup's eyes.

"Murph, help Val. Understand? Help Val." He pushed her forward, but Murph hesitated, looking up at him with something that might have been uncertainty.

"Attack! Go!" Murph barked once, sharp and loud, then turned and raced away. She disappeared between the cars, heading toward where Val had gone down. Enzo took a breath. Hoped he wasn't making a mistake. Then he stood, arm swinging over the roof of the car, and fired as he moved. Two blasts in rapid succession, forcing the manipulation-type to react. It ate both spells. He paused. Lined up the third. Waited for that moment of vulnerability, when its eyes remained closed but it stopped consuming magic.

"Bolt." The Eater's head burst apart. Four spells for one kill. Manipulation-types might be more vulnerable to damage than their counterparts, but being forced to target their heads risked them eating the spells. Wasted time he didn't have with chaos all around. Val stumbled to her feet from where she'd gone down, and Enzo's heart lurched. Blood covered her face and hair, dark and slick. She buried her face in the crook of her arm, scrubbing furiously at her eyes. Enjoying this book?

Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Not her blood. An Eater's. The relief lasted half a second. Behind her, another Eater rounded a vehicle and charged. His hand snapped up.

"Bolt." From his right, Sumi fired at the same time. Both blasts slammed into the Eater and threw it across the hood of a car, limbs splayed. It struggled to rise, fingers scrabbling against metal. Then there was a growl, and the Eater slid from the hood and vanished from sight. For a moment, there was a lull in the fighting. To his right, Sumi was repositioning, moving closer to Val. Val herself spun around, eyes finally clear, and stomped down hard on something out of sight with a loud crack.

Enzo could still see three Eaters converging on them. Two from Val's left. A third was north of Sumi, angling toward her. But his gaze caught on the others. Four Eaters stood further in, each with a faint halo of energy around its head. Manipulation-types. Three of them were arranged in a loose line, facing in Val's direction. The fourth stood slightly behind the others, and it was watching him. But unlike the usual, vacant hunger that drove them toward the nearest source of mana, this one was focused.

Evaluating, with an intensity he'd never seen from an Eater. Physically, it looked no different from the others. Just another human corpse, reanimated through mana and seeking to fill its steadily draining reserves. Val hadn't been wrong to describe it as having purple wisps curling from its skull. But the mana looked different to his eyes, trained over years of evaluating the way light moved through gemstones. The others had a flat, translucent purple glow. This one shimmered.

Almost metallic, like light refracting through alexandrite, shifting as it moved. The three in front pulsed in tandem.

"Get down!" Val threw herself behind a car without hesitation. He wasn't as fast. Three blasts tore through the space where she'd been standing, and the car between her and Enzo caved inward. The roof buckled, doors wrenched open on their hinges, and every window exploded outward in a spray of glass.

"Shield!" He poured mana into the barrier, feeding it as fragments hammered against the surface. Each impact shuddered through the spell and into his hands. And each impact tore mana from his reserves as he held on, teeth clenched, until the last shard clattered to the asphalt. He let the shield drop and stumbled behind the nearest intact car, pressing his back against the side as he allowed himself to slide down. His legs were shaking. Not from the knee, for once. Something else. He looked down. Glass.

Dozens of small fragments embedded in his pants from the thighs down, dark spots of blood spreading through the fabric where each piece had bitten. A longer shard was stuck in his left forearm, just below the elbow, blood running freely down to his wrist. The pain arrived all at once, as if it had been waiting for him to notice. Enzo gritted his teeth. Breathed through his nose, deep and slow. On the right side of the bridge, he heard Sumi casting spell after spell.

"Ren!" Val called out.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He pulled the long shard from his arm with a hiss of pain.

"I think the boss is controlling the other Eaters." There was another explosion, followed by the sound of metal warping. A second later, Murph snarled. Val shouted, "Burst!" He'd thought he misheard the first time, but hearing it again confirmed that she had somehow shortened the Invocation for her technique. Enzo pushed himself to his feet, wincing at the new mixture of pain that elicited.

He raised his head just enough to see Val struggling with the two remaining cultivation-types, one of them with its jaw hanging from its face by a thread of skin. To the right, Sumi was tracking the fight, but she couldn't get a clean angle to shoot without risking hitting Val. He made a grasping motion.

"Telekinesis." And pulled sideways. Ethereal purple mana seized the rightmost Eater by the shoulder and yanked it backwards, away from Val, giving Sumi space to act. She did. The blast took it in the neck, causing it to stumble against the car next to it. Val followed up with an attack of her own. It went down at the same time the other tripped over something he couldn't see, probably Murph. Val stomped hard, then ducked behind cover as another series of explosive blasts tore across the battlefield.

"I only see four left," Sumi yelled. Enzo shoved off the car he was hiding behind, leaning hard on the cane as he went. He kept his head low, watching the remaining Eaters turn. Toward Sumi.

"Look out!" She hit the ground. The roof of the car shattered under the force of the blows. Glass sprayed in all directions.

"I'm okay," Sumi called out a moment later. Out of the corner of his eye, Enzo saw one of the Eaters sway. The halo of arcane energy around it dissipated, and it collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Strange. None of them had taken a shot at it. Instead, its sudden death aligned with something he'd been wondering for a while now. Eaters slowly bled mana, according to the guide. But they also used mana. For attacks. Self-enhancement.

The Tier 1 at the hospital had grown extra eyes and formed claws of arcane mana. And now this Tier 1 manipulation-type appeared to be puppeteering the other Eaters, controlling their actions. Making them block and evade attacks. Fire off blasts of energy in coordination. Another combined blast rocked a nearby car, forcing Val to reposition.

"We need to spread out more and keep drawing their attacks," Enzo yelled.

"Are you out of your mind?" she shouted back.

"One hit and we're not walking away." Sumi shuffled closer, nodding in his direction from a few cars over.

"He's right! The boss is draining their mana. It's killing them." Enzo put words into action. He climbed to his feet, the pain from the old injury and recent cutting wounds combining into something more exquisite, and hobbled toward another car. The Eaters' heads snapped toward him. Mana pulsed. He threw himself against the side of the vehicle. Angled his right hand, palm out.

"Shield." The explosion tore through the roof of the car, shattering the windows and sending glass raining down on him. This time he was low enough, and the shield positioned just right to catch the shards.

"God, fuck, damn it," Val shouted.

"Fine! I'm going left." Another explosion, followed by more of Val's cursing, echoed across the bridge. He hoped Murph was sticking close to Val. To his right, Sumi moved, racing north between the vehicles. She ducked behind cover.

"Shield!" An explosion followed.

"Moving!" Enzo shoved off, stumbling on legs that were blurring the lines between numb and stinging and throbbing pain, and moved toward the Eaters. There were only a handful of cars between him and them now. To his left, Val also took off, sprinting in a leftward arc. The boss Eater glanced between him and his sister, almost appearing indecisive. Then the remaining two minions turned their heads, splitting the difference. Both pulsed. Enzo leaned forward as he moved, cane thumping hard with every other step.

Threw up his hand.

"Shield." Magic fired as both Eaters unleashed their attacks at the same time. Val had already switched directions, now racing directly toward them. She leapt and punched out at the air, a sphere of energy forming around her right fist. The ring. Blast met shield and detonated in the air. But Val kept moving, landing and dropping into a slide behind cover. His own shield caught the second Eater's attack, causing him to stumble and crash into the side of the vehicle instead of performing an elegant drop.

Another Eater lost the distinctive purple aura around its head and dropped.

"Two left!" Sumi yelled. She was already sprinting, drawing the next attack. The explosion that followed missed as she disappeared behind cover.

"Val! I'll draw the fire," Enzo called out.

"You finish it." He didn't wait for an answer. He pushed himself up and moved, legs screaming, cane striking asphalt in a ragged rhythm. The remaining Eaters' heads snapped toward him.

"I wasn't ready!" Val shouted from somewhere to his left. The minion pulsed and fired.

"Shield." The blast hit the barrier and his arm shuddered from the impact, mana draining from reserves that were already running thin. A few more spells. Maybe. That was all he had left. He kept moving, letting the shield dissipate as he shifted his hand into the familiar two-fingered point. The boss Eater was within range now, its remaining minion beside it. And no more bodies to hide behind.

"Burst Step!" To his left, Val launched skyward, clearing two cars in a single leap. From his right, Sumi's spell caught the last minion in the side of the head. It dropped hard and didn't move. Enzo fired.

"Bolt." The attack cut through the air toward the boss. Its mouth opened exactly as planned, and his spell warped as it reached the final Eater, the mana deforming and spiraling inward as the creature inhaled it. The blast disappeared. Val landed and stumbled. For one sickening moment, her legs buckled and she tipped forward. Then her hand caught the hood of a car, and she shoved herself upright. The boss's eyes snapped open, turning toward her.

Val lunged forward and threw herself into a slide, asphalt grinding beneath her boots as she closed the last few meters. She came up swinging, fist driving forward with everything she had left.

"Fire Burst." The boss Eater's head exploded.