They charged.
Dante's body screamed in protest. Every muscle aching from the strain.
He had no magic left. No army to command. He was just a strategist without a strategy. A king without a kingdom.
But a cornered rat will still bite.
His eyes darted to the ground. He spotted the twin daggers dropped by the fallen leader, Leo. Too small.
His gaze fell on a simple longsword lying near one of Rhonda's dead. It would have to do.
He snatched the sword from the ground. The weight felt foreign in his hand. The balance all wrong.
In his previous life, he had taken a few fencing classes. A brief hobby. He knew the basic stances, the simplest parries.
It was a child's drawing compared to the masterpiece of a true swordsman.
But it was better than nothing.
Kael scrambled to his feet beside him. His face pale but his eyes blazing with desperate, defiant light.
He had no weapon. But he had a library of stolen skills. He was now their only real line of defense.
"Stay behind me!" he yelled. Positioning himself in front of Dante.
Rhonda's last fighter reached them first. His good arm swinging a heavy club in a wide, brutal arc.
Kael's eyes glowed with faint silver light. He didn't try to meet the blow.
Instead, he vanished in a blur of motion. Using the Warpstep skill he had copied from Leo.
He reappeared behind the brute. His hands crackling with stolen energy.
He had seen the lightning mage's spell.
A bolt of raw, untamed lightning, weaker than the original but still potent, erupted from his palms and slammed into the brute's back.
The pack member screamed. His body convulsing as electricity coursed through him. He stumbled, muscles locking up. Momentarily paralyzed.
Kael didn't waste the opportunity.
A faint red aura, the echo of Rhonda's Berserker Rage, flared around him. He snatched a heavy rock from the ground and, with borrowed, unnatural strength, brought it down on the back of the paralyzed fighter's head.
CRUNCH.
The sickening sound echoed in the quiet clearing. The brute collapsed in a heap. Skull caved in.
One on one.
But Dante's fight was not going as well.
Rhonda charged him. Not with wild abandon, but with the focused, terrifying confidence of a predator toying with its meal.
"A sword?" she laughed. Her voice a low, mocking growl. "You, think you can fight me with a sword?"
"Let me show you what a real warrior looks like!"
Her axe whistled through the air.
WHOOSH.
Dante tried to parry. His fencing lessons a distant, flimsy memory.
The impact was jarring. Bone-shattering force that sent waves of pain up his arm and nearly tore the sword from his grasp.
He staggered back. His form clumsy. His defense pathetic.
"You're weak," she taunted. Pressing her attack. "All your power was in those ghosts. Without them, you're nothing."
"Just a scared little boy playing at being something."
She swung again. He dodged, but he was too slow.
The edge of her axe blade caught his side. Sliced through his jacket and deep into his flesh.
SHLIIICK.
A searing, white-hot pain exploded in his ribs.
He cried out. Stumbled back. Clutched the wound as blood began to soak through his clothes.
"See?" she grinned. Advancing slowly. "You bleed. You hurt. You're just meat, like everyone else."
"And I'm going to enjoy carving you up."
He raised his sword. His arm trembling from the effort.
His vision was starting to blur from the pain. He was going to die here.
After all his plans, all his manipulations, he was going to be butchered by this brute.
Kael, having finished his opponent, saw his new leader's predicament.
He used Warpstep again. Appearing beside Rhonda, his hands crackling with another lightning bolt.
But Rhonda was ready for him.
She spun, her axe swinging in a low arc that forced Kael to teleport away to avoid losing his legs.
She hadn't fallen for the same trick twice. She was toying with both of them.
"You have no one left to save you," she sneered at Dante. Her attention returning to her primary target.
She raised her axe high. Preparing for the final, killing blow.
He was on his knees now. The sword lying useless beside him. The pain in his side a blinding agony.
Kael was too far away to intervene in time.
This was the end.
And then, a sound like a screaming meteor tore through the air.
A massive, condensed ball of fire, larger and hotter than anything Erica had ever created before, slammed into Rhonda from the side.
She had no time to react.
The fireball exploded on impact. Engulfing her in a maelstrom of flame and concussive force.
She was thrown sideways. Her body smoking and charred. Her triumphant roar turning into a scream of pure agony.
Dante didn't need to look. He knew that signature. He knew that power.
A slow, pained smile spread across his bloodstained lips.
His pieces had finally arrived on the board.
Rhonda, her armor melted and fused to her skin, her hair completely burned away, pushed herself to her knees.
She stared into the forest. Her eyes wide with disbelief and fury.
"What the hell?" she roared. "Not again! Who is that?!"
From the shadows of the trees, a figure emerged.
Erica.
But this was not the shy girl. Nor even the determined warrior he had seen before.
Her eyes were burning with cold, white-hot rage that seemed to eclipse the fire she commanded. Her entire body radiated palpable heat. The air around her shimmered with power.
Rhonda stared at her. Then her eyes darted to the side as a volley of razor-sharp ice spears shot from the darkness.
They embedded themselves in her shoulder and leg.
She coughed. Blood sputtering from her lips. She looked to the right of Erica.
There stood Masha. Her face a mask of cold fury. Hands still outstretched.
"Prez...?" Rhonda whispered. Her voice a broken, incredulous rasp. "Why?"
She began to crawl away from Dante. Her body a wreck of burns and bleeding wounds.
She wasn't crawling to escape. She was crawling toward Masha. Her last act a desperate, confused plea to the girl who had once represented order and reason.
Erica ignored her completely.
She rushed to Dante's side. Her face a mask of anguish as she saw the deep gash in his side.
"Why?" she cried. Her voice cracking. "Why did you do it again? Why do you always put yourself in this state?"
"It always has to be you, doesn't it?"
He looked up at her. Putting on a pained, noble expression.
"I had no other choice," he gasped. His voice weak. "This boy... Kael... he was in danger. They were going to kill him right in front of my eyes. Before I could..."
He interrupted himself with a wracking cough. Let a fresh trickle of blood run down his chin for effect.
Seeing his state. Seeing the blood he had "shed for another."
That was the final catalyst.
Erica's grief, her fear, and her obsessive devotion ignited.
She stood up slowly. Her gaze turning toward the crawling, pathetic form of Rhonda.
A wave of pure, unrestrained mana erupted from her body.
Not the gentle warmth of before. A violent, blinding light. Raw power that pulsed with the intensity of a newborn star.
The light was so bright it felt like it could compete with the sun. Chasing away every shadow in the clearing.
The mana began to change. To coalesce above her head.
It swirled and compressed. Pulling in dust and leaves and ambient energy. Growing larger and hotter until it formed a miniature, terrifying sun.
A swirling, incandescent planet of pure fire.
The heat was instantaneous and unbearable. From across the clearing, they could feel its scorching waves.
The leaves on nearby trees began to smoke and curl.
Kael, his eyes wide with terror and awe, grabbed Dante's arm.
"We have to move!" he yelled.
With a final, desperate Warpstep, he teleported them both a hundred yards away. Just as Masha turned and fled from the blast zone.
Rhonda, on her knees, could only stare up at the celestial body of fire that spelled her doom.
The arrogance was gone. The savagery was gone.
All that remained in her eyes was pure, primal terror. The understanding of a creature about to be erased from existence.
Erica raised her hand.
And then she brought it down.
She didn't scream. She didn't shout.
She simply unleashed her judgment.
The ground did not just explode. It ceased to be.
A silent, blinding flash of white light consumed the clearing. Followed by a deafening roar that shook the very foundations of the forest.
Trees for fifty yards in every direction were instantly vaporized.
The earth was gouged out. Leaving a massive, glowing crater of molten rock and glass.
A superheated shockwave rolled outward. Turning the surrounding forest into a raging inferno.
It was apocalyptic.
It was terrifying.
It was beautiful.
When the blinding light finally subsided, the clearing was gone.
The forest had been replaced by a smoldering, volcanic wasteland.
Of Rhonda, there was no sign. Not a bone. Not a shred of armor. Not even ash.
She had been utterly and completely unmade.
And in the center of this new hellscape, Erica stood alone.
Her clothes were half-burnt. Her skin blistered and bruised from the sheer force of her own power.
She stood trembling. Panting. A lone figure silhouetted against the raging fires she had created.
A girl who had just unleashed the power of a god to protect the man she worshipped.