At the rear of the group, Lyria, Emma, and Zack held their ground.
There was simply no need to move. The three at the front had it handled and everyone in the group knew it.
Emma crossed her arms and watched with her brown ponytail swaying slightly as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her gauntlets caught a flash of the fire from Leonard's spear.
It was over quickly.
The last wolf dropped with Damien's blade through it, the golden light fading from the steel as he straightened and shook the blood clear in a single practiced arc.
The four of them moved through the fallen bodies and extracted the mana cores — small dense crystals pulled from just below the chest cavity, already cooling as the monsters' vitality left them.
Emma exhaled through her nose. "Our team is absurdly stacked. It's almost frustrating." She looked at the three cores being collected with a dry expression.
