Mia was just about to stop, her hand already up in a motion to stop the group as her ears picked up some serious shuffling and growling coming from not one, but seven of the houses further down the road. Alas, the howl coming from the closest one alerted the group more than she ever could.

  “I also heard movemen- “ Ten other howls echoed the first and Mia only continued when they started dying down. “Yeah. Eleven monsters. All feel somewhere around level 9 or 10. By the sounds of it, they are the same basic Rust Wolves as the one before.”

  Camie hopped down, hurrying to join back up with the group.

  “Anything behind us?” Brent asked the redhead, who shook her head. “Good. Then form up and let’s put that wall on the left to our left and that alleyway just behind us to leave an avenue of retreat should we need it. Mark, Clive, you’re in front. I take the right side and the rest form up however you think best.”

  “Did you catch anyone following us besides the army guys?” Mia whispered, grabbing Camie by the wrist before she could bounce off to circle around to flank the monsters like she always does.

  “Nope,” Camie said with a soft smile. “Just worry about the monsters. No one else will get close to you out here.”

  Mia relaxed a bit and nodded. A cowardly part of her just wanted to keep holding onto Carmilla’s arm and have her stay around her at all times, there was a sense of safety and calm Mia could only achieve while feeling the vampiress's closeness, smelling her calming scent and hearing her thundering heartbeat.

  I’m being a coward again. Mia thought with a grimace. Reluctant as she was, she still let go after gently running her thumb over the back of her girlfriend’s hand.

  Camie sent back an awkward smile, lingering for a moment like she didn’t know what she was supposed to do, which brought a wry grin to Mia’s face.

  “Go do your thing,” Mia said, waving the vampiress off with a smile as she grabbed her wand from its holster. Then she added in a whisper only Camie would hear, “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  Carmilla gave her an uncertain nod, then dashed off and with a forceful kick off the ground, landed atop the nearest suburban house’s slanted tile roof.

  Alright. They’re coming. Mia psyched herself up, mentally entering combat mode as she checked over her prepared pair of spell circles and recharged both her Spectral Blade and Ward. Quick and easy. Bolt to the brain or through the neck and that’s it. You can do it, you’ve done it countless times.

  Still, she couldn’t forget how close to death not only her, but all of her friends and mother got the last time they faced up against monsters. Her mother wobbling on her feet from three arrows lodged in her body, Carmilla standing with dried blood and weapons still piercing her body, Lina with a gash so deep on her stomach her intestines could be seen and finally the descending blade of that damned goblin that woke her up from the worst nap of her life flashed by before her eyes.

  Mia kept thumbing the pommel of her wand nervously, a slight shake slipping into her hand and growing worse up until the moment she laid eyes on the first Rust Wolf to burst out through the windows of a house.

  It was go-time from then on, her nerves went away and her hand went deathly still as she raised her wand and flicked off a piercing Bolt.

  It was a grazing hit, drawing a crimson line across the right side of the monster’s canine head and making it give a pained yowl.

  Mia frowned and re-cast the spell, and this time, she didn’t miss. The pink Bolt in the shape of a spike burrowed into the head of the beast, dropping it dead instantly as its head flopped bonelessly before its whole body fell mid-run.

  “The skulls aren’t as tough as on the Trolls and Boarlings,” Mia noted for the other’s benefit, giving a relieved sigh under her breath as she clutched her wand.

  I still got it. One cunt with a rifle and some nasty goblins won’t scare me away from this life. Lina was right, we need power if we don’t want to be trampled on and cowards don’t deserve to have such power.

  Zeigler was a good person, Mia thought, and an admirably good leader. He cared for people, and made sure no one starved and had clean water to drink, and yet Mia knew there was severe rationing going on. But it’s never been a concern to her, since they had always gotten whatever they asked for.

  Because they were powerful because they were useful and had the strength to take it from others if they weren’t given it freely. Mia liked to think she wouldn’t have taken food out of another's mouth … but she had also never experienced starving, never had to watch her family slowly wither away from the lack of food.

  She knew perfectly well whose wellbeing she would have prioritised though, and it wasn’t even a question.

  The thought barely settled in her head before the monster’s friends were out in the limelight, barrelling through windows and broken doorways and bounding down the street toward Mia’s group like a pack of starving hyenas catching the scent of fresh blood.

  There were ten of them, running down the street in a disorderly pack with the first one being within hundred metres of reaching Mark and the last twice that, rushing to catch up with its kin like it was afraid there would be no food left for it if it was late.

  A zap of lightning had the first three falling flat on their faces, twitching helplessly from the chained Lightning Bolt. They were finished off quickly by a pair of piercing Bolts from Mia and an icicle from Nikki, the latter of which burrowed in through one ear of the monster and went out the other.

  Lina already had her magic spread out and the moment the next four monsters came within range of it, she blasted their legs out from under them. With her previous testing, it made sense why she went for making them fall instead of going for the kill.

  Mia and Nikki started shooting off Bolts and icicles at the monsters trying to get back on their feet while out of the corner of her eyes, Mia saw her girlfriend pounce on the slowest wolf from behind.

  Mia only paid attention to aiming accurately and firing her spells quickly, but she saw Camie kick another monster’s head into the ground just a few seconds later, so she must have made short work of her first prey.

  That left one wolf, which scampered around the corpses of its kin and came at them slightly from the right. Mia readied to send her sword flying as she gathered the mana for her next spell, but Nikki was faster.

  The short spear made of ice shot out of her hand and drew a curved arc through the air before sinking halfway into the shoulder of the rushing wolf.

  To Mia’s senses, it released a blast of icy mana that surged through the monster in the blink of an eye, and visible ice grew out of the weapon.

  It died four steps later. Though Helene couldn’t tell the difference between frost-induced slumber and death like Mia could with her Spirit Sense, so the carcass' head was obliterated a moment later by a blue-yellow lightning bolt.

  During that time, Clive had come around and smashed his shield down in the beast’s path and set his foot, but now just stood back with a relieved sigh.

  “Well, that’s it for now I guess,” Mark muttered. “Any of them still alive?”

  “Nope,” Mia supplied, trying to breathe through her mouth to escape from smelling the coppery tang of blood now hanging in the air like a pervasive cloud. “All dead. The last one is super dead.”

  “I had to make sure,” Helene said with a hint of sheepishness in her tone, shrugging.

  “As you should, Miss Vexley,” Mark agreed enthusiastically. “Always double tap.”

  Carmilla came back over, limping slightly as she walked and Mia grew worried instantly … before she noticed the girl was just trying to kick the blood of the monster whose head she’d put her boots through off of her leg.

  Of course, she’s not injured, stupid. Mia chastised herself. She’s a vampire juiced up on fancy Halvyr blood. Of course, she’s alright.

  “Soooooo,” Mia asked, subconsciously slinking closer to her girlfriend, who took to looking over her shoulders while glancing at Brent. “Do we loot the cores? … just in case.”

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  “That would put us even further behind schedule.” Brent shook his head, looking up at the sun’s position in the sky. “We’ll do it next time around if they refuse to dismantle the carcasses for us. Today though, we go ahead and clear as much ground as possible.”

  “We go on,” Mia translated for the ice mage, who had kept close to her as the only person she could converse with. “If they don’t loot them for us, we’ll take time to at least get the cores from the stuff we kill tomorrow.”

  “Understood,” Nikki said, nodding appreciatively. Her eyes lingered on the piled-up carcasses with some longing, even as her nose scrunched up at the stench they were releasing. After a few seconds she shook her head and with a slightly nervous look, asked another question. “I would like to ask, why is every building so empty? These are … residential buildings, are they not?”

  Mia’s answer died in her throat as she gave a mechanical smile to the woman before bravely … turning to her mother for help.

  “Nikki is asking why is every building around here so empty,” Mia asked, a plea for an answer she could give other than ‘because everyone’s got eaten’ clear on her face. “Please tell me not everyone in the southern third of the city got eaten by monsters.”

  “I could fly up and check for signs of life?” Helene suggested with uncertainty thick in her voice.

  “There is not much scent of human blood in the air,” Camie said calmingly. “Neither fresh nor stale. I’d suspect only a fraction of the people here died in their homes.”

  “She is right,” Brent said. “From what I know, thousands gathered in dedicated shelters. Schools, hospitals, government buildings, large factories and even some in the subway system which has been put on lockdown and escaped being swarmed by monsters.”

  “Oh, that’s … great?” Mia said with a surprised blink, having prepared for much worse news. “Do we have to hurry and free them up? Escort them to safety or something?”

  “Dedicated groups are already doing that,” Brent shook his head. “We have to worry only about clearing out sections of the city to make sure we have more breathing room free of monsters. Others will handle evacuating the larger clumps of survivors … though we might perhaps stumble upon smaller groups who couldn’t radio in for an extraction.”

  “Then … “ Mia started. “Shouldn’t mom do a quick round from above to see whether she catches obvious signs of life anywhere?”

  The rest looked at each other. Most shrugged, and not even Lina piped up with an objection about how much slower the group would have to proceed if Helene was out scouting.

  “We clear this street for three other blocks, then we rest for a quick snack break while Helene does a small circle around us,” Brent said. “Other groups will notice survivor shelters further away. The best way we can help them now is to kill the monsters who would make their escape from their territory a serious challenge.”

  Everyone agreed on that front after some consideration and Mia belatedly turned to Nikki and translated the summary of the conversation.

  “I see,” Nikki said with clear relief, though it stemmed not from the source Mia would have expected. “With this many people possibly eaten by monsters, they could have been well on their way towards ascension. We might have even gotten some serious undead … problems … uhm, no offence to your … ?”

  “Girlfriend,” Mia supplied, an uncomfortable frown drawing itself onto her face. “We might already have a minor one. Camie said she saw some shambling undead in the cemetery. We might have to consider swinging around to check it out.”

  “Indeed,” Nikki said. “If it’s any comfort, there are few elements better suited for fighting Darkness and Death than Arcane.”

  “Why?” Mia asked with a hint of curiosity mixing with doubt. Darkness could eat magic. She couldn’t see how arcane, a fundamentally non-material element, would face up against it.

  “As you well know,” Nikki said, a slight admonishment in her voice. “Arcane has natural disruptive qualities which makes it near impossible for Darkness spells and skills of the same power to syphon it to any great effect. Also, creatures of Death tend to be tough and hard to kill with usually some manner of healing ability mixed in, but arcane is well suited to simply … obliterating every bit of their bodies so thoroughly even their unnatural healing couldn’t save them from a true death.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Mia mused, but wasn’t sure whether she believed that just yet. “Shouldn’t Light be the best element for destroying the undead?”

  “It’s … suitable.” Nikki shrugged. “But less so than arcane, since it doesn’t benefit from the increased difficulty of syphoning it. Quite the contrary, most Light mages have abysmal control of their magic and are usually an open buffet for the more skilled creatures of Darkness. I heard of this one occurrence when a Light mage with an extremely powerful buffing aura Skill at the head of an army faced up against an opposing army of undead, but instead of being weakened by it, his aura was like a free, endless fountain of mana for them.”

  “Strange,” Mia mused, but at Nikki’s questioning look only shook her head. “Sorry. We’ve got some … fictional books, stories, games and stuff like that which had made up magic systems and while most things were largely the same as here, this is the first major difference I found.”

  “Is that so?” Nikki said curiously, raising an eyebrow. “I suppose it makes sense. I’m not familiar with how strong the barrier around this Realm might have been, but it’s not an impossibility that some talented people caught glimpses of the Spirit Realm or the Astral. Both should have already been here before the System, underlying reality just beyond a normal non-magical person’s sight.”

  “Can we go?” Brent asked, his voice unhurried, but he was all packed up and already facing the street.

  “Ah, sorry,” Mia apologised sheepishly. “Yep. We can whenever.”

  Then she turned back to Nikki and added in Common, “They are aching to continue on. We are supposedly behind schedule … despite doing this voluntarily. I didn’t even know there was a schedule.”

  “An ordered and tidy commanding officer is usually a good thing,” Nikki said, nodding towards the group. “I am ready to depart.”

  *****

  Another two dozen wolves fell before the group’s speedy advance, spread out across a stretch of a kilometre of road and among three separate ‘packs’ of wolves.

  Mia felt the air thickening with that strange miasma, the rift was still far, but they were clearly on the right track.

  Helene’s scouting had found no hidden pockets of survivors, though she did report that she had found basements that stank of death and decay which she didn’t dare enter.

  That put the whole group in a sombre mood and the next pair of wandering monsters got utterly slaughtered the moment they were within sight. At least Brent kept calming them that tens of thousands were, while not particularly well, alive in the shelters.

  They set a brisk pace after that, but their next round of troubles wasn’t of the monstrous variety.

  Like always, Camie was the first to notice it, or rather, them. Down the street, just a few hundred metres ahead came a thin street from the side connecting up with the main road they were walking down on. Hidden amateurishly behind the corner was a group of not monsters, but humans … err, people.

  There might have been humans among them, but it was doubtful.

  “They stink of some mangy wolf Bloodline,” Camie said, sniffing at the air delicately. “And a … lizard of some kind?”

  “Helene,” Brent said in a soft whisper. “Could you please fly up and take a look from far up in the sky? Try to go unnoticed, if possible.”

  “I could sneak closer and listen in,” Camie suggested. “I can tell some things just from the scents carried on the wind, but they might let something slip … “

  “Well,” Brent said, thinking for a moment. “Do that. I’d like to say we shouldn’t need to worry, but we can’t be so careless as to grow lax. I’ve been warned a squad of beastkin was tasked with cleaning the street running parallel to this and to keep an eye peeled, even if they are nominally our ‘allies’ at the moment.”

  “Take care,” Mia whispered into the wind and caught the flicker of a smile on the vampire’s face as she swiftly started skulking up on the unknowing beastkin.

  It wasn’t even half a minute later that Mia felt a prickling sensation at the edge of her awareness. It took her a moment for it to click; the sensation was her Spirit Sense picking up on magic being used in the vague outer border of its reaches.

  She still could only sense the mana of a person when they were standing right in front of her and even then, she had to specifically search for it with the knowledge that it was there for certain to find it. Apparently, the healthy spirit of a normal person declared the body and mana inside it its own domain and made it harder for outside forces to meddle with it.

  For Rank 0 baby halvyr, that included obstructing their senses.

  That ‘veil’ as people called it, didn’t cover active spells or skills though, and those lit up in Mia’s perception like lighthouses on a moonless night.

  “We have someone trying to sneak up on us,” Mia said in a low tone, her eyebrows furrowed as she reapplied her Ward, then tried focusing on the slippery presence creeping steadily closer.

  “Where?” Mark barked, and when Mia pointed in the direction with a gesture he eyed it suspiciously. “Can’t see shit. Magic?”

  “Yeah,” Mia said, trying to put a finger on the magic being used. It had a slippery, oily feel to it and was not letting her narrow down its specific location accurately. “Some kind of shadow magic … ? Maybe? Feels vague and slippery. Should we call Camie back?”

  “Let her scout for now,” Brent said, glancing towards the vampire who stopped her advance behind a parked van and was looking back at the man through narrowed eyes. “We shouldn’t attack prematurely. They could be just … curious.”

  “Yeah right,” Mark grumbled. “Cause waiting in ambush and sneaking up on someone is not a clear show of just how nasty their intentions are.”

  “We will not attack first,” Brent said, putting weight on his words as he glared at the group like he’d personally lay them out if they went against that order. Helene nodded next to him, as did Clive. “On that note, even if they do attack us, we should try to avoid needless deaths.”

  Mia was more than fine with that and quickly switched her active Bolt spell over to the blunted variant while also making sure Shield’s circle was still intact. Only because she had let her runic model rest while there were no monsters within hearing range could she still cast spells and not be writhing on the ground from extreme spiritual strain.

  Her fingertips tingled from the dense mana she had sitting in them, her now Order-aspected and stable arcane mana being practically effortless to keep from harming her channels unless she herself was trying to shove more into the vessels than they could handle.

  She was ready, ready as could be. Physically and magically at least, but did the same go for her mental state?

  While the person skulking towards her was likely not a human, considering the company they kept. To Mia’s mind that didn’t change anything. A person was a person. Was she ready to kill one if they came at her with intent to kill?

  She thought back to the absolute certainty she felt when that group of soldiers laid in an ambush after she and Camie beat up the were-bear Lars and came out of the forest with him in tow. Back then, she had been ready to slaughter them to protect herself and the vampire.

  Mia took a glance at her group, at her mother Helene, at her friend Lina, at the man who was practically her second brother Mark and the others who she might have known less, but still considered more friends than acquaintances.

  This time will be no different. Mia promised herself, searching deep and hard for that sense of certainty, though it kept evading her valiantly. No different. When it comes down to it … I won’t be a coward.

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