John quickly got the vibe that the System was pissed off with him. Somehow, something about this particular horde of monsters just seemed... spiteful.

  He rose perhaps two hundred metres above Micklefield Hall's sprawling grounds and climbed. Each beat of his Dragon Wings sent him higher, granting him a better vantage point to survey what was coming.

  And what was coming was excessive, even by the System's standards.

  The horde stretched across the countryside like a living plague, a seething mass of chitin, flesh, and malice that seemed to have been assembled specifically to overwhelm the fledgling resistance before it could truly get started. From this height, John could make out the composition in full with Eagle Eye, his enhanced Mind stat processing the nightmare unfolding below.

  The ground forces were vast and varied. Giant insects scuttled forward in their hundreds—beetles the size of trolleys with mandibles that could likely shear through steel, mantises tall enough to look a man in the eye, centipedes whose segmented bodies stretched longer than a car.

  Interspersed among them were crystalline horrors that reflected the hellish sky in jagged facets, skittering along on pointed limbs.

  Lumbering animal-like monstrosities rounded out the collection: twisted, grotesque parodies of bears or wolves or stranger beasts with too many limbs, too many eyes, too many teeth.

  Soul Specs painted the majority in shades of green and yellow, with a concerning number of orange souls scattered throughout like warning beacons. The System must have pulled from a wide variety of sources to gather this force, that much was clear.

  But considerably more alarming than the ground-based threat were the flying foes.

  John had encountered precious few airborne enemies throughout the apocalypse. The red-souled dragonfly had been one of the rare exceptions, and even that had stayed grounded for most of their encounter. Flight was apparently a premium feature in the monster catalogue, which had made his own Dragon Wings feel even more valuable.

  The things approaching now looked like corrupted dragons, though that description didn't do justice to how utterly wrong they were. Their bodies were elongated and worm-like, slimy with some kind of mucous that glistened in the burning light. Instead of the majestic wings of legend, these creatures sported translucent buzzing appendages more insectoid than reptilian, moving so fast they created an audible drone that carried across the distance. Their heads were bulbous and grotesque, featuring compound eyes that sparkled with malice and lamprey-like mouths lined with concentric rings of teeth.

  The black bodies of the wyrms—John decided that's what he'd call them—gained a hellish glow from the burning sky above, the crimson light on their slick surfaces making them look like they'd been dipped in blood. Even with the false night created by the black hole's manifestation darkening the world, that glow persisted, as if the creatures themselves were lit from within by infernal fire.

  Soul Specs revealed the aerial threat in uncomfortable detail. The majority were yellow-souled, perhaps thirty or so, moving in loose formation. But leading the pack were three orange-souled specimens, larger and more heavily muscled, their wing beats stronger and their movements more purposeful.

  John grimaced as he ran the tactical calculations.

  He'd faced down hordes before. He'd obliterated waves of monsters with Supernova and Gravity Bomb, had carved through swarms with Draconic Inferno and Hurricane. But those had all been ground-based enemies, clustered together nicely for area-of-effect devastation. Flying enemies changed the equation entirely.

  They were spaced out, for one thing. Where ground forces naturally bunched together as they navigated terrain, these wyrms had the entire sky to work with. They'd spread themselves across perhaps two kilometres of airspace, too dispersed for his most powerful abilities to catch more than a handful at once. And with cooldowns on Supernova and Gravity Bomb measured in minutes, he couldn't just spam them until the problem went away.

  Worse, their manoeuvrability gave them options his usual opponents lacked. A ground-based monster couldn't suddenly climb thirty metres to upward or dive fifty metres down. These things could, and probably would the moment they recognised him as a threat. Predictable enemy movement was half of what made his bombardment tactics so effective. Take that away, and suddenly fights got a lot more complicated.

  The horde was less than a kilometre out now, close enough that he could hear the cacophony of their approach. The clicking of mandibles, the scraping of chitin on chitin, the wet slithering of the wyrms through the air.

  Below him, barely visible at the edge of Micklefield Hall's elaborate gardens, he could make out defensive positions. Flashes of green fire told him Lily was already in position, her enchanted crossbow bolts streaking out toward the advance scouts of the horde. Other figures moved along the makeshift battlements—Doug's distinctive swimming-shorts-clad form, Chester's bulky hockey armour, Jade's grey tracksuit, and dozens of Watford survivors he'd rescued, all preparing to make their stand.

  They were doing well, considering. But it was painfully clear they'd be overrun before long. The sheer numbers were overwhelming, and while all of the survivors had combat-capable abilities by design, most were still merely competent with their newfound powers. This wasn't a fight they could win on their own.

  Which meant John needed to focus on the aerial threat first. The ground forces were slow enough that his allies could hold them for a while, picking off stragglers and maintaining the defensive line. But if those wyrms got past him and dove on Micklefield Hall from above, their manoeuvrability would let them bypass the defenders entirely. They could wreak havoc inside the manor itself, slaughtering survivors in the halls and rooms where defensive lines meant nothing.

  No choice, then.

  John angled himself toward the enemy and beat his Dragon Wings, picking up speed as he accelerated into combat. The wind tore at his clothes and hair, his Shadow Coat billowing dramatically behind him.

  The wyrms noticed him coming. He wasn't exactly being subtle, a lone figure cutting through the sky on wings of black dragon scale, heading straight for their formation. The orange-souled leaders shrieked, a sound like metal scraping against glass amplified to physically painful levels. The yellow-souled wyrms responded in kind as they oriented on this new threat.

  John took a deep breath augmented by Biomancy to expand his lung capacity far beyond human norms, and prepared to show these abominations why challenging him in his element was a catastrophically bad idea.

  He activated Hurricane.

  The world compressed as he exhaled, his mouth opening impossibly wide to release the cataclysmic torrent building in his chest. A visible cone of devastating wind exploded from his mouth with the force of a dozen jet engines, spread wide enough to cover an entire motorway.

  The wyrms at the leading edge of the formation never stood a chance. The weaker yellow-souled ones were caught in the initial blast, their buzzing wings shredded by winds moving fast enough to turn air into a cutting implement. They tumbled through the sky like broken toys, their slimy bodies ragdolling through space before gravity finally claimed them. The fall alone killed them, their bodies splattering across the countryside below in sprays of black ichor.

  +12000 Aura

  But most of the wyrms were stronger than that, more resilient. They managed to angle their wings against the gale, fighting the wind with desperate, buzzing wing-beats that kept them aloft even as the Hurricane tried to dash them from the sky. The orange-souled leaders weathered the attack with particular ease, their more powerful frames merely inconvenienced for a moment.

  John's lungs burned. Even with Biomancy reinforcing his respiratory system, there were limits to how long he could maintain this kind of output. The Hurricane continued for perhaps ten seconds before he finally had to cut it off, gasping for air as his Spell faded.

  The wyrms had scattered, no longer in anything resembling a formation. Without giving them time to regroup, John activated Supernova.

  He pointed at the most densely clustered pack of wyrms, a group of about eight yellows that weren’t exactly close, but it would have to do. His fingers splayed wide, then clenched into a fist.

  A sphere of pure incandescent light erupted into existence where he'd targeted. It expanded outward like a miniature star being birthed into reality, a perfect sphere perhaps fifty metres in diameter.

  The wyrms didn't get a chance to scream or thrash or do anything except be erased from reality in the span of a heartbeat. When the Supernova faded, the aftermath was visible even from hundreds of metres away. The air itself shimmered with residual heat, distorting vision like looking through water. Enemy bodies that had been incinerated mid-flight rained down as ash.

  +30000 Aura

  The shockwave from the detonation rippled outward in an omnidirectional wave of compressed air that caught wyrms at the periphery of the blast and sent them tumbling. A few of the weaker ones lost control entirely, their wings too damaged by the pressure wave to keep them aloft. They joined their fallen brethren in the ground-bound afterlife.

  In two moves, John had reduced the aerial threat by roughly a third. Just like that. The sheer power at his fingertips was intoxicating, a reminder that he'd become something far beyond the anxious shut-in who'd watched the apocalypse begin from his bedroom window.

  Another pretty fucking nice boost to his self-esteem, he had to admit.

  But the orange souls were still coming, and they'd learned from watching their lesser kin die. The leaders had spread out even further, maintaining maximum distance from each other and from the remaining yellows. Smart. It made them harder targets, reduced the chance that one of his big spells could catch multiple threats.

  The remaining wyrms adjusted their approach vectors, coming at him from multiple angles rather than a unified front. Also smart. They were trying to overwhelm his ability to respond to threats from all directions simultaneously.

  Fine. He could work with that.

  The wyrms were spread across perhaps a kilometre of airspace now, but there was still one cluster of yellows that he figured might be close enough together to catch a few of them with one attack.

  He raised his hands to either side of his body, then brought them together in a thunderous clap that echoed across the sky like a cannon shot. The sound seemed to fold space itself, reality rippling around the targeted area as gravitational forces took hold.

  Space itself folded inward on the wyrms. Chitin snapped with sounds like gunshots. Their slimy bodies pulped, reduced to organic matter that collapsed into a sphere of concentrated gore hovering in midair.

  Then Gravity Bomb’s second phase activated.

  The compacted mass detonated outward with devastating force, sending shockwaves rippling through the air and spraying wyrm remains across a massive radius. The few yellow-souled monsters at the edge of the blast who'd survived the initial crushing found themselves flung away like ragdolls, tumbling.

  +18000 Aura

  That left perhaps half the original aerial threat still alive. The yellows looked damaged, their wings torn and bodies battered from proximity to John's bombardment. But the orange souls seemed completely focused on him, their compound eyes tracking his every movement.

  John found himself thinking wryly that this must be what Chester felt like when using his aggro-grabbing abilities. Every hostile eye in the sky locked onto him, prioritising the greatest threat over all other targets.

  The orange-souled wyrms closed in, their more powerful wings carrying them forward in a coordinated assault. John kept moving, his Dragon Wings beating steadily to maintain altitude while he chained together more Spells. The remaining yellows fell first to a chained combo of Meteor Strike, Tornado, Draconic Inferno, and Vacuum.

  +6000 Aura

  That left just the oranges.

  They spread out, approaching from different vectors simultaneously. Smart tactics for pack hunters. Make the prey choose which threat to address, leave it vulnerable to attacks from the others.

  But John wasn't prey.

  The world dissolved into that familiar targeting view, a 3D snapshot of his surroundings within a hundred-metre sphere. He selected a position he estimated to be behind and above the rightmost wyrm, a spot that would give him a clean attack angle. The selection took less than a heartbeat.

  Then Teleport completed its activation sequence, space folded, and he was there.

  The wyrm was still turning, its bulbous head swivelling to track where he'd been, when John drove his Aurora Blade into the back of its skull. The crystalline sword punched through chitin and into whatever passed for a brain in these things. Ice spread from the wound as the Ice Grasp aspect activated, flash-freezing the wyrm's insides. Gravity Sphere caused the creature's body to suddenly weigh ten times what it should, dragging it from the sky. The Dominate aspect briefly seized what was left of its nervous system, and the dying wyrm's wings gave one final spasmodic beat before it went limp.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  +8000 Aura

  John yanked the blade free and kicked off the falling corpse, his Dragon Wings beating to launch him clear before the others could capitalise. The corpse plummeted toward the earth, already beginning to disintegrate.

  The remaining orange wyrms shrieked their fury, the sound loud enough to be physically painful even at a distance. John grimaced and reached for Biomancy, cutting off his sense of hearing entirely. The sudden silence was disorienting for a heartbeat, but better than being discombobulated by sonic attacks.

  With his hearing gone, the battle took on a surreal quality. He could see the wyrms' mouths opening in those banshee wails, but heard nothing. Could see them creating wind-based attacks with slashes of their wings, visible distortions in the air that he had to kick his legs to Flash Step away from, but the attacks made no sound.

  They were getting close now, close enough that John could see the details of their grotesque forms. The mucous coating their bodies gave off a foul stench that made his eyes water involuntarily, and he added his sense of smell to the list of senses he was cutting off with Biomancy. Better to fight deaf and without smell than to deal with whatever biological warfare these things were packing.

  The wyrms tried to flank him again, splitting to come at him from opposite sides. John responded with Ultimate Shot. The bolt that manifested above his hand contained fire, ice, lightning, force, wind, earth, light, necrotic energy, and more besides—a rainbow of destruction compressed into a single projectile.

  He loosed it at the closer wyrm, and the projectile streaked through the air with a trail of effects. It struck the creature in the centre of mass and detonated, each aspect of the Spell triggering in rapid sequence. Fire burned. Ice froze. Lightning arced. The wyrm's body couldn't handle the conflicting energies all trying to unmake it simultaneously, and it came apart in a spray of gore.

  +8000 Aura

  The final wyrm dove at him, faster than its brethren had moved, learning from their failures. John Flash Stepped backward, then activated Accelerate. Time seemed to slow around him, the world becoming sluggish and dreamlike while he moved at normal speed within his own frame of reference.

  The wyrm's diving attack became easy to read, its path through the air as obvious as if it had been painted in neon. John angled his Dragon Wings and dove beneath it, coming up on its underside where its compound eyes couldn't track him as easily. He fired off a Vacuum, and the sphere of absolute nothingness appeared just ahead of the wyrm's flight path.

  The creature couldn't change direction fast enough. It flew directly into the void, and its front half was yanked into nothingness. The back half tumbled past, already beginning to disintegrate without the front to keep it coherent.

  +8000 Aura

  The aerial threat was eliminated.

  John hovered in place for a moment, Accelerate wearing off and returning the world to normal speed. He restored his hearing and smell with Biomancy just as blessed silence settled over his section of sky.

  But the rest of the world was far from silent. The resistance’s resistance was cacophonous.

  He turned his attention to the ground-based horde, vast as it still was, and immediately understood why the sounds of combat from Micklefield Hall had grown so much louder. The ground forces had reached uncomfortably close to the defensive positions while he'd been occupied with the aerial threat.

  The sound of the monsters' stampede was riotous, impossibly loud. The clicking of countless insect legs, the grinding of crystalline bodies against each other, the roars and howls of the beast-like creatures, all mixing together with the myriad magical effects flying from the resistance. It sounded like a warzone down there.

  He could see the resistance's defensive lines at the end of Micklefield Hall's elaborate gardens, perhaps a hundred and fifty metres from the manor house itself. They'd set up a makeshift barricade using overturned furniture, bits of fence, and whatever else they could scavenge with their magical powers. People stood behind it, firing what projectile attacks they had into the oncoming mass.

  Lily's flaming crossbow bolts were the most visible, streaks of sickly green fire that arced through the air to punch through monster skulls with commendable accuracy. He spotted Doug's massive form near the centre of the line, the old man's fists wreathed in some kind of golden energy as he punched any monster stupid enough to get too close. Chester's radiant pink light flared periodically, grabbing aggro and pulling monsters toward him while using the Blazeball Bat to knock flaming home runs at the enemy. He couldn’t see Jade anywhere.

  They were doing well, all things considered. The survivors he'd rescued from Watford were contributing too, a mix of abilities ranging from useful to bizarre. Someone was creating walls of solidified shadow. Someone else was launching what looked like spectral birds that dive-bombed monsters. A third person seemed to be making the ground itself reach up and grab monster limbs, slowing their advance.

  But it was clear they'd be overrun eventually. There were simply too many monsters, and the defensive line was already beginning to buckle under the pressure. The defenders were being forced back step by step, giving ground to maintain cohesion rather than being scattered and picked apart.

  John swooped down, targeting the heart of the horde with Supernova.

  The miniature star erupted in the densest concentration of monsters with a sphere of annihilating heat that flash-burned everything within its radius to ash. When the light faded, there was a crater marring the wave of flesh and chitin.

  +45000 Aura

  But even that massive display of power barely made a dent in the overall numbers. There were still easily a thousand monsters remaining, perhaps more. The horde just kept coming, filling in the gap John had created.

  He needed more big guns.

  Opening his Spell menu with a thought, John scrolled to his unused Level 9 options. Planetary Devastation caught his eye first. The name alone suggested something absurdly destructive, and if it lived up to the mental image it conjured...

  -128000 Aura

  Knowledge flooded his mind, the activation sequence imprinting itself into his muscle memory and consciousness. He understood instantly what the Spell required of him.

  John extended his hand downward, fingers curled into claws, reaching as if trying to grasp something buried deep in the earth itself.

  Then he pulled.

  The ground below erupted. Vast quantities of soil and stone suddenly yanked skyward. Millions of tons of devastation tore free from the ground in a torrent perhaps a hundred metres in diameter, the sheer mass of earth rising into the sky like a mountain deciding to fly.

  Monsters caught in that initial upheaval were crushed between layers of ascending earth or pulverized by rocks moving with ballistic force. Hundreds died in the first second alone, their bodies becoming paste between stone slabs weighing tons each.

  The mass continued rising, higher and higher, reaching perhaps two hundred metres into the air before it reached its apex. For a brief, surreal moment, a small mountain hovered in the sky above Micklefield Hall.

  Then gravity reasserted itself, and the mountain fell.

  The impact was apocalyptic. Millions of tons of earth and stone crashed back down. A visible shockwave rippled out across the landscape like he’d just dropped a stone in a pond. The ground buckled and cracked, fractures racing away from ground zero. Any monster still alive in the impact zone was obliterated instantly, reduced to paste and smears under the weight of the falling earth.

  The dust cloud that erupted upward would be visible for miles, a mushroom of pulverised stone. When it finally began to settle, the devastation was staggering. Where there had been a sprawling field and several hundred monsters, there was now just a crater filled with rubble and the liquefied remains of what had once been living creatures.

  +67000 Aura

  Still not enough.

  Even after Planetary Devastation's absurd display of power, there were hundreds of monsters left. Plenty of the horde had been outside the Spell's effect radius, and they continued pressing forward with the same mindless determination, stepping over the pulverized remains of their fellows without pause.

  John scrolled through his remaining Level 9 options and selected another one almost on impulse.

  -128000 Aura

  This Spell's activation was mildly more complex. John brought his hands up, making a circle with his fingers and thumbs, creating a frame through which he could peer at the battlefield below. He looked through that circle, targeting a section of the horde that had clustered together on the manor's northern approach.

  The area he observed through the finger-circle immediately darkened to total black, as if all light had been sucked from that space. It was absolute darkness, the kind found at the bottom of the ocean or in the deepest caves, but localised to just that specific area. His hands began to glow with a pale silver-white that seemed to belong to another world entirely.

  When he broke the circle, pulling his hands apart, the effect triggered.

  When light returned to the area he’d targeted, everything was frozen. The absolute zero of deep space made manifest. Every monster caught in Dark Side of the Moon's area of effect had become a statue of ice, frozen solid from the inside out. Their bodies were preserved in perfect detail—mandibles mid-click, claws mid-swipe, mouths mid-roar—all rendered in crystal-clear ice.

  Then the flash-freeze took its toll. Ice-locked bodies began to crack, fractures spreading across crystallized flesh. Within seconds, the frozen monsters shattered, breaking apart into chunks of frozen meat that tumbled across the ground.

  +54000 Aura

  The combination of Planetary Devastation and Dark Side of the Moon had killed somewhere around six hundred monsters in the span of perhaps thirty seconds, if he had to guess.

  But there were still nearly a hundred remaining, and they were getting dangerously close to Micklefield Hall proper. He could see them swarming through the gardens now, overwhelming the barricades through sheer numbers. The defenders were in danger of being overrun.

  John considered deploying Reaper's Gale to mop up the rest—the ghostly scythe would make short work of what remained—but decided against it.

  These monsters, while numerous, were mostly greens and yellows. The resistance should be able to handle them.

  If John swooped in and finished the job himself, the resistance would learn nothing. He couldn’t hog all the points. They'd remain dependent on him, waiting for the overpowered protagonist to save the day every time things got dicey. That wasn't sustainable, not if they wanted to survive the long term.

  He descended toward Micklefield Hall, flying ahead of the remaining horde to land near the defensive line. His Dragon Wings folded against his back as he touched down, and he quickly dismissed them to avoid accidentally clipping anyone with the diamond-hard appendages.

  Lily was nearest to him, perhaps five metres away, loosing crossbow bolts into the approaching mass. Her face was set in that dead-eyed expression he'd learned meant she was suppressing her natural disgust for the act to fulfil what her Accuracy System demanded of her. Each bolt found its target eye shots, throat shots, places where chitin was weakest.

  She spotted him landing and her expression immediately shifted, the deadness falling away to be replaced by something that looked more like relief.

  "Holy shit, John!" She actually lowered her crossbow for a moment, which seemed incredibly dangerous given the approaching monsters, but she was grinning. "That was fucking amazing! You literally summoned a mountain from the ground and dropped it on them! And that freezing thing? I didn't even know you had spells like that!"

  +1000 Aura

  Her voice had taken on an almost fangirl quality, effusive praise delivered with genuine enthusiasm. She was practically bouncing on her heels, and John couldn't decide whether to be embarrassed or amused by the display.

  "Those things you were fighting in the air looked absolutely terrifying," Lily continued. "Like, I was watching you fight them between shots, and I swear I thought you were going to get overwhelmed for a second there when they all closed in on you. But then you just—" She made an explosive gesture with her free hand. "—wiped them out like it was nothing! You're incredible!"

  +1000 Aura

  The other survivors nearby had stopped fighting to stare at him now, which was mortifying. Their expressions ranged from genuine awe to something approaching worship, and John wanted to sink into the ground and disappear. This was exactly the kind of attention he'd been dreading, dozens of eyes on him, looking at him like he was some kind of saviour.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and aimed for nonchalance, even though his heart was hammering in his chest and every social anxiety he'd ever had was screaming at him to flee.

  "It was necessary," he said, keeping his voice level and detached. "The aerial threat had to be neutralized before they could bypass your defensive positions."

  +800 Aura

  Lily's grin didn't falter. If anything, it widened. "Yeah, and you neutralized the hell out of them! Seriously, that was the most badass thing I've ever seen, and I've been watching you blow up monsters for days now."

  +1000 Aura

  The praise made him squirm internally, but he forced himself to maintain his composure. This was important. What he said next would set the tone for how the resistance operated going forward.

  He turned to address the defenders in general, raising his voice to be heard over the sounds of approaching monsters.

  "You can't rely on me entirely," John said, and he was gratified that his voice came out firm and authoritative. "Yes, I can handle large-scale threats. Yes, I can eliminate major obstacles that would overwhelm most groups. But I won't always be here. I can't be everywhere at once, and if you become dependent on my intervention every time danger appears, you'll never develop the strength you need to survive this apocalypse on your own."

  +6000 Aura

  He gestured toward the remaining monsters, now less than fifty metres away and closing fast.

  "The rest of those creatures are down to you. They're mostly greens and yellows. You have the numbers, you have abilities, and you have defensive positions. More importantly, you need to believe in your own strength if you want to make it through this."

  The speech felt awfully cheesy to him even as he delivered it, like something out of a shounen anime where the protagonist gave a rousing pep talk before the big battle.

  +3000 Aura

  Yet, the System rewarded him. Apparently, sincere encouragement delivered with conviction counted as "cool" even if it made him want to die of embarrassment.

  There was a moment of trepidation among the defenders, a collective hesitation as they absorbed his words. He could see doubt in some faces, uncertainty in others. These were mostly people who'd spent the past week being hunted, who'd survived through hiding and running and desperate scrambling. Asking them to stand and fight, to believe they could handle nearly a hundred monsters without his direct intervention, was asking a lot.

  But then something shifted. Doug was the first to react, the old man letting out a booming laugh and cracking his knuckles.

  "You heard the lad!" Doug called out, golden energy wreathing his fists again. "These bastards aren't so tough! Time to show these monsters what humans can do when we fight back!"

  That seemed to break the spell. The other survivors began moving with more determination, more purpose.

  Someone created a wall of fire that cut off one avenue of approach, funneling the monsters into a narrower kill zone. Someone else launched a volley of what looked like spectral arrows that rained down on the horde from above. A third person caused the ground to become treacherous, transforming solid earth into sucking mud that slowed monster advance to a crawl.

  They were adapting, combining their abilities, working together in a way that suggested they might actually pull this off.

  John mentally patted himself on the back for a job well done, then activated Mana Sense to track how many monsters remained in the horde.

  The feedback caused him to freeze entirely, every muscle in his body locking up as his brain processed the infuriating information his arcane sense was providing.

  The monster horde he'd just spent the last several minutes decimating, the aerial wyrms and ground forces he'd obliterated with Level 9 Spells and tactical bombardment, turned out to be just the beginning.

  There was another horde coming from the exact opposite direction.

  And this one was even larger than the first.

  John glared at the black hole, just visible in the distance, and he was sure it was glaring back at him.