Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 718: Revenge

The valley below stretched for miles, a vast basin of stone and scrub and scattered monster territories where most of the rookie-track guilds operated. From this elevation they could see the terrain like a map, the clusters of activity where teams hunted, the empty zones between territories, the natural corridors that monsters used to move between feeding grounds.

Those corridors were full.

Monsters poured through them in a flood, dozens of creatures that had no business traveling together, predators that would normally kill each other on sight running side by side in the blind, panicked stampede of animals fleeing something worse. They crashed into the hunting zones like a wave breaking against rock, and the tiny figures of rookie fighters scattered before them.

Some didn’t scatter fast enough.

Brittany grabbed her artifact and dialed.

...

”Kaiden!” Her voice was tight and fast and stripped of everything except the message. ”You need to move! Right now! Get your team out of there!”

Kaiden and his girls were scattered around the kill zone of their latest hunt, recovering.

They were deep in the mountains, far above the basin where most rookie-track guilds operated. The lower elevations were filled with teams farming weaker monsters, grinding safe experience in safer zones. Kaiden’s team had pushed past all of that more than a week ago, climbing into territory where the monsters were level seventy and above and the nearest friendly face was miles away.

It was why they were winning. It was also why Brittany’s panic didn’t match anything he could see.

”Slow down,” he said. ”What’s happening?”

”The scoreboard is hemorrhaging. Multiple guilds losing tens of thousands of points in seconds. Silver Talon lost forty thousand. Iron Halo lost thirty. That’s seven dead fighters, Kaiden. Seven dead in mere seconds.”

Luna sat up.

”I’m on a ridge above the central basin,” Brittany continued. ”Monsters are flooding the rookie zones, pouring down from the upper elevations in a stampede. Predators running alongside prey. Everything fleeing downhill.”

Just then he felt it.

A vibration through the rock beneath him, faint enough to dismiss as seismic if he hadn’t just heard what Brittany told him.

”It’s coming for us too.”

”Then run!”

Kaiden did not hesitate.

”South,” he said. ”Fast. Stay tight.”

They ran.

His artifact buzzed.

”Kaiden.” Tessa’s voice, stripped of every trace of the playful woman who shook Talia by the shoulders. ”I have been notified by my staff. Something very bad is going on right now and I think I know what it is.”

Kaiden’s fist tightened. ”So do I.”

”I can reach you in two minutes. Say the word and we intervene.”

”No.”

”Kaiden-”

”If allied fighters intervene on my behalf during a competition event, I’m disqualified.”

”Better than dying.”

”Intervention is a last-ditch choice.” His voice was flat and steady, and Luna glanced at him sideways because she could hear the fury underneath it. ”Don’t intervene, Tessa. Not unless the Association officially suspends the competition.”

The line was quiet for a beat.

”Noted,” Tessa replied.

Brittany’s voice came through next. ”We’re already moving toward your position. We can reach you in-”

”No.”

”We’re independent mercenaries. We’re not part of any guild. The rules don’t-”

”The rules don’t matter if Magnus’s lawyers argue you’re de facto allies. You’re housed under my banner, financed through my accounts, and your legal defense is paid by Runewoven. The whole world watched the ’Used and Abused’ video. Any Association review board would call you affiliated.” He ducked under a rock overhang and kept running.

”Understood...” Brittany’s voice was strained.

The line went dead.

The sound reached them before the monsters did.

It started as a low rumble, the kind you felt in your chest before your ears registered it. Then it grew, layering on itself, the thunder of hundreds of bodies crashing through stone corridors and narrow passes, the shrieking of monsters that had been driven from their territories and were running blind with rage and fear.

The ground shook beneath their feet as they kept running.

Luna was out front because Luna was always out front.

The rumble behind them was getting worse. Ahead of them, the mountain’s ambient sounds had gone wrong in the same way, creatures fleeing south through the terrain, driven by the same force.

They pushed south.

”I know a cut up ahead!” Luna called back without slowing. ”It’s narrow, human-sized. Too tight for anything big to follow at speed. Opens up on the other side into a downhill slope.”

Nobody answered. They just ran faster.

The cut came into view as they rounded a bend. A crack in the rock face, barely wide enough for two people abreast, the walls rough and jagged. Luna had been right. A chokepoint that would turn a stampede into a traffic jam while they slipped through.

Luna reached it first.

The ridge above her came apart.

Boulders sheared off the rock face and slammed into the mouth of the cut, massive slabs of stone that hit with a concussive force that sent debris spraying across the pass. Luna threw herself backward, and Kaiden caught her, his arm hooking around her waist and pulling her into his chest as the largest boulder cratered the ground where she’d been standing.

The shockwave knocked Aria off her feet. Calypso hauled her up without breaking stride.

The cut was buried. Tons of rock where their escape route had been.

Luna was shaking against him. ”What the fuck?!” she cursed.

Kaiden looked up at the ridge.

Empty for just a moment.

Then three figures walked into view, casual and unhurried, as if they’d been taking a stroll and happened to notice something interesting below. Two of them were identical, same height, same build, same lazy posture. The third was a woman with black hair that caught the wind.

Cassian. Calix. Selena.

Kaiden looked at the blocked passage. Then at the stampede grinding closer behind them. Then at his siblings on the ridge, looking down at him with smug, victorious confidence.

The irony was immediate.

Luna had done this. His team had pioneered this exact tactic, herding monsters into New Dawn’s squad and using the chaos to engage them under the cover of emergency response.

This was the same play at a hundred times the scale, and it was aimed at everyone in the basin.

’And they can legally kill us under the same cover we used... They can attack and call it collateral.’

Selena smiled. ”You should probably start running again.”