CRACK!
The sickening sound of Jin's body hitting the tree echoed in the clearing. It was a sound that snapped the team's courage.
He slumped to the ground, motionless. One of their strongest fighters, taken out in an instant.
Panic, cold and sharp, threatened to swallow them whole. Derek's team was a well-oiled machine of death.
Their skills wove a perfect net of curses, gravity fields, and illusions. They weren't fighting them; they were taking them apart, piece by piece.
Dante's mind raced, cutting through the terror with icy precision. A head-on fight was suicide. They were outmatched in teamwork and raw power.
They couldn't break the enemy's formation by force. They had to shatter their coordination. They had to turn their perfect symphony of ruin into a messy storm of chaos.
"Eric!" Dante roared, his voice a lifeline in the battle. "Forget defending! Full power, Shield Bash! Knock Derek off balance, now!"
It was a suicidal order. Dropping his defense, even for a second, could get him killed. But Eric didn't hesitate.
With a deep bellow, he poured every ounce of his energy into his shield. It glowed with a blinding white light as he charged forward.
He didn't block Derek's next swing but slammed his entire body into the larger man.
BOOM!
The impact was like a thunderclap. Derek, caught completely by surprise, was thrown off balance, his greatsword swinging wide. It was only a two-second opening, but it was everything.
"Talia!" Dante screamed. "The gravity mage! Now!"
Her face was a mask of strained focus, sweat beading on her forehead as she fought against the crushing weight of the Graviton spell. But her Kinetic Eye was still active.
In the momentary chaos from Eric's charge, she saw her path. She didn't try to overpower the spell; she flowed with it.
Pushing off the ground with all her might, she used the fake gravity to launch herself forward in a low, spinning arc. Her rapier, guided by her predictive sight, wasn't aimed to kill.
Shnk!
It stabbed deep into the Graviton user's thigh.
The mage screamed, his focus shattering. The heavy weight on Talia and the distant, crumpled form of Jin vanished instantly. The spell was broken.
"Masha, stop trying to find the real illusionist!" Dante commanded. "Cover the entire backline! Absolute Zero, now!"
It was a command born of desperation. Masha, tormented by ghost images of Derek, clenched her jaw and obeyed.
She stopped trying to aim, stopped trying to tell friend from foe in the enemy's rear. She thrust her hands out and unleashed her power not as a focused attack, but as a wild, explosive wave of cold.
The air flash-froze. A blizzard of razor-sharp ice shards erupted from her position, covering the enemy's casters.
The illusions flickered and died as the Phantasm user shrieked, diving for cover. The curse user, who had been draining Erica, was forced to abandon his spell to avoid being shredded.
The battlefield had been thrown into chaos. Their teamwork was fractured.
"Rina!" Dante yelled, turning to their healer who was desperately trying to keep Eric on his feet. "Stop healing! The boy with the snake tattoo, the poison user! Use your Vitae Weaving on the ground beneath him!"
"What?" she cried, confused.
"He's a Toximancy user! His power comes from decay! Reverse it! Use your life magic on the plants! Overwhelm him!"
Understanding dawned in her eyes. It was a wild, new use of her ability. She slammed her palms onto the forest floor, not to heal, but to give.
A vibrant, emerald-green light pulsed from her hands, pouring life into the earth. The moss, vines, and roots around the poison caster and his Wardcraft protector exploded into monstrous growth.
Thick, thorny vines erupted from the ground, coiling around their legs and arms, trapping them in a cage of supercharged life.
The Toximancy user, whose magic fed on rot, was being suffocated by its polar opposite.
"Erica!" Dante bellowed, his throat raw. "You're free! Burn him to ash!"
Erica's head snapped up. The draining curse was gone. Her eyes, filled with rage and shame, locked onto the tangled poison caster.
All her fear, all her frustration, all her desperate need to prove herself, came together into a single point of searing hatred.
She didn't create a fireball. She held her hands together, and the air between them squeezed and ignited, forming a blindingly bright spear of pure, white-hot plasma.
"Disappear," she whispered.
She thrust her hands forward, and the spear of light shot across the clearing. The Wardcraft user, still struggling against the vines, tried to form a barrier, but it was too late.
The plasma spear hit the trapped Toximancy user square in the chest.
There was no explosion. There was only a silent, all-consuming flash of white light. The boy didn't even have time to scream.
His body, the vines, and a chunk of the earth around him were instantly turned to vapor, leaving behind nothing but a smoking, glassed crater.
One down.
The mental shockwave was as powerful as the blast itself. The enemy team faltered, their eyes wide with horror at the empty space where their teammate had been.
Derek, enraged, let out a furious roar. "You'll pay for that!" He ignored Eric and charged toward the still-recovering Jin, his greatsword raised for a killing blow.
But Talia was already there. Freed from the gravity spell, she was a ghost.
Her rapier was a silver blur, striking not at Derek, but at the brawlers who tried to support him, cutting the leg of one and disarming another. Her movements were so fast, so precise, they seemed to defy reality.
As Derek's blade fell, Eric intercepted it, his shield meeting the greatsword in a shower of sparks that lit up the savage grin on his face. He was no longer just defending; he was fighting.
The chaos reached its peak. Masha's blizzard raged, forcing the enemy casters to stay scattered and defensive.
The team, though wounded and exhausted, was fighting with a desperate, unified ferocity.
And in the center of it all, Dante finally had what he needed. A fresh corpse.
He stepped out from behind the rock that had been his command post. He extended a hand toward the smoking crater where the Toximancy user had died.
He didn't need to see the body; he could feel its lingering essence, its echo in the world. He pulled on that echo with all his might, pouring his cold, hungry power into it.
"Rise," he commanded.
From the edges of the crater, shadows began to come together. Dust, ash, and blackened earth swirled, pulled by an unseen force.
The shape of a person began to form—a silhouette made of pure darkness and hate. It solidified into a perfect, shadowy copy of the dead Toximancy user.
Its eyes opened, glowing with the same violet, unholy light as the goblins he had raised.
The remaining members of Derek's team froze, their blood running cold.
The Wardcraft user, who had just freed himself from the last of the vines, stared in absolute terror as the shadow of his dead friend turned to face him.
The fight wasn't over. But their perfect symphony was broken. And now, they would face the terrible shriek of their own fallen comrade, conducted by him.