From his place on the scorched earth, Dante watched the end arrive. The Orc Champion, a seven-foot-tall behemoth of scarred hide and blackened iron, had broken past Eric's guard. Its massive axe rose high, poised to descend and crush their frontline defender. His team was fighting with the desperate courage of cornered animals, but they were losing. And he, their strategist, their god, was bleeding out, helpless to stop it.
It was the sight of the corpses that saved him.
Three dead orcs lay on the field, the hard-won prizes of Jin and Talia's desperate efforts. Faint wisps of mana shimmered above them. A resource. A feast waiting to be claimed. In their previous battles, the team had shared this bounty. But now, empathy was a luxury he could not afford. Survival is a zero-sum game.
His Necromancer skill, hungry and parasitic, lashed out. He reached out, not to raise the dead—his five puppet slots were filled—but to feed. Invisible tendrils of his power shot across the battlefield, ignoring his struggling teammates, and latched onto the shimmering mana of the three dead orcs.
He pulled.
A jolt of cold, raw energy flooded his system. It was not a gentle warmth; it was a chilling, unholy power. He saw Jin flinch, saw Masha's head snap in his direction, her eyes wide with disbelief. They had been expecting to share that mana. They were watching him hoard it, stealing the spoils of a war they were still dying in.
The energy surged to the gash in his side, not healing it with gentle care, but cauterizing the wound with cold, dark force. The flesh knitted together with a faint, black smoke, leaving a puckered, ugly scar. The bleeding stopped. The blinding pain receded to a dull throb. His vision cleared. His mind snapped back into sharp, analytical focus. He was back.
The Orc Champion's axe began its descent.
"Eric!" Dante's voice, though raspy, cut through the din with absolute authority. "Knee! Shield up, forty-five degrees! Brace!"
Eric, who had been preparing to meet his end, reacted instantly. He dropped, his shield forming a solid, angled ramp. Instead of a crushing impact, the blade struck the shield and skidded upwards with a deafening shriek of metal, its momentum carrying it harmlessly over his head. The champion roared in frustration, thrown off balance.
"Masha!" Dante commanded. "Ground! Not a wall, a slick! Now!"
Masha, her face a mixture of relief and a new, subtle apprehension, slammed her palms down. The scorched earth beneath the champion's massive boots instantly coated over with a sheet of black, treacherous ice. The orc slipped, its massive weight working against it.
"Talia! Jin! Hamstring it!"
They moved as one. Talia's rapier was a silver flash, her Kinetic Eye guiding her blade to the vulnerable spot behind the champion's knee. At the same time, Jin drove his sword deep into the other leg. The Orc Champion let out a bellow of pure agony and rage as its legs gave out. It crashed to its knees with a heavy, earth-shaking thud. The king of the horde was crippled.
The tide had turned.
"Listen to me!" Dante called out, his voice regaining its strength. "Stop trying to kill them with single attacks! It's inefficient! Your new objective is to feed me. Create corpses. I will do the rest!"
A new, terrifying understanding dawned on their faces. They were no longer just fighting for their lives. They were his harvesters, and this clearing was their field. They would do the bloody work, and he would reap the rewards.
The orcs, however, were not mindless beasts. The champion, kneeling but still very much alive, let out a series of guttural, barking commands. The horde's strategy shifted instantly. An orc fell to Erica's plasma, and two others immediately turned on the corpse, their axes and clubs smashing it into an unrecognizable pulp, destroying it before Dante could claim its spirit.
"They're adapting!" Edgar yelled, his eyes wide. "They're destroying the bodies!"
"So am I," Dante replied coldly. "This is no longer a battle. It is a race. Kael!"
The Mimic looked at him.
"The spear-throwers on the ridge," Dante pointed. "You saw how they aimed. Copy it. You are now our sniper. Your job is to kill the orcs who try to destroy the corpses. Protect my food."
Kael's eyes glowed silver. He scooped up a sharpened piece of shrapnel, his posture changing, his arm cocking back with an unnatural, practiced grace. He hurled the metal. It flew with the speed and accuracy of a bullet, embedding itself in the eye socket of an orc about to smash a corpse. The orc dropped, and Dante absorbed its mana instantly.
"Erica!" he commanded. "Stop the fireballs! Condense! I need lances, not explosions! Pierce their armor! Give me clean kills!"
Erica, her face a grim mask, nodded. The swirling orb of fire in her hands compressed into a searing, white-hot spear of plasma. She unleashed it, and the spear punched a clean, molten hole through the iron breastplate of an orc brute. Another thread of mana flowed into Dante, each one a jolt of intoxicating strength.
The battle became a brutal, efficient engine of death. Masha controlled the field, Jin and Talia acted as a single entity, Kael became a deadly marksman, and Erica's plasma lances neutralized the heavily armored brutes. With every orc that fell, a new thread of cold energy flowed into Dante, healing him, replenishing him, making him stronger, while his team grew more and more exhausted.
The Orc Champion, still on its knees, watched in horror as its army was torn apart. It let out a final, defiant roar and tried to push itself up.
But its time was over.
What followed was a masterpiece of coordinated slaughter. Masha encased the champion's lower body in a block of solid ice. Talia and Jin darted in, crippling its ability to fight back. Eric acted as a mobile wall, blocking its desperate swings. Kael, having copied the champion's own strength, hurled a massive boulder, staggering the beast.
And then, Erica stepped forward. She took a deep breath, and all the fire in the burning forest seemed to dim, drawn toward her. She created not a spear, but a long, incandescent sword of pure, white-hot plasma. She walked up to the immobilized champion. It looked at her, its red eyes filled not with rage, but with a warrior's grudging respect.
Erica swung the plasma blade.
The cut was clean, silent, and absolute. The Orc Champion's massive, tusked head slid from its shoulders and fell to the scorched earth with a heavy thud. As its body collapsed, a tidal wave of potent, rich mana washed over the clearing. A king's ransom.
Without hesitation, Dante opened himself to it, drinking it all in.
The last of the orcs, seeing their leader fall, broke and fled. The team let them go. The clearing fell silent. They were standing in the center of a field of more than thirty giant corpses, wounded, exhausted, and covered in blood and ash. But they were alive.
The team looked at Dante, their faces a mixture of awe and a new, unsettling fear. They had won the battle, but he had won the war. He stood taller, his wounds completely gone, his body thrumming with stolen power. They, on the other hand, were leaning on their weapons, gasping for breath, their own energy spent. The harvest had been bountiful, and he had kept it all for himself.