Chapter 20: Bait
Lucas kept his eyes closed a moment longer, letting the pieces settle into some kind of order.
’Lora.... Colt’s ability. The glitch that fires without my command.’
Three variables, none of them fully in his control, and somewhere underneath all of it the horde itself, closing in exactly as it had the last three times.
He opened his eyes and looked at Lora properly for the first time since dragging her into this.
"Your dagger skill," he said. "Is that the only thing you’ve got, or is there more?"
Lora blinked, caught off guard by the specificity of the question. "How would you even—"
"Answer first, questions later," Bertram cut in, gently but firmly, before she could finish. "Trust me... It saves time."
She glanced between them, visibly deciding whether any of this was worth the confusion it was costing her before she exhaled and answered. "Fine. I’ve got a speed skill too. Short bursts make me faster than anything should be for a few seconds at a time. Good for closing distance, better for getting out before something closes it on me."
’Assassin-type,’ Lucas thought, filing it away fast. ’Fast, precise, built for getting in and out before anything reacts. That’s not just another fighter.... That’s something I can actually use.’
"Good," he said out loud. "That’s good...Very good....it helps"
"Helps with what, exactly?"
"Working on it." He turned away, mind already racing back to the problem that mattered.
The flare, the uncommanded [ignition], the horde converging on him like he’d rung a dinner bell.
’It fired without my command. If it does that again in the middle of everything, I’m dead again.’
The thought sat heavy in his chest, closer to despair than he wanted to admit, because there was no controlling a glitch that didn’t wait for his input in the first place. He couldn’t out-think a malfunction that operated independently of his own choices.
Then, mid thought, one detail caught and held....
’It drew them to me. Every single beast in range turned toward the light the second it fired.’
Lucas went very still.
’That’s not just a liability. That’s bait.’
If [Ignition] was going to fire on its own regardless of what he wanted, then the only real choice left to him wasn’t whether it happened, it was what he did with the fact that it would.
A glitch that drew every nearby beast’s attention wasn’t just dangerous. Aimed correctly, positioned correctly, it was a weapon he hadn’t asked for but could still use....
"Okay," he said, quiet, mostly to himself. "Okay. I think I’ve got something."
"Care to share?" Bertram asked.
"Not yet. I need it to actually work first." Lucas managed something like a grim smile. "Just...stay close to Colt once things start. Whatever happens to me, don’t stop feeding him fighters."
Nobody had time to ask him to clarify....
The ground shuddered, the same tremor Lucas had felt three times now, and Bertram’s face went tight with the grim recognition of a pattern he’d so desperately didn’t want to recognize.
"That’s them," he said.
[Ding!]
[Warning: Multiple Bora Class Entities Detected.]
[Multiple Ball Class Entities Detected]
[Objective: Survive.]
Chaos descended exactly as it had every time before — the wall folding, screams rising, fire catching along canvas rows, and somewhere at the camp’s center Colt’s voice roared above the noise as Warlord’s Grip condensed into shape around his outstretched hand.
"To Me! Every Fighter Still Standing—"
"Go!" Lucas shoved Callum toward the gathering point, Bertram already moving to follow with two survivors in tow. "Iris, cover positions! Lora—with me!"
Lora didn’t ask questions this time. She simply moved.
***
They fought in a rhythm so smooth it shocked even them.
Lora’s speed skill flaring in short, precise bursts that put her exactly where a strike needed to land before the beast in front of her finished its own attack.
Lucas’s fists trading blows alongside her dagger with the kind of violence that came from two people who’d both learned the hard way exactly how much a single fight could cost.
"Left!" Lucas called, hitting a Bora a moment before it lunged.
Lora’s blade was already there, burying itself in the gap between armor plates before the creature finished the motion.
"Behind you!" Her voice was sharp and Lucas spun in time to drive a burning fist into an Avallion’s exposed flank before its claws found his back.
For a while...a genuinely surprising while, it worked. Between them they carved a bloody, narrow path of survivors toward Colt’s position, every fighter they funneled into the growing cluster making the war-hammer’s next swing land with visibly greater force.
Then [Ignition] fired again.
Just as he expected...
[ERROR]
[Skill: Ignition has been Activation]
Flame erupted around both his fists without warning, bright like before, and Lucas felt the old surge of panic rise before he pushed it down this time, because this was exactly what he’d planned for.
"It’s fine!" he shouted to Lora, to Iris, to anyone close enough to hear. "Let it draw them! Push the survivors toward Colt while they’re focused on me!"
Beasts turned toward the light in a wave, exactly as they had before, and this time Lucas didn’t fight the pull of it. He ran toward the open ground instead of away from it, blazing like walking a signal , dragging the horde’s attention away from the fleeing survivors and toward himself alone.
"Lucas, what are you—"
"Bait!" he shouted back, already sprinting, already surrounded by shapes converging from every direction at once. "Get them to colt, i’ll find you."
It worked exactly as well and as terribly as he’d expected.
Beasts peeled off from every other target in reach to chase the burning shape sprinting across open ground, and for a handful of desperate minutes, survivors who would have died in the chaos instead found a clear, beast free path toward the growing strength of Colt and his hammer..
It also meant Lucas was, for those same moments, entirely alone against a horde that wanted nothing more than to kill him.
He fought with feral instinct, flame roaring uncontrolled around both fists and up to his forearms taking hits and giving them back worse, buying time as much as he could.
A Bora’s tail caught his shoulder and spun him hard onto the ground. An Avalion’s claws raked down his back before he rolled clear.
He kept moving anywaw... kept drawing them further from the fleeing survivors, kept feeding Colt’s growing cluster of fighters one desperate stretch of open ground at a time.
Hours seemed to pass that way...fighting, bleeding, dragging himself back up, watching more people reach Colt’s light while more beasts turned their fury on him instead.... until his body simply couldn’t keep making itself to move anymore.
He went down hard, finally, an Avalion’s weight pinning him into the floor, its jaws opening wide enough to end things cleanly, and every nerve in Lucas’s body lit up with the same raw terror that had never once dulled no matter how many times he’d already died.
’No. No, not again, not like this—’
His heart slammed against his ribs....breath tearing in and out too fast to do anything useful with, the jaws above him filling his entire vision until there was nothing else in the world but the certainty of teeth closing down.
The regressions never made this part easier. He still didn’t want to die. He was still, underneath every hard-earned scrap of strategy, just as terrified of it as he’d been the very first time.
These were his thoughts when movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention instead.
A Bora, mid-lunge toward him, collided instead with an Avallion that had swooped in from the opposite direction, both of them thrown off course by the impact, and the two creatures turned on each other with a sudden, vicious fury that had nothing to do with any human target at all.
Lucas stared, forgetting for one suspended second that he was still pinned beneath a third creature entirely.
’They’re fighting each other.’
It clicked into place all at once — the way Avallions had broken off from fighters to hunt survivours.instead, the way this Bora had abandoned him mid-strike the instant an Avalion crossed its path, the specific, focused fury in the way the two creatures tore into each other now instead of finishing him off.
’They’re natural enemies."
The Avalion pinning him faltered, distracted by the fight breaking out inches away, and Lucas used the half-moment.of loosened grip to shove himself sideways from underneath it, mind already racing far ahead of his exhausted, bleeding body.
’If I can turn them on each other instead of on us...’
The idea arrived whole and electric, cutting clean through the exhaustion and the pain that had settled over him a moment ago, and for the first
time since the horde had first broken through the wall, Lucas had a full, complete idead...something that was close enough to work with...
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