Chapter 38: Breached
Eleanor ducked beneath another talon and answered with an upward slash that carved across the beast’s chest.
Flames spread over its scales, and instead of burning, the creature simply shook them off, embers scattering harmlessly into the churned grass of the quad.
She gritted her teeth, retreating a step to gather herself. "This is harder than I thought."
The realization settled heavily. Each exchange was doing less than it was supposed to — cuts that should have opened flesh instead skated across scale, flame that should have caught and spread instead guttered out against hide that seemed to shrug off heat entirely.
Every technique she’d honed across weeks of fighting felt suddenly and disturbingly blunted, like she was swinging a sword she’d only just picked up for the first time.
She circled the creature warily, flaming blade held low, mind racing through every drill she’d run over the past three days, every formation and counter she’d drilled into her own fighters and none of it accounted for an enemy that simply refused to stay hurt the way it should have.
’This isn’t right... this isn’t right at all’
Worse, the beast was adapting.
Its movements had grown sharper with every exchange, reactions faster, and it had started predicting her rhythm... the next strike proved it beyond doubt. Eleanor swung for its neck, a strike that would have ended a lesser fight instantly, and the beast caught her wrist mid-swing, closing talons around her forearm with bruising force.
Her eyes widened as it flung her body into the air and soared after her, wings beating hard enough to close the distance before she knew what was happening...
**BIFF**
Its massive arm swung with destructive force, slamming into her side and sending her crashing back toward the earth in a graceless, spinning fall.
The impact drove the breath from her lungs entirely, and she hit the ground hard, tumbling across churned grass before finally skidding to a stop.
"Ack—!"
Pain shot through her ribs, sharp enough to make her vision white at the edges, and blood pooled from her mouth as she forced herself back up before the dust had settled around her.
The beast didn’t give her time to recover.
It screeched and crashed through the dust cloud with open jaws, and Eleanor planted one foot hard against the earth, her blade of living flame igniting brighter— a desperate, all or nothing gamble born from pure instinct and gradually growing fear.
The blade pierced straight through the creature’s mouth and erupted from the back of its skull.
For a moment, everything stopped.
Then what happened next shocked her.
The beast twisted, wrenching itself sideways despite the blade buried through its own skull, and the motion tore the sword free through the side of its mouth in a spray of dark blood, sending Eleanor stumbling forward off-balance.
"Shit!"
The beast hadn’t died. It had weakened though visibly, but it was still very much alive, blood streaming from a wound that should have been instantly fatal, its remaining eye fixed on her in a renewed, furious glare.
***
A short distance away, Lucas was soaring through the air with the practiced effort of one who didn’t know how in the first place.
[Ignition] roared beneath his feet and he blitzed through the air flying straight for the beast.
**WHAM**
Lucas drove a flaming fist into the side of it’s face sending it reeling.
Lucas landed in an ungracefull stumbled before steadying himself.
Soon, Mark came and they faced the Avallion together.
However, it was proving no more forgiving than the one tormenting Eleanor.
"It’s not slowing down!" Mark bellowed, gauntlets raised to catch a diving strike that drove him back a full two steps despite [Bastion’s Oath] humming at full strength beneath his skin. "This thing hits like it’s got something to prove!"
"Welcome to my world!" Lucas shot back, Ignition roaring around both fists as he drove a punch into the creature’s flank the instant it recoiled from Mark’s block.
The strike landed clean, exactly where he’d learned to hit an Avallion across a dozen deaths but it barely staggered the beast at all, a low shriek lefts it’s throat, the only real acknowledgment the hit had connected.
"That’s not right," Lucas muttered, shaking out his fist. "That should’ve dropped it."
"You think?!!" Mark caught the creature’s next dive on his forearms, boots skidding backward across the grass under the force of the impact. "It’s fast, Lucas, faster than the Avallion we know—"
The Avallion twisted mid-air, using the rebound off Mark’s block to redirect itself in a way that shouldn’t have been physically possible, talons raking low toward Lucas’s exposed side before he’d fully recovered his stance.
"Lucas—!"
He barely twisted clear, feeling the wind of the strike against his ribs, close enough that a half moments difference would have opened him from hip to shoulder.
He stumbled, caught himself, and drove flame wreathed knuckles up into the creature’s underside on pure reflex, the fire catching this time albeit barely enough to force a genuine shriek of pain rather than mere irritation.
"Fucking Finally!!—"
"Because you basically fed it your own arm to land that hit!" Mark shouted, closing the distance to slam his gauntlets into the same wounded flank, widening the injury with brute, straightforward force. "We need better than lucky openings, man!"
Arggh gimme a minute!"
The Avallion recoiled from the combined damage, climbing higher, clearly recalibrating its approach rather than retreating outright.
Lucas watched it circle, chest heaving, sweat and blood mixing along his forearm from where an earlier strike had grazed him.
’It’s not just stronger. It’s smarter... It’s adjusting to what’s hurting it.’
The realization sat cold in his chest. Every beast he’d ever fought in The Edge had followed patterns predictable and learnable, the kind of thing his own hard won foreknowledge had always been able to exploit.
This thing adapted right before their eyes, in a way that meant every trick he pulled only worked exactly once before it recalculated around the counter.
"Man, I kinda miss that nightmare now..." Mark complained as he rushed forward.
"Mark, when it dives again, I need you to bait it low. Force it to commit to a strike on you specifically."
"Oh, great, great plan! Use Mark as bait. Love that for me..."
"You’re literally built for this! Aren’t you The Mountain King or something?"
"I know that! I’m just saying it out loud cuz it’s terrifying facing a beast when I’m barely half my strength..."
The Avallion dove.
Mark planted his feet and raised both arms, gauntlets flaring and the creature’s talons crashed against him with enough force to drive him a full stride backward into the earth.
Je held, exactly as Lucas needed him to, the beast fully committed to the strike with no room left to redirect.
Lucas surged in from the side, flame roaring hotter than he’d managed all fight, and drove both fists into the exact wound Mark had widened earlier, twisting with everything he had.
"RAHHHH!!"
The Avallion’s shriek cut off into something choked and desperate, its whole body seizing as the flame finally caught and spread properly this time, and it thrashed once, twice, before crashing down into the churned grass in a smoking, unmoving heap.
Lucas staggered back, chest heaving, staring at the fallen creature with disbelief, fatigue clawing at every joint in his body. "That should not have taken that long."
"Tell me about it," Mark gasped, "Ow." He said, shaking both arms again. "I felt that."
Across the quad, a fresh shriek rose.
Eleanor’s beast, still alive despite the wound through its skull, rounding on her with renewed fury.
"Eleanor!" Lucas was already moving, Mark close behind, both of them sprinting toward her position the instant their own fight ended, adrenaline, the only thing keeping either of them upright after the fight that had just cost them so much more effort than it should have.
She’d retreated a step, blade raised, blood still trickling from the corner of her mouth where the beast’s earlier strike had connected, and the creature reared back for what looked like a finishing blow.
Its remaining eye tracked her with a cold, calculating focus that had nothing animal left in it, every prior exchange clearly filed away and used to refine exactly how it intended to end this.
"Hey you overgrown bird!" Mark’s shout cut through the chaos, gauntlets slamming into the beast’s flank from the side hard enough to stagger its charge, buying Eleanor the moment she desperately needed.
The impact cost him... Lucas could see it in the way Mark’s arms trembled afterward, [Bastion’s Oath] clearly straining to absorb damage it should have handled without visible effort...
But it worked, the creature’s momentum breaking just enough to throw off the timing of its intended finishing strike.
Lucas closed the remaining distance in a dead sprint, flame roaring around both fists and feet, causing him to blitz forward, and drove a punch into the same gaping wound Eleanor’s blade had already carved through the creature’s skull.
The combination of her earlier strike, Mark’s staggering blow, and Lucas’s flame all converging on wounds already weakened past recovery finally proved too much even for a creature that had shrugged off everything thrown at it individually.
The Avallion’s remaining eye rolled back, its massive form swaying once before collapsing fully into the grass, motionless at last.
***
Silence fell across the quad, broken only by ragged breathing and the distant murmur of survivors slowly emerging from where they’d sheltered during the fight.
Eleanor sagged, one hand pressed to her ribs, wincing as she straightened. "That," she said, breathless, "should not have been that hard."
"Tell me about it," Lucas said, staring down at his own scorched, trembling hands. "That was supposed to be an easy fight. We’ve killed worse."
"Much worse," Mark added, flexing fingers that were clearly still aching from the last several blows he’d absorbed. "I took hits off two Hestia and walked away better than I feel right now."
"We need to talk about this," Eleanor said, staring down at the fallen creatures, voice tight with dawning dread. "If we’ve lost whatever advantage The Edge gave us, and things can still follow us here..."
"Then we’re not as safe as we thought," Mark finished grimly. "Even back home. Fuck man, I’m not getting paid enough for this."
Eleanor raised an eyebrow. "You’re not getting paid at all..."
Lucas thought to himself ’If ordinary Avallion nearly took all of us to bring down two of them, I don’t want to think about what a horde crossing over would do to us.’
Lucas stayed quiet, staring at his trembling hands as a colder, more personal fear clawed up through his chest that had nothing to do with the current situation...
’If I’m not stronger here.... If The Edge was the only thing keeping me alive through everything I’ve survived so far’
’Then dying here might not be any different than dying there. Except here, I don’t know if [Regression] even still works.’
The thought hit him like ice water, he knew his skills were glitched and it was only reasonable to think that one of them might not work if they left The Edge.
However, right now, he could still use his [Ignition] skill so he became gravely afraid that his other skill might really not work...
His breathing quickened despite his best effort to stay composed. The old, familiar panic clawing up from somewhere he’d thought he had buried deep enough not to have to face again so soon.
Eleanor noticed and her expression straightened with concern.
"Lucas?" She crossed the distance between them, wincing against her own injuries, concern replacing the tactical focus in her expression. "Hey, You’re shaking. You okay?"
[Ding!]
The system chimed before he could answer, a new notification blooming in front of every survivor still standing on the quad.
[New Objective: Retrieve the Guard Relic.]
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