The first order of business was freeing the rest of our team and letting them heal up to a point where they could fight back. Stiletto was down, but still breathing, Xiphos looked worse for wear, but she was standing off to the side near Stiletto, and Khopesh was bound by the lanky needle-faced monster.

The explosions took out a number of nemorti, but there were a couple of boneclaws with explosive tumour collars around their necks still moving through the crowd. One of them was right near Khopesh and the monster that had him grappled.

The dragonslayer stood to the left of Khopesh and the needle-faced monster, about a car length behind them. If I could get this right, I might be able to make the boneclaw explode and take out both the lanky mosquito-man and deal some hefty damage to the dragonslayer.

“Khopesh, get ready to use your shield!” I said as I ran into the fray.

“Oh you crazy motherfucker!” Khopesh said as he realised what I was about to do.

He’d obviously seen the other boneclaws explode all around him earlier and knew what they were capable of. I hoped that if his shield was on cooldown, he would have said so.

“Use your shield now!” I shouted as I raised Gravedigger and aimed it right at the boneclaw’s explosive necklace.

I waited until a thin covering of sand flashed out and covered Khopesh’s body before pulling the trigger.

The moment Gravedigger boomed, I leapt to the side – putting myself directly behind both Khopesh and the needle-faced monster.

A blast of white hot air exploded out from the boneclaw as its collar ignited. I closed my eyes to protect them from the blast wave and landed heavily on the snow-covered road. The powdery white snow barely broke my fall as I went down hard. One leg of my pants lit on fire, but I quickly extinguished it by rolling the flaming patch into the snow. The flames sizzled as they died.

Khopesh stood unharmed, but the mosquito-faced monster had been blown to pieces. Khopesh already had his edged weapon in hand and ran straight at the dragonslayer, who had seen better days. One of his arms had been completely blown off his body and lay in the snow a few metres away. It broke down into red motes of light which floated away on the breeze as his ragged stump started to bubble and morph, regrowing another arm slowly.

The dragonslayer turned towards us, which meant his attention was no longer on Xiphos on Stiletto.

The plan had worked.

Xiphos knelt next to Stiletto while this was all going on and pushed a healing pill into his mouth. We just needed to keep the dragonslayer’s attention on us until Stiletto could get back to full health.

Naginata ran into the fray and parried the dragonslayer’s attempt to slash his blazing red arm at Khopesh. I activated my class skill and sent Kaiser in to attack the dragonslayer as well. Kaiser tried to keep the dragonslayer off balance by pulling his legs out from under him, but that strategy didn’t last long. A number of nemorti advanced on Kaiser, which I quickly ran to intercept.

Gravedigger boomed until it was completely spent, leaving shredded corpses in its savage wake.

“Reloading!” I called out, because that’s what people did in firefights, right?

I loaded the six incendiary shells we’d received from the first supply drop into Gravedigger one at a time. Hopefully the extra elemental damage would let us control the crowd a little more easily.

One of the nemorti swiped a gangly hand at Kaiser, who yelped in pain as the blow landed. A portion of that damage was reflected back on the enemy thanks to the Call Him Spike skill, and my shotgun blast hopefully healed Kaiser back to full thanks to my newly acquired Share the Love skill.

Kaiser seemed to perk right up as soon as the nemorti went down in the blaze of fire. The flames also caught two nearby nemorti, which started to flail about in panic.

Their panic worked in our favour. The flames spread from nemorti to nemorti as they ran through the crowd to get away.

Another glance over at Xiphos and Stiletto revealed that Stiletto was gone. Hopefully he’d healed and slipped away using his class skill to find a better vantage point. I quickly opened comms for a second.

“Stiletto if you’re looking for a crow’s nest to shoot from, try the second or third floors in the resort. They’re empty, and we haven’t looted the third floor yet,” I said.

“One step ahead of you,” Stiletto’s voice came back through comms. “Thanks for the save, writer boy. I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me shit. We all make it through this together, you got that?”

“I hear you.”

With that, Xiphos activated her own class skill, which bolstered the whole team’s deadliness. I noticed a definite reduction in Gravedigger’s recoil as I painted another group of nemorti with fire shells. Three down, three to go, and then I was out of incendiary shells.

Naginata held her own against the dragonslayer. He didn’t have a weapon per se, but I did notice something strange about his glowing red arm that remained. The tip of each finger burned with a sharp luminescent claw, which he tried to swipe at Naginata.

Even after her class skill wore off, she could still parry like nobody I’d ever seen. Her poise, posture and composure in battle were second to none. It was like she’d trained for battles like this her whole life.

I made a mental note to never get on Naginata’s bad side.

The dragonslayer turned to face Khopesh as he advanced on the dragonslayer’s exposed flank. The bedraggled, shirtless man suddenly lurched towards Khopesh in a puff of red mist.

In that split second before the dragonslayer slammed into him, Khopesh raised his edged weapon across his chest and placed his palm against the flat of the blade. Khopesh flew backwards and rolled to a stop.

“Urgh, damn it!” Khopesh grunted as he got back to his feet.

I lifted Gravedigger and pulled the trigger. The whole shot hit the dragonslayer across the chest and burst into flames, but the flames puffed out a moment later.

Was this guy fireproof?

God damn it.

During my first mission, one of the skill trees had a final Level 20 skill that would have rendered me fireproof. Was this guy the same? Was he resistant to the cold, too? Walking around shirtless in this weather? He had to be.

Cold didn’t stop him, flames didn’t slow him down, but explosions had worked. We needed to use the boneclaws to kill him. It was our only way.

The remaining boneclaws were standing back from the fray now, almost like the dragonslayer had commanded them to stay out of the fight.

“I’ve got a crazy plan, and I think we can use Rho to help make it work,” I said.

“I’m watching the battle below, and we’ve got our best minds analysing the data coming through,” Rho said. “What do you need?”

“We earned another supply drop with that last mission, right? I asked. “Send it down, but can you mark the landing site on our HUDs like you did with the last one?”

“I sure can,” Rho said.

“Good. Until then, we need to focus on thinning out the remaining nemorti, not letting this red-clawed bastard grab any of us, and we need to hobble the remaining boneclaws.”

Xiphos shot me a sour look, but she didn’t object to me taking charge of our battle strategy. I think she already saw the sense in it.

“We keep the boneclaws immobile and use them to blow this motherfucker up, yes?” Xiphos asked.

“Exactly right, Captain,” I replied.

Using her correct title was shorthand for saying my bad for taking over, but someone had to change things up.

“When do you want the supply drop?” Rho asked.

“How long will it take to get here?” I asked.

“Two minutes, max.”

“Then send it down. There’s no time to lose.”

A section of the street a little further down from where we were lit up with a targeting circle. The central landing spot was marked with a big red circle with a DANGER: IMPACT ZONE message flashing up around it.

That’s where we needed to get the dragonslayer in the next two minutes. They needed to be immobilised by that time too.

A crack rang out in the air as Tasha – Stiletto’s sniper rifle – removed one of the boneclaw’s heads from their shoulders. The pink flesh blew apart like a watermelon, but the explosive collar did not ignite. The boneclaw’s body fell to the ground, and it still didn’t explode.

“Do that a couple more times and we should be sweet,” I said into comms. “We should only need one, but backups are appreciated.”

“I read you loud and clear,” Stiletto said as another boneclaw head exploded.

This time the explosive collar went with it, exploding in a fireball, destroying the nemorti that were close enough to be engulfed by the blast. Xiphos and Naginata fought back to back against the marauding horde of nemorti, carving limbs from bodies, skewering them as they advanced, thinning the horde.

I activated my class skill again and commanded Kaiser to attack the dragonslayer.

“Shred the ankles!” I said.

The dragonslayer could heal, sure, but that capability had to have a limit.

Khopesh and I rushed towards the dragonslayer as Kaiser ripped into the back of his legs. The arm that had exploded off was mostly reformed now, but blazed red.

Just as I’d suspected, the dragonslayer’s wounds on his legs did not heal as quickly as they once did. All of his anima was focussed on regrowing his missing arm.

He lashed out at me and I took a hit to the chest. His good arm was damn good, punching me like a steam-powered piston. It sent me flying backward as he switched focus to Khopesh.

The dragonslayer sneered at me as I got back to my feet, then put Khopesh on his arse with a super-powered punch too. Kaiser doggedly pulled the dragonslayer towards the landing zone of the supply drop.

I opened comms. “Okay, drag that headless boneclaw behind the dragonslayer now. As soon as it’s in position, Stiletto will blow it the hell up.”

I took a moment to glance towards the sky above the landing zone and saw the smoking trail the supply drop left in its wake. It was only seconds away now!

“Now!” I shouted.

Xiphos and Naginata grabbed the headless boneclaw by the legs and dragged it behind the dragonslayer as Khopesh and I both leapt back into the fray to keep his attention focussed in our direction. Kaiser retreated, which I was very thankful for. I couldn’t risk him getting caught up in this blast.

The sound of the supply drop crackling in the air grew louder with every passing second.

Xiphos and Naginata dumped the boneclaw’s body on the snow right behind the dragonslayer.

“Stiletto, now!” I shouted as both Khopesh and I leapt away from the coming explosion.

Khopesh had his shield skill, but I didn’t. I tried to land face down in the snow and pre-emptively swallowed a healing pill. A crack split the sky as Stiletto pulled the trigger from his higher vantage point. Another blast wave scorched me, but this time it was a lot worse. The pain seared me deep, taking my breath away. I rolled so that my back was on the snow. The cold felt incredible on my burned skin as it slowly healed.

When I finally looked back at the landing zone I grinned as I saw the dragonslayer laying right in the red zone, less one arm and a leg. He tried to crawl away, but the supply drop slammed into him a moment later.

His body was completely obliterated as the supply drop landed, spreading chunks that began to evaporate into red mist all over the street.

The dragonslayer’s head came to a stop in the snow nearby. He had no lungs left, so couldn’t speak, but he looked up at me with amusement. His mouth was twisted up into a smile as his face crumbled to dust.

I’m not sure exactly what happened next, but the remaining nemorti fled the resort. They ran to the east – the direction of a nearby mountain peak further down the range.

“Should we go after them?” I asked.

Xiphos joined me and shook her head. “We need to get across the valley. You’re not the only one who’s been touched by these things now. We need to see if we’ve all been infected.”

“Uh, team?” Rho’s voice came through our comms.

“We’re here,” Xiphos replied. “The threat has been eliminated.”

“No it hasn’t We’ve got something absolutely massive coming your way from the eastern road,” Rho said.

I stepped into the middle of the street to get a good look east, and that’s when I saw it. An absolutely enormous humanoid figure was gunning it down the road right towards us.

Its eyes blazed with bright red light as its heavy footfalls shook the ground beneath our feet.