From the earth, dozens of chitinous bug people stormed out, brandishing swords and ready to fight. All at once, the center group was thrown into the chaos of battle.

The bugs had surrounded us, and instead of an orderly fight with two sides, everything quickly devolved into scattered skirmishes. Within moments, the relative safety I’d enjoyed being amongst the shadows in the center group vanished, and I found myself throwing my body to the side as a blade narrowly missed my head.

I turned frantically towards Hartha, hoping she’d lend me a hand, but she was likewise under attack from not one, but two of the creatures. My eyes darted in all directions, but the story was the same wherever I looked. I was on my own.

The creature who’d attacked me rushed my new position, its eyes disconcertingly devoid of life as it sought to take mine. I stifled an urge to scream, forcing my panicky nerves to submit to me. I wasn’t just some run-down college grad anymore: I was a fighter. Maybe I wasn’t on the same level as the shadows, and maybe I wasn’t some epic dragon-slaying hero, but I could do this. This was what day after day of hunting with Hartha had been for, and panicked or not, I wasn’t about to run screaming.

Doing my best to ignore the butterflies wreaking havoc in my stomach, I spared a split second to focus on my attacker, eager for some information. Right before it arrived for the second swing, its info popped up.

Kexid Skirmisher: Level 7, 160/160hp

I leveled my spear and thrust at its approaching form, but it was poorly aimed, with the bulk of its force redirected to the side by the kexid’s chitin. Hell, it’s like attacking someone in plate armor. Was this really an opponent I could face? Especially with the debuff at play, was I really supposed to fight here?

Not the time, T. Focus. Focus!

Having slipped past my attack, the skirmisher gripped its sword with two hands, delivering a horrifyingly swift slice at my shoulder. Narrowly and only on account of my recently gained Dexterity, I avoided it, jumping back to give myself some distance from the bug.

As I did so, I neared the standoff behind me, two kexids against the shadow who I’d just been talking to about the game. Thankfully for him, they seemed to be moving fairly sluggishly. With that and the fact that the shadow had a much longer reach than either of his opponents, it was clear he would have already won were it not a two on one fight.

One of the kexids had its back completely turned to me, and before my opponent could follow up, I dashed toward the hapless bug. While the other fighter should have been able to see me coming from the corner of its eyes, it made no move to intercept me or even warn its compatriot. Even as I managed to strike its fellow with everything I had, it merely stared down the shadow across from it with glassy eyes.

The bug collapsed in a heap, and an experience notification confirmed that it was dead. The tip of my spear had met with quite a bit of resistance on striking the insect’s hard exterior, but with it not having seen my attack coming, I’d managed to strike in just the right spot to bring it down. Pivoting from my strike to turn back to my own assailant, I barely registered the shadow letting out a grunt of thanks and charging at his remaining enemy.

The moment I turned back to my original opponent, I found myself frantically batting away another vicious swing. While the skirmisher wasn’t astonishingly fast, neither was I. I pushed the blade away with the haft of the spear, but not quite enough to avoid it. The blade slid into my flesh, shallowly slicing down the side of my chest.

Just like that, my battle focus snapped. Following in the sword’s wake, a wave of pain flooded the gash.

I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. As a primal mixture of pain and terror ate away at my nerves, I threw a feeble jab at the kexid, which it effortlessly batted away.

As it readied itself for the finishing blow, an impending sense of doom wriggled through my body, its icy tentacles wrapping my heart, my throat, my will. I started shaking. I couldn’t help it. This was on an entirely different level than anything I’d had to deal with in the forest.

As the blade came swooping down to finish me off, I leapt back with unsteady feet, but even as I did so, I could tell it wouldn’t be enough.

Then, quite suddenly, a spear raced through the air right past my head. It lodged itself in my attacker’s throat, and just like that, it collapsed, dead.

I turned behind me, hyperventilating, to find the shadow from earlier. He ran over to me, having evidently already dispatched his previous foe.

“We need to find you a healer, fast.” He bent down to the slain bug’s corpse and ripped his spear from its neck.

“Oh. Right. Healing.” In a trance, I activated my spell while the man looked at me with eyes full of concern. The spell seemed to resist me in my nerve-wracked state, but after a few seconds, it worked as expected. Green radiance suffused me as my wound shrunk, not completely disappearing.

“You can heal?” A hint of respect entered his eyes, mixed in with the concern still evident within them. “We need to go help everyone else. Can you keep healing?”

I nodded mutely, scanning the battlefield around us. He was right. We needed to help. The bugs were low-leveled in comparison to the shadows, so I thankfully didn’t spot any casualties on our side yet, but with the powerful debuff they were all under, many of the shadows were sporting some serious wounds.

“Hey,” I mumbled.

The shadow cocked his head toward me. “Yeah?”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

Amidst the crunching and clinging of weapons and the shouts and grunts of the fighters, the man spared the time for a chuckle. “Any time. Now let’s go.”

Now vaguely in control of my body again, I nodded, and we rushed toward the closest shadow to help out. Seeing as she’d been right next to me when everything started, that ended up being Hartha.

Of the bugs that had attacked her at the offset, one lay dead off to the side. The remaining foe, however, seemed a touch stronger than the others, and as a result, Hartha was sporting a puncture wound on her thigh, slowing her down.

My newfound companion charged in as I activated my healing spell once again. I watched with satisfaction as the flesh on her thigh knit back together. For good measure, I considered casting it once more, but an eye on my mana bar dissuaded me from the notion. It looked like just those two casts had taken about a third of my mana, so I decided to hold off in case anyone else was in worse trouble.

The skirmisher ended up being no match for the two shadows at once, and within a matter of seconds, it fell to a well-placed jab from Hartha. Wordlessly, she nodded at us, and the three of us continued on.

After that, it was just a matter of time. The kexids had little chance of downing any of the shadows in a one on one fight, so as the numbers turned in our favor, there was nothing they could do.

Additionally, now better able to focus, Hartha was free to try out some of the spells she’d learned from her class upgrade. The earth rippled beneath the skirmishers, making them easy prey as they fell to the ground. On one occasion, she summoned a desiccated root which poked through the ground and attempted to wrap around one of the enemies, but failed. Evidently, the area was too barren for such a spell to work.

Our mana soon bottomed out, but by then, the fight was effectively over. In a matter of minutes, the dozens of kexids had been reduced to just one. With twenty shadows surrounding it, it had nowhere to go.

As the shadows closed in on the final foe, something caught my attention.

“Wait!” I focused on the bug-like figure as one of the shadows who’d been going in for the finishing blow jumped back.

“Don’t kill it. I think we need it alive.”

Not daring to take their eyes off the enemy, the shadows weren’t able to give me the odd looks I knew they wanted to. Meanwhile, the kexid spun about, unable to strike, surrounded as it was.

Without asking questions, the shadows nodded and slowly advanced together. Two of them dashed in from behind, striking at the bug’s legs and crippling the creature while a third thrusted her spear forward. Reeling from the strikes to its legs, the skirmisher failed to deflect the attack, and it sliced into the bug’s claw, forcing it to drop its weapon. Without pause, the shadows swarmed it, restraining its limbs and bringing it to the ground.

Finally, the fight was over. In the distance, I could see the perimeter groups, similar piles of kexids on the ground around them. Evidently, they’d had to fight just as hard as we did.

One of the shadows in the frontmost group threw his hand up in some sort of signal, and with that, the perimeter groups began walking towards the center. In a moment, all of the shadows had assembled, and Rock stood at the front of the crowd once more. He shouted for each group to give him a status report, and then he addressed us all.

“Two casualties.” He grimaced. “One scout who got caught out before we could help, one fighter who got swarmed. A moment of silence for our fallen.”

The shadows hung their heads and moved not even a muscle. Even with my enhanced hearing, the only sound was from the gentle wind. After the better part of a minute had passed, everyone raised their heads, and Rock continued on. Before he spoke, he turned to me, making intense and chilling eye contact.

“We thank the Protagonist. Without her stopping the groups and alerting us that something was wrong, more may have died in the first surprise attack.” He nodded at me, for once in a completely genuine manner, and the other shadows bowed their heads in my direction.

“Now, we have much yet to accomplish, but first, why is that one still alive?” He pointed to the still-restrained kexid held off to the side of the group. Its eyes were dark, and it had since ceased to struggle at all.

I chimed in, despite having just fought with them all somehow nervous to speak in the middle of the hundred shadows. “I see something.” It was still incredibly faint, and even with my enhanced Perception, it flitted in and out of my vision if I didn’t focus intensely.

I squinted at it as I spoke, still barely trusting myself. “There’s a thin line of mana coming off of it.”

A few shadows began to mutter, and Rock raised a bushy eyebrow. “Oh?”

I followed the mana trail with my eyes, but even with my sight now reaching much farther than it once had, I could find no end to it. “It trails off into the distance. I think… I think we might be able to follow it.”

Rock stared off in the direction that I’d been looking before turning back to the force. “Then,” he replied, “we follow it.”