59

2-1

The four of them spread out ahead of the line formed by the Onsolian army. As the party took their positions, Rian headed to the outermost side on the right. A few dozen feet away to his left was the priestess, Chrono.

He realized she was staring at him.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I, uh—” She glanced at the city as if worried that the cannons would fire upon them when she wasn’t looking. “I’m…not all that fast on my feet. I’m just a healer. If I can’t get around in time, then…”

Smiling, Rian gave her a thumbs up. “Hey, no problem. I got you.”

When he considered the situation, it really did come down to him. To Chrono’s left was Bree, a mage, who probably didn’t have much in terms of Agility either. And beyond them, Enishi had his hands full, dealing with two cannons at once.

Wait, how the hell is he going to block two—

The general’s voice resounded on the wind, no louder than a whisper despite being nearly a hundred feet away.

“Advance.”

The Onsolians began to march. Along with them, Rian and the party stepped forward, bringing themselves into range of the mounted cannons. At the same time, a tremendous rustling sounded from behind.

Risking a glance back, Rian saw that the hundreds of Onsolian mages had raised their staffs in unison. He could feel a steadily rising energy in the air, and a timer appeared on his HUD, counting down to what he assumed would be the spell they were casting.

Ten minutes.

He turned forward just in time to see the inner machinery of the cannons’ barrels begin to turn. Five faint lines shot across the distance, missing everyone in the party and landing upon the Onsolians.

Tracer beams. It had never really made sense to Rian why Pyceian weaponry would have that—a way of giving away their target. But when he’d looked over his shoulder to confirm that the tracers were indeed landing on the Onsolians, none of them seemed to notice. As if they couldn’t see it.

He hurried his way toward the path of his designated cannon. Just as he began to ponder if the tracers weren’t real but rather a representation of the future—meaning he was seeing into the future—the innards of the gigantic barrels flashed, and five solid beams of light instantly shot through the air.

Every single one hit the Onsolian line. Explosions shook the ground to the point that he almost lost his footing. Fire and dirt rained from the sky. It was so loud that it took a moment until he could hear anything beyond it—and when he could, it was the sound of men and women screaming.

Amid the fire and smoke, dozens of bodies lay torn and bloody. In pieces.

Holy shit. What the—

His stomach lurched. Shivering, he looked forward again. The cannons slowly swiveled in different directions, aiming for new portions of the army. A window on his HUD automatically tabbed over to party-chat, in which Bree was swearing profusely.

To his left, Chrono was ducking down, covering her ears as scattered dirt rained upon them.

Dammit. Why did I hesitate?

He’d been expecting a fun little diversion, a mini-game on the way through the Rift. Not an actual war battle. This was straight-up traumatic. He could smell the air burning.

Nothing had ever sobered him up so quickly. Screw the Hundred-Year War or whatever the hell this was. He immediately wanted no part of it.

What the hell am I doing here? What do I care what these mages are even fighting for?

Feeling some kind of primal instinct of preservation, he was about ready to throw down his shield and run to grab the other party members to get them out of here. But he had no choice. They were already locked into this Rift session. Failure meant no other chance.

On top of it all, the completion timer for the Onsolians’ spell had jumped up several minutes. Because a portion of them had just died.

It felt like everything around him was on fire.

Shit. Shit! What do I—

The calm, rational part of his mind told him. Eyes forward.

The cannons weren’t revving up simultaneously now. They’d taken different amounts of time to turn and re-aim. That gave him a window to work with—to block both his cannon and Chrono’s.

Luck was on his side: the cannon he was responsible for began to turn first. He raised his shield and sprinted, attempting to judge the angle by sight. The tracer beam fired off within reach, and Rian slid to a halt, lining up. Within less than a second, the actual beam followed the tracer and struck his energy shield.

The kickback dug his heels into the ground. It felt like someone had just tackled him. Electricity crackled up and down the shield, but it held together. The beam, however, had deflected away and into the ground at an angle. Grass and dirt exploded into the air, blocking his view of the city and the cannons.

No!

He could barely see the next tracer to his left, which told him it was already too late. He’d lost sight of Chrono as well, but judging by the subsequent beam of light and the explosion tearing through the Onsolians, she hadn’t been anywhere near in position for it.

Walls of smoke had begun to drift along the wind and cover the battlefield. When Rian sprinted ahead and into the open, he spotted two of the party members as the leftmost cannons turned and took aim.

Bree aimed her staff. A gigantic ice crystal sprouted from the ground and intersected a tracer beam, altering its path at a sharp angle—toward her. A moment later, the beam fired into the crystal and followed the path of the tracer. Bree held her shield at just the right slant to send the beam back toward the city, tearing a path through the Pyceian foot soldiers lined up outside it. By the look of it, she’d been aiming for the cannon itself but had narrowly missed.

Near her, Enishi had somehow attached his shield to an arrow and launched it into the path of a tracer. Bouncing off the laser, the shield deflected the shot skyward. The shield device then vanished, dissipating into heat haze. Rian double-taked, realizing that Enishi had duplicated his shields. He’d been holding onto another one the entire time.

No, he didn’t have two. Rian sprinted to get into position for his cannon. That was a Mirage skill.

He cast Earthen Resonance, and a surge of wind temporarily surrounded him and the rest of the party members, amplifying their movement speed.

Distantly, Rian could hear Enishi shout, “Yeah! There we go!”

Rian appreciated the approval, but he knew he should’ve cast that at the beginning. This stage was way more brutal than he’d expected, but at least now things were improving.

And then both his and Chrono’s cannons began to charge at the same time. He turned and spotted her practically wandering around as if she was lost. Smoke was covering her line of sight.

He stopped and sprinted toward her as fast as he could, realizing what he needed to do. He shouted, “Just wanna say in advance: sorry for this!”

God I hope this works.

Eyes wide, she saw him coming. “What are y—”

Digging his feet into the ground, he grabbed hold of her and used Dash backward, reversing his momentum with enough whiplash that he thought it would break something.

An instant later, he Dash-canceled and let go.

Vaguely wondering how things had ended up like this, Rian fell over as he made the motion to suplex a priestess while traveling backward at dozens of miles an hour.

Chrono went flying out of his grasp as he Dash-canceled. Thankfully, it seemed she had enough sense to not let go of the energy shield as she tumbled through the air, screaming.

Rian had no time to judge the angle to see if his lob had been on-point, let alone if Chrono would be facing the right way for the shield to block the laser. Both tracer beams were about to appear. Rian stood and sprinted to line himself up with the unattended cannon.

He had the premonition of the beam tearing through Chrono, missing the shield entirely.

Okay, maybe it was actually a bad idea.

And then he thought, grimly, But if her body blocks the beam at least, then—

Remembering what Bree had said, he pushed the shield forward when he anticipated the flash of the cannon. At the speed of light, the laser struck his shield and rebounded at an angle, sending it at a cannon to the left.

At the same time, a second reflected laser swept across the walls of the city. A curtain of fire exploded into the air.

Rian looked over in disbelief. From the fading trail of the laser that had struck Chrono mid-fall, her shield had spun enough to reflect the beam at such a wide angle that it took out the two left-most cannons and a huge chunk of the standing army outside the city.

Seconds after the explosions, Rian winced as the shock wave slapped him back a few inches.

“Holy shit!” Enishi yelled from a distance.

Chrono crashed into the ground, rolling, the energy shield breaking into hundreds of fading shards of light. Rian immediately sprinted over to her. She’d landed hard enough to take damage.

When he got to her, she was wide-eyed with shock but managed to stand up. Looking out at the city, half of which was engulfed in flames, her shock turned to glee.

“Oh my goodness,” she said, smiling up at Rian. “That was brilliant. Well done.”

Rian sighed with relief. Even if it might’ve saved their session, he’d half-expected her to pan him for that maneuver, using her as a literal projectile.

He’d forgotten again. To other players, it was just a game.

Chrono looked around for a moment as if she were missing something. Then Rian realized she’d dropped her staff at some point during her impromptu flight. When he didn’t see it anywhere, he looked carefully at what remained of the city instead.

The Pyceian soldiers had broken off from the line and had begun charging toward the left flank where Enishi and Bree were. When they saw the soldiers coming, they dropped their shields and readied their weapons. Their cannons were beginning to redirect themselves—toward Rian and Chrono.

Chrono, whose shield had broken.

It was all down to Rian. He brought up his shield. All right. No problem. Just do it again, except…

At first he figured he could use Mirage: Cancel to block two beams at once, but judging by the aim of the two remaining cannons, the distance between them would be too much. He just couldn’t maintain the dual-state long enough.

On the left flank, Enishi and Bree were retreating, exchanging volleys with the approaching soldiers, but the Pyceians outnumbered them by the hundreds. The wave was quickly closing in on the Onsolian line.

“What are you looking so grim for?” Chrono said out of nowhere, making him jump. “We’ve already won.”

He turned, and she was standing beside him, having found her staff. She calmly looked out over the battlefield, then began to jog toward the other party members.

Not understanding, Rian followed after her. He checked the stage conditions as he went.

To his surprise, the completion timer had dropped from several minutes to a matter of seconds.

What? But there’s still—

And then he saw the Onsolian general stepping ahead of everyone else. In his palms appeared a staff of pure light surrounded by concentric rings. He aimed it at the city.

Catching him completely off-guard, Chrono slipped off the energy shield device from Rian’s arm while they were running alongside each other, and then she leaped at him.

Flabbergasted, he caught her in his arms and stopped.

Making a cute face, she said, “Sorry, but you’re way faster than me. You’d better start running toward the others before the next rift opens.”

Movement above the city made him glance over. The flames and smoke lingering above it shrunk like the air was pushing everything inward.

Fragments of the destroyed cannons levitated and reassembled themselves. The explosion had begun to play out in reverse. When it reached its brightest moment, all the light within it went out as if someone had switched off a gigantic light bulb, leaving a fading afterglow.

The Onsolian general’s staff then glowed brighter than the sun.

Wincing as he ran while carrying Chrono, Rian watched the general raise the staff higher. The sense of energy in the air strengthened, the staff brightening even further. He was doing what Decha had done—redistributing the energy of the Pyceian weaponry. Except instead of recreating the explosion, he was directing everything toward the spell that the army was collectively casting.

Enishi seemed to realize what was happening. A party-chat message showed up on Rian’s feed, telling everyone to group up immediately at the city.

“But…” Rian said, attempting to run toward Enishi while a blinding light obscured the battlefield. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t the general just do that with the explosions that were wrecking us?”

“If the general pulled energy from near us,” Chrono said, “it would kill his own soldiers. And probably us, too. It has to come from a distance. And, on top of it, the Pyceians aren’t considered technically alive, either, so the Onsolians can’t just life-drain them for their spells.”

Remembering what Decha had done, seeing him again in his mind, lying there, dying, Rian regretted asking the question.

The timer hit zero.

[Party Chat]

: Dammit! Where are you two? I can’t see a damn thing.

: Ugh. We might be screwed here. Hope you two are close enough to us.

Sounding nothing more than disappointed, Chrono said, “Aww, guess we didn’t make it in time.” She looked around, then stopped. “There’s the next rift.”

The blinding light faded, and above the swarm of advancing Pyceian soldiers, the air shattered like glass. A wave pulsed through Rian’s body, a palpitation. Everything went numb.

He lost all feeling in his body and dropped to the ground. Wind howled as it surged toward the opening in the sky, picking up both him and Chrono like they were lifeless bodies. Lightning crashed around them, the ground itself cracking into pieces. Metal fragments flooded the air—the remains of destroyed Pyceian androids.

Rian managed to see the swirling vortex into which everything was being pulled just as his perspective went black.

Stage All-Clear! (Time remaining: 3:23)

Temporal Rift 2-1 Complete!

You have gained experience! (+10954)

Time grade: A (+200g)

Combat grade: C (+500 EXP)

Advancing to 2-2…