Feeling the world fade around me, I bit my tongue, using the pain to focus my mind. It helped, though I was still wobbly, sinking to my knees instead of completely keeling over. I needed to remain active, simply because I had no idea what was going on around me, the battle might still be ongoing, even after I struck the primary nexus of the Withered.

Slowly, my senses came back to me, reporting reality as it was, instead of being blocked out in favour of the magical sensations coming from the ritual. When focusing completely, it was incredibly easy to lose track of everything else, in this case, my mind had been fully focused on the sensations feeding back from my Astral Power, ignoring what happened here. Now, that awareness was returning, but slowly.

The first sense to come back was, amusingly, my sense of magical perception, riding on my sense of smell. There was a scent of death in the air, both physical and magical, the cloying scent of blood mixing with the cold, desolate scent of the grave. It wasn’t the sweet, sickly scent of rot that came with a decaying corpse, but that of ending, a colder, much more final death.

Next, noise began to filter into my mind, the snarling of some creature of another, the slick sound of a weapon or claw penetrating into flesh and ripping out blood, and the laboured breathing of my companions, mixed with a few other noises told me that battle was still ongoing. Knowing that added a sense of urgency but given my exhausted state, hurrying would only see me keel over, I needed that bit of time to rally myself, to catch my second wind so I could keep going.

Blinking, I managed to get my eyes back open, allowing them to adjust to the faint light coming from the stars above. If not for my ability to see in the dark, there would have been little to see but for me, there was enough. Only, without raising my head, I was limited to inspecting the remains of my ritual circle. It looked a little worse for wear, the sheer amount of power had destroyed the substances I had used to draw it, turning them into dark, sparkling dust. The stuff wouldn’t last long, it was composed of unstable Astral Power that would soon escape into the Astral River, but for the next hour or so, it looked fairly pretty. Sadly, it was also mostly useless, at least to my knowledge. There might be some alchemical way to use it, but if I wanted to use it to cast spells, I’d need to unbind the power first, requiring far more input than I’d get out, due to the tiny size of each grain.

For a minute or so, I simply rested on my knees, doing nothing more difficult than drawing in my breaths, hold them before expelling them back out. Conscious breathing was the easiest form of meditation and now that I wasn’t mentally fit enough to have part of my mind delve into the Astral River, it was the best way to replenish some of my magical and physical reserves. Neither were in great shape, though amusingly, the magical reserves were recovering far easier.

There were notifications calling for my attention, sitting in the corner of my eye until I focused on them, but for now, I needed to concentrate on bigger things, like getting my body back into fighting shape, one breath at a time.

It took far longer than I was comfortable with, but in reality, it had only been a minute or five since I finished the ritual. The noises had change a little, but not too much, nothing that made me thing something had gone seriously wrong. Just the usual barks from Silva, the slick sound of Lia’s claws rending flesh and the noises I attributed to various Withered.

Pushing myself to my feet, I slowly turned, making sure to keep my legs steady, even as they wanted to escape from under me. They were trying to overthrow me, to throw down the reign of my mind, but I wouldn’t let my revolting feet win. They would stay down where they belonged, holding up the rest of my body.

Letting my gaze sweep across the rooftop, I could see that our preparations had held, there was a lot of blood near the stairwell, where Silva and Lia held the line, but no damage anywhere else. Luna was lying near the ritual circle, looking like she had been knocked out, likely by the amount of levels she had gained at once, while Alex was behind the other two, in a similar state.

Past the door held by Silva, who was walking on two legs, and Lia, I could see the top landing. Standing there, trying to get through the door, were two Withered Hunters, only to be rebuffed by my two companions. From the looks of it, the two Hunters tried to work together to get past my two companions, but without taking any major wounds. Teamwork, but not the suicidal teamwork they had shown in the past, where one would happily die to give another an opening to wound or kill their prey Past them, I could see the stairs going down and that area had quite a few bodies, though none seemed to be moving.

With a grin, I send out my frozen shuttle, watching as it soared past Silva and struck the first Hunter in the head. my companions hadn’t been trying to get into the room with the two Hunters, they had merely made sure that neither Hunter could get onto the roof with them, creating a weird stalemate, a stalemate I had broken by striking past them.

My attack struck true, but with far less power than I would normally have used, my mind was still reeling from exhaustion after all. But even a soft strike could be quite impactful, especially if it was made with a sharp, pointy blade and hit the sensitive nose of an enemy. It immediately caused a rather interesting effect, namely the Withered Hunter letting out a psychic howl of pain, making the one next to it wince, as if it had been struck, too.

A most curious effect. Before, when attacking one Withered, the rest had barely reacted. It had been obvious that information was passed on, but not pain, making me wonder if there had been some sort of filter involved. Now, that filter, if there ever had been one, was gone, but the coordination, at least between these two was still going strong, proving that the bond still existed, at least in some form.

My attack had disrupted their patterns, a disruption that Lia had capitalised on by striking out with her chain hook, scoring a deep wound in one of the Hunter's legs. Not enough to completely disable it, but the thing was clearly crippled, allowing Silva to push in, forcing it to dodge back and opening the other up for an attack from me. It wasn’t a killing blow, but to my surprise, it was enough to do something that hadn’t happened before.

It was enough to drive the Hunter to flee, the action catching me off-guard as they quickly moved down the stairs. When no new attackers joined them, I moved up to the edge of the roof, peering down so I could see what was going on there.

To my surprise, I could see what I could only describe as packs of Withered, mostly Withered Hunters but also a few Withered Husks with their Undead thralls, move about, not attacking each other but also not moving in the same, coordinated way they always had. It was as if there were different groups of Withered now, all of them far smaller than the singular hive but equally coordinated amongst their numbers.

Looking down, I started to seriously worry, wondering if I had just doomed all survivors in the area. If the Withered before had been limited by the reach of those stationary fungi in the park, these might lack that limit and I had accidentally set loose a few dozen packs of psychically connected predators. They might lack the overmind that had connected them all together, but by the looks of it, that merely meant that individual packs moved as units, making them less of a threat to me and mine, but a far greater threat to the people at the farm.

Looking at things long-term, the destruction here was undoubtedly vital, as it stopped the Withered before they became a threat nobody could deal with, but in the short term?

Things might get seriously hairy for a while until the packs were hunted down and dealt with.

Before I could consider attacking them from our elevated position, the various Withered started to move, some groups scattering into all four winds, others attacking other groups, without any discernable pattern.

Shaking my head, I stepped back away from the edge, planning to check on Luna, Alex and lastly, my notifications. For now, the battle was over.