Drawn by the cries like a hook in the gut, they pushed through the brush and closed in fast.
“Help! Somebody!” A caravan of traveling merchants was under a beast attack, panic fluttering like a cage of sparrows.
The attackers were armored wolf-beasts and venom spiders. Around the Holy City, beasts bred like rain-fed weeds; these two were the common kind.
They weren’t strong, but they came in swarms. They hunted as a pack, fangs and chitin like a rough sea breaking on rock.
Near the Holy City, the Beast God’s power soaked the land like unseen rain. Under that grace, even swarming beasts stayed in their own ranges. They didn’t leave to hit travelers on the main road.
So this caravan, cutting through a closed path to save distance, had asked for the storm and found it.
“Anyone—help! We’re gonna die!” The merchants shivered inside their wagon like leaves in cold wind. Outside, the pack rammed the boards again and again. The single-horned rhino-beast in the traces stood petrified. A few mercenary corpses lay scattered like broken scarecrows.
They were cornered. Death stood at the door, only waiting for the pack to figure out how to pop the lid for a ready snack.
Shelika and Rex crouched ten-odd meters away, buried in brush and shadow.
Rex felt the knot first, a grit of pain and annoyance in his chest. He saw the numbers swelling as the shouts pulled in more monsters. He hesitated. “Do we save them?”
He was warmhearted, but not soft. He was a knight of the Legion, duty braided with iron.
In his eyes, they’d ignored Legion warnings and trespassed into a closed forest. The noose they wore now was one they wove. Saving them would be a bad lesson carved into stone.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t save them. If he did, more travelers would flout the rules and gamble with their lives. They’d dream of luck—if trouble comes, the Legion knights will ride in like summer rain.
Save one caravan now, and later you doom more fools to die in beast-maws. That was how Rex saw it, cold as a whetstone.
Shelika felt something else first: the ache of ordinary people caught between teeth.
Why would traveling merchants risk a forest they knew was dangerous? The thought landed easy. The proper road ran longer and bled them with tolls. A merchant fed a family with coin. One more toll could mean one less meal, then a cold death far from home.
She didn’t dig deeper. If it wasn’t tied to her, she rarely chased it, and she never nursed guilt for ripples she couldn’t hold.
“Let’s save them,” she said, as if noting the weather.
Not conscience. Just riding the current.
Rex shot her a look, surprise flicking like a match. “You sure?”
For a heartbeat, he stared at a stranger.
While he faltered, Shelika moved. She sprang from the brush, voice clear and cutting as a blade. “Your death hour has come!”
The sound rang bright as frost on iron. Aside from a few still battering the wagon, most of the pack snapped their heads toward her, eyes like coals.
“Good. You’re looking.” Shelika smiled, drew True Crimson Whirl, and slicked the blade with blood. Her shout cracked like a flag in wind. “Then die!”
She spun and unleashed a whirling slash.
The strike bit cold and carried spellforce. The front rank of beasts fell like wheat to a storm blade.
“Hey—wait! Don’t rush in alone!” Rex yelled from behind, heart kicking against his ribs.
He sprinted after her. He’d seen a few sly ones ghost to her flank, timing a pounce for the gap at the end of her arc.
“This isn’t reckless. It’s tactics,” Shelika said, righteous and bright.
On that beat, two sharpshooter drones that had been lying doggo flared to life and took the flankers under fire.
Boom, boom, boom—
Thunderhead reports rolled the trees. The leaping beasts were caught midair, bodies torn open like wet paper. Impact shockwaves hurled them into trunks. They burst into meat and chitin against the bark.
The pack watched their kin fall like cut grass. Fear licked their spines on pure instinct, a winter draft under armor.
But beasts were called beasts for a reason. The baleful miasma gnawed their minds thin. Fear couldn’t leash them. With no thought for life, they surged at Shelika in a gray tide.
Dozens of armored wolf-beasts charged. The scene tightened like a noose.
“Fall back to me!” Rex shouted, urgency sharp as flint. He meant to pull her behind him, then sweep the field with a Sky Rank battle art.
Shelika had long since learned to fight alone. These were C-rank beasts. Numbers be damned—she had answers.
“Watch closely!” She declared it like a gladiator in a sand-bright arena. Even without an audience, her voice stood tall.
Then she spread her wings.
Wind exploded under her. A fierce cyclone kicked up leaves and grit. In a blink, she rose into open air like a hawk riding a thermal.
The charge whiffed. Beasts snapped at empty air, victory curdling into confusion. Skulls cracked as some collided headfirst, dropping senseless, eyes spinning with stars.
The field slipped into chaos. Shelika took the moment and shaped a seal.
Level-6 elemental art: Icefall Storm.
Sword in hand, she cut a line through the void at the snarling mass below.
That stroke carried winter. Hundreds of ice darts spat out, small as bullets and cruel as sleet.
They fell like rain on a tin roof.
Thwip, thwip.
Branches snapped. Earth pocked and split. The ground, already a mess, bloomed into red spray. Scarlet washed the scene raw. Then the forest sank into silence.
Shelika touched down and spoke toward the wagon, voice calm as a cooling forge. “It’s over. The main road’s ahead. Go. Now.”
She pointed back the way they’d come, hand steady as a compass.
The merchants spilled tears and thanks, then scrambled to the reins. The wagon jolted, wheels clattering, and vanished like a spooked deer.
What remained was Shelika, and Rex with both knight’s sabers drawn, standing there like a man who’d misplaced his next breath.
She waved a hand before his eyes, fingers flicking like swallows. “You okay?”
“I… of course,” Rex said after a beat, sheathing his blades.
“Then let’s move.”
“Right.”
They set off again, deeper into the forest’s lungs.
With each step, the miasma thickened like smoke in a closed room. The green grew shadowed, lush turning somber, life painted over with a dusk stain.
Silence pressed in. Maybe it was the hush that loosened her tongue. Shelika walked and thought of earlier, a smile warming like tea. “You’re not mad I stole your thunder, are you?”
