The city feels like a graveyard. Jin thought solemnly as he moved through streets that had once bustled with morning traffic and vendors hawking fresh bread. Now they were silent except for the occasional groan of settling rubble.

  Fifteen days since the attack, and Vienna looked like it had aged fifty years. The buildings that still stood wore their scars openly.

  It'll take decades to rebuild this. Jin's jaw tightened. If we even survive long enough to try.

  The sky bled overhead, that perpetual crimson stain that marked the ritual's progress. But there was good news buried in the devastation. Their combined efforts in the destruction of outposts had tanked the ritual's efficiency hard enough to matter.

  Twenty days. That had been the countdown before ambient essence condensed to lethal levels for anyone without an awakened aura. Now they'd bought themselves almost thirty more days. The Trojan horse was working. Jin, along with the narrator, spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand its progress, but never overstepped in fear that someone would detect it. But the Trojan was working, not only delaying the grand ritual's recovery but also corrupting and taking control of its nodes.

  Small small victories. Jin allowed himself half a second of grim satisfaction before pushing it aside. Still gonna die if we don't finish this.

  ? Your pessimism remains consistent,? The Narrator observed.

  Optimism doesn't keep you alive. Caution does.

  The HUD updated automatically in Jin's vision, mapping their route with clean blue lines and marking his companions' positions with pulsing icons. The new gear was worth every drop of blood they'd shed to make it.

  The ruins gave them plenty of concealment, and the party moved in loose formation. Joe was on point, with his usual grin on his face, like this was all just an interesting diversion. Jin and Reyana flanked, staying low and keeping to cover. Rudy brought up the rear, surprisingly quiet for someone who liked to bulldoze through things.

  They stuck to the shadows, moving from ruined building to collapsed storefront, always staying low. Jin adjusted the cloak around his shoulders for what felt like the fifteenth time, the fabric shifting against the material.

  Would it have killed Joe to add some kind of hook or clasp? This thing keeps sliding. Jin thought, annoyed at the constant readjustment.

  ? Recommendation: cease fidgeting. Movement draws attention. ?

  Yeah, yeah. Tell that to the cloak!

  The good news was that the gear worked. The masks, the cloaks, the whole elaborate setup, all of it functioned exactly as designed, suppressing essence and life signatures both. After what happened with the Veil somehow tracking them and beaming down champions like orbital strikes, Jin wasn't taking any chances.

  He reached out through the whisperlink, the mental connection feeling strange but functional. "Status check. Any distortions in my voice?”

  "I’m hearing you loud and clear, brother," Rudy said through the link. The mental communication felt almost natural now, like talking without the inconvenience of using his mouth.

  "It's working well under the Veil," Reyana added. Her mental voice carried the same composed quality as her physical one.

  "Indeed, there's minor interference, but no signal loss," Joe said, audible grin bleeding through his mental tone. "I'm quite pleased with how these turned out."

  Jin nodded to himself. Of that, there’s no doubt…

  "We move two blocks east," Joe continued. "Then we cut south through the industrial district."

  "That puts us in cultist territory," Reyana pointed out. "Pretty sure there was an outpost marked there."

  "Hence the stealth gear," Joe said simply. “We’ll be gone before they even know it.”

  Jin brought up the map they'd loaded into the system. The underground shelter Rudy insisted his father would've reached was marked with a green beacon three miles southeast, buried beneath what used to be Riverside Park.

  "If they're anywhere, they're there," Rudy had said with absolute certainty two hours ago when they'd been planning the route. "Dad would've known about that shelter. He helped design the damn thing."

  Good place to hide, Jin thought. A better place to fortify if you know it's coming.

  "Movement," Reyana's warning came sharp and immediate. "Three signatures. Two hundred meters, eleven o'clock."

  Everyone's interface updated simultaneously, three red markers blossoming in Jin's vision.

  Cultists. ORDER III based on the essence density readings, Jin's mask was feeding him. Dangerous but manageable if they played it smart.

  Jin met Joe's eyes. Joe nodded once and gestured forward with two fingers.

  Your show.

  "Alright, stay on lookout, Joe," Jin said through the link.

  "Roger." Joe's mental voice carried lazy confidence.

  "We hit them fast. Just like we planned," Jin said, feeling his heartbeat pick up.

  "Yes," Reyana confirmed.

  "Let's go," Rudy added.

  Jin pushed essence into his mask, cranking the perception enhancement. His vision sharpened, overlay updating with information. Three figures in dark robes materialized in his sight, faces hidden beneath hoods, moving with the casual confidence of people who thought they owned these streets.

  Jin held up his hand, watching the cultists through the broken window of their cover position. They were talking, voices low but audible now that Jin was focusing.

  "—still nothing from the patrol at sector seven," one said, voice rough like gravel.

  "They're probably just drunk again," another replied. "Makas can't keep his damn flask away for more than an hour."

  "...besides…there shouldn't be anyone left in this sector," one said, a male voice rough with irritation. "Command's wasting our time with these patrols."

  "Orders are orders," The one with a voice rough like gravel replied. "Besides, better than ritual duty. You hear what happened….?"

  Jin's hand tightened into a fist. "Rudy, me, then Reyana. Hold..."

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  The cultists kept walking, completely unaware they were being watched.

  "Now."

  “Let’s ride!” Rudy exploded from cover, white flames erupting around his body like a supernova going off. "Come and get some, you bastards!"

  All three cultists' heads snapped toward him like puppets jerked by the same string. Their essence signatures flared with alarm, confusion bleeding through.

  "What the—"

  "You in fuck are—"

  But their attention was already locked in. Warrior's Call didn't give them a choice about where to look or what to focus on. Rudy owned their attention now, whether they wanted to give it or not.

  Jin focused on each cultist in sequence, activating Inevitable Doom. Invisible threads spun out, connecting him to each target. The skill latched on like hooks sinking into flesh.

  Got you.

  ? Skill [Inevitable Doom] has successfully triggered. Make sure to land any sort of damage within the next seven seconds. ?

  Hmm.

  White flames flickered around Rudy's body as his Asura flames roared to life. Heat washed outward in a wave, making the air shimmer and distort.

  Then Jin heard it. Actually heard it—a drumbeat that echoed through his chest like thunder made physical.

  Dum. Dum. Dum.

  Rudy's heart beat like a war drum, each pulse reverberating through essence and sound both. He planted his foot and stomped.

  Fire exploded outward in a wall, obscuring vision and flooding the space with blazing light that turned shadows into stark, dancing things. The cultists recoiled, hands rising to shield their eyes from the sudden inferno.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Three shots punched through the firewall, each one placed with surgical precision.

  Left knee. Left knee. Left knee.

  Jin had learned the lesson: you don't aim for center mass when you need someone immobilized. You destroy their mobility.

  The cultists staggered, screaming, and Jin heard Reyana's voice whisper across the distance like silk over steel.

  ? By spilled life—bloom, blood-vines. ?

  Blood sprayed from the cultists' legs where bullets had torn through flesh and bone. From each drop that hit the ground, thorned vines made of crystallized blood materialized, twisting like living things. They wrapped around legs and torsos with vicious speed, thorns digging deep.

  The cultists screamed louder, limbs tangled, balance shattered completely.

  In the chaos and pain, none of them noticed their shadows move.

  Figures emerged from three pools of darkness simultaneously. Reyana's shadow clones rose like specters manifesting from a nightmare, moving in perfect synchronization with each other.

  Three thrusts. Three hearts.

  The blades passed through flesh and bone as if neither existed, necrotic energy flooding into the wounds. The cultists' flesh darkened immediately, corruption spreading outward in black veins from each puncture. Their screams turned strangled, wet. Eyes went wide with terror that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with feeling death crawl through their bodies.

  The mark of doom materialized on each cultist's forehead, searing itself into existence like a brand. Jin felt his connection to the skill strengthen in that instant, the threads pulling taut.

  Rudy emerged from the flames like an asura stepping through a portal.

  His greatsword came down in an overhead swing that had all his considerable strength behind it. The blade bisected the first cultist from crown to groin, white flames burning along the edge and cauterizing even as it cut. The body fell into two perfect halves.

  Reyana materialized beside the second cultist, her real body flowing out of shadow like liquid darkness given form. Her blade took him through the neck, severing head from shoulders with surgical precision. The head toppled, expression still frozen in terminal shock.

  Jin put a bullet through the third cultist's skull.

  The enhanced round punched a hole the size of a fist through bone and brain matter. The cultist dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, dead before gravity finished pulling him down.

  Silence crashed over the street.

  The whole engagement had lasted maybe eight seconds. Nine at most.

  Jin checked his essence reserves. Barely dipped. Maybe five percent of the expenditure total. The coordination had been that clean, that efficient.

  ? Team synchronization efficiency: 69%, ? the Narrator supplied helpfully. ? Projected improvement: ongoing. ?

  "Clear," Reyana sent through the whisperlink.

  "Barely even winded," Rudy said, voice carrying satisfaction and maybe a little disappointment. "That was almost too easy."

  "ORDER III cultists aren't exactly elite troops," Jin replied, already scanning for additional threats. "But yeah. That was clean."

  And it was. The new gear made a massive difference. No fumbling with hand signals across a battlefield. No shouting and hoping your teammate heard over the chaos. Just clean, instant communication that lets them coordinate like they'd been fighting together for years instead of weeks.

  Joe appeared in the center of the carnage, hands already moving through gestures that left trails of light in the air. A circle materialized around the three corpses, runes Jin didn't recognize spinning through complex patterns.

  The blood on the ground started dissolving. The essence signatures scattered in the air began breaking apart into meaningless noise. Even the physical evidence faded, bodies turning to ash that the wind scattered.

  Thirty seconds later, the battlefield was pristine.

  "Let's move," Joe ordered, already turning southeast. "It was a clean job. Well done. But we can talk later… we're burning daylight, and I'd rather not stick around for the next patrol."

  They fell back into formation and kept moving deeper into cultist territory.

  ???

  The next encounter came twenty minutes later.

  Not cultists this time. Abominations.

  Four of them shambled through what used to be a residential street, movements wrong in ways that made Jin's skin crawl. The mask tagged them immediately, red markers appearing in his vision.

  ? Low ORDER III threats, recommend coordinated elimination. ?

  "I've got this one," Reyana said before Jin could call the play.

  She didn't break stride. Just raised one hand, and shadows exploded outward like living things given teeth and hunger.

  The darkness consumed the abominations in an instant. Jin heard wet tearing sounds, brief screams that weren't quite human, then silence as absolute as a tomb.

  When the shadows receded ten seconds later, there was nothing left. Not even corpses. Just an empty street.

  "Show-off," Rudy muttered through the link.

  "Efficient," Reyana corrected.

  Jin frowned. "There's a reason we're doing coordinated strikes, Reyana. Not only do we save essence, but we also deepen our understanding of each other's combat patterns."

  Reyana paused for just a second, her gaze flickering to Joe. "Understood. My apologies."

  “No worries, but save high-cost skills and actions for when we face elites,” Jin said.

  They kept moving.

  ???

  More enemies appeared as they pushed deeper into the city. Mostly roaming abominations, with the occasional cultist patrol. Each encounter ended the same way… fast, brutal, and leaving nothing but clean streets behind them.

  The ruins gradually gave way to more open terrain. Fewer tall buildings. More parks, or what used to be parks before corruption turned them into nightmare landscapes. The vegetation had twisted into something cancerous, trees growing at wrong angles with bark that looked diseased and weeping.

  The HUD updated as they entered the industrial district. Warehouses dotted the landscape, most of them collapsed or burned out. Railroad tracks cut through the area like scars, leading toward the old metro connections Rudy had mentioned.

  "Hold," Joe called a halt at the edge of a broad avenue, raising one hand.

  Everyone dropped into cover behind a fallen concrete barrier.

  "Problem?" Jin asked.

  Joe's eyes glowed silver-blue, essence flooding his perception. A moment later, information bloomed in their shared vision.

  "Several problems," Joe's mental voice carried unusual tension. "Ward lines. Three of them overlap. Professional work, too."

  Jin pushed essence into his eyes, cranking his magical perception to maximum. The world shifted, colors bleeding away to reveal the underlying essence structures that most people never saw.

  And there… he saw them. Three lines of woven magic, pulsing with detection enchantments that would light up anything crossing them like a flare in the dark.

  "Those would've lit us up the second we crossed," Joe continued. "Which means..."

  "We're on the right track," Reyana finished, voice carrying grim satisfaction. "This ward style is too different from cult work."

  "See? I told you we were on the right path!" Rudy's mental voice surged with hope.

  "Maybe," Joe said. "Wait..."

  His eyes went distant, perception reaching out beyond normal sight.

  "Large essence signatures. Lots of them, moving about three hundred meters northeast."

  Jin zoomed his HUD's map. Three hundred meters put whatever Joe was sensing almost directly on top of the suspected entrance to the underground shelter.

  "How large?" Jin asked, already knowing he wouldn't like the answer.

  "Maybe thirty signatures. And something bigger is coordinating their movements." Joe's mental voice turned flat. "Expect cultists. ORDER III mostly, but there's at least one ORDER IV signature in the mix."

  "They're attacking," Jin said, the pieces falling into place. "A battle of attrition."

  “Probably.” Joe nodded. “My guess is this battle has been ongoing for some time now, the cult is making sure the resistance is always backed in the corner.”

  Joe stood, essence already crackling around his hands in anticipation. Red light danced across his pale features, that usual smile taking on something sharper. "Then let's crash the party."

  “Now we are talking!” Both Jin and Rudy nodded their agreement.

  ???

  PS: Psst~ Psst~ Advanced chapters are already up on patreon, you can read upto one month ahead... It would be awesome if you guys, you know...

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