RTA Book 2: Against Ruin's Fate - Chapter 1

Len's boots crunched over a carpet of crystallized vegetation as he sprinted through Halem’s mana-twisted forest, Rick draped over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. The trees around them had transformed—once-normal pines bark now cracked with blue, purple and other neon colors that pulsed with power, their needles crystallized into razor-sharp fragments that chimed eerily in the wind.

The world slumbered in the heart of night. The mana affected forest illuminated with a different kind of nature.

Len’s body was falling apart. He was using his will to create tethers of mana and hurl himself forward, Accelerated Step enhancing his speed beyond its limits. He even used Resonating Strike with every footfall, the recoil smashed into the bottom of his foot and threw him forward.

Accelerated Healing was keeping him together. Like baling wire and spit holding a thrice broken fence as a hurricane bore down on it.

It slowed the degradation of his body, it didn’t stop it.

He knew how far he could push himself. A century of surviving after the mana apocalypse he’d had to push himself beyond his limits constantly.

This wasn't their first disaster, and if they had anything to say about it, it wouldn't be their last.

"Goddamnit, Len," Rick wheezed, a wet sound accompanying his words as corrupted blood trickled from wounds, it coated Len’s neck and shoulders, sticky and warm. "I've been more comfortable riding a mutated grasshopper that was trying to eat me than bouncing on your bony-ass shoulders."

Relief flooded Len, he tamped down on it and threw it away. They were ass-out in the middle of a forest that looked like someone took a psychedelic paint scheme to it.

At least if Rick was joking it wasn’t too bad—or he was hiding how bad it was to try and comfort Len.

“It was offended by your jumped ass being on its back. I can understand why it was pissed.” Len shot back. Keep him talking, keep him conscious.

Len shifted his grip on Rick's thigh while scanning for threats. His senses—honed through decades of combat that technically hadn't happened yet—registered movement before his conscious mind processed it.

A six-legged creature with too many eyes burst through the undergrowth ahead of them. Its skin rippled with unstable mana, patches hardening and extending in random patterns—classic signs of fresh mutation. Len had seen it a thousand times before.

Without breaking stride, Len extended his free hand, drawing thermal energy from the surrounding air into his palm. 

He shaped it with his will, compressing and superheating it until the air itself ignited. A lance of blue-white flame punched through the creature with surgical precision, the heat so intense it cauterized the wound instantly.

It shrieked—a sound like metal tearing—before collapsing in a heap of rapidly decaying flesh.

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You have earned: 2,912 XP

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Do you wish to upgrade the ability Thermal Control (J) to Thermal Lance (E)

Y/N

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Len accepted the new ability while still running, the system recognizing his mastery through repeated use.

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Ability Unlocked: Thermal Lance

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Skill: Spellcasting

Grade: Expert

You can alter thermal energies through mana applied and condense them into physical form.. Able to instinctively understand something's thermal energy. 

===

The system notifications flashed across Len's vision—a reminder of how their very existence had changed since being thrown back in time. Experience points, stats, abilities—mechanics that governed their growth and gave them an edge in this second chance at preventing the apocalypse.

The plants around it glowed—excited by the feast at their roots.

"Two o'clock!" Rick shouted, drawing his spitter—an enchanted automatic rifle that had been through as much hell as they had—and firing one-handed over Len's back.

Len took the impact against the ground, softening it, to keep Rick’s aim steady as he leapt forward on the next stride.

The spitter coughed three-round bursts, enchanted rounds punching through a leaping predator's hide and detonating inside with wet thuds. Len recognized the creature from their original timeline—a mana-twisted variant of mountain lion that wouldn't normally evolve for another decade.

Things were accelerating faster than they'd anticipated.

"How's your mana situation?" Len asked, vaulting over a fallen log that glowed faintly from within, saturated with unstable energy.

“"Peachy," Rick grunted. "Just peachy. Though I'm starting to feel a bit... sparkly. Hold onto me.”

Len grabbed onto Rick with both hands—heading in the direction of the Firebase. It sounded like every spitter and shoulder cannon was at work.

Rick jerked, Len saw the shard come out of his leg as he pulled shards from his wounds, stuffing them into his cargo leg pocket.

“That’s better,” Rick said. “My mana stat was shooting up as I absorbed all that. It’s taking all my will to stop it from corrupting me.”

A bush leapt out at Len and Rick as they passed.

Fire spread over the bush—causing it to scream out.

“Casting spells at least pushes mana out of my body,” Rick said.

“Though it erodes your will over time,” Len said.

“Yeah,” Rick said.

Len cast Accelerated Healing on him.

Rick tightened in pain as his body healed. Len’s mana reserves depleted in real-time, his head splitting in pain as he cast five intensive spells at the same time, two that needed perfect timing to keep him racing forward.

The healing fixed up Rick’s body, pushing back on the mana poisoning as his body was tempered and grew stronger.

The ground trembled beneath them—the fourth such tremor in the past ten minutes, each stronger than the last. In the distance, the staccato bark of spitter fire punctuated the air, accompanied by the deeper thump of shoulder cannons from the firebase. Lieutenant Adrian's platoon holding the line, buying them time.

“Pause, keep going?” Len asked.

“Get some of these shards out of my ass,” Rick hissed through the pain.

Len picked out a space to slow down, letting his momentum slow. Those at the firebase needed them. They didn’t have much time. 

Len pulled Rick over his shoulder, and came to a stutter-step stop.

Len kept using Accelerated healing on them both as he set Rick down.

He pulled out Rick’s stamina potions and put them infront of Rick.

Rick opened them and drank as Len took out the healing potions. The back of Rick’s body was peppered with them. Some had even gone through his backplate. He’d been on Len’s shoulders when the dungeon exploded. Taking the brunt of shrapnel.

He only had two healing potions left. Len put one next to the dwindling pile of stamina potions.

"Hurry up. Something big’s coming. I can feel it in the ground,” Rick said.

Len placed his hands over the largest shard, a jagged splinter the length of his middle finger. It was melding into the skin around it, blackening it and veining it. 

The memories of a field medic he'd been in another life—a future that would never come—guided his movements. The shard resisted, its own chaotic energy fighting his control.

"Always gotta be difficult," Len muttered, doubling his efforts. The shard vibrated, then slowly lifted free as Rick bit down on a scream.

"Motherfucker!" Rick hissed through gritted teeth. "Warn a guy!"

Len pocketed the shard and poured healing potion into the open wound, the ashy blackened skin taking on a healthy pallor. "In the old days, I'd have had proper tools for this."

Rick moaned and thumped on the ground with his fist as Len worked, quickly using up all the healing potion and tossing it to the side.

"In the old days," Rick grimaced, "I'd have been dead five times over by now."

Len noticed there were some shards in the back of his own legs but he focused on Rick instead. Rick had a lot more shards.

A massive tremor shook the forest, nearly toppling them. Trees creaked and swayed like drunken giants. In the direction of the dungeon, a column of prismatic light shot skyward, piercing the clouds and illuminating the entire forest in unnatural colors.

"That's not good," Rick said, glancing back

“Dungeon Evolution. A big one.” The wind was pulling at Len’s clothes, leaves, grasses and leaves drawn towards the pillar. The forest was devastation behind them.

The obelisk’s detonation had torn through the forest around the dungeon—mana stone cutting down swathes of trees.

Len turned back to Rick's wounds. "No time for finesse."

He grabbed the next shard and yanked it free. Rick's curse was lost in another earthquake rumble as the forest floor buckled beneath them.

It had been a staple ability for them both and saved them more than once.

The ground beneath them lurched violently. Cracks spread through the earth, revealing veins of purple mana stone. The entire forest groaned, trees bending against unnatural forces.

Trees, enhanced and altered by mana leaned in the wind created by the dungeon’s evolution.

“Time we were getting the fuck out of here,” Len yanked the last two shards in quick succession, ignoring Rick's strangled curses.

He shifted Rick’s legs into position and used a quick application of Fuse Bone to get them set. He pinched together the worst weeping wounds giving them a flash of Mend Flesh.

"My bones are knitting together wrong," Rick complained, the sensation of healing always uncomfortable no matter how many times they'd experienced it.

“You'll live."

The forest around them was coming alive—not just with creatures fleeing the evolution, but with the trees themselves. Bark split to reveal glowing purple veins. Roots tore free of the earth, whipping through the air like tentacles searching for prey.

Rick shoved Len aside as a root speared the ground where he'd been kneeling.

Len created a Thermal Lance. That cut off the roots.

Flames ignited around the tree and wrapped up around it.

===

You have earned 619 XP

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"You're welcome," Rick said with a tired grin.

"I think we’ve overstayed our welcome," Len replied, rolling to his feet and offering Rick a hand.

Rick took it, getting to his feet.

Rick tested his weight on his injured leg, grimacing but staying upright. "Good enough to get back to work."

"Good, it sounds like the firebase could use our help," Len said.

He felt a tremor go through the ground, then another—footsteps.

Rick pointed into the forest.

Len looked.

A four limbed creature lumbered forward, it looked to be made of obsidian, bone and mana veins. Roots stuck out of it like straw sticking out of the fringes of a scarecrow.

It didn’t have a head and was twelve meters tall.

“Fucking aberration,” Len muttered.

“Shit!” Rick’s spitter fired. Len turned to see a group of nearly a dozen mana corrupted wolves.

Mana-corrupted wolves—if they could still be called wolves. Their bodies had elongated unnaturally, joints bending at impossible angles. Where fur remained, it had a metallic sheen, sticking up in spikes. Their eyes glowed with internal purple light.

Rick’s spitter took out two, the group splitting apart as he ran empty.

Len cast Mana Combust, an explosion hurling one wolf backwards and throwing another to the side, both stopped moving.

Rick pulled his hammer from its holster.

Len drew in the heat and mana—there was a lot. 

The remaining wolves charged them, coordinated in a way that normal animals shouldn't be—another sign of mana intelligence developing.

Len unleashed his built-up energy in a wave that caught three of them, flesh flash-cooking and bones cracking from thermal shock. Steam rose from their corpses as they collapsed mid-stride.

Rick swung his hammer in a wide arc, enchanted metal connecting with wolf skull in a bone-shattering impact. The creature's head simply ceased to exist, its body carried forward by momentum before collapsing in a heap. The kinetic energy stored in the hammer could crack mountain stone—wolf skull hadn't stood a chance.

Rick pivoted with a grace that belied his injuries, bringing the hammer down on another beast. The ground cratered beneath the impact, the wolf's body pulverized. The force traveled outward in a shockwave that staggered two more wolves.

He stomped the ground and spikes stabbed through the creatures.

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You have earned: 7,332

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"Always showing off," Len observed dryly, forming a spear of concentrated heat that he drove through a wolf's chest. The creature combusted from within, organs boiling instantly.

"Says the man making glowing weapons out of thin air," Rick retorted, charging his hammer with kinetic energy before hurling it at a distant wolf. The weapon streaked through the air, crushing its target before returning to Rick's outstretched hand with a satisfying slap of metal against calloused palm.

The last wolf turned to flee, instinct finally overcoming mana-driven aggression. Len raised his spitter and put three rounds through its spine. It collapsed mid-stride, twitching once before going still.

Len pulled up his stats and pushed all his experience into body—even the experience that wouldn’t get him to the next stat point.

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+1 to Body

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Body: 111

XP: 9,969/18,729

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Name: Len

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Experience: 0

Mana: 85

Body: 111

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"We need to move," Len said, eyeing the expanding column of light. The aurora overhead had intensified, its colors bleeding into each other like spilled paint. "Firebase is just over that ridge."

Rick nodded, wincing as he took a step. Despite Len's healing, the damage had been extensive. The shard wounds themselves were closing, but the mana corruption would take longer to purge completely. 

"Lead the way," Len said. Putting Rick ahead of himself he could make sure he didn't fall behind and keep an eye on his condition.

Another tremor, stronger than before, nearly knocked them off their feet. From the direction of the dungeon came a sound like mountains collapsing—a sound they'd heard only three times in their previous century and a half of life.

Rick grunted along, clearly in pain, and pushing past it.

He threw himself forward as he used his full strength, quickly getting up to speed. Len kept pace, leaving stealth behind for speed.

The landscape they passed through bore little resemblance to what it had been just hours ago. 

This accelerated evolution was unprecedented—in their original timeline, these changes had taken years.

A creature like a bear crossed with a porcupine erupted from the ground directly in front of Rick. He didn't slow, channeling kinetic energy through his hammer as he smashed it directly into the beast's face. The creature's head snapped back at an impossible angle, body flying backward from the impact.

"Left side!" Len called, already targeting a swarm of bat-like creatures diving from the canopy. Their wings membranes were transparent, making them hard to see in the sky.

They were hard to see even with Len's mana sight.

Len used Mana Combust, a half dozen small blasts appearing among them, tearing them apart or throwing them into disarray.

Rick holstered his hammer and swung his spitter around, bracing it in his armpit he sent a stream of rounds into the sky, any bat that was hit exploded.

The remaining bats flapped away with as much force as they could muster--finding easier prey.

"We got incoming!" Rick warned--punctuated by him firing into the forest, targeting a herd of twisted deer that were moving through the forest towards them.

The deer had multiple eyes sprouting from their flanks, and antlers that branched in fractal patterns, beautiful and deadly.

The shadows behind them, revealing a behemoth on four legs its head a maw of teeth. It dragged its jaw through the ground, scooping up a fleeing deer and throwing it four meters in the air, catching it in its mouth.

A Silver light illuminated the midnight black forest.

Len looked away to preserve his night vision.

The beast shook its head and the deer, The hardened skin around its maw burning. The deer came apart. The behemoth munching on the half in its mouth.

Rick's rounds punched into the deer fleeing, killing three of them before they disappeared.

"I'm going for a core," Len called out.

He threw himself down, sliding on the groun, he grabbed onto a dead deer a mana blade willed to the end of his arm, he stabbed it into the creature and dismissed it, pushing his hand through the cavity to grab the core within.

He tore it out, mana swirled under his will's direction creating a mana blueprint. The core was red liquid, hidden under his blueprint as he used form to alter the core's outer structure.

Len rose up to his feet as he finished enchanting the core which flared dangerously.

He hurled the core--the aberration turned its head towards the core, its teeth getting in the way as it bounced off and hit the ground.

"Run!" Len yelled.

They scrambled up the ridge, taking in the scene on the other side.

The firebase finally came into view. It was two separate buildings to either side of the tunnel they’d cut through the mountain range. Massive doors sealed the tunnel. The two buildings made from compressed stone were covered in firing slits.

Lieutenant Adrian's men—soldiers they'd trained themselves over the past months—operated with discipline and precision, laying down coordinated fire against the creatures fleeing the dungeon's evolution.

Tracers cut lashes of light through the air as spitters targeted the faster, smaller threats. Shoulder cannons—heavier weapons that fired explosive rounds—focused on larger creatures and groups. The firebase itself had been Rick's project, built to withstand threats that this world hadn't yet seen.

Its going to be tested today.

"Almost there," Len said, just as the ground lurched beneath them. Trees swayed as if in a strong wind though the air remained unnaturally still. Cracks appeared in the earth, spreading like lightning across the ground.

Behind them, the roaring grew louder, accompanied by cracking sounds like the earth itself was being split open. A massive tremor knocked them both off balance, sending them staggering for several steps.

Len drew his sword, as he analyzed the creatures between him and the firebase.

Rick was beside him, spitter in one hand and hammer in the other.

The core Len had tossed detonated. His stomach dropped as there was no experience update—then he was among the mana mutated horde.

***

Lieutenant Adrian had seen some shit during his time serving in the Isendia Mercenaries.

Seeing some shit didn't quite compare to the pillar of mana that was flowing into the dungeon that his charges and leaders had been targeting.

The night's aurora that had been more excited than in other regions was stirred up. The clouds darkening and rain falling down.

Lightning tore across the ground around the dungeon—altering the very make up of what they struck.

There had been a rumble through the ground and the dungeon had collapsed—setting of the current events.

He didn't have time to focus on that. Like how creatures flee before the storm, these creatures were trying to flee Halem forest, and instead crashed against the firebase.

"Reloading!" Adrian tore out the magazine on his spitter, throwing it into the empty box and grabbed another magazine from the shelf that had been extruded under the firing slit he was using.

There wasn't any commands he could issue that would change things. Shoulder Cannons targeted the strongest beasts, the spitters took on everything else.

All of his soldiers and Captain Sam's Combat engineers worked their weapons. As well as anyone else that was willing to wield them.

"Ammunition!" One of the Xinta engineers yelled, throwing in a box of ammo and grabbing the box filled with empty magazines.

He ran back out as another helper grabbed the box and distributed magazines.

Adrian slammed the fresh magazine into his spitter and resumed firing. Controlled bursts, just like Len and Rick had drilled into them. Conservation of ammunition with maximum effect.

The enchanters and engineers were making rounds out of stone—extruding it from the walls as it took too long for them to send runners to the steel extruder deeper in the mountain.

Though it did mean that their rounds weren’t as strong—quantity was a powerful thing.

The firebase trembled as something massive impacted the northern wall. The stone held, but dust sifted down from the ceiling. A testament to Rick's engineering—any normal structure would have collapsed already.

"Lieutenant! Eastern building reports multiple heavy mutated beasts attempting to scale the walls!" Private Jenkins shouted over the cacophony of weapon fire.

“Keep me updated,” Adrian said, never taking his eyes from his firing slit.. Everyone that knew how to use a weapon was in the firebase. They’d run out of weapons and they were burning through ammunition faster than it could be resupplied.

There were no reserves to draw upon.

Through his firing position, Adrian watched a creature that may have once been a badger but a dozen times larger. Inorganic looking limbs stuck out of its back as it picked up boulders on the slopes and hurled them at the firebase.

Adrian fired bursts into the creature to try and find a weak spot.

Shoulder cannon rounds hit the creature, making it stagger a round penetrated its side and detonated inside. The creature collapsed, sliding back down the incline.

The soldiers around Adrian worked with mechanical precision, loading, firing, reloading. They were good—he'd made sure of that. But they were facing an endless tide of mutation and horror, and even the best would eventually tire.

A ground-shaking explosion rocked the firebase, different from the tremors they'd been experiencing. This was close and it came from the west, not from the dungeon site.

Adrian steadied himself against the wall, using his Far Sight ability to study the location. 

“Its Len and Rick!” Jenkins yelled.

Through the chaotic battle haze, Adrian caught movement at the treeline—two figures sprinting across open ground with inhuman speed.

A line of tracers cut out from Rick’s spitter, cutting through creatures, but alerting other.

They tore into mutated creatures, Len’s sword and Rick’s hammer making short work of what they faced.

Len and Rick made the fight seem like some kind of dance. Each movement set up the next, creatures falling ahead of them as they pushed on before they could get stuck in one place.

"Cover fire! Eastern slope!" Adrian shouted, snapping out of his momentary awe. "Clear them a path to the gate!"

“Fuck is that?”

A beast rose up on the ridge that Len and Rick had run down.

It was a massive beast with a face of teeth. It was bloodied and wounded, missing limbs. Though for the force of the explosion, it was still able to move and fight.

“Target it with shoulder cannons!” Adrian yelled.

It seemed his command wasn’t needed as shoulder cannon rounds impacted the creature. It roared in annoyance more than pain, then it set its way down the ridge towards the firebase carved out of the mountain.

They were getting pressed on all sides. Len and Rick would need someone to open the gate. He didn’t have any soldiers or engineers to spare.

Adrian flicked his sound talisman to the channel he needed and activated it. "Mister Xinta! Len and Rick are hurrying back to the base but the doors are closed." Adrian knew what he was asking—the danger he was asking them to put themselves into. “I need you to get them open.”

A beat of silence followed, then Joe Xinta's steady voice replied, "On our way, Lieutenant."

Adrian grimaced. Joe was a civilian—an engineer, not a soldier.

“Thank you.”

“They’re one of ours.” Joe said and cut the call.

“They're almost to the killing field!" Adrian shouted.

The killing field—fifty yards of cleared, trapped ground surrounding the firebase—was now living up to its name. Bodies of twisted creatures littered the approach, some still twitching with mana corruption even in death. And through this carnage sprinted Len and Rick, moving faster than should have been possible for humans.

A winged beast with too many eyes descended from above, diving directly at them. Three separate spitters tracked it, tearing chunks from its hide, but it kept coming. Rick, without breaking stride, hurled his hammer upward. The weapon connected with a sound like thunder, crushing the creature's chest before returning to his hand.

Little fires whipped up around Len forming into lances that stabbed our around him, piercing creatures trying to surround him as he dodged around a beast using its antlers to try and gorge him.

He stabbed out, eviscerating the beast as he kept running, moving across the battlefield with ease.

Just how many fights do you have to be in to be like that?

Adrian continued to fire around them.

The massive beast behind Len and Rick bulled through other creatures, taking hits from shoulder cannons, tearing out chunks of the creature.

Through an interior slit, Adrian could see Joe and three other civilians sprinting across the space between the outer door and inner door toward the gate mechanism. Brave men, all of them. Risking their lives without hesitation to save another.

Joe and his team strained at the massive gears, their faces red with exertion. The gate was rising, but slowly—too slowly.

Len and Rick slowed their pace, fighting more creatures, in order to give Joe and his people time.

"Put your backs into it!" Joe yelled to the other men.

A pile of creatures was starting to develop around Len and Rick.

A rabbit leapt towards them.

Len caught it with his will and smashed it to the ground. Rick fired point-blank into its head and threw back his rifle on its sling.

Len cut into a beast, moving to the side as another leapt for him.

A blade of mana appearing in their path—tearing through them as Len pulled a core out of another beast he’d cut into.

Mana swirled over the core as Len tossed it to Rick his sword flashing as he stepped into a group of beasts.

Rick threw the core, it shone—the light glowing brighter.

It dropped in the path of the large creature, light emanated from the core before its structure failed in an explosion.

The massive aberration reared back from the blast, missing another limb.

Shoulder cannons hit the beasts stomach, two penetrated as it stiffened and dropped down. The ground shuddered with the impact. A crater ahead of it, and a ring of dead around it.

Len and Rick were fighting as hard as they could, pinned with their backs against the gate as it was drawn up.

They had no room to move and were using spells with every other attack.

Adrian switched to the all—talisman channel.

“Spells!”

The firebase unleashed its own chaos as every person on the wall used any attacking spells they had.

Fire, ice, water, earth, every element, every state, every color—it was unleashed in a devastating wave that braced Len and Rick.

Adrian looked down into the interior space between walls.

Len and Rick dropped to the ground and rolled under the slab of stone—trusting in Joe and his people.

They rolled under the meter thick door—coming up inside.

Joe and his people released the mechanism—dropping the gate into place.

Rick clapped Joe on the back in passing he and Len ran for the doors that lead into the firebase.

Rick reloaded his rifle as he disappeared from view.

“Good shit everyone,” Adrian said on the all-talisman channel. Their actions would have eaten deep into their ammunition levels.

People were using their spells freely now, the creatures at the walls, using their own attacks. Their spells and claws tore into the stone.

“Evacuate the lower sections of the firebase,” Rick said as he walked into the room, Len in tow.

Adrian took out his talisman to pass the orders.

Len stepped up next to him, squinting at the storm and grimacing.

"Fuck!" he yelled, blinking away tears as he pinched the bridge of his mouth, his eyes screwed shut. "Like squinting into the sun with a fucking telescope!"

"Well that's stupid!" Rick shouted back from where he had taken up a firing position.

"Don't I fucking know it!" Len responded, rubbing his watering eyes. "The mana stone is getting ripped up around the dungeon and pulled into the storm! Its ripped up a massive amount.

"That does not sound good," Rick observed, still firing at the creatures trying to reach the firebase.

The pillar of mana that had been streaming into the dungeon abruptly collapsed. The clouds above twisted into a vortex, lightning crackling in impossible patterns across the heavens.

"Everyone down!" Len shouted, his voice carrying throughout the firebase.

A wave of dust tore through the forest, bending and breaking trees.

Adrian barely had time to duck when the shockwave hit. Dust spewed through every crack and firing slit.

Adrian opened his mouth, sucking in dust, he coughed and spat.

“Sound off!” He yelled as he looked out of the firing slit. People called out their names.

Spitters started firing once more, 

The creatures stunned or wounded from the shockwave had dealt with it head on.

The storm gathered by the dungeon evolution moved unnaturally, shimmering with colors like the aurora above.

"About time for the creatures to come out of the dungeon?" Adrian asked, his voice steady as he fired bursts into creatures.

"We killed everything in the dungeon," Len replied. “Nothing left in there to run out.”

The storm started shifting its position, its thunder drowning out the weapons fire the firebase was laying down.

“Is it just me or is that mana storm heading this way?” Rick asked.

Adrian stared up at the storm, the winds hauling whatever they touched up into the sky. The mana running wild and changing the ground beneath it and its own structure in a chaotic mess.

“Seems that way,” Adrian yelled.

Thunder, larger than any that Adrian had ever seen before lashed the ground. Trees burst into flames and the ground altered—mana turning it into new materials.

"Weather isn't supposed to do that!" someone yelled as rain flickered to snow, then ice, then steam in rapid succession.

“Evacuate to the tunnel,” Len yelled as more strikes hit, each coloring the room with harsh light.

Adrian turned to the command chat and activated his talisman. “Squad leaders, we’re withdrawing into the tunnel. Captain Sam, rig the base to blow and collapse if we need it to.”

Sergeants Simmons, Edwin and Mackie all gave their agreement with Captain Sam following up afterwards.

“Gather up everything and pull back to the tunnel!” Adrian said to those in the room. “Jenkins, check on the rest of the squad and the volunteers.”

“Sir!” Jenkins slung his spitter and ran out of the pillbox’s door.

The rest of the squad were gathering up their magazines, empty and not.

Adrian found himself with Len and Rick off to the side. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"We did," Len replied.

Adrian nodded, they’d been tight lipped on their purpose here, but he knew that it was important. He’d witnessed enough to know one thing with absolute certainty: where Len and Rick led, he would follow.

“Without us on the walls of the firebase the creatures are going to claw their way in,” Adrian kept his voice low. Already the rate of fire was dropping quickly as people withdrew.

Another tremor shook the mountain, stronger than before. Cracks spread across the ceiling like lightning.

“Mana storms have the power to reshape reality and whatever lays in their path,” Len said. “We hold in the tunnel.”

Adrian nodded.

"Time to go," Rick said simply.

They followed the last squad member out. Adrian could hear the beasts roaring at the defenses, their claws and attacks hitting the compressed stone of the structure.

“I’ll catch up with you,” Adrian said. He moved against the flow of people rushing out of the firebase, checking on people as he moved.