Chapter 6 - The Fight Back

"Don't slack off. Even if you tire quickly, that doesn't matter. You need to stay at 100% even when you have 0% in the tank. No matter how good your stamina is, if you can't fight at your best when you're exhausted, it means your strength is waning as you lose energy." Nathan was pacing back and forth like a drill sergeant. The other three were bobbing and weaving, hitting a punching bag. As instructed, each strike was powerful enough to make an earth-shattering crack. Nathan's stick impacted against Sylvia's leg.

"Sylvia, you're slagging. I saw you time that punch so that Athemar's would mask it."

"I don't see you hitting the bag." She mumbled.

"This is my daily training routine. The only reason I'm not joining in is so I can keep you guys in line." Sylvia grunted and slammed her fist hard into the bag. "That's better, but you went back to wasting energy there. Try to keep your cool." Nathan moved on to Gawain.

"You're flagging too, mate. At least you're still trying, but don't let it get to you. Just focus on keeping your technique and power." Gawain's gaze hardened and he nodded. Several loud cracks resounded throughout the city as he returned to his exercise. Nathan beamed proudly.

A few minutes later, Nathan decided to set up a new bag for himself once everyone was doing okay, but before he could get one out of storage, Gawain's bag split. Shortly followed by Athemar's. Sylvia looked around at them in shock and redoubled her efforts. Nathan's shoulders sunk as he got three new bags out. As he began his exercises, he tapped out a tempo that gradually quickened at regular intervals. Even still, each strike was strong enough to nearly deafen the group, and his head movements were enough to dodge any incoming strike. Before long he was panting, but rather than letting up, he doubled his speed, maintaining a precise level of power and movement. Athemar attempted to copy him, but repeatedly lost his balance or reduced his power and ended up reverting to the way he'd been shown. At this point Sylvia was simply focused on her technique, having given up on showing off. Before too long she fell into her own tempo and began slowly quickening too.

The friends had begun sparring when a messenger arrived a few days later. Nathan casually stood up to meet the woman.

"Your training is impressive. McDunnall sent me to tell you he's perfected the material."

"Thank you. He's perfected it? Not just come close?"

"That's all he told me to say. I don't know much about your situation, so I assume there's something sensitive involved. McDunnall is usually adamant on giving us the full picture." Nathan nodded and turned to the pile of bodies on the ground.

"Right you lot, we'll continue this later. Time to head to the smithy." The other three untangled themselves and grouped up around Nathan, before heading off with Athemar back in the lead.

"Ah, there you are. I'd hoped you were closer. We think we've got it exactly. It shines just like Excalibur did, and preliminary tests show it's both harder and lighter than Chronosteel, it has plenty of flexile strength and holds the sharpest edge we've seen." McDunnall was waiting impatiently, eager to show off his man's progress.

"I was expecting you to inform everyone involved in this project of the situation. It was a surprise when the messenger knew nothing." Nathan questioned him.

"As much as I strive to let my workers make informed decisions, I strive to protect them even more. Especially when it's from themselves. Now, let's take a look shall we?" the giant man rushed through a set of curtains without pausing to look behind him. The four friends looked around at each other and shrugged before following him. They entered a room that looked like a cross between a geologist's ideal bank vault and a chemistry lab. Rocks and crystals with various colours were scattered on desks and shelves alongside vials of similarly varied liquids and metals. A couple of copper pots identical in shape but smaller than the ones in the main area sat in the centre. The thin man they'd met before was hunched over a desk that was clean except for a shining lump of metal, cautiously tapping it with a mallet. He raised it to his mouth and bit it, dropping it immediately. He turned around, holding his tooth in pain. Looking up, he saw he had a crowd and ushered them in to look at the metal.

"We'll have to synthesize a new piece specially for each project we need it for, once it's like this it won't soften again. It's by far the hardest material I've ever felt, but miraculously it's not brittle. I'm confident we've got it perfect this time. I just can't believe we never thought of alloying Chronosteel before. Not that we ever needed something like this before." He was beaming brightly, no trace showing of his timid self when the group first met him. As if realising this, he hunched back over and withdrew to a dark corner of the room. Sylvia chuckled innocently.

"You're really not a people person are you?" She prowled after him like a tiger.

"When you take as much of an interest in materials as him, generally you won't be. Leave him alone and just admire his work." McDunnall had a warning look in his eye. Sylvia snapped back into a natural posture and joined the others crowding around the piece of metal. Gawain handed Excalibur to McDunnall to confirm the similarities. It turned out to be identical and the smiths were put to work immediately forging new parts for the weapons. A few hours into the process, the king entered the smithy. At once every man stopped their work to salute until McDunnall dismissed them.

"Ah, my old friend. I understand you have some of my most valuable weapons. Would you care to show me to them?" The old man winked at the head smith.

"Of course, my lord, they are almost ready. Follow me." The king nodded and moved through the curtain indicated. The friends greeted him excitedly once he entered the synthesis room.

"How are the soldiers doing? Are they able to fight the things?" Athemar asked.

"They're not doing well, unfortunately. We can contain the creatures reliably, but any attempt even to weaken them costs too many lives. That's why I'm here now. We need you, as soon as possible." The king's expression was dark and worried.

"We're just in the process of making upgrades to our weapons. When we fought the creatures, we found our stamina to be the primary factor in the fight, so we developed a material to make our weapons lighter and more effective. We've also been training while the smithy was working, so we should be ready as soon as our weapons are." The worry turned to anger.

"I can't wait for some shoddy weapon upgrade. Get out there now and make up for the fathers you've taken away from their families by not fighting!" The king was panting, maddened like a beast.

"With respect sir, without these upgrades, we would be likely to die also. If we're really the only ones who can fight them, this kingdom would be doomed were that to happen. I suggest you supply anyone who will be fighting them with these kinds of weapons too, and train them in this type of endurance fighting." The King's lower lip quivered while he calmed himself.

"Of course, my apologies. I've lost men and women who were incredibly important to me, and some of my best friends are still fighting out there - so I hope you can forgive me for my impatience and outburst. I'm here to give you my official blessing to arm yourselves in lethal capacity. Please destroy the threat posed to our nation." He grew more noble and commanding with each word. The friends looked at each other in excitement. It had been a long time since anyone had been considered important and trustworthy enough to bear arms in lethal capacity. More or less every citizen, human or NPC, had a right to bear arms, but certain weapons and armour were prohibited to all but the most highly respected because they were considered to be warmongering. Duels were commonplace in the city and combat was a way of life, but war no longer devastated the land. As such, anything considered more appropriate for war than duelling was forbidden. Athemar had been a soldier during the Clan Wars, so he possessed not only armour, but weapons from that era, and he was missing using them.

"In that case, my lord, would you permit me some extra time to upgrade my old weapons and armour? I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it would be invaluable." The king hesitated, then nodded.

"It would be pretty pointless for me to grant you lethal capacity if it's less effective than your duelling gear. Go for it." Athemar grinned and sprinted home immediately to collect his armoury. Several hours later he collapsed on the floor back in the smithy, sprawling in a mess of steel. Among the pile were some swords, several pieces of plate armour, and a few identical Chronosteel contraptions, each with a small spike protruding from the end. They weren't particularly intricate or elegant like his shields because they'd been put together by novice smiths at a time Chronosteel wasn't properly understood. Even still, they'd served him well and saved his life more times than he could count. McDunnall whistled when he saw them.

"I almost forgot you had these, Athemar. The Santeri Shotspikes made my career, and you never even got one that I made. I reckon it's time I fixed that blunder. I'll make one worthy of Athemar Santeri himself." Athemar nodded and they got to work deciding on the upgrades. Most items ended up being slated for an entire rework using the new alloy (now named Shinesteel). Nathan's Skrath was given a steel core to add weight to the puncturing strikes, and Sylvia's weapon remained mostly Chronosteel, with a Shinesteel coating on the edge of the spear. Athemar's gauntlets and shields had been refashioned entirely from Shinesteel, and instead of a clockwork mechanism, the shields simply clipped and locked onto the gauntlets. The shotspikes were reworked to use a smaller Chronosteel design and attached to the base of the gauntlets. They now fired Shinesteel spikes also. McDunnall personally reforged Gallatin (Gawain was too reluctant to allow him to work on Excalibur) to remove the steel and replace it with Shinesteel. As a result, the sword was much longer and thinner. It still had the same weight, but as Shinesteel was able to take a sharper edge and was lighter and harder than steel, McDunnall had forged it with extra reach. As for the armour, every single plate of steel had been replaced for a Shinesteel one, where a member was using cloth armour a new Shinesteel suit was created, and padded duelling vests were handed out to go underneath. This took roughly a week. The king visited them once more meanwhile and told them there had been no casualties since his last visit, that the soldiers had been able to contain the creatures.

Finally, they were heading out to fight. Excitement reigned within the group, as well as nervous boasting. They were each keen to test out their new equipment but worried that it might not be enough. Despite the buzzing atmosphere, the four were the quietest they'd ever been. Once they neared the clearing, three guards perked their heads up and ran over from the makeshift battlements.

"Our saviours!" One squealed. "You have no idea how hard it's been to hold on until you got here. These creatures took my brother. You have to let me get revenge with you!" Athemar pondered for a short while. There was a risk that some of the soldiers might get severely injured or get in the way, but eventually he decided they all deserved a good chance to get their own back.

"Alright. Gather everyone up and tell them that if they wish to get revenge they may help us, but they carry the risk of themselves getting fatally injured if they do." The four stepped forward into the clearing to prepare for the fight to come, and were soon joined by a growing number of soldiers.

"Just remember, if you tire, fall back and recover!" Sylvia shouted. "We've trained for a stamina battle, but these monsters can take a lot of killing. We can't protect you, so save us and yourselves by retiring if you have to!" several in the gathering crowd nodded, and the party moved through the huge wooden gate into a blackened digital nightmare. A great number of bloody corpses seemed to hang over an abyss, some half torsos, some legs and some severed heads. All with varying degrees of entrails hanging out and very few matching sets. The decay was not from maggots or fungus, but from the same black particles that were devouring the landscape. They were still at work, boring unnatural holes at the edges of every natural body that remained and bringing black tar-like bubbles to the surface - which popped in a burst of dark blood. Nathan turned and emptied his stomach, narrowly avoiding an empty stomach of a different variety.

"They've been violated. I knew we'd lost people, but this is horrific." A few in the row behind him comforted him.

"This is only the most recent group to fall. The King's family were among the first, and he came to check on them just in time to see them melt away like this. The truth is, most of these creatures are easy enough to fight off, but the combination of overconfidence and the occasional Wraith has cost us a lot."

"Wraith?" Athemar enquired.

"We've classified the creatures based on their appearance and capabilities. The Wraiths are huge things that look like a classical depiction of a ghost, and they can rend a man in two from ten feet. We've slain three of them so far, but every team that managed it sacrificed themselves."

"That sounds more dangerous than anything we fought. What are the ones that look like bears?" The soldier looked horrified.

"We... have two. The Ursa Minor is fast and ferocious, and the Ursa Major is huge and powerful, but slow." Athemar pondered a short while.

"Okay, I think the one we couldn't fight was the Ursa Major, and we might have killed an Ursa Minor first... are there any that fight like the Minor but look more like a tiger or some other beast?"

"We've come across one. We named it Tigris. It wiped out a whole squad before I personally destroyed it. Even if it was an Ursa Minor instead, the four of you killing it alone is impressive."

"Okay. Last question. What do you call the giant ball that takes forever to kill but has no method of attacking and eats up the landscape at a terrifying rate?" The soldier blanched.

"We haven't come across anything like that. If it showed up at the same time as any of the others, we wouldn't stand a chance." Athemar nodded, and moved to the front of the group. A small voice called out:

"Ready up everyone, we're dealing with a Wraith." As if to lend credibility to the man's statement, a huge black mass of digital particles appeared, in the traditional ghost shape. The same particles streamed off it as if it'd just come out of a black ocean. Moments later, another mass of particles in the shape of a ball rose up behind it.

"Oh, for crying out loud." Muttured the soldier that Athemar had been talking to earlier. Athemar went into General Mode, and began ordering the soldiers around. The plan was that Athemar and his group would try to deal with the Wraith, while the soldiers would surround the ball and hit it with everything they had. A simple plan overall, but one that required precise positioning and individual orders. On his command, the parties split off to their instructed positions. Athemar fired his Shotspike at the Wraith while moving back, maintaining 10 feet distance, and the soldiers pushed the ball back. As predicted, the creatures were separated through moving their targets, making the soldiers safe from the Wraith's attacks. Athemar had a further plan for dealing with the Wraith, but it was a dangerous one. He hopped into its range and immediately back out. Faster than the human eye could see, a skeletal arm whipped out and slammed the ground where Athemar had been. He grinned.

"Nathan, did you catch that?"

"Yeah. It's fast, but it's not perfect. The thing has regular reaction times, and it relies on a physical strike to attack. I can handle it." Nathan shuffled forwards, holding his skrath in a high guard and watching the Wraith carefully. Without warning he jumped and swung his weapon down. What happened next was too fast for any of them to see. The Wraith's arm shot out and attempted to slice Nathan with its finger, but he'd already jumped out of the way. The hooked blade of the skrath pierced the arm and got stuck there. Then the arm retracted, bringing Nathan with it. During the arc, Nathan's skrath dislodged and he spun through the air towards the Wraith. Finally, he swung his weapon out and gored a huge ravine in the creature's body. What anyone standing there saw was just that Nathan teleported to the other side while the Wraith simply collapsed on itself. There was silence for a solid half-minute, then a huge cheer emanated from the soldiers. The friends high-fived each other and congratulated Nathan while moving towards the ball glitch. However, two new glitches rose out of the blackness surrounding them. One was a huge bearlike form, the other a slightly smaller shape that looked like a tiger.

"We've got an Ursa Major and a Tigris!" One of the soldiers shouted.

"Okay. Split up again. Nathan and Sylvia, you take the Tigris. Gawain, you're with me fighting the Ursa. You soldiers, continue to attack the ball while moving it towards the Ursa. I want Squad 5 to multitask between the two." Athemar barked orders again, and no-one hesitated.

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Nathan and Sylvia ran at the Tigris as soon as Athemar gave his command. A slash from a spear and a stab from the skrath got its attention, then they settled into a stance and growled. The Tigris growled back and darted in a zigzag pattern towards Nathan. Sylvia jumped over its back and landed a deep cut across where its spine should be. It howled and charged at her, but Nathan hooked the back of his skrath into its cheek and diverted its path. He then pulled its head into a devastating punch and plunged the spike into its neck. It shook him off, then hopped back a few steps and reset.

Athemar and Gawain reached the Ursa Major and began taunting it. Gawain darted in with small cuts while Athemar banged his shields together to create noise. Once they were satisfied that it was targeting them, Athemar loosed a Shotspike round into its neck and Gawain dashed in for a real slice. Galatin bit into the black particles at the Ursa's left leg, then cut through like butter. Athemar's Shinesteel spike blasted a hole several times bigger than itself and carried on through with no resistance. The giant bear reared and toppled backwards, but got back up on all fours. Well, threes. It roared viciously and began to draw black particles to it from the ground. It appeared confused. The ground below it was starting to revert to a natural colour, and all the particles were being absorbed into it, but it didn't seem to have the effect the creature wanted.

"What's it doing?" Asked Gawain.

"I think it's trying to heal itself. But for whatever reason, it can't." Athemar was amazed. The bear gave up and charged back into battle.

The Tigris, meanwhile, was trying the same thing after being cut open by Sylvia. It realised much quicker that it wasn't working and dived at Nathan. He punched his skrath down its gnashing jaws and rolled backwards, taking the momentum of the creature and sending it flying over his head. It flipped midair and pounced back towards him, but Sylvia jumped in and sliced it in half from mouth to tail with her spear.

When the Ursa resumed its attack, it was both careful and violent. It used its front paws to bat away attacks and its fangs to counterattack. The soldiers from Squad 5 had started delivering cuts to its rear, but they weren't having much of an effect and the creature was able to heal those ones, so Athemar instructed them to just focus on the ball. Suddenly Gawain had an idea.

"It's acting like a duellist. Parrying strikes then countering them. We fight duellists every day."

"Yeah, but not weird glitchy beast duellists." Countered Athemar.

"That doesn't matter. How do we beat this strategy of parrying in the arena? We feint, and then pull out a surprise."

"Ah, gotcha." Athemar dove in with an overhand punch, then cut it short to duck under the beast's deflecting paw and rotated his chest to deliver a powerful uppercut to its jaw. Gawain then rushed in and placed Galatin's tip at the base of its neck, while Athemar released another Shotspike round into its skull. Gawain shifted his weight to lift the Ursa up using Galatin, and Athemar performed an astounding jump tackle to bring it to the ground, locking its body up with his legs and raining all kinds of strikes down on it. Whenever his Shotspike was reloaded, he'd chain a shot to one of his punches. Eventually his clip had run out and he simply carried on with unarmed attacks. Gawain noticed that the Ursa had disintegrated already and Athemar was just hitting the ground, so he walked over and gently pulled his friend up.

"You've done well, but it's already dead. Let's work on the ball." Athemar nodded, and they joined Nathan and Sylvia in assisting the soldiers. It didn't take long to fall with all of them attacking it, and Athemar wanted to take the chance now that there were no monsters threatening them.

"Everyone, think of what this place was like before the glitches came, and place your hands on the ground. I'm not sure this will work, but it's worth a try." Everyone obeyed him, but nothing happened for a pregnant minute. Slowly though, specks of green appeared here and there, and the landscape began to rebuild itself. Trees came back one layer at a time, and even the waterfall was rebuilt. It was all as if a giant 3d printer was tasked with the job. Before the area could be finished, an Ursa Minor appeared from one of the original fissures, and a few of the soldiers stopped to fight it.

"Don't stop yet, we don't know if our progress is going to be reversed and we won't have this chance again." Athemar shouted to them. They gulped and put their hands back on the ground. It was close, but the whole area including the original fissures was restored before the creature got to them. Gawain darted in front of a soldier who was being attacked and killed the creature with one swing. The particles that had dropped off of it simply scattered on the ground and left it intact. Everyone collapsed, relieved and exhausted.