System Breaker: Surviving Apocalypse with Nine-Tailed Kitsune-Chapter 25: Waves of Familiar Flame

"Run!" A scream pierced the battlefield.

Damon had no idea who it was that yelled, and he had no time to care. He was already mid-run, charging toward the rift core in hopes of closing it before the swarm of fly-like monsters descended onto them.

But before he could take no more than three long leaps, the swarm crashed before the rift.

The horrendous buzz of the countless flies filled the entire space as they coalesced into a bipedal creature of buzzing flies. It stood like a singular being, two legs and two arms. Its featureless face moved across the three of them as if it had eye sockets, despite its face being completely empty, except for the countless fly-like monsters that made it.

Damon stood closest to the rift, Victor a few steps behind him near the treeline, while Casper lingered off to the right flank, his hand wrapped around a dagger Damon had not seen before.

"Wh-what’s it doing?!" Victor suddenly asked, his voice tense.

Damon lingered for a moment before his confusion shattered, and he sprang into action. He raised his arm, and a moment later, two shards of black ice tore through the air as he dashed forward, his tachi ready to strike.

His run, however, slowed to a mere walk, then to a complete pause, as the two shards of ice tore right through the swarm, leaving two gaping holes. Damon frowned as his eyes followed down to the couple of dozen flies from his strikes.

’The system didn’t announce the kill...’ before Damon could even finish the thought, Kitsune’s voice cut through his head.

"The mana presence is shifting inside its body, almost as if it’s one big monster divided into a swarm of flies."

Suddenly, just as the two gaping holes got filled with more flies, the monstrous figure raised its fly-made arm.

Damon barely managed to throw himself out of the way as the arm suddenly shot forward, extending through the entire battlefield and tearing through the air like a spear.

He barely had time to get back to his feet as the elongated arm suddenly curled and whipped across the entire battlefield before crushing into him.

Damon’s vision went dark, his world became a turmoil of pain and moving shapes, before his body slammed into one of the trees lining the edge of the clearing with a heavy, bone-rattling thud.

[Warning! Health Points dangerously low! HP: 11/270]

’Yeah... I can tell...’ Damon murmured in his head as his consciousness quickly slammed back into him. His vision swayed for a little longer before he was finally able to make up the shapes in front of him.

Victor lay sprawled across the centre of the battlefield, no more than a meter away from the rift, visibly injured from most likely trying to reach the rift core.

To the east side of the clearing, he saw Casper circle around the swarm of flies, which now had returned to its cloud-like shape. The man moved inhumanly fast, he was zooming across the battlefield almost faster than Damon could follow.

But the flies were relentless. They spread further across the battlefield, blocking every one of his attempts to get past to the core.

At the same time, Damon pushed himself off the ground, picking up the tachi, which had dropped a few feet away from him.

Metallic taste filled his mouth as he took a long inhale. His whole body was in pain, but despite that, he tightened the grip on his weapon and dashed forward.

Suddenly, before he could even try to join the frenzy that was happening a dozen meters away from him, a wave of fire tore across the battlefield.

Unlike his shards of black ice, which had only killed a couple dozen of the flies at once, the raging flame engulfed hundreds at once, making a visible difference in the monster’s size.

A faint recognition tugged at Damon as he saw the flames, and, to his surprise, he saw that very same recognition on Casper’s face, before his body suddenly vanished from the thin air.

Damon turned toward the direction of the flames. There, standing on the west side of the clearing, he saw a girl with familiar red hair weave raging flames between her figures as she continued to strike the creature again and again.

He only needed a second to recognise who it was.

Ivy.

But despite recognising her immedietaly there was something about her that Damon couldn’t quite recognise. A hardened expression, one that he hadn’t seen before. He, however, had no time to dwell on that thought as Casper suddenly reappeared right behind her, his dagger raised high.

The girl barely turned in time, flames raging at her palm as he struck, the blade of his dagger plunging deep into her shoulder. If she didn’t pivot at the last second, that would’ve been her neck.

"You’re lucky he wants you alive, you wench!" Casper hissed, "Otherwise you’d be dead already!"

Ivy lifted her flame-engulfed arm to retaliate, but at that time, Casper had vanished once again, reappearing from a different blind spot just a second later, slicing his dagger across the girl’s torso.

Damon dashed to her side.

At the same moment, the swarm surged from the center of the clearing toward them. But before the climax of the battle could come to a natural end, a sudden crack filled the battlefield, one that froze everyone in place.

Damon’s head snapped toward the core, where he saw Kitsune, in her true form, stand beside the already destroyed rift core.

The last thing Damon saw was her cunning smile as everything around them was engulfed by darkness.