Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 719: Bait

Kaiden looked at Selena on the ridge. Then at the twins flanking her, casual and unhurried, two young men who’d grown up tugging on his sleeve and now stood above him like executioners waiting for gravity to do its work.

The stampede hit the blocked cut behind them and broke around it like water around a dam, monsters piling into the stone, clawing over each other, some of them already turning toward the only living things in the corridor that weren’t running.

Luna grabbed his arm. ”Move!”

They moved.

Laterally, cutting across the mountainside through a gap between two rock formations that opened onto a steep traverse. The footing was loose stone and scrub, bad terrain for running, worse terrain for fighting, but the only direction that wasn’t blocked or full of monsters.

Calypso and Bastet fell to the rear because the rear was where the teeth were. A massive lizard-like creature broke from the stampede and lunged at Bastet, and she sidestepped it and stamped one foot against the stone and a pillar of rock erupted beneath it, snapping its jaw shut and launching it sideways off the traverse. Calypso’s axe took the next one in the skull before the creature cleared the rocks.

Aria was airborne, moonlight gathering at her fingertips, picking off the creatures that outpaced the herd and threatened to cut them off. Her bolts punched through scales and chitin, each one placed, but there were too many, and each kill bought seconds instead of safety.

The dark halo above Kaiden’s head blazed to life.

Alice’s voice was a blade in his mind.

The halo pulsed, furious and golden, and a beam of light lanced down from above Kaiden’s head, vaporizing a charging predator forty meters out. Then another. Then a cluster of three that had been circling toward Nyx’s flank. Alice was angry and her anger made her accurate, and the creatures died in flashes of gold that left afterimages burned into the mountainside.

The first attack from the ridge came while they were mid-traverse.

A concussive blast of mana screamed down from Selena’s position and slammed into a cluster of creatures that had been gaining on them from behind, close enough that the shockwave threw Nyx sideways and sent a cascade of debris across their path. The monsters were dead. The path they’d been running toward was buried under shattered stone.

”You’re welcome!” Selena’s voice carried down from the ridge, casual and performative.

— [MOD] Lady Leia: Oh so NOW New Dawn sends their Golden Spoon Kids to ”help”?? I know that bitch. She is the heir apparent to the whole Empire.

— [MOD] Kaiden’s Wife: She just buried their escape route and said ”you’re welcome.” this is retaliation!! They can’t beat Kai on the scoreboard so they’re trying to kill him instead!!

— [MOD] PrincelessPrincess: Three veteran-track fighters just happen to show up right when a stampede hits? Yeah, this is BS!

— xStormborn: Nyx got thrown off her feet by the shockwave. That was way too close to be an accident.

— GigaAsh: ”you’re welcome” she says after burying their only path out lmao. time to grab popcorn guys!

— [MOD] PrincelessPrincess: I’m calling the association.

Nyx was already on her feet. She found Kaiden’s eyes and shook her head once, sharp and certain.

”They want you to attack them.” Her voice was low and fast. ”That’s the whole play. We attack New Dawn veterans, we’re disqualified and jailed just like Ash. They keep shooting at the monsters near us, and if we die, it’s collateral. If we retaliate, it’s assault. Either way they win.”

”The association is a joke!” Aria spat. ”How are they allowing this?!”

”What do you mean? We’re returning the favor. You helped our rookies, we help you. Fair is fair.” Cassian shouted.

Kaiden’s expression darkened.

”We have to run,” Nyx said. ”That’s how we beat this.”

Another blast from the ridge struck a pack of creatures scrambling along the slope above them, and the impact sheared boulders loose from the rock face. They tumbled past, and Luna threw herself flat to avoid one that would have taken her head off. The mountainside was coming apart around them, the siblings dismantling their escape routes one by one.

They found a new path, rougher, steeper, cutting upward at an angle that burned the lungs. The monsters were still behind them, driven forward by whatever force was herding them from the higher elevations, and the creatures that broke from the pack to chase Kaiden’s team met Calypso’s axe or Alice’s light or Aria’s moonbeams, but they kept coming.

Luna was everywhere. Lightning crackled across the traverse as she flickered between positions, her Stormblade carving through anything that got close, her speed the only thing keeping the flanks from collapsing. She was running on fury and adrenaline and the stubborn refusal to die on someone else’s terms, and every time a blast from the ridge forced them to change direction, she was the first to find the new route and the last to leave the old one.

Alice’s telepathic voice shook with a rage that had nothing to do with the monsters.

Another golden beam lanced out and turned a lunging predator into ash.

A third blast from the ridge punched through a creature that had been circling toward Kaiden’s right flank, and the concussion threw Bastet off her feet. Calypso caught her by the arm and hauled her upright without breaking stride.

”Another one in your vicinity!” Calix called down. The voice was smug and lazy. ”Stay alert down there! This zone is dangerous for rookies!”

Kaiden’s hands were shaking. His mana churned beneath his skin, hot and dark, and the crimson edge of it was seeping into his vision, narrowing the world to a point of fury where everything outside ceased to matter.

Nyx saw it. She put her hand on his arm as they ran. ”Kaiden. Look at me.”

He looked at her.

”We survive this. That’s the win. Don’t give them what they want.”

He breathed. The crimson receded. Barely.

They pushed higher. The terrain steepened and the monsters thinned as the slope became too severe for the larger creatures to follow. The smaller ones still came, scrambling over loose rock with the mindless persistence of animals driven by fear worse than hunger, and the team cut them down as they climbed.

The ridge where the siblings stood was opposite them now, separated by a gap of maybe sixty meters of open air and a drop that would kill anything without wings or mana to spare.

Selena stood at the edge with her arms folded. The twins flanked her. They looked relaxed, rested, untouched. Three veteran-track fighters watching a group of exhausted rookies scramble for their lives on a mountain that was trying to eat them.

”You’re running out of mountain,” Selena observed. Her voice carried with perfect clarity. ”And the herd isn’t stopping. How long do you think this lasts?”

Luna spat blood and glared at her. ”Come down here and find out, bitch!”

Selena smiled. She raised one hand, mana gathering at her fingertips, and the glow of it was bright enough to cast shadows across the open air. Her eyes tracked something behind the team, a cluster of monsters cresting the ridge below them, three heavy-bodied creatures with armored hides that were shouldering through the smaller beasts and closing fast.

”Let me help with those,” Selena said.

The attack was beautiful. A crescent of white mana that arced from Selena’s hand and screamed across the gap, aimed at the three armored creatures behind and below Luna’s position. The trajectory was perfect. The timing was perfect.

Luna saw it coming. She was already moving, her body dissolving into lightning to dodge, the electric form scattering across the rock face in a burst of blue-white energy.

She reformed three meters to the left and the crescent sailed past her.

Then it curved.

The mana bent mid-flight, a subtle correction that changed the arc just enough to carry it away from the creatures and toward Nyx, who had her back turned.