“It has to be some sort of natural defense mechanism,” Golrim postured, staring at the small army of fleshy monsters that was being grown out of nowhere around the two halves of the monster attempting to grow toward one another again. “It’s protecting itself so it can reattach without issue.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the reason, we need to deal with it, now!” Spur said, unsheathing his sword and hopping off the wall as he shouted one last order. “Tell Mei the plan, have her redirect our forces!”

  “This is going to be a bloodbath,” Golrim muttered, before turning and running over toward the Strategist to fill her in. During all this, Mei had been hard at work commanding and redirecting different warriors to where they were best needed to combat the preexisting fleshy monsters surrounding the whole town.

  “We only have a few minutes,” Lumel said, frowning as she looked at the mass of new fleshy monsters forming a living barricade around the severed halves. “I’m going to go start teleporting people over to where we need them. Be safe, alright? You already used your boon.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m pretty certain I used up every last explosive the camp had,” Vin chuckled. “No blowing myself up a second time even if I wanted to.”

  The two exchanged a quick hug, before Lumel vanished with a flash of purple. Resigning himself to what he had to do, Vin hopped off the wall and started toward the mass of monsters, using Renewal on himself all the while. He had a lot of skin to regrow, so might as well start now.

  To his surprise, rather than warp in Phil, or Shia, or any of their other heavy hitters, Lumel began with Shredder, before vanishing again and bringing in Slayers a few at a time.

  “Shredder?” Vin blinked. “Where’s Phil and the others?”

  “Phil and Reonelli are working with a chunk of the first wavers to keep what we think is the head of the monster busy,” Shredder explained as they ran. “Shia is using Living Giant over in the forest she grew to try and keep the tail-end distracted. If either of them stop fighting, the monster might realize it can just wriggle over and destroy the town with a few good smashes!”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” Vin said, pointing at what they needed to do. “You know the plan?”

  “No, but then again, I rarely do,” Shredder grinned, unsheathing his two serrated blades and letting out a battlecry that shook Vin’s very chest. Vin swore he saw a pale red aura of all things erupt out of the Berserker, before Shredder turned and sprinted head first straight into the mass of fleshy monsters. Letting his snakeskin armor tank most of the hits, Shredder got to work and began, appropriately, shredding his way through the thick crowd.

  Combat-wise, he was the second deadliest Earther in all of Terra for a reason.

  “Follow Shredder! Kill the fake monsters and prevent the worm from reattaching!” Mei shouted from up on the wall. The Strategist must have had a passive similar to Spur’s because as soon as she gave the order, Vin felt a jolt of energy wash through him, helping him focus on her orders. He clearly wasn’t the only one, as all the Slayers Lumel had brought in and the assorted warriors joining them on foot let out a cheer as they dashed in right behind Shredder.

  At this point, it was time for Vin to figure out where his help would be most needed. While he could certainly hold his own in a fight, he was far from a warrior. No, rather than rushing headfirst into things and trying to whack the fleshy monsters with his staff, he’d be better off providing overall support. Realizing he needed a better vantage point, he began rapidly casting Create Cloud, running up into the air until he was a good few stories up and capable of looking down at the battlefield.

  Now that he could see everything, he turned to give a quick look at the two other spots the fighting was heaviest. At the front, just as Shredder had said, he made out Phil, Reonelli, and about twenty other Earthers frantically darting around as the head of the worm smashed into the ground again and again, trying to crush the Earthers cutting into its face. Phil narrowly dodged certain death each and every time the worm crashed down, always standing mere feet away from the edge of the monster, allowing him the chance to strike again. Shaking his head at the man’s cold and calculating fighting style, Vin looked the other way, easily spotting Shia’s Living Giant on the other end of the battlefield.

  Normally, Shia’s battle spell made her the largest thing around, nearly doubling her height as the tree-golem form grew around her. But this time, she was dwarfed by her opponent. Even so, she was still more nimble than the tail-end of the giant worm, and she was strong enough to actually deflect some of the strikes that came down too close to her. Vin had a feeling a head-on strike would crush her like a bug, but Shia must have suspected that as well, as she was careful to keep moving. Whenever she got the chance, she smashed into the side of the worm with her full might, actually getting a reaction out of the trembling wall of flesh.

  Lumel wasn’t able to teleport Alka, but the Slayer must have heard Mei’s order as she was currently sprinting back toward Shredder and her other Slayers, eager to help stop the worm from regenerating. The ranged specialists on the walls were hesitant about firing into the crowd of Earthers doing their best to carve their way through the fake monsters, so they instead focused their fire on the ends of the worms, attempting to help keep them distracted.

  Well, I suppose there’s really only one thing I should be focusing on… But right before he could start lobbing Fireballs down at the regenerating halves, Vin received a rather unwelcome surprise.

  In the form of a fleshy, imitation bird monster flying straight at him.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Vin barely had enough time to leap back as the monster shot straight through the cloud he’d been standing on. As he fell through the air, he blinked at the fleshy tether connecting it to the worm.

  How does that work?!

  Catching himself with Slow Fall, he quickly conjured up more clouds and ran back up to his earlier vantage point. Any monsters he could attract his way would mean less for the ground troops to deal with, and he needed to start working on the regenerating flesh. As strong and capable as the other warriors were, the army of flesh monstrosities was so large that cutting through them was slow going.

  “Fireball!” he shouted, dumping as much mana into the runic formation as it could take as he lobbed it at one of the worm halves. The explosion was powerful enough to get an annoyed roar from one end of the monster, and he pumped his fist as he realized he had in fact managed to blast away some of the newly formed flesh. He’d been slightly concerned his spell might end up cauterizing the wound and stop the monster from bleeding out, but based on the rivers of blood still pouring out of it, that didn’t seem to be an issue.

  Yet before he could cast again, the bird came at him a second time.

  This time with friends.

  Vin managed to blast the first one out of the sky with another Fireball, but he was forced to leap off his cloud again to dodge the second and third. He severed one of the flesh tendrils while falling with a well-placed Stone Shot, and narrowly blocked the third from penetrating his chest with its beak by casting Dimensional Sheath and summoning a petrified elderwood door between him and the monster to act as a shield. Before the monster could recover, he snatched the door away again, whipped out his fire-knife, and severed the monster’s flesh tendril.

  Of course by that point, the first bird had already finished regenerating.

  “How is that fair?!” he shouted, sprinting back up into the sky on a stairwell of clouds as he ran from the first bird once more. He hadn’t expected to have to use his newest spell so soon after just finishing it yesterday, but nothing he could do was capable of putting the monsters down for good.

  If he couldn’t kill them, he’d have to incapacitate them.

  Trusting his life to Threat Detection, Vin made his cloud wider and nimbly danced his way around the fleshy bird as it attacked him, not bothering to go for the open tendril even when he had the opportunity. He didn’t want to keep killing the monsters over and over again every time they grew back, he needed to get them out of his hair once and for all. There were a handful of near misses, but with his prosthetic arm and quarterstaff, he managed to keep his wounds superficial as he waited for the perfect moment.

  Finally, it happened. In a frenzied attempt to peck his brains out, all three of the bird monsters came close enough to one another that he had his chance, and he wasn’t going to miss it. Throwing together his newest runic formation, Vin cast.

  “Binding!”

  His first and very own tier 3 spell, one he’d created through painstaking effort over an entire week of devoted practice with Lumel’s assistance activated as his mana flooded through the runic formation. He’d used both Entangle and Magic Lock as root spells to create this masterpiece, and it did exactly what he wanted it to do.

  As his mana saturated a few select pieces of the fabric of reality before him, tiny slivers of these other dimensions reacted. A small handful of other-dimensional bits attached to each of the monsters all reached out, connecting with slivers reaching out from the other monsters, all tying themselves up into a neat knot. In an instant, all three of the birds had specific spots on their bodies seemingly stuck to the others, causing them to tumble and fall out of the sky in one messy heap of squawking flesh. Vin spared one second to ensure that they weren’t going to get back up, grinning down at his handiwork.

  Killing them meant they would just come back. But using the fabric of reality to connect them to one another and stop them from flying?

  One couldn’t exactly regenerate from that.

  It seemed Mei had somehow figured out what he’d done, as he vaguely noted her shouting at the warriors fighting below to leave the three birds alone, but his mind was turned toward other matters. Now that he could devote his full attention toward the worm, it was time to unleash hell upon the epic monster.

  And Vin had all the mana of a twice prestiged mage class.

  Vin cast Fireball after Fireball at the regenerating halves, supercharging each one with as much mana as he could and watching as his spells continued blowing the regrowing flesh away. Thankfully, Shredder and the Slayers finally managed to make it to the beast soon enough, and they decided to divide and conquer. While the rest of the warriors dealt with the constantly regenerating monsters, Vin focused his magic entirely on one of the halves, and Shredder, Alka, and the rest of the Slayers focused on the other, diving head-first straight into the monster’s open wound and getting to work.

  One minute turned into two, which crept into five, and simply continued ticking up and up, seemingly without end. Vin had already been forced to drink all of his mana potions, despite the fact that they didn’t do much more than refill a fraction of his mana pool. He knew Frank had estimated they might have to keep this up for fifteen or twenty minutes, but that was easier said than done.

  Shredder and Alka were still going as hard as ever, almost looking like they were competing with one another to cut back against the ever-regrowing flesh. Alka’s Slayers had switched to a simple rotation, half of them cutting frantically for a minute, before resting within the crater Vin’s original attack had formed while the other half took over. Vin even recognized Tiffany and Tall Phil taking their turns in the battle, watching over the newer Slayers and ensuring that they didn’t take any errant blows that would result in their deaths.

  With both ends of the worm distracted by the strongest fighters they had, the fleshy monsters being dealt with by the majority of the combat forces, and the two parts of the regenerating worm being continuously destroyed by Vin, Shredder, Alka, and the Slayers, the battle quickly became one of pure attrition. Vin had no doubt every single Earther participating or watching the battle had the identical question on their mind.

  Could each of their many fronts hold out long enough for the worm to finally bleed to death?

  Finally, just as Vin was preparing to shout down that he’d be running out of mana soon, it happened. There were two, simultaneous crashes on either end of Terra, and the dual shockwaves merged into one massive quake that tripped up all the warriors and caused them to stumble as one. This would have been a death sentence for many of the fighters if the fleshy monsters took advantage of the openings to sink teeth or claws into them.

  Luckily, they all dropped to the ground at the same instant, collapsing as if they were puppets with their strings cut.

  Which, functionally… they were.

  From his view up on high, Vin ignored his throbbing mana-headache as he glanced around. Both of the two ends of the worm were down for the count, the fleshy monsters had gone lifeless, and as far as he could tell, the two halves of the worm had finally stopped their endless regeneration. It had taken the culmination of everyone’s effort, but it was finally over.

  They’d survived the battle for wave five.

  non-writing stuff that needs to be done. Editing is of course the largest! Having all those advance chapters available from the get-go on Patreon means I get to spend hours upon hours of just editing, which is not exactly my favorite activity haha. Anyway, I'll post an actual update next week like I did when I released The Eternal Assassin with an actual blurb for the story. Pretty much the same situation, I'll be dropping a handful of chapters on Sunday and hoping for the best. Totally get if the concept isn't up anyone's alley, but if it intrigues you, I hope you guys check it out!

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