Misha stood near the rear line and watched Blackthorn fight for their lives.

The first wave had hit hard. The second wave hit harder.

Goblin corpses already littered the ground near the shattered barricade. Green blood darkened the dirt. Broken arrows lay snapped in the mud. Men shouted over one another at the gate while the remaining boards creaked under every impact from outside.

Blackthorn still held. Barely.

Misha shifted her grip on her rapier and looked toward the front where Kylo stood on the raised platform near the wall. He drew, fired, and reached for the next arrow in one clean motion. His shots landed fast and precise, each one finding a throat, an eye, a gap in armor.

She hated that she had to admit it even in her own head. He was good.

"Left side! Hold the left flank!" Kylo barked, already nocking another arrow. "Shields forward! Don’t let them through!"

One of his men stumbled back with a goblin clawed across the chest. Another screamed when a spear slipped past the shield line and tore into his thigh. The formation shook.

"Um..." She glanced sideways at Nyxie. "Should we join now?"

Nyxie stood with her claymore resting against her shoulder, eyes fixed on the mess at the gate. "No. They said they’ll handle it, so let them."

A hobgoblin slammed into the front line with a roar and sent two Blackthorn fighters crashing into the dirt.

Nyxie’s grin sharpened. "Let them die a little first." She tilted her head and stared straight at Kylo. "Especially that fucker."

Misha almost smiled. That felt harsh.

Then again, after meeting him, maybe not harsh enough.

The hobgoblin pushed through the broken fence with a rusted axe in one hand and a shield made from nailed planks in the other. It stood nearly a head taller than the goblins around it, thick-necked and broad across shoulders. Mud and blood caked its boots. One yellow eye bulged wider than the other, which somehow made it look uglier.

It swung once more and a Blackthorn shield spilt down the middle. The man behind it flew back and crashed against the gatepost hard enough to stay there.

Kylo swore under his breath and fired three arrows in quick succession. One struck the hobgoblin’s shoulder, one buried itself in its neck, and the last sank into its cheek.

The battle at the gate turned uglier by the second.

Blackthorn’s line had started clean. Now gaps opened everywhere. Goblins squeezed through broken points in the barricade. The wounded piled near the inner wall. Blood slicked the dirt and made every step look dangerous.

Kylo kept firing. To his credit, he did not panic. Instead, he shouted new orders, redirected the other archers, and picked off anything that got too close to his men.

A goblin leaped onto the platform near him. He grabbed his arrow and drove it onto its throat without even lowering his bow for long. He looked so competent while doing all this.

Ding!

「 〔SYSTEM NOTICE〕

Third Wave Commencing.

Enemy strength has increased. 」

A second later, something massive slammed into the outer walls.

The wood groaned and the iron shrieked.

The last beams snapped apart and crashed into the dirt in a spray of splinters. Dust exploded into the air. Goblins poured through the opening with shrill screams, and two more hobgoblins shoved their way in behind them, trampling the dead under heavy boots.

Yara rose from where she had been watching in calm silence.

Misha knew what it meant even if she didn’t say a word. Now it’s our turn.

Cold spread from her fingertips first. Frost curled around her hand, gathered into a pale shimmer, and then hardened into the shape of a sword. The blade gleamed like frozen moonlight, thin and sharp, with mist curling off its edge.

Misha stared for half a second.

Ice.

So she really did use ice.

"Skyreach," she said, and that single word cut cleaner than any shout. "Move."

Gerbaut moved first past through Yara. He lunged into the breach like a spear thrown by a giant. His weapon flashed once, twice, and a goblin pinned itself to the shaft before the body even understood it was dead. He ripped the spear free, pivoted, and drove the butt into another creature’s face hard enough to crush bone.

Nyxie laughed beside Misha and charged in next.

Her claymore came down in one brutal arc and split a goblin from shoulder to waist. Before the corpse hit the ground, she spun and caught a second one across the ribs. The impact sent it tumbling into the trench of broken bodies near the gate.

Jules followed with a breath that sounded more like a prayer than courage. Then he slammed his shield forward and stopped a hobgoblin in its tracks. The sound cracked through the battlefield.

The monster reeled as Gerbaut’s spear struck its throat a heartbeat later.

Elyes stepped forward too, staff in hand, looking as exhausted as a man asked to solve a problem other people should have handled better.

Pale light gathered around the head of his staff as he muttered a spell under his breath.

A ring of mana spun once then it fired.

Three goblins near the breach lifted off the ground at once and flew backward like someone had swatted them out of the way.

Misha blinked a few times. Right... he was a support mage.

Then, Yara entered the fight without wasting a single motion. Her ice blade slipped through the chaos in clean, elegant lines. She cut a goblin across the chest, turned on her heel, and opened another from the hip to the shoulder. Frost spread from every wound she made.

A hobgoblin charged her with a roar.

She stepped in, not back.

Yara swung her sword and the monster’s arm hit the dirt first. The rest of it followed.

Misha stood there for a second with her rapier half-raised.

She had expected a messy struggle but instead, she got a massacre.

Skyreach crashed into the battlefield and took control so quickly it almost looked unfair.

Blackthorn had spent the last several minutes clawing for every inch. Skyreach took those same inches back like they had never belonged to anyone else.

Misha hardly needed to move.

A goblin broke toward her from the side, and she drove her rapier into its throat on reflex. It dropped with a wet choke.

「 You have killed a Goblin

EXP +3 」

Then nothing else reached her.

Gerbaut held the center, Nyxie chewed through the left side with open delight, Jules blocked and shoved anything big enough to matter, while Yara carved a path through the breach like cold judgement given form. Elyes kept the whole field under control with frightening ease, tossing enemies away, breaking their momentum, and turning chaos back into shape.

Misha looked around once and thought with some offense that they did not seem to need her at all.

Then she noticed movement near the collapsed platform.

Kylo.

He had retreated half a step from the breach and climbed over broken timber for a clearer view. Blood streaked one side of his jaw. His cloak had torn near the shoulder. Even then, he kept moving with sharp efficiency.

He drew an arrow.

Misha’s eyes narrowed and soon widened as realization sank in. He was not aiming at a goblin. He was aiming at Elyes.

Her stomach dropped. "ELYES!!"

The arrow flew before she could even reach him. It cut through the air in a straight black line, fast enough to make her breath catch.

Just when she thought it would hit Elyes, it bounced off with a sharp crack.

A pale shimmer flashed at the back of Elyes’ head for a second before vanishing like it had only blinked into existence to make a point.

Elyes turned his head and looked at the fallen arrow. Then he looked at Kylo.

There was no anger in his face, no shock either. He simply raised his hand and flashed his middle finger at the other man.

Kylo’s expression changed. For the first time since she met him, real alarm crossed his face.

Elyes lifted his staff and chanted something.

Mana surged and the air around Kylo twisted so violently that Misha heard it before she understood it.

A blast of force hit him from the side and ripped him off his footing. His body lifted clean off the broken platform and shot outside the wall, straight into the middle of the monsters gathering near the entrance.

"YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!"

Elyes lowered his staff as if he had only tossed an annoying object out of the way.

Misha turned to him slowly. "You threw him outside..."

"He aimed at me."

"Yes," she said. "At the monsters too."

Elyes glanced at Kylo, who had already recovered his footing and was now carving through goblins with the vicious efficiency of a cornered predator.

"He’ll live." That was all he said.

A goblin lunged for him immediately.

Kylo rolled, snatched a fallen blade from the dirt, and drove it up through the creature’s chin in one violent motion. He kicked another off his chest before it could pin him, then rose into a crouch with the speed of someone far too used to ugly situations.

A hobgoblin charged at him.

He ducked the first swing, slid under the second, and buried the blade into its thigh before leaping back out of reach.

He snatched up his dropped bow between movement like getting hurled into a swarm had merely interrupted his rhythm.

Nyxie noticed too and clicked her tongue in disappointment. "Tch. He’s tougher than I wanted."

Elyes rested his staff against his shoulder. "That’s why I sent him there."

Misha stared at him again. "You knew he could handle it?"

Elyes looked at her with that same tired face. "Obviously."

"..." She really should never get on his nerves.