Chapter 122: The Mission That Goes Wrong

The Ashcroft Family and the Nephilim entered the Abnormality zone expecting a difficult mission, and the first thirty minutes went almost exactly as planned.

Maki had already mapped the first three movement patterns. "These things aren’t moving randomly," she said, studying the signatures. "The larger Abnormalities are pushing toward the western side. The smaller ones are moving away from it."

"Then the core’s probably on the western side," Seraphine said, glancing at the map.

"I think so."

"I agree."

Mara adjusted the formation without hesitation. "Yuna, keep the western route open. Emily and Rika, take the front. Maki and Seraphine, keep tracking the movement. Rhea and Lily, stay on rescue." Nobody needed the instructions repeated twice.

The team moved, Emily and Rika clearing the Abnormalities blocking the route while Lily and Rhea searched the ruins for trapped personnel, Maki and Seraphine still reading the battlefield, Mara holding the whole thing together from the center.

An Abnormality dropped from the side of a damaged building. Maki caught it first. "Left—"

Seraphine had already moved before she finished the word, her blade flashing through the creature’s neck before it reached them.

Maki looked at her.

"You were going to say left," Seraphine said.

"Yes."

"You took too long."

Maki considered that for a second. "I’m getting faster."

"You are," Seraphine said, and for the first time the whole team looked less like two groups cooperating and more like one unit moving on the same instinct.

Then the entire district shook. The ground dropped beneath their feet, and a pulse of dark Mana rolled through the ruins.

Maki’s expression changed instantly. "That wasn’t one of the previous patterns." Dozens of new signatures bloomed at once, Abnormalities pouring out of the surrounding structures.

"Everyone, prepare for a surge!" Mara shouted.

Yuna activated her Gnosis immediately, a massive slab of broken concrete hanging above the street freezing in midair, held by nothing but invisible force.

"Move!" she called, redirecting the falling debris clear of several trapped Awakeners as the team passed underneath.

"Can you keep that section open?" Mara asked.

"About three minutes," Yuna said, eyes locked on the structure.

"That’s enough."

Across the district, Archon faced an entirely different kind of problem, an entire corridor between two ruined buildings packed solid with Abominations.

She didn’t bother with an ability. She simply stepped forward, her body moving faster than even Reinhard could fully track, her blade separating the first creature’s head before it finished its own attack.

Another came from the left, and her katana swept up and split it from hip to shoulder. Three dropped from the ceiling at once, and she jumped into them, a horizontal slash, a reverse cut, a downward thrust, all three bodies hitting the floor nearly together.

Fast, Reinhard thought.

Another wave hit, and she walked straight into it, vanishing forward in a streak of red and black, slash after slash flowing into the next with no gap for any of them to react in.

Then the corridor itself began to collapse, and she stopped advancing long enough to cut through the first section of falling debris before it crushed the Awakeners beneath it, then another as the spatial structure around the corridor warped further.

She could kill every creature in front of her. She couldn’t also stop the battlefield itself from falling apart.

Reinhard had the bigger problem.

A spatial rupture had torn open through the center of the district and was still expanding, and if it kept growing it would swallow everything nearby. He opened a Space Tear and fed the unstable Mana into it, then another rupture opened a few meters off.

He used Spatial Step to close the distance, opened a second tear, and used Spatial Pull to drag loose debris clear of the widening distortion.

A wave of Abnormalities surged straight out of the rupture. He raised a hand, Spatial Pull dragging them toward him as the Gunga Gourd opened beside him and swallowed the whole wave in a single pull. More kept coming.

"That’s becoming inconvenient," he muttered, opening another tear.

For the moment the battlefield had split into separate crises, Yuna holding the structure together, Archon clearing Abominations while keeping the evacuation route open, Reinhard containing the rupture, and the rest of the team left to handle everything in between.

...

Maki stopped walking.

"What is it?" Seraphine asked.

"The paths changed." She looked at the map. The route they’d been following no longer existed, a street that had been blocked a minute ago was open now, while another passage had sealed itself behind a solid wall of black Mana. "That’s not random."

"What do you mean?"

"The Abnormality’s changing the battlefield based on our decisions. It’s reacting to us. Every time we pick a route, the next one shifts."

Seraphine’s expression sharpened. "The better we coordinate, the faster it learns."

A pulse rolled through the district and the comms crackled with interference. "Everyone, fall back toward the eastern route," Mara’s voice came through.

Another voice cut in through the static. "Negative. Eastern route is blocked."

"Who said that?" Mara snapped. Nobody answered. The ground split open.

"Ashcroft Group, move east!" she called again.

The ground beneath Lily and Rhea gave out.

"Rhea!" Lily shouted as the street broke apart between them and Rhea dropped into the lower section.

"Lily, stay with the formation!" Mara ordered.

Lily froze. She knew the order was right, that holding the formation together mattered more than one person, that breaking off could put everyone else at risk.

"Lily!" Rhea’s voice came up from below.

She looked down. "I can’t."

"Lily." Mara’s voice sharpened.

"She’s down there."

"We’ll get her."

"I’m going," Lily said, and jumped before Mara could answer.

She landed hard several meters down and rolled clear of an incoming strike. Rhea was already fighting, blood running down one arm, several Abnormalities circling her, still on her feet.

Rhea stared at her. "You weren’t supposed to come."

"I know."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because you’re here."

Another Abnormality charged, and Rhea intercepted it while Lily hit it from the side, the two of them turning toward the next one without a word exchanged between them. They fought like that for a while, Rhea reading exactly when Lily would push forward, Lily reading exactly when Rhea would pull an enemy off her, each one covering the other’s opening the instant it opened.

Then Rhea caught something in the creatures’ movement. "They’re adapting."

"They learned our pattern," Lily said.

"Then change it."

They did, Rhea drawing the enemies in while Lily swept their flank, resetting again the second the Abnormalities adjusted to match. At one point Lily pushed into a bad position to cover Rhea, and Rhea grabbed her arm and hauled her back.

"I’ve got it."

"I can take it."

"You don’t get to decide that alone."

Lily looked at her. Rhea let go of her arm and stepped forward instead. "If you’re staying, we’re staying together."

"Fine," Lily said, and they advanced side by side.

Above them, Reinhard finally stabilized the rupture enough to move, using Spatial Step to land near the lower section expecting to find them trapped.

Instead he found them fighting in sync, Rhea catching a strike meant for Lily, Lily cutting clean through its exposed side a half-second later, another creature lunging at Rhea from behind before Lily spun and finished it.

He watched for a moment. His first instinct was to end it himself. Then he stopped, because they weren’t waiting on anyone to save them. They were handling it.

He lowered his hand. "Lily."

She glanced over. "Reinhard?"

"You’ve got this." He nodded at the remaining Abnormalities. "Finish it," and vanished again with Spatial Step before she could respond.

Rhea watched him go. "He actually left."

"I think he trusts us."

"Then let’s make sure he doesn’t regret it," Rhea said, and they turned back to the fight.

Elsewhere, Maki and Seraphine had reached another stretch of the shifting battlefield. "They’re funneling us," Maki said.

"Toward where?"

"The center." Seraphine looked toward the distant ruins. "The core."

"Every route eventually leads there."

"Then we stop following its routes."

"We make our own," Maki said.

"Now you’re thinking faster," Seraphine said, smiling.

Nearby, Emily and Rika had found another cluster of trapped Awakeners surrounded on all sides. "Stay behind us," Emily said, and the first wave hit, Emily cutting through the center while Rika covered her blind side, adjusting the instant the second wave changed angle to try to flank them.

"You’re getting faster," Emily said.

"You taught me," Rika said, finishing another kill.

"No. You listened."

Rika glanced at her, then back at the fight. "I’ll take that."

Near the center, Mara kept the evacuation moving while Yuna’s arms started to shake under the weight of what she was holding.

"Yuna," Mara said.

"I’m fine."

"How long?"

"One minute."

"Then we’ll be out."

Across the district, Archon kept clearing Abnormalities, but every route she opened closed itself again as the environment rebuilt around her. Even she couldn’t cut through a battlefield that kept remaking itself faster than she could clear it.

Eventually the scattered group found its way back together, piece by piece, and Mara counted them off as they returned.

"Rika."

"Here."

"Emily."

"Here."

"Maki."

"Here."

"Seraphine."

"Here."

"Lily."

"Here."

"Rhea."

"Still alive," Rhea said, raising one hand.

"You sound surprised," Lily said.

"I was starting to wonder."

Reinhard arrived a beat later, scanning the group. "Everyone here?"

Mara checked once more. "Everyone."

Nobody spoke for a moment. They’d been separated, fought alone, found each other again, and every single one of them was still standing. The mission still wasn’t finished.

Mara looked toward the center of the district, where the Abnormality core had gone unstable and Mana contamination was spreading through the deeper sections. Rescue signals were still coming from inside.

"There are still people trapped," Maki said, reading the signals.

Reinhard could feel their Mana signatures. He could probably reach them. But the spatial structure was growing more unstable by the minute, and Yuna was already running on fumes from holding the evacuation route open this long.

Mara understood exactly what that meant. "If we stay, we lose everyone we’ve already rescued."

Reinhard looked toward the remaining signals, considering it for a moment longer than he should have, then looked at the people already standing beside him. He knew exactly what pushing further would cost.

"Everyone retreats," Mara ordered.

He held still for one more second, then nodded. "Understood."

They moved, Archon cutting through the last wave blocking the route, Yuna finally releasing the collapsing structure once the last group cleared through, Reinhard using Spatial Step again and again to reach the injured and apply Mia and Serene between them. A final swarm flooded the passage as they pulled back, and he opened the Gunga Gourd one more time, clearing the path in a single pull.

"Keep moving," he said, and nobody needed telling twice.

They reached the edge of the Abnormality zone, and the moment the last person crossed the boundary, the structure behind them gave out completely, a shockwave tearing through the ruins they’d just escaped. The team stood outside and watched it happen, and nobody celebrated. They’d survived. They hadn’t finished everything.

Hours later, the Association evaluation came through.

[Mission Evaluation Complete.]

[Primary Objective: Completed.]

[Abnormality Suppression: Successful.]

[Secondary Objective — Rescue Trapped Awakeners: Incomplete.]

[Mana Contamination Prevention: Successful.]

[Abnormality Core Recovery: Failed.]

[Civilian Rescue: Incomplete.]

[Casualty Assessment: Acceptable.]

The team stared at the report.

Then the final notification appeared.

[Mission Result: Partial Success.]

[Fame Increased!]

[163, 234 —> 173, 245]

[Current Fame: 173, 245 / 1,000,000]

[Description: Haters are thriving on Emily failure and once again mad even more posts and statements about how much of a bum and lucky she has been. Yet her fans still stands by her with many new members because they want to see her bounce back from this.]

There was no celebration.

For the first time since the Ashcroft Family had begun climbing the rankings, they had finished a mission without getting everything they wanted.

Rhea was sitting in the medical area with her arm bandaged when Lily walked over and sat beside her.

Rhea glanced at her. "You disobeyed an order."

Lily nodded. "Yes."

"Mara’s going to kill you."

Lily looked slightly concerned.

Rhea smiled. "I’ll help you."

Lily looked at her. "Why?"

Rhea leaned back against the wall. "Because you came back for me."

Lily smiled. "Then we’re even."