David had faced bad days before. Once, a kitchen fire, a break-up, and a surprise audit all landed within forty-eight hours. This, however, made those feel like a spa weekend.

  Five wolf-things stepped out of the foliage, and David’s internal threat assessment immediately started screaming. One was Level 1. Two were Level 2, and the other was Level 3—big, bipedal creatures that looked like they bench-pressed sedans for fun. They stood upright, all muscle and teeth, eyes glowing a color somewhere between red and “infernal barbecue.”

  The final, largest one of them carried himself with a smugness reserved for gym influencers and minor celebrities. His claws sparked with inner lightning, a fireball idling in his palm like a football.

  [Infernal Warlock — Level 7]

  David’s brain did the math.

  Bad.

  Actually, horrific.

  Really, spectacularly bad.

  So bad it made “call your mother” sound like a reasonable next step.

  He blinked once, twice, as if repetition might improve the numbers.

  It didn’t.

  He considered running. A tactical retreat, as professionals called it. He only had one plan: the others would handle the dying part while he perfected the art of survival by sprinting in the opposite direction.

  A creature stepped forward—massive, car-sized, fur pale and streaked with gray. It radiated heat and hate, each breath thick with demonic energy. Flames traced its limbs, licking along its form in lazy spirals. Its eyes burned with intelligence, or maybe contempt.

  It dragged a mangled corpse behind it—one of the wolf men—and with a lazy wave of its claw, fire slid from its palm into the body. The corpse twitched, stood, and began to move again, skin glowing from the inside out.

  [Possessed Hellborn Werebeast Corpse — Level 2]

  He entered a state of battle sense so intense it felt unnatural. He tried to draw on every part of himself, every ounce of awareness and will. He focused until the effort burned, pushing his mind to clear itself of everything useless. The world lost its noise, color, and distractions. His attention filtered everything down to movement, distance, and intent. There was nothing left except the skill, operating at full capacity, holding him between survival and death.

  It felt as though his body borrowed logic from somewhere older than thought, running on rules older than sense. He had no clue how it worked, only that something in him was trying to survive smarter than he could think. The world stopped being noise and turned into patterns, lines, options. His eyes kept moving, measuring, predicting before he even acted. The awareness took everything he had and left nothing but precision.

  David’s eyes met the infernal warlock’s. It tried to speak. He didn’t wait to hear what a giant demonic fire-controlling werebeast warlock had to say.

  Someone screamed. The possessed charged.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Evans fired first. Four shots. All hit. None stopped anything. The beasts burned hotter as they came, flames rolling off them like they were proud of it.

  Evans ditched the pistol and drew his sword—an ugly piece of metal hacked from armor, wrapped in filthy cloth. It looked held together by spite and tape.

  David shoved his shield onto his back, gripped his sword with both hands, and let demonic energy surge through his body. It hit like bad liquor, hot and reckless, but it worked.

  The first beast sprinted past, heading for Evans. David pivoted and swung with everything he had. The sword bent on impact. Bone cracked loud enough to count as applause. The beast collapsed halfway, then crawled forward anyway, too stubborn or too stupid to quit.

  Evans stepped in. One stab through the chest. Another through the skull. The thing finally stayed down.

  The warlock still stood there, mouth open, flames crawling up its arms. David glanced at it once and kept moving. Some conversations weren’t worth the risk of listening.

  A car-sized Wolf-beast-thing that juggles fireballs and raises its own backup dancers, David thought, mid-sprint. And we’re supposed to fight that?

  David moved in a wide arc, pulling the Warlock’s attention off the others. The forest felt cramped, crowded with trees that all looked vaguely guilty for being there. His sword stayed solid in his grip—one of the few dependable things in circulation. The demonic energy under his skin pushed for control. He let out just enough to keep his mind sharp and his body cooperative. Everything came down to resource management, which, as it turned out, was also how you survived hellspawn.

  The Warlock loomed at the center, a mountain of muscle leaking fire from its seams. Level 7. Unkillable if handled wrong, expensive if handled right. His plan remained tidy: take apart the scaffolding before addressing the monument. The creature’s eyes tracked him. Good. One of its Level 3 escorts clung to its side. The other moved with a smaller Level 2, eager and dumb. The last one fought Mara, Corbin, and Evans, who all worked with the resigned coordination of people who wished they had taken another flight.

  “Don’t split up!” Corbin shouted. His voice had that clipped edge trained into people used to mid-air disasters.

  “Use the trees! Watch your flanks!” Evans barked. His tone turned gravel and smoke. “Take the weak one first!”

  Sound tactics. David preferred short-term profits. The Level 2 lunged. Battle Sense flared, drawing a neat, glowing path through its movement. He stepped aside and slashed the hamstring. The creature fell, roaring—a mobility problem waiting to happen.

  The Level 3 took that personally. It charged. David slipped behind an oak and let it swing at lumber instead. “Break their legs!” he yelled. “Don’t let him resurrect them!”

  Evans adjusted. His blade crashed down into a knee joint, which gave way with a noise best left unimagined.

  David moved. He channeled power into his sword until the metal burned black. The swing cut through the beast’s knee, the return drove clean into the skull. Efficient.

  Ten seconds of chaos, then quiet.

  Mara’s arm bled. Evans leg did too. Both ignored their injuries as Corbin reloaded in silence, the calm of a man who had already exceeded his pay grade. The Warlock lifted a hand, flames spinning slow as if savoring the show.

  David raised his shield, feeding energy into it until it vibrated with tension.

  BOOM.

  The world went sideways. Fire rolled over him, the ground buckled. He hit a tree. Pain stacked up in layers, his ribs screamed, but the shield held. Without it, he would’ve been an anecdote.

  BOOM.

  Another hit. He rolled behind a trunk, dirt clinging to blood. His arm went numb, but the demonic energy braced the bones, kept them intact. His sword was gone.

  He forced demonic energy through the damage. The limb stiffened, ugly but functional. Battle Sense burned another warning—something big and fast.

  The last Level 3 hit him, claws dragging across his side. He shouted, mostly to stay conscious.

  He pushed energy through pain, because pain was cheaper than dying. The beast leaned in, jaws open, manners gone. His battle sense highlighted the obvious—the throat. Always go for the throat.

  He jammed his fingers in, demonic power hardening them past reason. Cartilage gave way with an unflattering sound. The creature made a noise halfway between a scream and a managerial complaint, then folded.

  David staggered back, both arms numb but attached. The Warlock began shaping another fireball, apparently determined to make the whole situation less survivable.

  He rose, energy surging. “Sure, why not,” he muttered, ignoring the notification, not taking his eyes off the warlock.

  “One left.”