[New Hostile Entity Identified: Ashroad Warden]
[WARNING! You have encountered an E Rank Construct Predator!]
"Up!" Reid snapped, alarm evident in his voice as he quickly unslung his rifle in one smooth motion.
The others didn’t need any quantum physics to understand Reid’s urgency.
The Conductor, an F-Rank warped existence caused them so much trouble when all of them were mere Unraked Awakeners.
Yes, 4 of them were stronger now, F Rank Awakeners, but they were not invincible. And drawing from the experience of fighting the Conductor as Unranked, it was easy to understand why Reid suddenly felt so uneasy and tense.
Reid barely spoke when the world thickened around him like he was suddenly stuck in a quagmire... this was him finally using his special ability.
His perception dropped gears as Rift Energy burned through his veins. And through that slowdown, details rose in HD quality, making the world feel brighter and easier to understand than ever before. Updates are released by noᴠelfire.net
He looked again, and this time, he saw.
He saw the way heat flexed around the Warden’s shoulder seam, the half-beat pause before a forelimb struck, the true angle of a joint beneath the shimmer.
And then, raising his Rifle and taking him, he squeezed once.
The first round knifed through mirage and struck the invisible hinge of the Warden with the dry pop of a joint punched out of socket. Reid only managed to see such a well-hidden opening due to his special ability.
The Warden’s arm stuttered, but not for long because it recovered almost immediately, plates grinding.
"I need the face gone, blind it," Reid ordered, his voice calm inside the rush. "I can’t map the core, I need him blind".
"On it," Ethan said, and let the Wheel decide, subtly directing it’s decision, and then...
[Improvised Gear: Phase Beacon – F Rank]
>A beacon that collapses mirage constructs for 6 to 8 seconds in a 5m bubble that restricts and blinds them.
>Cooldown: Single use.
Ethan threw the beacon and it slapped onto the topmost melted hood of the Warden. It flowered into a low hum, and then it peeled the lies away.
For one hateful moment the Warden was naked, becoming a lattice of glass bones, a knot of vibrating shards in its chest, and tiny pits in plate where heat had tried to hide weakness.
Now, these weaknesses were laid bare to Ethan and his crew.
At that moment, Reid squeezed the trigger again.
Reid’s second shot landed with lethal precision dead center on a tendon of light. Reid was not the only one taking shots, Holt was also taking shots with his Rifle and he unleashed his third which took the construct’s knee.
The beacon died, and the shimmer slammed back like a curtain.
The Jackals found direction from their Warden again as they surged to cover the Warden’s stumble. The group reacted. Kara broke the first wave and Jonas the second, but a third slipped past their flank, fast as wrong light.
But there was another layer to this group’s depth.
The Jackal sprinted, never once looking back. But then, Mira’s fingers curled, and the air listened.
Wind in the air thrummed, responding to her ability.
"Down," she breathed, and they reacted immediately, even as the wind she pulled became more than a breeze, becoming a decision.
The wind smashed a sheet of glittering dust sideways, turning a creeping veil of micro-shards into a wave that scattered with velocity across the jackals’ flanks, not just the one that bypassed.
And collectively, they shrieked, wind cracking over bottles, bodies grinding on the glass like kicked cutlery.
"Two right, one back!" Holt called, reading what the heat would choose next. His Rifle coughed...
...and a Jackal turned to glitter.
Jonas? While the others mostly fought the minions, he barreled directly to the final boss as he drove his shoulder into the Warden as it rose.
The impact of their collision to Jonas was like ramming a parked car.
His skin split over the point of impact, but his bones did not.
The Ashroad Warden didn’t stay idle, it retaliated almost immediately as its arm scissored down and shaved a ribbon off his jacket without touching him. Jonas pulled his upper body away at the last moment, dodging by the skin of his teeth.
He bared his teeth in a grin that said unimpressed, but then his knee failed. He’d put too much into the hit and then the pull away, and now the road stole his balance like a pickpocket.
The Warden immediately coiled to finish him.
In that moment, there was nothing Jonas could do. He was trapped, and time seemed to freeze as the big guy stared death in the eye.
That was when Ethan finally moved.
He didn’t think. He fired his Grapple into the car pile, line hissing taut, as it reeled his body across the lane in a blur. He hit the ground in a skid that burned his palms through the gloves, but he was already moving again.
"Ethan!" Travis called in panic, but he didn’t have time to say anything else.
Staring at the new enemy, the Warden’s face shimmer flickered, uncertain... whether it was which illusion to weave or which human to kill first, Ethan didn’t know, but it was in that uncertainty that Ethan felt the Wheel pulse a second time.
Not a new draw, just a reminder this time.
And then, the Exo-Spike Gauntlet materialized into existence like a fist that had always been there.
The aura around him changed as spines grew over his hand in a black bloom, resin hardening with a heat that matched the road’s heat.
"Overload," he breathed.
The gauntlet listened.