The world was a haze of pain and fire. From my place on the scorched earth, I watched the end arrive. The Orc Champion, a seven-foot-tall behemoth of scarred hide and blackened iron, had broken past Eric's guard. Its massive axe, a slab of metal that had shattered Masha's ice wall, rose high in the air, poised to descend and crush our frontline defender, our shield. My team was fighting with the desperate courage of cornered animals, but they were losing. They were being systematically dismantled. And I, their strategist, their god, was bleeding out, helpless to stop it.
It was the sight of the corpses that saved me. Three dead orcs lay on the field, the hard-won prizes of Jin and Talia's desperate efforts. Faint wisps of mana, the life essence of the slain, shimmered above them. It was a resource. A feast waiting to be claimed. In our previous battles, we had shared this bounty, a communal act to strengthen the group. But now, in my moment of weakness, empathy was a luxury I could not afford. Survival was a zero-sum game.
My Necromancer skill, hungry and parasitic, lashed out with an instinct born of my own will to live. I reached out, not to raise the dead—my five puppet slots were already filled by the ghosts of Derek's team—but to feed. Invisible tendrils of my power shot across the battlefield, ignoring the living, ignoring my struggling teammates. They latched onto the shimmering mana of the three dead orcs.
I pulled.
A jolt of cold, raw energy flooded my system. It was not a gentle warmth; it was a chilling, unholy power, the stolen vitality of the dead. My team felt it too. I saw Jin flinch, Masha's head snap in my direction. They had been expecting to absorb that mana themselves after the fight. They were watching me hoard it. They were watching their leader steal the spoils of a war they were still dying in.
The energy surged to the gash in my side. It did not heal with gentle care; it cauterized the wound with cold, dark force. The flesh knitted together with a faint, black smoke, leaving a puckered, ugly scar. The bleeding stopped. The blinding pain receded to a dull, manageable throb. My vision cleared. My mind, once sluggish and reeling, snapped back into sharp, analytical focus. I was back.
The Orc Champion's axe began its descent.
"Eric!" My voice, though raspy, cut through the din of battle with absolute authority. "Drop to one knee, angle your shield up, forty-five degrees! Brace!"
Eric, who had been preparing to meet his end, reacted instantly. He dropped, his shield forming a solid, angled ramp just as the axe came down. Instead of a direct, crushing impact, the blade struck the angled shield and skidded upwards with a deafening shriek of metal, its momentum carrying it harmlessly over his head.
The champion roared in frustration, thrown off balance by the unexpected maneuver.
"Masha!" I commanded. "The ground beneath its feet! Not a wall, a slick! Now!"
Masha, her face a mixture of relief and a new, subtle apprehension, slammed her palms down. The scorched earth beneath the champion's massive boots instantly coated over with a sheet of black, treacherous ice. The orc, its footing already compromised, slipped, its massive weight working against it.
"Talia! Jin! Hamstring it!"
They moved as one. Talia's rapier was a silver flash, her Kinetic Eye guiding her blade to the vulnerable spot behind the champion's knee. At the same time, Jin, his sword glowing with focused mana, drove his blade deep into the other leg.
The Orc Champion let out a bellow of pure agony and rage as its legs gave out, and it crashed to its knees. The king of this horde was crippled.
The tide had turned.
"Listen to me!" I called out to my team, my voice regaining its strength with every passing second. "Stop trying to kill them with single attacks! It's inefficient! Your new objective is to feed me. Create corpses. I will do the rest!"
A new, terrifying understanding dawned on their faces. They were no longer just fighting for their lives. They were my harvesters, and this clearing was our field. They would do the bloody work, and I would reap the rewards. It was a cruel, but necessary, division of labor.
The orcs, however, were not mindless beasts. The champion, kneeling but still very much alive, saw what was happening. It saw the faint threads of mana connecting me to its fallen warriors. It let out a series of guttural, barking commands. The horde's strategy shifted instantly.
They were no longer focused solely on killing us. Now, whenever one of their own fell, two other orcs would immediately turn on the corpse, their axes and clubs smashing it into an unrecognizable pulp of flesh and bone, destroying it before I could claim its spirit. They were denying me my power source.
"They're adapting," Edgar yelled, his eyes wide. "The leader is intelligent!"
"So am I," I replied coldly. "This is no longer a battle. It is a race. Kael!"
The Mimic, who had been providing cover fire with weak but distracting lightning bolts, looked at me.
"The spear-throwers on the ridge," I pointed. "You saw them. You saw how they aimed. Copy it. You are now our sniper. Your job is to kill the orcs who try to destroy the corpses. Protect my food."
Kael's eyes glowed silver. He scooped up a sharpened piece of shrapnel from the ground. His posture changed, his arm cocking back with an unnatural, practiced grace he had not possessed seconds before. He hurled the piece of metal. It flew with the speed and accuracy of a bullet, embedding itself deep in the eye socket of an orc that was about to smash a corpse. The orc dropped dead, its own body now ripe for the taking. I absorbed its mana instantly.
"Erica!" I commanded. "Stop the fireballs! Condense it! I need lances, not explosions! Pierce their armor! Give me clean kills!"
Erica, her face set in a grim mask of concentration, nodded. The swirling orb of fire in her hands compressed, becoming a searing, white-hot spear of plasma, just as she had done against Rhonda. She unleashed it, and the spear tore through the air, punching a clean, molten hole through the iron breastplate of an orc brute, killing it instantly. Another thread of mana flowed into me, each one a jolt of power that made my head swim with intoxicating strength.
The battle became a brutal, efficient engine of death. Masha controlled the field, her ice slowing and tripping the enemy. Jin and Talia acted as a single entity, their blades a blur of precision, creating openings for Eric's raw power. Kael, from the backline, became a deadly marksman, picking off the "clean-up crew" with thrown debris. Erica's plasma lances neutralized the heavily armored brutes. And with every orc that fell, a new thread of cold energy would flow into me, healing my wounds, replenishing my mana, and making me stronger, while my team grew more and more exhausted.
They were fighting harder than ever, but they were not reaping the rewards. I was.
The Orc Champion, still on its knees, watched in horror as its disciplined army was torn apart. It let out a final, defiant roar and tried to push itself up, to rejoin the fight.
But its time was over.
What followed was a masterpiece of coordinated slaughter. Masha encased the champion's lower body in a block of solid ice, immobilizing it completely. Talia and Jin darted in, their blades targeting every exposed joint, every weak point in its armor, crippling its ability to fight back. Eric, his shield held high, acted as a mobile wall, blocking the champion's desperate, flailing swings. Kael, having seen the champion's own strength, felt a flicker of the Berserker rage and used it to hurl a massive boulder, staggering the beast.
And then, Erica stepped forward. She took a deep breath, and all the fire in the burning forest seemed to dim, drawn toward her. She created not a spear this time, but a blade—a long, incandescent sword of pure, white-hot plasma.
She walked up to the immobilized, wounded, and surrounded Orc Champion. It looked at her, its intelligent red eyes filled not with rage, but with a warrior's grudging respect for a superior power.
Erica swung the plasma blade.
The cut was clean, silent, and absolute. The Orc Champion's massive, tusked head slid from its shoulders and fell to the scorched earth with a heavy thud.
As its body collapsed, a tidal wave of potent, rich mana, far greater than any of the others, washed over the clearing. It was a king's ransom. Without hesitation, I opened myself to it, drinking it all in, my own power swelling to levels I had never imagined. The last of the orcs, seeing their leader fall, broke and fled into the burning woods, their morale shattered. We let them go.
The clearing fell silent. The fires began to die down. We were standing in the center of a field of more than thirty giant corpses. We were wounded, exhausted, and covered in blood and ash. But we were alive. My team looked at me, their faces a mixture of awe and a new, unsettling fear. They had won the battle, but I had won the war. I stood taller, my wounds completely gone, my body thrumming with stolen power. They, on the other hand, were leaning on their weapons, gasping for breath, their own energy spent. The harvest had been bountiful, and I had kept it all for myself.