Insomniac Player

BOOM!

The massive castle gates burst open. Steel thundered against stone as ten towering figures charged out in perfect formation.

The Elite Knights. Full-body plate, no two suits alike. One wore crimson armor engraved with lions. Another’s black plate overlapped like dragon scales. One dragged an executioner’s sword taller than he was.

Another carried twin longswords. One more marched behind a tower shield wide enough to hide a man completely. Every knight had built a whole fighting style around a single weapon, and their footsteps hit the ground hard enough to shake it.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The killing intent rolling off them alone would have suffocated an ordinary Player.

Damien didn’t hesitate. The second the horn’s echo faded, he was already gone, pressed flat against the corner of a stone building. Exactly as planned. The horn had thrown down a challenge, and every ear that heard it turned toward the only visible targets left standing.

The four women. Not him.

A knight in silver armor broke formation first, greatsword splitting the air as he charged straight at Doctor Smoke.

"Die!" The voice came out hoarse, wrong, like it belonged to something that had stopped being alive a while ago.

Doctor Smoke didn’t bother dodging. "...Slow." She stepped into the swing instead. Her mechanical arm hummed, pistons locking into place with a sound like a door bolting shut.

BOOOOM!!

Her fist met his breastplate and the impact rolled out like artillery fire. The knight left the ground entirely, sailing backward through a stone fountain and straight through the wall of a house fifty meters off. The building came down around him in a cloud of dust.

Doctor Smoke lit a fresh cigarette, unhurried, and took a slow drag before glancing at the rest of the knights. "Don’t get cocky, tin-heads."

Damien stared from around the corner. "...What the hell."

She’d just put down a Level Twenty Elite Knight with her bare hand.

Curiosity got the better of him. Party membership had opened up their basic profiles, and he pulled hers up without thinking twice.

➤[Player Profile]

Alias: Doctor Smoke

Level: 20

Class: Combat Chirurgeon (Elite)

He rubbed his eyes and read it again. "...Elite Class." That explained the confidence, then. Elite classes sat leagues above anything ordinary, and the name alone, Combat Chirurgeon, carried something unsettling about it.

Across the courtyard, Naked Nun bent backward almost past what a spine should allow, letting a spear thrust sail harmlessly overhead. Her blindfold never shifted. She was smiling the whole time, like this was less a fight than a dance she already knew the steps to.

➤[Player Profile]

Alias: Naked Nun

Level: 20

Class: Dark Holy Warrior (Rare)

Rare, and at level twenty, that put her comfortably above most players walking around this city. She caught the next incoming blade in one gloved hand, dark energy crawling up her palm and along the steel, then drove a kick into the knight’s chest hard enough to send him stumbling.

"...Rough." She laughed, light and unbothered. "Haven’t even touched your codpiece yet."

He decided that watching her mid-fight only made her stranger, not less.

Madam Marvel floated a few centimeters off the ground nearby, silver mana circles spinning around her one after another, precise where Doctor Smoke was brute force. He didn’t even need to check her class to guess it was something clean and controlled, though he checked anyway.

➤[Player Profile]

Alias: Madam Marvel

Level: 19

Class: Elemental Avatar (Elite)

Another elite. He swallowed without meaning to. She raised a single finger, and a spear of fire condensed out of the air, punched through a knight’s shoulder plate, and detonated.

BOOM!

Flame swept down the street. She hadn’t looked concerned once since the fighting started.

He glanced toward Delulu last and found her humming to herself while running loops around a knight twice her size, floating pistols spinning at her hips.

"...Bestie!" She waved at him mid-dodge like they’d bumped into each other on the street.

He didn’t bother pulling up her profile right away, not until she snapped her fingers and a ring of fist-sized drones bloomed into the air around her, each one opening fire in near-perfect sync, driving the knight backward step by step under the barrage.

Only then did he check.

➤[Player Profile]

Alias: DeluluGirl_404

Level: 18

Class: Ordnance Virtuoso (Rare)

"...Rare too." He shook his head slowly. Not just cheerful. Actually dangerous.

A pressure dropped over the whole battlefield without warning, the air turning heavy, the ground trembling under it. Every Elite Knight stopped mid-motion at once, weapons half-raised, waiting.

BOOOOOOM!!

Something dropped from the castle wall and hit the ground hard enough to crack the stone road on landing. Dust rolled outward, and a shape rose out of it slowly, close to three meters of dark iron scarred by more battles than Damien could guess at, patches of rust the color of old dried blood crusted along the plates. Spikes jutted from one shoulder. A tattered black cloak hung off his back, moving despite the fact that no wind was blowing anywhere near it. A horned helm swallowed his whole face, nothing behind the visor but two burning crimson points, colder than eyes had any business being.

A greatsword rested on one shoulder, too thick and too heavy to really be called a sword at all, its rusted edge dragging a groove into the stone with every step he took.

SCRRAAPPPPP

The sound alone crawled up Damien’s spine. Every step landed with the weight of something that had never once needed to hurry.

Even the Elite Knights around him lowered their weapons an inch, unconsciously, like something in their bodies knew to make room.

Damien finally understood why the last three hundred and thirty-nine attempts had ended the way they had. This wasn’t just a Level Thirty monster. This was something that had spent years learning exactly how to end a battlefield.

Don’t fight that. He didn’t need to think the words, his whole body had already decided for him, chest tight even from behind the corner, half a street away.

And yet the four women standing in front of it barely reacted at all.

Doctor Smoke flicked ash off her cigarette without looking up. Naked Nun rolled her shoulders like she was stretching before a jog. Madam Marvel tucked a loose strand of hair back into place. Delulu tilted her head, unbothered. "...He’s taller than I thought he’d be."

Nobody ran. Nobody so much as tensed.

Then it clicked. The horn had done exactly what it was supposed to. Every real threat in Ironfall, the Commander, the Elites, the standing patrols, had just walked itself outside the walls and into one spot.

Doctor Smoke’s eyes stayed on the Commander, but her voice reached back toward him anyway. "...Sleepless." One word. "Go."

He didn’t need her to say more than that.

She stepped forward first, mechanical arm locking with a hard metallic click. Madam Marvel’s circles bloomed brighter around her. Delulu’s drones scattered upward into the sky. Naked Nun pulled a black-bladed sword from her inventory, and the knights nearest her actually flinched at the sight of it.

The Commander raised his greatsword, slow, deliberate, and the air itself seemed to hold its breath.

Damien smiled once. "...Thank you."

He triggered Shadow Imitation and let the darkness pooled against the castle wall take him in. His body blurred into the shape of the shadow itself, and he crossed through the unguarded gate without a sound.

Behind him, the first clash landed.

BOOOOOOOOM!!

The ground shook as Doctor Smoke’s fist met the Commander’s blade head-on, the shockwave rolling out across the whole town. Damien didn’t look back once. He wasn’t here to fight. He never had been.

While every monster in Ironfall locked its attention onto four extraordinary women, a single shadow slid deeper into the castle, closing in on the Lord of Ironfall.