1% Lifesteal

He, his sister—Jean—and their best friend, Rick, had witnessed many tragedies. Throughout their years together, they had seen many of their party members perish, and eventually, they no longer had the heart to invite any more people into their fold.

But the three of them?

When push came to shove, they thrived. And when shove came to stab, they always made it out.

His sister ran past him, using brief bursts of wind to push several delvers out of the way of incoming attacks. She ran forth, meeting one of the cloaked figures in combat. It was a man who seemed to possess a strength-boosting talent—a powerful one, as could be judged by the cumbersome armor and sword he wielded.

Unfortunately for him, he met Jean in combat.

The man swung his massive sword at the lithe, tall Jean, swinging it in an impressively tight arc, closing virtually all escapes. Jean merely flicked his massive strike aside with her thin rapier as if it weighed nothing. Her talent—Parry—could parry almost any blow as long as it wasn\'t overwhelmingly above her power level. And she could use her talent even with a feather, let alone a rapier.

The man\'s panic was evident as his sword bounced off the thin weapon, but it was pointless. Negative Pressure pulled Jean\'s weapon along, pushing her rapier forward in the blink of an eye as it stabbed into the thin slit in the helmet beneath the hood the man was cloaked under. And just like that, he was dead.

Jack brought his attention back to himself as the levitating figure flew over his head, thrusting a swift shortsword as the wind carried him forward.

With minimal effort, Jack stepped aside without even looking directly, and the flying man tumbled forward, landing on the ground. An illusory blade swung at the now grounded man, forcing him to block, only to realize a second too late that Jack hadn\'t even moved yet. In the blink of an eye, powered by Hydraulic Flex, Jack\'s shortsword flicked the man across the neck but failed to cut deep enough to finish the job.

Jack pushed forward, using illusions to keep the man too preoccupied to risk taking to the air again. A second later, a flying strike flew at Jack, flung by a cloaked woman waiting deeper in the forest. Jack was forced to duck under it, but he was already attacking again, thrusting his sword into an opening, only for a woman clad in shadow to raise her hand, conjuring a small black disc that swallowed the force behind his strike.

The tip of his blade barely touched the floating, black object, but all the momentum behind his strike simply vanished as if he hadn\'t even been moving at all.

A second later, a dark, coiling tentacle tried wrapping itself around his leg but moved through the illusory limb, revealing Jack\'s actual leg, which was grounded in an entirely different spot.

He leaped back and took in his opponents.

Rick pulled his short hammers out, swinging his arms, which stretched to the length of three to four meters in wild swings. The man was trying to provide aid to Jack but pulled back as he was overwhelmed by three other opponents.

Before Rick stood a giant of a man whose strikes seemed to carry through weapons and shields into the arms of those holding them, a man whose talent conjured phantasmal, fiery copies of himself that swung at anyone trying to get close, and a woman with a scorpion stinger tail growing out her back.

Rick had tempered his arms with life affinity to stretch them like that, thus they weren\'t as susceptible to the giant\'s destructive power. Still, despite Rick keeping his distance from the nimble scorpion-woman and bulky man, the man with phantasmal bodyguards was throwing projectiles of fire his way, and not all of them could be cleanly dodged under pressure.

These three were far too powerful for Rick to hold alone against them. "Jean!" Jack yelled. "Cover for me!" he shouted as he suddenly vanished.

All of their opponents froze, instantly noticing that he had disappeared. He couldn\'t hold Invisibility for long as he simply didn\'t have the essence reserves, but luckily, he didn\'t have to.

A mere second later, after a wild leap with Hydraulic Flex, Jack reappeared, standing less than a foot away from the man defended by phantasmal copies of himself. The fiery phantoms reacted instantly, skewering Jack, while the shadowy disc appeared to block his attack.

As the phantasmal shortswords embedded themselves into the illusion Jack created and the shadowy disc stood in the way of no actual attack, Jack stabbed a sword through the back of the phantom user\'s head, taking him out of the fight.

Jean used the momentum of the man\'s death to rush at the shadow-user who was blocking their attacks. The woman couldn\'t use her talent too often, so she was forced to back away, melting into the forest\'s shadows as the woman who stood further back threw more flying strikes at Jean, and the levitating man fired bullets of stone.

The two ranged attackers held her back long enough for the shadow-user to conjure another Black Mirror, yet Jean used her Parry as she struck the mirror, causing a direct clash between two attack-nullifying talents.

Her gamble only half paid off. Parry was enough to make the disc vanish, but it wasn\'t enough to stop it from negating her momentum all the same, and this time, she was forced to take a nasty stone bullet to her shoulder as she hopped back, relying on her mobility to create some space, but the pressure was on, and one projectile after another locked her down, forcing her to expend her essence on dodging and defending herself, her Parry the only thing keeping her alive against the barrage of flying strikes.

Jack put his trust in his sister as she kept those three preoccupied, and he relied on Rick to hold the giant down while he lunged at the scorpion-tailed woman.

Hydraulic Flex launched him forward with a few quick leaps, and before long, he was dueling the woman.

She moved with a grace that was only possible with her tail\'s counterbalance and continuously thrust her stinger at him.

This woman was bad news. Despite only relying on her tail, which was undoubtedly a function of her talent, she was more than skilled enough to keep him at bay. He couldn\'t haphazardly rely on his illusions—his essence reserves were already half-empty, but the woman wasn\'t even using a weapon, let alone her essence.

With his talent, he sensed the presence of the levitating man behind him and dodged the Stone Bullet as he shifted to the side without even looking. But the man was flying at him without stopping, as if he intended to tackle him.

With the levitating man leaving her to the shadow user and the woman who kept launching flying strikes, Jean finally caught an opportunity to rush past them and launch herself to help her brother, but a shadow mirror blocked her attack again.

Simply forcing the shadow mage to use her talent was enough to let Jack retaliate and slip past the scorpion stinger, but with that, although safe for the time being, they were both on the back foot.

With a glance, he checked on how his best friend was doing.

Short hammers flew in tight arcs, but with almost dismissive ease, the giant of a man met them fist-first, and judging by the blood spewing from Rick\'s hands, he couldn\'t hold his own for much longer.

On the other side of the battlefield, Karen kept stumbling, continuously being pushed back by her berserk foe. Red Venom coursed through her veins, sending constant pangs of agony throughout her entire body as icy projectiles drew even more blood.

She thought of her grandfather, seeing his face morph into the picture of disappointment in her mind\'s eye and the image of her brother sneering at her. How cowardly was she? How pathetic? Despite facing an inferior foe, she kept stumbling, allowing herself to be swept up in the tides of battle. And why? Because she was afraid to spend too much essence?

Her foot suddenly slipped from beneath her. She stepped on someone\'s spilled guts, falling back first into a pile of gore. The world around her slowed to a halt. Her cowardice warred with a lifetime of conditioning, and she felt the draw to just give up, allowing her opponent to swing their blade down on her head.

Perhaps she would have settled for that if it were her life alone. But it wasn\'t.

As the massive blade swung down at her, her arm twitched. Her talent, Sword Saint, blessed her attacks with a preternatural cutting ability and force… but only if she struck with the skill worthy of the title. Letting the screams and the sounds of war fall into the background, she focused on the weapon in her hand. With a single, fluid swing, her sword met the incoming attack.

With a clang, her thin saber split her opponent\'s sword in two. Without hesitation, she expelled nearly half of her remaining essence on an omnidirectional burst of wind, blowing her opponent away and raising her off the ground and back up to her feet. As soon as she landed, she rushed her opponent, who now swung only half a sword around.

The match was decided—or so she thought. But in the next instant, a portal of water appeared beside her feet, and the grinning figure of the sinister water mage popped out, reaching his arm out to most likely sever her leg with a Pressure Jet.

Panic threatened to overwhelm her, but a dagger flew out of nowhere, forcing the mage to cancel his spell and pull his arm back. It was an attack by Phillip, who she could hear scream as he likely accepted a blow in turn to save her. Gritting her teeth, she ignored the water mage, who was already out of range, and leaped at the bulky figure before her.

With a single, elegant swing, she cut their hand off, then their whole arm, and finally, the head.

In the next moment, she leaped back and dodged the incoming shard of ice that threatened to pierce her skull. She dashed again, evading several icy projectiles as she made her way over to the ice mage. The man conjured a shield of ice, but no matter how thick, it was insufficient against a perfect thrust that pierced through the defense and straight through the man\'s forehead.

She could hear the sounds of the massive golems collapsing not too far from her, and she turned to see how the rest of her team was doing.

Even though Theodore had both the light and holy affinities, neither provided a substantial way to boost one\'s physical prowess; yet, he dodged numerous projectiles, relying on his perception abilities to prevent even a single one from reaching him.

That man\'s talent and drive were unlike anything she had ever seen, even among her fellow clansmen, apart from her older brother. Yet he was old. Withering. Had he been born into a mighty clan, Theodore would no doubt already be a star. But even as a brown dwarf, he shone bright enough that it was dazzling.

Theodore ducked under another bloody projectile and leaped back to get outside the radius of another fireball as he once more dodged a shard of Red Venom. He was getting tired. Some of the bloody projectiles were starting to graze him, but his Sacred Temple tempering technique prevented the poison from doing any substantial damage.

Still, he couldn\'t hold on for long. They were on the back foot, and although they had seemingly regained some momentum in the last few moments, they had expended far too much to get there.

Jacob was severely hurt, and so was Phillip. Karen had burned through most of her essence, and Theodore was on the brink of passing out from exhaustion. He looked over to where his old party was fighting, unable to resist keeping track of how they were doing. His heart dropped.

He watched a cloaked figure sever Robert\'s arm off as an explosion burned Kyle\'s side. Beatrice and Petra kept throwing attacks with a few other delvers, but their enemies were far superior, and the rabble dropped like flies.

"Brave of you to look away," a voice whispered from his back, and Theodore moved his head aside just in time to dodge a Pressure Jet that would have pierced his skull.

Theodore swung his sword at the portal of water, trying to cut the seemingly impressed water mage\'s head off, but before he could reach, a transparent barrier blocked his blow, allowing the water caster to escape and leaving Theodore to dodge yet another projectile and once more leap outside the range of an explosive attack.

As long as the woman with the barriers still stood, their odds of winning this fight were nonexistent. The water caster could pop up anywhere and kill anyone if they dropped their guard, and with her around, attacking the mage in turn was almost impossible. Perhaps Karen or Jacob could manage, but they were both running out of steam, and soon enough, they would fall unless something changed.

He glanced over at Jacob. The stern, massive leader looked… desperate. Jacob\'s face contorted in agony as he tried fighting back by firing stone bullets and throwing fireballs, but there was no use. The man was a brawler, first and foremost, but with his massive body and talent, his lack of mobility and reach was lethal.

The mace-wielder could take one or two attacks from Jacob and trade another two, backing away each time to kill a straggler to heal the damage he took. While the mace-wielder had run out of targets, it didn\'t matter. Jacob was mangled. His whole body was bleeding, and one of his eyes was closed.

It would be a different story if Theodore could afford to bless the man, but as it was, if he even tried, he\'d die as soon as he did so since Phillip wasn\'t there to keep them safe from counterattacks.

The tall, skinny man jogged to another corpse and prepared to throw it at Theodore. The latter man had no way to defend himself from the attack; from the enemy\'s perspective, it was over for him. Unfortunately for them, this wasn\'t the first time Theodore had been trapped with seemingly no escape.

If there was any one thing he excelled at, it was seeing that which nobody else could.

As soon as the skinny man ignited the corpse and threw it forward, Theodore was already running at it. The slim man seemed surprised as Theodore\'s move looked like nothing but suicide.

But he wasn\'t aiming to kill himself.

His eyes shot wide open. He activated True Gaze. He saw the flying, burning corpse, its trajectory, how it would fly and spin, and pulled his sword out.

While it was still flying in the air, Theodore stabbed the shortsword through the dead man\'s forearm, lodging it between the bones as he grabbed the handle with one hand and the blade with the other. Then, pushing his two-star physique to its absolute limit, he pivoted on the ball of his foot and pulled back, swinging the corpse around his body as his blade cut into his fingers, and before the corpse could explode, he threw it right back at the fire caster, who watched the whole thing happen with his eyes wide open.

The moment Theodore saw the shimmering barrier manifest to protect the fire mage from the exploding corpse, he was already turning around and charging his Piercing Beam. He aimed it behind Jacob\'s back, seemingly firing at nothing, but in the next moment, a water portal manifested out of thin air. The Piercing Beam swallowed the remainder of Theodore\'s essence, but it was worth it, as the water caster\'s eye was struck dead-on, and the sneer was wiped off his face as he screamed.

Jacob heard the scream, saw the beam, and turned around, spotting the water caster. There was no shield to protect the man and no time for him to pull back through the portal.

Jacob\'s arm shot forward, gripping the water caster by his hair as he pulled him into his knee, shattering the man\'s face and killing him instantly. The portal behind the man collapsed, severing his body in half, and with half a corpse in his hand, Jacob swung it around, throwing it at the mace-wielder, who was attacking again.

Fire burned beneath Jacob\'s skin as he punched the water caster\'s body, shattering it into a rain of gore that obscured the mace-wielder\'s vision. Through the mist of blood, Jacob\'s arm flew forward, gripping the mace-wielder around the neck as Jacob\'s other hand grabbed the mace by the spikes and pulled it out of the man\'s grasp.

"Resist this, you piece of shit!" Jacob screamed as he headbutted the mace-wielder, cracking the man\'s forehead apart and spilling his brains.

Back on the other side of the battlefield, Jack was beginning to realize that they were fighting a lost fight. If they kept going any further, before long, they would run out of essence and get overwhelmed.

"Retreat!" he shouted, jumping back as he fled from the attackers.

His sister was already running ahead of him, but Rick was stuck trying to shake the giant man off.

Suddenly, Jack\'s entire body simply came to a halt, as if someone had erased all the momentum carrying him. He looked down. His eyes widened as he spotted his foot standing on the Black Mirror.

An intense feeling of danger sparked on the back of his neck as he felt a powerful energy flying right at him. The levitating fighter was rushing at him to finish him off. But suddenly, the energy was steered off course.

He turned around.

Rick\'s arm had elongated and wrapped around the levitating man\'s leg. But as Jack watched, the giant slammed Rick straight into the torso. For a long moment, Jack couldn\'t breathe. He couldn\'t move. Panic overwhelmed him as he realized he was about to watch another person die for his sake.

But he knew that it was too late. If he hesitated any longer, his friend would perish for nothing. Gritting his teeth hard enough that he felt one crack, he moved his foot off the black disc and continued forward, rushing after his sister and running to the other side of the battlefield.

His eyes scanned the battlefield. Only two other battles were still going on. One was a gory sight of numerous corpses, where there had likely been too few elites to stand a proper chance. On the other side were Jacob and his party, who were on the back foot but rapidly recovering.

Karen dashed over to Phillip, who was fighting against two people. Both were air-affinity archs, one wielding a long whip and the other a bow, both natural enemies to Phillip. To Karen, however, they were nothing but fodder. With two quick dashes, she evaded the arrows that curved to home into her body and cut the head off the archer. In the next moment, she severed the whip that tried to flick her sword out of her hand, and Phillip threw a metal dagger to finish the job.

The two of them regrouped—Phillip\'s helmet was like a hedgehog, with several arrows having penetrated through it and into his skull. His armor was cracked all over the spots he had been forced to receive blows by the whip he hadn\'t been fast enough to dodge, but other than that, he was doing fine enough.

They ran over to Theodore, just in time for Phillip to block a projectile that would have killed the man.

Theodore looked terrible—pale, his body sagging like a rotten apple.

Jacob was bathed in blood but didn\'t let that stop him as he dashed, lunging at the two remaining foes.

The woman desperately conjured barriers, but those were near-useless against Jacob, who shattered them with two strikes a piece and continued forward. The two casters were trying to look intimidating, but with how many spells they had thrown into the mix, both were guaranteed to be either out of essence or close enough that it didn\'t matter, with likely only satellites keeping them from completely running out.

They tried pulling weapons out, but Jacob\'s fists shattered their swords, and with a single, visceral punch, he broke the woman\'s head apart like a watermelon and crushed the chest of the tall corpse-thrower.

With that out of the way, their path was clear.

They turned around.

Jacob spotted Jack and Jean running from several foes, Rick nowhere to be seen.

Theodore desperately looked over to the other fight, and as soon as he did, he despaired.

Kyle and Robert were dead, their bodies barely recognizable in the pile of corpses.

Petra and Beatrice were still among the few standing, mainly because they had both stuck to the backline, but they were burned and bleeding.

He watched one of the cloaked casters conjure a fireball, only to compress it into the size of a tiny bead. There was nobody left to defend the two girls.

His body was weak, yet at that moment, he felt like he could dash across the whole field to save them. Before he knew it, he was already running, but it was far too late.

The compressed bead flew right at Beatrice, but Petra threw herself at it before it could hit her. The projectile exploded as soon as it touched the woman\'s body, sending her flying right at Beatrice and knocking both of them halfway to where he was.

What followed was a second of silence as everything crawled to a halt. Fear wrapped around his throat like a snake, and his breath halted, waiting for a sign.

Beatrice\'s shrill scream echoed through the battlefield in the next moment. Theodore experienced a dizzying blend of horror and relief as he rushed to her.

She was so bloody. Open wounds littered her whole body, and she hiccuped and choked as she shook Petra\'s charred corpse, desperately looking for any signs of life.

Shivers made their way down Theodore\'s spine as he saw the disfigured image of Petra. The force of the blow had blown her eyeballs out of their sockets, and her jaw hung limp, broken, open so wide she could swallow his very soul.

But he ignored her. Beatrice was still alive.

"We have to go!" he shouted, pulling her back.

"Let me go!" she screamed in outrage. "Petra! Petra! Someone!" she shouted. "Someone heal her!" she shrieked until her throat gave out.

Try as he may, Theodore was too weak to tear the desperate Beatrice apart from Petra. "Fucking hell!" he yelled as he punched Beatrice to knock her out. She was knocked back but remained conscious, staring at him in horror as he threw another three punches to get her to stop moving. She wasn\'t even unconscious—he had simply dazed her too much to resist. "Shit, shit, shit," he cursed as he lifted her up on his back and ran after his allies.

He was slow. He felt slower and more tired than ever before in his life.

His vision grew blurry, and before long, he dropped to the ground.

Someone lifted the weeping, bleeding Beatrice off his body and dragged her on, and a moment later, someone lifted him as well.

Phillip carried the unconscious woman while Karen raised Theodore, carrying him on her back as they followed Jacob into the woods. Jack and Jean followed after them, and moments later, the few survivors other than the two spotted the escape and ran.

Several of them were picked off, but four people managed to join the two parties on their way out.

Everyone who had access to them drank elixir recovery potions. Those that could be used in combat were incredibly expensive, and nobody there had access to them. No, the ones they used needed time to settle; they had to be mixed with a bit of gathering to dilute the external essence with natural essence. Using the raw essence could cause soul damage, but nobody cared.

Soul damage was better than death.

None of the survivors really believed that they were safe, but to everyone\'s surprise, as soon as they were in the woods, the cloaked figures stopped their pursuit. Perhaps they were going to recover first and then hunt them down.

But maybe others were waiting. Maybe they were heading to their deaths.

They pushed through the forest, obliterating any gorels they came across without any care, as they had no reason to preserve the bodies. After a long, tense half-hour of running, Theodore, Jacob, Karen, Phillip, Beatrice, Jack, and Jean, followed by four strangers, made their way into the passage realm Jacob and his party had hunted in earlier that day.

Jacob, Phillip, and two strangers used their earth affinity to create a makeshift blockade, although nobody had high hopes for its defensive properties.

Thoroughly exhausted, with numerous severe injuries, low resources, and no healers other than Theodore present, few among them were optimistic about their chances of survival.

***

The cloaked figures watched the delvers escape into the woods, confusion seared into their expressions. Among the fleeing people, there was a figure they were surprised to see.

"Why is he with them?" the giant man asked. "Wasn\'t the plan to kill everyone?"

A fully armored man was running beside the other delvers. His armor was covered in blood and gore, but if anyone had been watching, it would have been clear that he had contributed nothing to the ongoing battle other than half-heartedly defending against the occasional attack.

"If he is with them," the scorpion-tailed woman said as she whipped her tail to flick the blood off, "then he must have a reason for it. It is not our place to question him. Let them go," she said, turning around. "Let us rejoin the others. We must continue with our plans."