​Chapter 19: Squad Outcast Takes the Lead

Phoenix and Toby tore through the glowing purple canopy like a two-person natural disaster on a mission from God.

Every ten yards, another mutated horror tried its luck. Every ten yards, Phoenix introduced it to the concept of high-velocity physical trauma while Toby looted its corpse like a hyperactive raccoon on bath salts.

"Boss! On your six!" Toby yelled, slapping another EMP canister into his launcher.

A twenty-foot Cinder-Gator—a mutated reptile with glowing red magma scales and a mouth full of razor-sharp obsidian teeth—burst out of a stagnant swamp, snapping its jaw inches from Phoenix's face.

"Bad breath, lizard-dick!" Phoenix barked.

She leaped straight over its open jaw, planted her steel-toed boot squarely on its snout, and used the bounce to drive her star-iron spear straight down through its upper palate and out the bottom of its jaw, pinning the creature’s mouth shut against the mud.

SQUULCH.

The Gator thrashed wildly, its tail slamming into a nearby obsidian tree and shattering it into kindling. Before it could recover, Phoenix dropped onto its back, straddled its neck, grabbed its upper snout with both bare hands, and leveraged her Dragon-Blood strength.

CRACK-POP!

With a sickening wrench, she snapped its neck cleanly sideways. "And stay down, you overgrown leather shoe!"

[NOTIFICATION: A-RANK CINDER-GATOR ELIMINATED.] [POINTS AWARDED: 2,500.] [CURRENT SCORE: SQUAD 'OUTCAST' – 5,800 POINTS]

"A-rank core extracted!" Toby cheered, using a pair of heavy-duty pliers to yank the glowing red crystal straight out of the beast's skull and tossing it directly into Phoenix's void-ring. "Boss, we're currently beating Class A by four thousand points, and we haven't even reached the city center!"

"Pacing, Toby, pacing," Phoenix chuckled, wiping black blood off her forearm. "We need to leave a few crumbs for Travis, otherwise he’ll cry so hard his fucking eyeliner will run."

Suddenly, an earth-shattering roar echoed from the ancient stone ruins ahead, loud enough to vibrate Phoenix's teeth.

The ground trembled so violently it knocked Toby flat on his ass. High above the crumbling skyscrapers of the subterranean city, a massive shape rose into the purple mist.

It was a S-Rank Obsidian Wyvern—a sixty-foot nightmare covered in jet-black armor plates, its tail ending in a massive spiked club, and its four glowing yellow eyes burning with pure, unadulterated malice.

"Holy shit," Toby whispered, scrambling to his feet and staring up in absolute terror. "Boss... that’s the trials' Boss Beast. It’s got an S-Rank Mana-Shield and armor thick enough to ignore tank shells!"

"Look at the size of that glowing core in its chest," Phoenix purred, her dark brown eyes flashing with deep crimson dragon-blood fire. "That thing isn't just a monster. It’s a walking, roaring loot chest."

Behind them, the brush burst open as Travis, Lionel, and the rest of Class A finally caught up, panting heavily, sweating profusely, and covered in mud.

Travis took one look at the sixty-foot Wyvern, then at Phoenix, and let out a manic, triumphant laugh. "You're fucking done, Phoenix! That’s an S-Rank Calamity Beast! You can’t poke that thing in the groin with a spear! Your little martial arts bullshit won't even scratch its scales!"

Phoenix turned around slowly, looking at Travis like he was a particularly dense toddler who had just shit his pants in public.

"Travis, sweetie," Phoenix drawled, tossing her star-iron spear into the air and catching it upside down. "Anatomical optimization doesn't stop just because a monster gets bigger. It just means the weak spots are larger and way fucking easier to hit."

She looked at Toby and snapped her fingers. "Toby. Load the heavy EMP tether. We’re going skydiving."

"Boss, you are completely insane and I fucking love it!" Toby roared, slamming a massive, glowing blue canister into his launcher.

Phoenix didn't wait for Class A to set up their little defensive phalanx. She activated her Dragon-Blood core, bursting forward in a blinding crimson flash, sprinting straight up the side of a collapsing fifty-story skyscraper to meet the Wyvern head-on.