Gacha Harem System

Akira couldn’t feel anything, but she knew that one of the bats was currently coming at her back right now.

She’d seen it in the vision, and she’d known about it since before it left the ceiling.

She could feel it swooping towards her spine, its wings folding and jaws opening, and she didn’t bother to turn to face it.

Instead, she turned away from it, almost dismissively. Like a woman who couldn’t be bothered.

Half a second later, an arrow tore through the bat’s body.

The shaft went in one side and out the other and the bat’s dive turned into a tumble.

It hit the ground three feet from her boots and burst into numerous blue shards, with Karrakas’s arrow standing up out of the wreckage.

Akira glanced back over her shoulder.

Karrakas was still crouched behind his column near the rubble, another arrow already on the string of his bow.

His brows were furrowed in concentration and his eyes were trained on the space above their heads.

He’d shot without even looking at her, or any signal between them.

He’d simply seen the danger out of the corner of his eyes, and of course, Akira had known that he’d shoot.

She knew all that would happen next, even if it came at the cost of using up a steady torrent of her mana.

She gave him a single nod.

He didn’t return it. He was already loosing again.

Akira’s eyes came off him and swept the battlefield.

Lukas was, as always, fighting with that confidence he always had. Like he couldn’t lose. Or more like he knew he’d win.

Positioned around him, with some blinking in and out of existence were his [Hex Shields], and his poleaxe worked overtime, sending fragments and shards raining down around him.

Melody was on the far side of a column with her mace, decimating any beast that came too close.

Akira turned away, looking back up at the ceiling, which was still dark with Crystal Bats, though their numbers were slowly thinning.

Her headband flashed with reflected light as she stepped to the side.

Four bats speared through the space where she’d been standing, one after another in a line.

They’d been flying so close together that when they hit the floor behind her, it was almost as if they shattered at the same time.

The crystal shards sprayed through the air, but she didn’t so much as glance at them.

Her eyes were on Percival, who was the only one among them who hadn’t scattered when the order was given.

He was standing exactly where they’d put him, in the middle of what had once been their formation, and currently in the middle of a small swarm.

Bats were diving at him from every direction, but that wasn’t the thing that made Akira keep staring at him with a frown on her face.

It was the fact that he was smiling.

On his face was an expression of such pure, unadulterated joy, that Akira had to blink a few times to make sure she hadn’t seen it wrong.

The expression on his face was open, bright, and delighted, like a boy who’d woken up to find it snowing, and won’t have to go to school.

And he was currently dodging.

Unlike the others, he wasn’t even trying to fight.

His hands were empty and loose at his sides. He simply moved, and the bats missed him.

A bat came at his face and he leaned back from the waist, bending farther than a spine should bend, until his shoulders were nearly parallel to the floor and the bat passed over his chest without touching.

He came back up in one smooth curl.

Another bat zoomed towards his legs, and he lifted one foot and turned on the other, moving a full circle on the ball of his heel.

The bat dove through the space his shin had occupied, and Akira could almost swear it wore a look of confusion.

Two more came from either side at once, converging on his ribs, and he folded.

Or at least, that was the only word for it.

His body compressed sideways like a hinge, one shoulder dropping and the opposite hip rising, and both bats passed through the air where a torso should have been and struck each other beyond him.

He laughed out loud, the sound feeling out of place in the cavern.

He was still laughing when the next bat came for his throat and he swayed aside from it like a reed in the wind.

Akira had seen fast fighters. In fact, she’d led a squad of them.

She’d seen Lukas step through the void and reappear at his enemy’s back.

She’d seen enough to know that this wasn’t speed. Percival wasn’t fast.

He was flexible. Impossibly flexible.

He twisted on the spot like he was made of putty. Like there was nothing solid in him at all, stretching and bending and coiling in ways that made her own joints ache to watch.

He turned his upper body a full half-circle without shifting his feet.

He somehow bent his knees backwards.

He even arched until his shoulders nearly touched the floor behind him and rose again without effort.

Everything looked unnatural for a human body to perform.

Akira had seen strange things, but this one was just... eerie.

That had to be one of his skills. Nothing about a body worked like that on its own.

But what made her suspicious was the fact that he wasn’t even bothering to attack.

He could have. She’d seen his hands, and the strength in his shoulders when he’d risen out of the water.

He could have been killing them, but instead he was letting them come, one after another after another, and slipping away from every one, then grinning like this was the best afternoon of his life.

He was playing a game with them.

Something cold turned over in Akira’s stomach.

Was he doing this on purpose or just having fun?

Was he trying to wear them out or this was how he always was?

Then a bat shrieked in her ear and she remembered where she was.

She turned away from Percival.

Whatever he was, whatever that skill was, whatever that smile meant, she would deal with it later.

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