I Evolve 10,000 Times Faster

The military train shook so hard the ceiling bolts rattled.

Holden stood in the armored car with one hand gripping the overhead rail. The car was packed, with thirty Vanguard soldiers sitting on benches along the walls, their faces pale and their weapons trembling in their laps.

None of them had seen combat against an Abyssal swarm.

Team Soup stood near the back door. Emric had his shield propped against his legs, Renna was checking her bowstring for the fourth time in ten minutes, and Lyra held her qspear close, her eyes fixed on the door.

Maeve was in the communications car, two cars forward. Her voice crackled through Holden’s earpiece every few seconds with updates.

"Satellite feed is still active. Portal is expanding at a rate of twelve meters per hour. Monster density on the approach to the Outpost is increasing. You’re going to hit a wall of bodies the moment those doors open."

"Copy."

"Brother."

"Yeah?"

"Be careful."

"Always."

The train screamed forward. It was built to crash through blockades and survive impact, which was good because the tracks leading into the Demon Mouth Outpost had been torn apart by the swarm.

They weren’t stopping at a station. They were crashing through the gate.

"Hold on!" the engineer’s voice barked over the intercom. "Impact in thirty seconds!"

Renna grabbed the wall rail. "Thirty seconds? Should we brace? Nobody told me how to brace for a train crash."

"Feet apart, knees bent, lean forward," Emric said. "Distribute the impact force across your lower body."

"That sounds like something you read in a book."

"I read it in three books."

"Of course you did."

"Ten seconds!" the engineer shouted.

Holden braced.

The train hit the Outpost gate at full speed.

CRASH!

Metal screamed. Wood splintered. The entire train lurched sideways, sending every soldier in the car slamming against the walls. The armored car skidded across ground, throwing sparks before grinding to a violent halt.

Silence for half a second.

Then the world outside came alive.

The doors dropped.

Holden stepped out into hell.

There was no sky left. A thick layer of black, greasy smoke had taken its place, hanging low over the Outpost and blocking out the sun completely. The only illumination came from the fires burning across the compound and the blue flicker of failing energy wards.

The Outpost was barely standing. The outer walls, which used to be twelve feet of reinforced stone and steel, had been chewed down to waist height in sections. Muddy craters pockmarked the courtyard, and bodies lay everywhere. Some were soldiers, some were monsters, and most were too mangled to tell the difference.

Thousands of soldiers were still fighting. They lined the remaining walls, firing cannons and energy rifles into the endless sea of monsters outside. The cannons boomed in steady rhythm, each shot tearing a chunk out of the swarm, but it wasn’t enough. For every beast that fell, ten more poured in to take its place.

The swarm was visible even through the smoke, a shifting, chittering carpet of black bodies stretching from the walls to the horizon. Rank 1 fodder mostly, but mixed in among them were Rank 2 brutes that shrugged off cannon fire and smashed against the walls like living battering rams.

And deeper in the swarm, barely visible shapes that were bigger still.

A figure ran toward the train, mud-caked and blood-soaked, moving with the desperate urgency of someone who hadn’t slept in days.

Captain Venus.

He was a stocky man with a square jaw and a shaved head. Or at least, Holden thought he used to have a shaved head. His scalp was now caked with dried blood and mud, making him look like he’d been dragged through a swamp by his ankles. His armor was cracked in three places, while a deep gash ran down his left arm, hastily bandaged with a strip of cloth that was already soaked through with red.

He came to a stop in front of Holden.

"Voss!" he shouted. His voice was raw and torn, the kind of hoarseness that came from screaming orders over cannon fire for too long. "You came. You actually came."

"You called. What do you need?"

Venus grabbed his arm, his grip iron despite the exhaustion. "The eastern trench. It’s about to collapse. We’ve got maybe two hundred soldiers holding a line that should need a thousand. The beasts are pouring through the gaps. If that trench falls, they flank the main wall, and if the main wall falls, the Outpost is done."

"How many in the eastern trench?"

"Two hundred. Maybe less. I stopped getting accurate headcounts an hour ago."

"What’s the enemy composition?"

"Mostly Rank 1 fodder, but there’s Rank 2 heavies mixed in. Dozens of them. And something bigger keeps moving in the back of the swarm. I haven’t gotten a clear look."

Holden summoned his sword.

The Solar-Forged blade appeared in his hand in a flash of golden light. The soldiers nearest to him flinched, and a few stared. Captain Venus’s eyes went wide for a different reason. The energy radiating from the blade was intense and wrong for a student.

"Team Soup. Formation tight. Emric, shield forward. Renna, cover the flanks. Lyra, rear guard. We’re hitting the eastern trench."

Emric snapped his shield off his back. "Ready."

Renna nocked an arrow. "Born ready."

Lyra gripped her spear. "Moving."

Holden looked at Venus. "Stay at the command post. Keep the cannons firing. We’ll hold the east."

Venus stared at him. The man looked like he wanted to argue.

He didn’t.

"The trench is straight ahead, two hundred meters through the courtyard. Follow the smoke." He slapped Holden’s shoulder. "Give them hell, Voss."

Holden ran.

The team followed.

The courtyard was chaos. Soldiers ran in every direction while medics dragged wounded toward the bunkers and cannon crews fired continuously, each shot punching a hole in the swarm that filled back in seconds later.

They reached the eastern trench.

It was bad.

The trench was a long, muddy ditch carved into the earth and lined with wooden barricades and sandbags. It was supposed to be the first line of defense. Now it was a slaughterhouse, with Rank 1 monsters pouring over the walls in waves, clawing and biting as they crashed into the soldiers inside. The defenders fought with bayonets, swords, and bare hands, while bodies, both human and monster, lined the floor of the trench.

The soldiers were losing.

A wave of thirty monsters swarmed over the eastern wall. They were black, multi-legged horrors the size of large dogs, with too many eyes and mouths that split vertically right down their faces.

A soldier lunged at the first one with a bayonet. The beast caught the blade in its jaw and ripped the weapon out of his hands.

Emric hit the edge of the trench at full sprint.

He didn’t slow down. He leaped off the trench wall, raised his heavy shield above his head with both hands, and slammed it into the ground at the base of the barricade.

BOOM!

The impact was catastrophic. Emric’s Rank 2 strength, channeled through the heavy shield into the ground, generated a kinetic shockwave that ripped outward in every direction. The ground buckled, mud exploded into the air, and the wooden barricade rattled but held.

Every single monster in a fifteen-foot radius was flattened, caught up by a wall of pure force and thrown backward. They crashed into the swarm behind them, bowling over another dozen beasts.

The soldiers in the trench stared.

Emric straightened and adjusted his stance.

"Shield wall reestablished. Someone please reinforce these barricades. The structural integrity is embarrassing."

Renna was already on the trench wall. She moved differently now, her Rank 2 body flowing across the ground like water. She nocked three arrows simultaneously, drew, and fired.

whoosh. whoosh. whoosh.

Each arrow was wrapped in crackling Storm energy. The first punched through a monster, kept going, punched through the one behind it, and buried itself in a third. The second and third arrows did the same. Nine monsters fell to three arrows, each pinned to the ground and electrocuted as blue lightning arced through their bodies.

bzzt. bzzt.

Renna laughed.

"Oh, that feels GOOD." She was already nocking more arrows. "I can actually DO this now."

She fired again, and five more monsters dropped.

The soldiers in the trench started cheering. Ragged, exhausted, blood-soaked men and women who hadn’t smiled in hours screamed and pounded their weapons against the barricades.

"Did you see that? Did you SEE that?"

"Who the hell are these kids?"

"They’re Academy students? ACADEMY?"

"Hold the line! They’re holding the line!"

Holden didn’t stop to listen.

He was already past the trench, walking to the very front of the defensive position. The mud ended here. Beyond it, the open field stretched toward the swarm, and the swarm was coming.

He stood alone at the edge.

The first wave hit.

Forty monsters. Rank 1 fodder, fast and vicious, throwing themselves at him in a frenzy of claws and teeth.

Holden raised his sword.

Hellfire Cleave.

The blade ignited. White-hot crimson fire erupted along the steel. The heat was immense, drying and cracking the mud at his feet in an instant.

He swung.

A wide, horizontal arc. The fire left the blade in a massive, expanding wave that swept across the entire front of the charge.

FWOOOOOSH!

The fire hit the first row of monsters, and they didn’t burn. They evaporated. The wave kept going, cutting through the second row, the third, the fourth. Bodies burst apart, and monsters behind the first wave stumbled over piles of ash that had been their pack mates a second earlier.

Thirty monsters vanished in a single swing.

[Mass Horde Kill! x30! +12,000 KP!]

[2x KP Booster Active! +24,000 KP!]

He swung again.

FWOOOOOSH!

Another forty monsters. Another wave of fire. Another pile of ash.

[Mass Horde Kill! x38! +15,200 KP!]

[2x KP Booster Active! +30,400 KP!]

He swung again, and again, and again. Each arc of Hellfire Cleave carved a burning trench through the swarm, each swing wiping out thirty, forty, fifty monsters at once.

[Mass Horde Kill! x42! +16,800 KP!]

[+33,600 KP!]

[Mass Horde Kill! x51! +20,400 KP!]

[+40,800 KP!]

[Mass Horde Kill! x47! +18,800 KP!]

[+37,600 KP!]

[Total KP Earned: 166,400 KP]

The monsters didn’t stop. They kept coming, pouring out of the portal, surging across the field and charging into the fire.

Holden stood in front of all of it, fire wreathing his blade while ash fell around him like black snow.

[Current KP: 392,290]

[Multiplier: 10,000x]

[KP Booster: 2x Active]

[Fighter Rank: Rank 3 (1-Star)]

The number glowed in his vision, climbing with every swing.

He raised his sword again.

"Next."

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