Chapter 35
The four crests connected.
For one breathless moment, Mai could not hear the battle.
The screams, the clashing weapons, the crack of spells, and the roar of the redcaps all vanished beneath a deep, vibrating silence. Red and silver light threaded between the four of them, forming a circle that hovered just above the ground. It was not a spell circle. It had no familiar runes, no visible casting structure, and no mana flowing outward from a single caster.
It felt like a decision.
A message appeared in front of Mai.
[[Temporary group resonance established]]
[[Participants: Mai, Okama, Suki Aiko, Puss]]
[[Compatible functions detected]]
[[Collective Skill available]]
[[Select group intent]]
Mai stared at the final line.
“What does it mean by group intent?” she asked.
Okama raised his sword as another wave of redcaps charged across the field. “Probably the thing we want to do.”
“That is not helpful!”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Miss Aiko thrust her staff forward. A wall of ice surged from the earth, catching the first line of redcaps and throwing them into one another. The barrier cracked under the impact almost immediately.
“We need to choose quickly!” she shouted.
Mai looked at the three people beside her.
Okama stood with his sword in one hand and his holographic barrier flickering around him. The light from his crest reflected in his green eyes, giving his face a hard, focused expression.
Miss Aiko’s blue hair whipped around her face as she held the ice barrier together. Frost spread up her staff and across her gloves.
Puss crouched low, dark energy gathering around her claws. She looked frightened, but the fear had sharpened her instead of freezing her.
Mai looked past them.
The civilians were still running toward the town gate. The redcaps were closing in behind them. The defenders on the wall were struggling to keep the creatures from spreading through the western quarter.
They did not need to defeat the entire army.
They needed to protect the people in front of them.
Mai placed both hands around her staff.
“Protect,” she said.
The system window reacted.
[[Group intent recognized: Protection]]
[[Collective Skill forming]]
[[Skill name generated: Fourfold Bastion]]
[[Activation conditions: unified defensive purpose]]
[[Accept?]]
“Yes!” Mai shouted.
The world answered.
A silver-red wave burst from the four crests and spread across the battlefield. It did not explode outward like a normal attack. Instead, it unfolded in layers.
The first layer became a transparent dome over the civilians.
The second formed a series of connected barriers across the western quarter.
The third wrapped around the four companions themselves.
The fourth sank into the ground.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then every redcap inside the protected area staggered.
Their weapons grew heavy. Their movements slowed. The mud beneath their feet hardened into pale stone, locking several of them in place. The flames spreading along the buildings were smothered beneath a veil of silver frost.
Mai felt the skill pulling at her.
It was not draining mana in the usual way. It was taking something else—concentration, determination, the willingness to hold the barrier even when every instinct told her to let go.
She gritted her teeth.
“Is this supposed to hurt?” she asked.
Okama glanced at her. “You’re the one who activated it.”
“That doesn’t answer the question!”
“It probably means yes.”
A redcap slammed into the outer barrier. The dome flashed silver and threw it backward.
Another followed.
Then another.
The barrier held, but each impact sent pressure through Mai’s body. Her arms trembled. Her knees weakened. Somewhere beside her, Miss Aiko made a strained sound.
“Mai,” the teacher said, “the skill is distributing the burden between us.”
“I noticed!”
“Then focus on maintaining the central field. Okama is controlling the structure. I’m reinforcing the outer layer. Puss is weakening anything that breaks through.”
Mai looked at Puss.
The catgirl’s eyes had narrowed into golden slits. Shadows poured from her hands and attached themselves to the redcaps beyond the barrier. Every creature touched by the darkness slowed, stumbled, or collapsed as its strength drained away.
Puss glanced over.
“What?” she asked.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“You’re doing well.”
Puss blinked, apparently surprised by the compliment. “I know.”
A redcap broke through the outer barrier.
It leapt over the frozen ground with a jagged axe raised above its head.
Okama moved first.
He stepped in front of Mai and raised his hand. A holographic wall appeared between them, but the redcap struck it before he could finish writing a command.
The barrier cracked.
Okama grunted and slid backward.
“Okama!”
“I’m fine!”
He pressed his fingers against the hologram.
[[Impact absorption]]
The command flashed across the wall.
The barrier thickened, but the redcap continued hammering it with its axe. Each strike sent a pulse of force through Okama’s arm.
Mai could see the strain in his face.
“He can’t hold it alone,” Miss Aiko warned.
Mai tightened her grip on her staff.
The group skill responded to her fear.
A silver line extended from her crest to Okama’s. Strength flowed through the connection.
His barrier stabilized.
Okama looked back at her.
“You can reinforce the others,” he said.
“I don’t know how!”
“Try.”
That was a terrible instruction.
It was also the only one she had.
Mai closed her eyes for half a second and focused on the feeling of the connected crests. They were not identical. Okama’s was sharp and geometric. Miss Aiko’s felt cold and deep. Puss’s was dark and unstable, like a flame struggling beneath water.
But all four were linked.
Mai imagined them as pieces of one structure.
A wall.
A shelter.
A promise that none of them would let the others fall.
The light strengthened.
Okama’s holographic barrier turned silver.
The redcap’s axe shattered on impact.
Okama stared at the broken weapon for half a second, then drove the hilt of his sword into the creature’s face. It collapsed backward.
“You could have done that earlier,” Mai said.
“I was busy making the wall.”
“You always have an excuse.”
“And you always complain when we survive.”
The exchange steadied her more than it should have.
Beyond the barriers, the battlefield continued to rage.
The town’s defenders had noticed the change. Soldiers began moving toward the western quarter, using the protected route through the flames. Mages on the wall shifted their attacks away from the civilians and toward the redcap units attempting to surround them.
The group’s intervention had not won the battle.
But it had created an opening.
A captain in black armour reached the nearest barrier and stared at the four glowing crests.
“Who are you?” he shouted.
Mai looked at him.
She did not know how to answer.
The system supplied one.
[[Group designation available]]
[[Unregistered Class]]
The title appeared above the barriers in silver light.
The captain read it and frowned.
“Unregistered Class?”
“Apparently,” Okama called back.
The captain looked at the approaching redcaps, then back at them.
“Can you hold that line?”
Mai nearly laughed.
“We’re trying!”
“Then hold it for three minutes!”
He turned and shouted orders to the soldiers behind him.
Three minutes.
Mai focused on that number.
Three minutes was possible.
Three minutes was something she could understand.
The redcaps attacked again.
This time, they came in a coordinated wave. Several carried shields made from black metal. Others threw hooked chains toward the barriers. A group of worg riders circled around the field, looking for a weakness.
Puss snarled.
“They’re trying to flank us.”
“I see them,” Okama said.
His eyes tracked the riders. Then he lifted his hand.
Several holographic panels appeared across the field.
[[Target marker]]
[[Movement prediction]]
[[Barrier extension]]
The panels connected into a glowing web. Okama’s Coded Hologram was no longer forming single walls. It was spreading commands through the collective field.
A worg rider charged toward the civilians.
The ground beneath it lit up.
The rider and mount were thrown sideways by a sudden wall of force.
Another tried to leap over the barrier.
Puss intercepted it with a dark pulse that made the worg collapse in midair.
Miss Aiko raised her staff.
“Mai, now!”
Mai did not know what she was supposed to do, but she thrust her staff forward anyway.
Water erupted from the ground.
It twisted into a wide spiral, sweeping redcaps away from the civilians and slamming them against the outer wall. Miss Aiko’s frost followed immediately, freezing the water into a jagged series of ice pillars.
The western quarter fell silent for half a heartbeat.
Then the soldiers charged through.
They struck the trapped redcaps from both sides, forcing the remaining enemies back toward the river.
The captain raised his sword.
“Push them out!”
The defenders roared.
The redcap line faltered.
It did not collapse all at once. It broke in sections. One group fled from the ice traps. Another was driven back by the soldiers. The worg riders scattered when Puss disabled two of their mounts.
The Blood Crown’s army was still enormous, but its attack on the town had lost momentum.
Mai’s vision blurred.
The collective skill was fading.
She could feel it slipping through her fingers like water.
“Hold on,” Okama said.
“I am holding on!”
“Hold harder.”
“I hate that phrase!”
Miss Aiko’s barrier cracked.
A massive redcap had reached the western quarter. It wore black armour and carried a hammer larger than Mai’s body. It brought the weapon down on the main defensive field.
The dome shook.
Mai cried out.
Okama’s holographic network shattered across the nearest section. Puss stumbled as several of her shadow bindings broke at once. Miss Aiko dropped to one knee.
The redcap raised its hammer again.
The captain shouted for the soldiers to fall back.
Mai saw the civilians behind them.
A mother clutching a child.
An old man trying to carry someone injured.
A boy staring at the glowing barriers with wide eyes.
The fear in their faces was the same fear Mai had felt when the Archduke attacked the Academy.
The fear of being abandoned.
She could not let the barrier fall.
Not now.
Mai pushed herself upright.
The crest beneath her clothes burned.
“Get away from them,” she whispered to the redcap.
The monster raised its hammer.
Mai stepped forward.
“I said get away from them!”
The silver line across her crest flashed white.
The collective skill changed.
[[Protection threshold exceeded]]
[[Emergency function unlocked]]
[[Fourfold Bastion: Sanctuary]]
A sphere of light formed around the civilians.
The hammer struck.
The force should have shattered the entire barrier.
Instead, the impact disappeared.
Not weakened.
Erased.
The redcap stumbled forward, suddenly off balance.
Okama reacted immediately.
His sword flashed across the creature’s wrist.
Puss struck its knee with a burst of shadow.
Miss Aiko froze the ground beneath its feet.
Mai raised her staff and released every remaining piece of strength in the collective field.
The redcap froze solid.
The soldiers surged forward and drove it back.
The four crests disconnected.
Mai collapsed.
Okama caught her before she hit the ground.
For a moment, all she could feel was his arm around her shoulders and the pounding of her own heart.
“Mai,” he said. “Stay awake.”
“I’m awake.”
“You’re bleeding.”
She looked down.
A thin line of blood ran from her nose.
“That’s probably fine.”
“That is not what fine means.”
She tried to smile. “You ask that too much.”
His expression tightened.
Then he pulled her closer.
Only for support, Mai told herself.
Only because she had nearly collapsed.
Not because his arm felt warm.
Not because his voice had sounded frightened.
Not because she suddenly wanted the battle to end so she could stay like this a little longer.
Miss Aiko approached them, breathing heavily but still standing.
“Is she conscious?”
“Unfortunately,” Okama said.
Mai glared weakly at him. “I heard that.”
“Good.”
Puss crouched beside them, one hand pressed against her side.
“You all look terrible.”
Miss Aiko glanced at her. “You’re bleeding too.”
“That is unrelated.”
“It is directly related.”
“I disagree.”
The captain reached them a moment later. His armour was scorched, and blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow, but he was still upright.
“The western quarter is secure,” he said. “You saved hundreds of people.”
Mai looked past him.
The redcaps were retreating across the river. The town’s soldiers had begun pursuing them, though the captain quickly called them back before they could overextend.
The battle was not completely over.
But the town had survived the attack.
The captain lowered his sword.
“Who are you?”
Okama glanced at Mai.
She was too tired to answer.
So he did.
“We’re looking for somewhere safe.”
The captain looked at the silver light fading from their crests.
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
The captain studied them for several seconds.
Then he sighed.
“Fine. You can explain yourselves inside the walls.”
Puss raised one hand.
“Will there be food?”
The captain blinked.
Mai closed her eyes.
Okama sighed.
Miss Aiko looked toward the town gate.
“Apparently, that is our most urgent concern.”
They began walking toward the fortress.
Mai leaned against Okama as they moved. She told herself it was because her legs were still weak.
Okama did not comment.
For once, neither did Puss.
Above them, the final traces of the collective skill faded from the sky.
The world had recognized them as a group.
Now the town had seen them too.
And somewhere beyond the battlefield, the collector would eventually hear about four strangers who had created a skill the system itself had not expected.
Mai tightened her grip on her staff.
The road ahead had become more dangerous.
But for the first time, it also felt as if they had gained something besides another enemy.
They had gained a name.
Unregistered Class.
It was not a comforting name.
Still, it was theirs.