Why that girl had been alone in the gym, Luke didn't know, but the stairs were a lot more crowded. After no more than one flight of stairs, resistance descended to meet him, and he threw himself at it head-on. First, a knight of some sort in full plate armor, only his eyes visible through a slit in his helmet. More falling down the stairs than charging, the knight let out a bellow that slammed into Luke like a physical force, putting him off balance. Rather than fall, he reached out and forward with a thread of mana, anchoring it in the knight's neck, pulling. That one action allowed Luke to find his center and put his opponent off balance. The knight stumbled forward with a yelp, falling in a heap while Luke continued upward to the next opponent, or opponents.

  A figure in a white robe, hood up, and one wielding knives in both hands, the blades emitting a dark gleam. Both formed spellweaves, which Luke sliced through with ease. Not wanting to kill innocent, brainwashed people, Luke zapped them both, just like with Eva. Before they'd even realized what had happened, they fell unconscious to the floor. An arrow lodged itself in Luke's shoulder, digging in deep.

  "Ow!" he cried, swaying left to avoid a spear thrust.

  In that moment, all the lights turned off, leaving the stairwell pitch black. A second later, a blue emergency light lit the space, making everyone in there cast eerie shadows.

  Another arrow bounced off the wall, missing its mark, as Luke reached out with a hand to yank the spear forward. He pulled the arrow out with a thread of mana, healing himself while jabbing at the side of the spearman's face, putting yet another opponent out of commission. That did little to dissuade the archer, who released a third arrow from where she stood, leaning over the railing one floor up. This one struck true in Luke's thigh, but it registered as little more than a wasp sting as he peered up at his attacker, healing that wound as well. Mana was no scarce resource when fighting other Integrated. Each of them held a supply for Luke to draw upon, like batteries.

  More melee-oriented opponents came at him. Knives, swords, staves, and even maces struck out again and again. Some blows he blocked, others left injuries that healed within moments, while he reached out again and again with Threads of Mana, dealing with them one by one. Before long, a heavier opponent charged down, much like the knight. This one, a brute of a man, wider than anyone had any right to be, covered the entire stairs. He barreled into Luke, pushing his guildmates down before him, trampling them. There was no avoiding the bull-charging asshole. Being on the receiving end of that sort of force sent Luke tumbling back down an entire flight of stairs, and he would have hit the wall if not for Weavestep. The skill carried him to the side, and then another use was all he needed to get past the attacker as he slammed into the wall, cracking the concrete.

  Coughing, Luke grit his teeth as he landed. He ignored the downed Integrated except for draining some mana from them, threads of mana extending from his legs as he passed. The archer returned with another arrow. Luke, without even seeing it, swatted the projectile out of the air. Stopping dead in his tracks, he blinked, then turned to look up at the archer, who'd gone white in the face.

  "Stop that!" Luke shouted, unsure how he'd just done that. It wasn't the first time, but he knew replicating it didn't work. At least it hadn't back in the goblin camp. Was it because of his improved attributes? No, he didn't think so. Dodging out of the way of a purple cloud forming on the stairs, he pushed the thought aside. How he'd reacted to that arrow didn't matter, not in that moment, not with so many opponents remaining.

  An authoritative voice rang out somewhere far above. "Everyone, stop!"

  If Luke had to guess, it was a cop coming back down. No one listened. Luke sure didn't. Instead, he punched the mage responsible for the purple cloud. She dropped like a bag of potatoes, unconscious. Several more Integrated took their place, and Luke stepped forward and launched into an attack before they had a chance to react. The two fighter types fell away, but the third opponent rebuffed his threads and formed a spellweave with too much speed for him to destroy. Something flew at him and ripped into his arm. Before he knew it, the limb was just gone. The mage, an older woman with a bob-cut that did not look good on her at all, sneered down at him, figuring she'd done what every other Integrated failed to do. Rather than fall, however, Weaver's Renewal restored the limb as Luke took another step forward and thrust the still-forming stump into her gut, doubling her over. Puke gushed from her mouth, and Luke stepped past, pulling a huge amount of mana from the old woman as compensation for forcing him to use such a costly skill. It was enough to make her pass out.

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  Another arrow whizzed by. While it missed Luke by quite a margin, it almost struck one of the downed Integrated.

  "Enough!" Luke shouted, bringing out his staff to throw it upward and at an angle. By some miracle, it hit its intended target, striking the woman right in the chest with a crunch. Her eyes fell back into her head, and she collapsed.

  Luke's eyes widened. "Shit! Out of the way!"

  More Integrated swarmed him. At that point, they weren't just coming from above, but from below as well. New ones, sure, but also those he'd already dealt with. They were waking back up, which meant he hadn't used enough force. With that woman dying from having her chest crushed, time was running out. Weapons stabbed into him, sliced and thudded as Luke pushed forward and upward, ever upward. Spells of fire and ice put the self-repairing enchantment to the test as he kept healing himself by taking mana from the opponents, fueling himself from their stores to mitigate the damage.

  "Enough!" he shouted again as people climbed on top of him, weighing him down. This was too much. Too many people.

  The situation was much like the one where dwarves threatened to pull him to the ground, their leader swinging a huge axe for Luke's head. Back then, he'd used nothing more than his threads to get out of the situation. It was time to do the same again. This time, however, he didn't need to use all of his attention to reach the same result.

  Cascading Threads [Active - Mana Cost: High]: The threads weave from one to another, and to another.

  Threads of Mana reached into all Integrated right next to him and jumped over to those behind, then past those and so on, extending like the web of a spider until every Integrated on the stairs with him was part of the network. To Luke's relief, the damaged archer was among those touched by his threads, and he found himself able to heal her from afar. Pulling mana from everyone, nothing they could do would overwhelm his healing. It was nothing compared to the overwhelming influx of mana from Naraxamus, but it was enough to allow Luke to focus on his patient.

  Several ribs were broken, and even more of them cracked. A line fracture in her spine didn't help, and one of the woman's lungs had collapsed, among a host of other injuries, large and small. The surrounding attackers dimmed away as he focused. Luke used threads of mana to pull and push the ribs back into place, mending the broken bones and restoring function to the lung. Needle of Life and Threads of Mana didn't quite work as he wanted them to, perhaps because of his distance from the patient, with his threads extending through eight other Integrated before reaching the archer. Due to that shortcoming, healing mana was the one available solution at some points to deal with the finer problems in her body, like the spine and nerve damage.

  Physical attacks weren't all he endured while healing the woman. At least one Integrated kept slamming some sort of mental attacks against Luke, forcing him to swat them off using the sheer force of his will. With Willpower and Focus raised to such a high number, it was at this very moment that he got to see just how much of a difference attributes could make. The attacks felt like they were coming from an apathetic gnat, not some powerful mental Integrated, and that was while he was being pummeled by dozens of other attacks at the same time.

  Luke felt strong. In control. These people didn't know what they were up against. They hadn't seen anything yet. Asserting his will through the vast network of connected Integrated did not mean pushing up against a wall built from a collective of bricks, with each one representing a person. No, their defenses were far more brittle than that. Some fell the instant he went on the offensive, once again making use of Weaver's Rupture to manifest needle-prick-sized blasts of force from threads of mana. Most of the initial victims consisted of different sorts of strength or speed-based fighters, Integrated with little in the way of mental attributes. Spellcasters put up a fight once they realized what was happening around them, their friends slipping into unconsciousness, but it did little more than slow Luke down as he pushed, flexing his will and focus to take them out one by one.

  It was over in less than fifteen seconds. The archer would live, though with a hell of an ache in her chest for a few months, and every opponent on the stairs was taken care of. Well, all the Integrated, at least.

  "Stop right there!" a trio of cops yelled, pointing their guns right at Luke's face as they descended the stairs, eyes wide with fear as they surveyed the mess of downed Integrated.

  Luke sighed and pulled the hood of his robe back up as it knitted itself back together.