That, and the fact that it didn’t wait for the rest of the pack to fully close, was the only reason Mike wasn’t immediately pulled under and torn apart.
It broke from the tree line, eyes glowing faint green, foam at its jaws, claws kicking up dirt.
He met it halfway.
“Stormstrike,” he snapped.
Lightning wrapped his fist, tight and mean. He stepped in and drove his knuckles into the wolf’s skull just behind the eye. The impact cracked through bone; the beast folded mid-leap, tumbling past him in a limp heap.
He pivoted, chest heaving.
The rest were smarter.
They paced at the edge of the grove, flowing between trees, using trunks and bushes as cover. Eyes glinted—too many to count at a glance. Duskhounds hunched low, muscles coiled. Smaller boars snorted, tusks scraping bark. Lean, feline shapes stalked the branches above, claws digging into wood.
All of them vibrated with a wired, unnatural tension.
Chaos residue.
He could feel it in the air—his Chaos, stretched thin over the grove like a film of oil on water, making the local mana shimmer and misbehave.
“Good job, me,” he muttered.
A howl rose from the left, echoed from the right, then the back, until the grove was a ring of sound closing in.
The System’s cheerful prompt floated at the corner of his vision.
[Tutorial Event: “Howl of the Broken Grove”]
You are the epicenter of localized mana destabilization.
Hostile creatures are converging.
Objective:
? Survive the Horde (0:37 / ???)
Timer: thirty-seven seconds since the event triggered.
It felt longer.
He checked himself quickly.
[HP: 61%]
[Mana: 28%]
Leg: punctured, but stable. Ribs: bruised, not broken. Arms: heavy but responsive. Stormstep: off cooldown. Stormstrike: ready.
He’d just killed a level 14 mini-boss with a move that should’ve turned his nervous system into soup. Now the Tutorial was stacking a mob event on top.
Of course it was.
“Full greed, huh?” he said to the empty grove. “Fine.”
The ring of beasts tightened.
This time, they came together.
Duskhounds broke into a coordinated charge at the front, jaws open. Two tuskers barreled behind them, ready to trample whatever slowed. The lean, wrong cats dropped from the trees in staggered arcs, going for his flanks.
He moved.
“Stormstep!”
The world blurred. He appeared at the edge of the Guardian’s massive fallen body, letting it block one side. Lightning already crawled down his arms.
The first duskhound hit him a heartbeat later.
Stormstrike met it halfway, his fist slamming into its jaw. Bone shattered. He pivoted, letting its body crash into the next beast and knock it aside. A third lunged; he ducked, drove an elbow into its ribs, then snapped a short, brutal kick into its knee joint.
[Stormstrike — Rank F]
Hits landed: 2
Damage bonus vs soft tissue: +4% (usage-based)
The notifications flickered at him, but he didn’t have the bandwidth to care.
A tusker thundered in, eyes rolling, bristles standing on end. He slid sideways along the Guardian’s corpse, using the massive body as partial cover, and brought his charged fist down on the boar’s shoulder.
Lightning detonated.
The joint buckled. The tusker screamed and crashed into the Guardian instead of him, tusks biting deep into bark-plate.
Something feline hit his back.
Claws tore through cloth and into skin, sharp lines of fire across his shoulder blades. Weight drove him forward. He rolled, using the momentum, and slammed his back into the Guardian’s corpse, crushing the cat between them.
It hissed, claws raking deeper, then went limp.
[HP: 48%]
“Stay in the groove,” he rasped.
He’d fought in stupid situations before. This was dumber. But the pattern was there:
Use the Guardian’s corpse as terrain. Narrow the angles. Force the horde to bottleneck instead of swarming from all sides.
He kept moving, circling, never letting himself be hemmed in against open ground.
“Stormstep!”
Another blur, this time only a half-meter shift to dodge a tusk and show up under a duskhound’s throat. He drove his hand up into soft flesh. Blood sprayed. The beast crumpled.
Lightning sang in his bones.
The ring of monsters thinned—but not enough.
For every one that dropped, two more seemed to push in from beyond his perception range. Their eyes were wild. Their movements jittery, as if the Chaos in the mana made them twitch.
A smaller wolf snapped at another’s leg when it got too close. A boar swung its head too wide and gored a duskhound by accident. The dead one’s packmate immediately turned and ripped its throat out.
The horde wasn’t a unified army.
It was a riot.
He took advantage where he could. He let them collide, let friendly fire weaken them, then finished off the worst-injured.
But every kill cost him a little more.
His calf wound opened further after a bad pivot, blood slick in his boot. His arms protested each Stormstrike, muscles and tendons screaming under the repeated discharge. The bruise across his ribs from the Guardian’s root hit flared hotter with each heavy breath.
[HP: 34%]
[Mana: 19%]
“Still enough,” he lied to himself.
He ducked a swipe from another cat, drove a knee into its stomach, then stunned it with a lighter, cheap Stormstrike to the temple. It dropped; a tusker stomped its ribcage in passing.
He used Stormstep to avoid being trampled.
The world narrowed to motion and impact and the constant, electric buzz of his class pushing his body to do things it had no right to.
He didn’t look at the timer again.
He didn’t need to know how many minutes had passed. His body was giving him all the milestones he needed: breathing harder, vision tunnelling, little tremors starting in his hands between strikes.
Another wolf lunged low, jaws closing around his forearm. Teeth sank in. Pain lanced up to his elbow.
“Fine,” he snarled.
He clenched his trapped fist.
“Overload.”
He forced more lightning into Stormstrike than he should have.
The wolf’s head exploded off his arm, jaw blackened, body twitching on the ground. The backlash sent needles of pain stabbing up his nerves. His HP dropped another notch.
[HP: 27%]
[Mana: 11%]
He staggered, momentarily blind.
Something hit his side—a glancing boar charge—and he slammed into the Guardian’s corpse again, breath leaving his lungs in a ragged grunt.
He pushed off, rolled, barely avoiding teeth snapping where his face had been.
He was losing ground.
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Not in a dramatic, “I’m-suddenly-overwhelmed” way. In the slow, inevitable math of attrition.
His class was powerful. His stats were stupidly high for his level. His skills let him hit harder and move faster than these beasts had any right to expect.
But he was one person, already half-drained from a boss fight, with no healer, no Lumi, no team.
“Storm—” he tried, reaching for the familiar Surge.
Nothing answered.
A flicker appeared.
[Stormstep: Cooldown 01.9s]
[Mana: 9%]
Too many steps. Too many strikes.
He shifted to pure physical movement for a few exchanges, relying on raw Strength and Agility. He ducked, spun, let one wolf overcommit and used its weight to throw it into another’s path. He sidestepped a tusk and slammed his elbow into joint instead of his usual lightning-punch.
Not enough.
A wolf’s claws raked his thigh.
[HP: 19%]
Another’s teeth scraped his ribs, armor absorbing most but not all.
He jumped back, shoulders heaving, and realized he’d drifted too far from the Guardian’s body.
He stood in a shallow hollow of trampled earth, corpses ringed around him, panting beasts beyond them. The horde circled tighter, less space to move.
“Okay,” he said, voice raw. “Time for something bigger.”
He had one skill he hadn’t used in this fight yet.
Mostly because he was a little afraid of it.
It had started as a simple radial discharge, a crude way to shove things off him. A “get away” button that fried everything in immediate melee range, including his own nerves if he misjudged the output.
He’d refined it since then. Pushed it. Fed it Chaos without meaning to.
The System had noticed.
[Skill: Storm Pulse (Rank F, Uncommon)]
— Emit a short-range burst of lightning from your body
— Damage falls off with distance
— Minor self-damage if overcharged
He could do more than that now.
If he was willing to pay the price.
His lungs burned. His Vision blurred. The beasts’ eyes glowed in the dim light, breath fogging in the cooling air.
He looked at his HP.
[HP: 17%]
[Mana: 9%]
If he tried to ride out the horde the normal way, he’d eventually misstep. One claw too deep. One tusk too fast. One Stormstep too late.
He’d die tired, surrounded by bodies, having almost made it.
He hated “almost.”
“Fine,” he whispered. “Let’s see how far this goes.”
He planted his feet.
Lightning stirred in his gut.
Not a neat line, not a single channel.
A storm.
He dragged every loose scrap of mana he had left into his core, ignoring the way his nerves screamed, ignoring the System’s faint warning ping about strain.
He pictured the pulse he knew: a short, sharp ring blasting out a meter or two.
Then he imagined it bigger.
Not a ring.
A sphere.
He pulled at the Chaos residue hanging in the air, the thin film he’d left over the grove by killing the Guardian the way he had. Mana swirled, reluctant and eager at the same time.
“Storm Pulse,” he called.
The skill tried to form, the old way.
He shoved more into it.
The System paused.
He felt it—not as a voice, but as a framework flexing around him.
[Skill Evolution Possible.]
He leaned into it.
“Do it,” he growled.
The notification snapped into clarity even as the beasts began to lunge, sensing something was wrong.
[Skill Evolved: Storm Pulse → Chaotic Storm Pulse (Rank E, Rare)]
Chaotic Storm Pulse (Rank E, Rare)
— Emit a powerful omnidirectional burst of lightning and destabilized mana
— High damage in close radius, moderate at mid-range
— Inflicts temporary confusion on lesser creatures
— Severe backlash: kills all current mana flow, locks skill usage, and increases damage taken for a set duration
He didn’t have time to read the fine print.
The first wolf hit his outer perimeter.
He let go.
The world turned white-blue-black.
Electricity ripped out of him in all directions at once, not as neat arcs but as jagged, thrashing branches. Chaos rode the lightning, warping paths mid-flight, splitting a single bolt into three, then five, then ten.
For a heartbeat, he was the center of a sphere of annihilation.
Beasts screamed.
The nearest wolves simply ceased to function, bodies convulsing mid-leap as the charge cooked nerves and hearts. Tusks cracked as energy ran along bone and detonated inside skulls. The cats on the perimeter clung to trees that suddenly became conduits, their fur standing on end before they fell, smoking.
The ground itself scorched in a spiderweb pattern, arcs grounding into roots, stones, the Guardian’s corpse, anything that could take the discharge.
Color bled out of the grove, replaced by stark contrast: white lightning, black shadows.
Mike screamed too.
Not out loud.
Inside.
Every nerve from the soles of his feet to the base of his skull lit up like someone had poured raw current through them. He’d been careful before, always—Stormstrike controlled, Stormstep moderated.
This was not careful.
This was ripping the dam open.
His body arched of its own accord, muscles seizing. His vision overloaded, then went black for a second, then slammed back in.
When it was over, he was on his knees.
Smoke curled off his clothes.
The air stank of ozone and char.
Silence hit the grove like a physical thing.
He blinked, ears ringing.
Where the horde had been, there were bodies.
Dozens of them.
Wolves piled in collapsed heaps, eyes glassy. Boars sprawled, legs twisted. A ring of blackened ground radiated out from where he knelt, scorched earth marking the limit where the blast had done its worst.
Beyond that, at the far edge of the grove, a few shapes moved.
The survivors.
They staggered, limping, confused. Some shook their heads as if trying to clear water from their ears. Their eyes were unfocused, movements jerky.
[Secondary Effect: Lesser creatures afflicted with “Disorientation”]
They didn’t try to rush back in.
Whatever instinct had drawn them here was now screaming in the opposite direction.
One by one, they turned and slunk away into the trees, wounded and afraid.
He’d broken the horde.
He’d also broken himself.
System prompts cascaded.
[Tutorial Event “Howl of the Broken Grove” — Completed]
[Multiple Hostile Creatures defeated.]
[Experience gained.]
A heavier chime.
[Level Up!]
[Michael Storm — LVL 12 → LVL 13]
[Stat Points +12]
He barely felt the rush.
Another window opened promptly.
[Warning: Severe Skill Backlash]
[Status Applied: Overloaded Channels]
Your mana pathways have been pushed beyond safe capacity.
? Mana Regeneration: 0% (locked)
? Skill Usage: Disabled
? Incoming Damage: +100%
? Duration: 12:00:00
The timer started ticking down in his peripheral vision.
Twelve hours.
No skills. No mana. Double damage from anything that touched him.
He stared at the status for a long second.
“…that was stupid,” he croaked.
He tried to call Stormstrike out of reflex, just a little spark in his fingertips.
Nothing answered.
Not even a tingle.
He felt hollow. Not just tired—empty.
His HP bar hovered at:
[HP: 9%]
Right.
Standing was suddenly an advanced concept.
He pushed himself up anyway, gritting his teeth as his leg screamed and his ribs complained. His muscles felt like they’d been peeled and stapled back on wrong.
The grove wavered around him.
He forced his breathing into a slow, even rhythm. In. Out. Don’t panic. Assess.
Horde: broken.
Immediate threats: gone.
Long-term threats: everything.
He was a glass cannon with no ammo and a sign on his back that said KICK ME.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Think.”
He had options.
Option one: curl up next to the Guardian’s corpse, pass out, and hope nothing wandered in for twelve hours.
Terrible option.
Option two: start moving now, while the immediate area was empty, and try to reach the ravine before he collapsed. If he fell on the way, maybe someone would find the charred crater he’d leave.
Less terrible. Still bad.
Option three: die.
Not on the table.
He took one shaking step.
Then another.
His leg buckled on the third and he caught himself against the Guardian’s cooling flank, panting.
He remembered, belatedly, the miniboss core he’d pried out earlier. The weight of it against his side where he’d jammed it into his belt.
Why had he done that?
Inventory, a part of his brain whispered.
He blinked.
Right.
Subspace inventory.
The System had given him that back at level one, along with everyone else. A neat little pocket in nowhere that held items weightlessly, safe until called.
He’d been too busy not dying to use it properly.
“Open… inventory,” he wheezed.
A grid unfolded in his vision.
A few items blinked in the first slots: the Guardian’s core, divided bark plates, a tusker haunch from earlier, some miscellaneous monster bits. A separate tab sat to the side—Quest Rewards (Unclaimed)—with a flashing indicator.
“Idiot,” he told himself. “Could’ve dropped this stuff hours ago instead of dragging it like a pack mule.”
He pushed the thought aside.
“Store all,” he muttered.
The physical weight at his belt vanished as the System pulled everything into subspace. His body didn’t feel good, exactly, but the slight reduction in drag mattered.
He pushed off the Guardian and started limping toward the edge of the grove, picking a direction roughly opposite where the densest horde had clustered.
Each step was an argument.
His calf wound throbbed in time with his heartbeat. His back burned where the cat’s claws had torn skin. The burn from his own lightning sat deeper, a bone-deep ache that no potion could fully touch.
“Marina is going to kill me,” he muttered.
He checked the global Tutorial quest out of habit.
[Main Quest: Survive the Tutorial — Time Remaining: 09:31:07]
Less than ten hours now.
His personal self-destruct timer said 11:59:02 remaining.
“Great,” he said. “Perfect overlap.”
The forest beyond the grove was quieter than it had been before the event. The horde had pulled many things in; the blast had left even more dead or fleeing.
For now, the beasts gave the grove—and him—a wide berth.
He staggered onward, every sense straining even without mana, relying on old human instincts: sound, sight, smell.
A branch snapped somewhere far off.
He froze.
Nothing came closer.
He forced himself forward again.
Step by step, tree by tree, he pushed toward where he hoped the ravine lay relative to the grove. Without mana-enhanced Perception, without Lumi’s tiny weight on his shoulder, the forest felt bigger. Meaner.
He lost track of time.
Minutes blurred into an ugly, stretched-out smear of pain and stubbornness. His breath came in harsh pulls. He found himself counting steps just to keep moving.
Fifty.
Seventy.
Hundred.
He stopped when his vision darkened at the edges, leaned against a tree, and slid down to sit for a minute that tried to become an hour.
He couldn’t stay.
He pictured Arin’s face, set and steady, when she’d watched him leave.
Vex’s lopsided grin.
Marina’s eyes, sharp with worry.
Lumi’s tiny nose poking his chin.
“Move,” he told himself.
Eventually, he did.
He kept going until the trees around him started to look familiar—not because of mana patterns, but because of broken branches and faint scuff marks on the ground. Signs of their previous paths.
Relief loosened something tight in his chest.
He was close.
He took another step.
His foot caught on a root his tired brain hadn’t registered.
He pitched forward.
His hands came up too slow to fully catch himself. He hit the ground hard enough to knock what little breath he had left out of him. Pain flared in a chorus across his body.
For a moment, he stayed there.
Face in the dirt. Breathing shallow. Status window quietly ticking his Overloaded Channels timer down from eleven hours and some long minutes.
He could not move another kilometer like this.
He might not be able to move another ten meters.
“Help,” he thought, hating it.
The Tutorial didn’t care.
The System didn’t care.
But his team might.
He struggled onto his side, then onto his back, and rolled until he was propped awkwardly against the base of a tree.
His throat felt like sandpaper.
When he spoke, his voice came out cracked and low.
“Party… message,” he rasped.
A faint interface flickered—separate from mana. Pure System UI. At least that didn’t rely on his burned-out channels.
[Party Chat — Michael Storm]
Text Input: _
He focused, forced the words together.
Still alive. Horde event cleared.
Coming back. Bad shape.
No mana, no skills for 12 hours.
If I’m not there in… two hours… come looking. Or don’t. You’ll smell the crater.
He almost deleted the last line.
He left it.
He hit send.
The confirmation blinked.
He let his head loll back against the bark, eyes closing for just a second.
He didn’t sleep.
He didn’t dare.
He just breathed. One. Two. Three.
Then he gritted his teeth and forced his legs to move again.
Somewhere not too far away, in a ravine that now smelled like smoke and blood and cooked tusker, three notifications pinged almost simultaneously.
Arin froze mid-sentence.
Marina nearly dropped the vial she’d been inspecting.
Vex swore softly.
Lumi’s ears pricked, tail fluffing, eyes locking on the direction of Mike’s message as if she could see through the stone.
The stormbringer was coming back.
Broken.
And he’d done something very, very stupid.
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