Bog Standard Isekai

They raced up the stairs, and he used individual threads to give personalized instructions to Vitor, Rhun, Bedelia, and Bia. The main message was the same to all of them. “The goal is to distract and confuse them. We just need to break down their teamwork and the Sentinels will be able to finish them off. I’m going to cover you in a Mirror Image of an Easterling. Stick with conventional weapons until we’re discovered.”

To Marksi, he said, “Stay hidden, and then take a shot with your laser if someone needs help.”

Brin placed his illusions, imbuing them with [Know What’s Wyrd]. Yes, I’m one of you. You know me. He didn’t understand these creatures well enough to make a compelling case, so he hoped this would be enough.

Then they ran out of stairs and burst onto the sixtieth floor. The great armored Sentinels were angels of destruction, meting out incredible violence against the swarming Easterlings, but the blue-shelled creatures fought in perfect synchronicity, creating a stalemate. None of the Easterlings gave Brin’s crew a second glance if they noticed them at all.

Brin had them split up, and the Easterlings accepted them into their ranks. Before any of them could be targeted by the Sentinels, Brin sent the command. “Now!”

He changed the glass head of his staff into a spearpoint, and then thrust it into the back shell of an Easterling, and it scraped the hard shell without going through. The Easterling turned back for a half-second to yell at him in annoyance, and then turned around to face the Sentinels again.

Brin pumped glass Mana into the weapon until it was fit to burst, and swung down on the back of the Easterling.

The hit was jarring and sent painful vibrations up his arm, even through the protection of his armor, but it broke through the shell. The Easterling screamed, a sound crossed between the clicking of a typewriter and the howling of a dog, and turned to swing its scythe at him. Even now, Brin sensed the hesitation it had to attack a fellow Easterling, and Brin parried and slammed the spike into the Easterling twice more. It sagged, and fell to the ground, tan and greenish fluids oozing from all three wounds.

Bia hadn’t managed to kill one, though she’d taken off the antennae of three different Easterlings, while both Vitor and Bedelia had downed their targets and Rhun had wounded another. Now all the Easterlings were yelling in alarm. The perfect time for Brin to press the advantage.

He cast Mirror Images everywhere, altering slight details of the Easterlings like giving them few spikes or too many mandibles, all along with the message. This isn’t right. This is an imposter. This is a danger to you!

While he fought, Brin kept his Morphic Shield in the shape of an actual shield, and floated it around invisibly to try to protect his friends, but he didn’t need to bother. The Easterlings wouldn't be baited into attacking each other. They must’ve had a really strong taboo about harming their own kind, because even with all Brin was doing, the Easterlings defended but didn’t fight back.

One of the black-clad Easterlings shouted orders, and they spread out through the room, far enough apart so that they couldn’t accidentally hit each other. Now when Brin’s team approached one of the Easterlings, they were quickly outed as an imposter. Brin tried anyway, hoping his spear could hit the enemy before it realized he was a fake, but then a strange kind of darkness fell and the Easterling that had been mere feet away from him was suddenly too far away to reach with his spear. He launched a swarm of glass bullets, but the distance was so far that the Easterling had time to see them coming and dodge.

None of his teammates had better luck, but they didn’t need to. The damage was done. Without their perfect teamwork, the Easterlings started to fall to the Sentinels one at a time. Thirty quickly became twenty, and he could tell that the rest were close to panic.

“What’s wrong?” shouted a human voice. And there, somehow, was Fowler again. Completely fresh and undamaged from their last bout.

An Easterling caster shouted something, and Fowler nodded. He drew an Eveladis from his dimensional bag, and unfortunately, he was no fool. He broke off the cap with his hands, spilling out the revealing light, and then threw the bottle and shattered it with a kick. The force pushed the potion’s contents quickly into the room.

Bia was revealed first, but she dodged back before any of the Easterlings could respond. The others were revealed shortly after. Rhun got the worst, as he was quickly surrounded by Easterlings, but his armor held against their scythes. Marksi cleared a path by roasting an Easterling with a well-placed laser, and then Rhun was free.

Brin had them group up at the back of the room, near the elevator doors. He didn’t like their odds if all the Easterlings attacked, but the Easterlings were still more focused on the Sentinels.

Fowler ran through the Easterling ranks and rushed one of the Sentinels like a madman. He dodged two swift punches from the Sentinel, and struck with three quick slashes of his saber. To Brin’s horror, the third slash actually left a deep cut on the Sentinel’s arm.

Fowler rushed inside the Sentinel’s guard and slashed through its belly. It must’ve hit something important, because the golem slowed to a stop.

Things might have gone really bad for Brin’s friends, but rather than move onto the next Sentinel, Fowler darted past and into the cellblock. He carved through the transparent wall in four quick swings and ran out of sight.

“Give them everything you got!” shouted Brin. Now that he didn’t need to pretend to be an Easterling, he could go all out.

He threw balls of molten glass that stuck onto the Easterlings and cooked them in their shells while they screamed in pain. The first time he’d fought these things they’d seemed so silent, but he was really getting them to use their voices today.

He wasted a bit of Mana trying to burn through one of their shells with a Fire magic, but they were too tough for that. He wondered if he’d be able to laser through their shells, but not with the Eveladis still in the air.

This story originates from NovelPhoenix. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The Easterlings fought frantically, letting their scythes fly. Brin’s floating shield was near useless predicting where they would hit, so it was a good thing his team had their own defenses. Rhun blocked every spell large enough to see coming with his shield, and his armor protected him against the rest. Bia was untouchably quick, and fought them hand-to-hand all while dodging scythe-slashes that disobeyed the rules of time and space. Bedelia laughed as she charged madly from one Easterling to the next, shattering their hard shells with her hammer. Vitor’s sand shield perfectly protected him from every blow, and he fought in a cloud of stinging wind.

Calixtum had come along, and was doing nothing but watching the entire adventure with wide curious eyes. But then a random scythe shot carved a gouge in his arm, and he rapidly darkened to red and charged into the fray.

For all their excellence, Brin kept them together and fought defensively, never pressing forward even if the Easterlings left an opening he favored caution rather than maximizing their kills. The black-clothed Easterlings still made him nervous with the way they could randomly bend reality, and there were three Easterlings with spears and orbs. Those didn’t have to strike in a straight line; they could stab the air anywhere in the room, and the spear would come at Brin or one of his friends from the east. Always from the east. It seemed like that should be an easy thing to guard against, but they always came at the worst possible moments.

Brin didn’t need to press. Between Brin’s team on one side and the Sentinels on the other, the pressure was too much. The Easterlings were close to breaking, [Battle Sense] was sure.

There was a crash, and the lights flickered. Half of the remaining Sentinels broke off and ran further into the prison. That eased the pressure on the Easterlings, and now more of them were turning their attention back to Brin.

Tower message. You have been granted full authority over this level. You are the designated Warden on site.

“No, I don’t want… oh.” The barrier and wall near the guard station was a transparent material, but Brin had assumed it wasn’t glass because his magic hadn’t resonated with it at all. But that must have been a trick of Authority. Now that the Tower had turned the room over to him, he could feel it. It was glass. Really strong glass, too. The best of its enchantments were destroyed when Fowler had broken through, but the base quality was still better than he could make.

He grabbed it all, and in moments, there was now an army of Mirror Men supporting the Sentinels. Just like that, the tides had turned back in his favor.

The Easterling casters revealed a few new tricks. A couple of Brin’s Mirror Men lost power, and there was nothing he could do to animate them again. A few of them were trapped in place, not able to approach any of the Easterlings no matter how fast they ran. But the rest followed his commands, guided by [Battle Sense] in a way that best supplemented the Sentinels.

Tower Message. Flee.

Flee from what? Weren’t they winning? He wished he could make Invisible Eyes. Fighting without seeing the entire battlefield was a fool’s game. He had to guide all his Mirror Men with his actual physical eyes, which wasn’t an easy feat, and that meant he almost missed the movement from deeper inside the prison.

A man, not Fowler, with shaggy hair and a long beard, poked his head around a corner, and then back again. A prisoner. Fowler had set the monsters free.

But then what happened to those Sentinels? There was no way Fowler had beat them all on his own. That was impossible.

Impossible or not, Fowler casually rounded the corner, chatting with a sleepy-eyed woman in a woolen jumpsuit. “--to join my crew.”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I’d love to.”

“Then clean up in here, and we’ll talk about getting you out of here,” said Fowler.

“Yes, captain,” the woman said, who was echoed by most of the others.

More people were behind them. They were ordinary-looking folk for the most part. No one would ever guess that these were some of humanity’s most dangerous monsters. [Wyrdic Inspect] didn’t give Brin a single one of their Classes or Skills. The Wyrd side had a lot to tell him, but nothing he couldn’t already have guessed. They were a pretty nasty group of individuals.

That still didn’t explain where those Sentinels had gone, but then the last prisoner turned the corner. She was one of the spiky-looking Easterlings, was larger than any Easterling he’d ever seen, and unlike the humans, there were clear wounds across her body. She had gouges in her reflective blue shell.. Three of her arms were either missing or maimed, and she only had one hand remaining.

Apart from his appearance, there was a weight to her that none of the other Easterlings carried. He could feel her in the Wyrd, even before using [Wyrdic Inspect], and when he did use it, he felt her authority and power like a wave. She was strong, and the other Easterlings here would die for her without hesitation.

To his surprise, parts of her status were open to [Inspect] as well.

Knight of the Green Mother

Fowler casually tossed a potion behind his back, and she caught it with her mandibles, considering it. That was a Healing Potion. Sancta Solia, he’d probably stolen that off Elpidio.

Brin slapped the elevator controls, and the doors behind him opened. The Tower had been ready. “We’re backing off.”

The sight of their enemy trying to withdraw brought the wrath of the Easterlings, and a storm of spells and scythe-strikes followed them into the elevator. The only thing that saved them from the furious assault was the fact that the narrow doorway meant that Rhun could block most of them with his towershield while Brin spread out his Morphic Shield to cover the rest.

The elevator doors closed, blocking off the rest of the attacks, and Brin let out a sigh of relief. He didn't like his chances with that thing, especially not with the Eveladis in the air.

Looking at his group, they'd all come out pretty well. Bia was as quick as she'd bragged and didn't have a scratch on her. Rhun was also unmarred because of his Class, and also the Commendation of Readiness that made their armor more durable based on their Vitality. Brin's armor had a few noticeable scratches, but nothing that would harm its effectiveness. Marksi looked happy, and was poised to strike, like he was ready to go another round and hoped the Easterlings would give him another crack at them. Vitor also mde it out without a scratch, though Calixtum was nowhere to be seen. Bedelia was the most ragged of the group. She had several open, bleeding wounds, and her clothing was artfully sliced away in key areas like the heroin of a PG-13 action movie.

Seeing that they were all safe, he let himself get distracted with System messages. He'd killed two Easterlings, both [Raiders], though he'd wounded a dozen more. That was enough.

He didn't get time to do more than glimpse at the messages. Only a half-second after their elevator had started moving, there was a bang, and the door exploded. Rhun took the brunt of the blast, but Brin felt himself get pushed into the back wall by the blow. He was up and ready with his spear to push whatever it was back, but when he got his bearings he saw that no one was charging in. The [Knight of the Green Mother] picked up another broken piece of one of the Sentinels and tossed it towards them. Rhun blocked it, but the force knocked him off his feet.

The elevator rose back up the two feet they'd traveled, putting them even with the prison floor again.

"Tower, what are you doing! Get us out!"

Tower Message. Interference detected. Elevator controls have been corrupted.

Brin didn't have time to guess which Easterling or human had messed up the elevator, he just needed it to move. Bia reacted first. She jumped to the control panel and hit it with [Kick]. That was a [Rogue] Skill he hadn't seen in a while–it completely canceled spells or Skills.

All magical power fled from the elevator's enchantments, and this time, there was no gradual acceleration. They fell.