A veritable typhoon devastated the entire compound as the downdraft of Chinook's rotors turned the rain into horizontal needles, when Grumps hit the ground running. Seven feet of orc muscle moved with surprising speed for something that size, boots churning mud as he crossed the distance to Building One's entrance in a dead sprint. The ballistic shield—four feet of ceramic composite plating that weighed north of sixty pounds—was held at the ready, angled slightly forward to deflect incoming fire.

  Behind him, the assault element followed in a tight stack, twelve operators moving as one organism. No wasted movement. No hesitation. No talking. Just pure tactical efficiency born from thousands of hours drilling room entries until muscle memory took over.

  Two operators peeled off from the stack without a word, sprinting past Grumps to slap a doubled-up breaching charge onto the reinforced door. So much det cord outlined the entire frame that the explosion wasn’t just going to knock the door off its hinges; the entire sections of the wall were most likely going with it. As the breachers twisted and pulled on the fuse to ignite it, they sprinted back to the stack as fast as they could before they turned into pink mist.

  Grumps was already in position at the predesignated Minimum Safe Distance (MSD), his shield up, blocking the violent forces about to explode toward them. The assault element stacked tight behind him, each operator placing a hand on the shoulder of the man in front. Heads lowered in unison, helmets angled down to absorb the blast and catch any fragments.

  Once that door was gone, everyone knew what came next. No commands needed. No callouts. Just execution.

  Ten seconds… Five… Three… Two… One…

  BOOM.

  The explosion slammed into Grumps's shield with a pressure wave that would've knocked a normal man on his ass, but the orc leaned into it, his boots staying planted as the door launched backward into the building and crashed somewhere inside.

  Grumps didn't charge. He didn't rush into the unknown. Instead, he executed a textbook Step Center, slamming his boot down directly on the threshold. He became the plug, the barricade, and the bait all at once. With his shield pointed at the door and his hand gripping the demolition sledgehammer so tightly he thought the metal might warp.

  This was one of the trickier parts of this new, rather bespoke entry style. He had to keep his shield positioned so no one on his team could be hit by incoming fire, while keeping his weapon ready to come down if any cheeky warrior burst out and took the fight to the team.

  And then his world turned into an absolute cacophony.

  The cartel members inside had more or less barricaded the door, set up makeshift fortifications, and positioned themselves behind cover as they lay in wait. The moment the door blew, they opened up with everything they had—AK-47s, AR-15s, illegally modified Glocks… Anything that could spit lead was spraying out of that doorway like a firehose.

  Rounds hammered into Grumps's shield. The sound was a continuous, deafening roar, like gravel poured into a jet engine, but the custom armored plate turned shield did its job. Laid with level IV ballistic ceramic, the shield absorbed every bullet. There was no spalling, no ricochets. Every bullet was simply absorbed into the face of the shield before slamming into a steel plate.

  Any normal ballistic shield would have immediately turned into confetti, but Grumps custom made piece of art, withstood the punishment as he stomped his feet down and rooted himself like a brick wall.

  Grumps stood like a statue in a hurricane, absorbing the hate as if he were just holding an umbrella on a particularly rainy day. But this wasn't passivity; it was geometry. Absorbing incoming fire was only one of the reasons the assault team chose to enter this way. The real goal was to act as a bullet magnet and narrow the fatal funnel into obtuse angles.

  By holding the dead center of the doorway, Grumps forced every muzzle in that room to converge on him. He was the singularity. And while the enemy fixated on the unkillable wall in the middle, they lost track of the edges.

  And with that, he deliberately stepped off to the left, creating the perfect calculated gap.

  A working gap.

  "Working left," Grumps grunted over the gunfire in rough English before pivoting.

  Behind him, two operators moved in perfect lockstep, glued to the orc’s massive shadow. It was a slow, deliberate grind as the two shooters sliced the pie from the outside in, exploiting the angles Grumps gave them. As the orc shifted his shield an inch to the left, he exposed a sliver of the room’s interior.

  The shooter on Grumps’s hip saw a gunman hiding behind a flipped table in the deep corner, hastily trying to reload his weapon. Unfortunately for the Cartel gunman, tables didn’t stop bullets. The operator didn't need to expose his body; he just leaned into the gap Grumps had created and squeezed the trigger.

  A hail of suppressed shots rang out from both sides of the massive shield, silencing muzzle flashes in different angles around the room as the operators worked.

  The stack flowed with Grumps as one lethal, fluid whole, dissecting the room, slice by bloody slice. This tactic was layered to hell. Through trial and error, they learned never to be in the room with anyone who could use any anomalous ability, whether that was an asshole with an axe or a mumbling magic caster. It was best to simply work from outside and do surgical work from the margins while baiting the magic and the melee into the shield.

  Continuing the dance, Grumps shifted his weight, rotating the shield to the right side of the frame, panning his cover like a tank turret. Once again, the room lit up like a Christmas tree as his shield absorbed more fire, but that was too soon silenced. Without this orc's immense strength and almost cartoonish size, such a maneuver would be impossible. No normal human could ever hope to swing a literal panel from a goddamn tank around to provide mobile cover for infantry.

  But having Grumps was a game-changer. They could hand him a 200-lb piece of metal, throw some ceramic on it so it wouldn’t ricochet, and bam. They had a surefire way to manipulate entryways and fatal funnels to create working space for shooters.

  It was a slow, grinding death for the people inside. They were trapped in a room with a monster they couldn't kill, watching as they were picked apart by ghosts they couldn't see.

  But as they slowly and methodically gunned down the defenders, something changed.

  Sparks flew deeper into the building as they continued firing at the silhouettes. Bright flashes lit up the smoke and dust still hanging thick in the air from the breach as bullets ricocheted, but the suppressed rifles kept barking. The shooters knew exactly what they were hitting, and they didn’t want to let up in case someone got cheeky. They kept firing, hammering into the silhouettes until their weapons went dry and the dust started to settle.

  It was then that they saw the light-blue interlocking hexagons forming a geometric hemisphere. It wasn’t glowing in a way that would be obvious to the human eye, but there was an obvious, strange, energetic light to it that radiated and distorted the atmosphere around it.

  A magic barrier.

  "Sparky up!" One operator immediately barked as the violence came to an abrupt halt.

  Coming up from Behind the assault element was Kaeth, the Sun Elf mage defector. With a wicked-looking bladestaff that had a truly massive focusing stone embedded into the base of the blade, he whispered words that made the air taste almost like static and crushed chalk.

  The words were brief and brutal. Nothing like the usual sing-song he and his people usually spoke. These were violent words of power, and they twisted reality just by being spoken.

  Kaeth thrust the bladestaff forward, the focusing stone flaring with vicious crimson light, and from its tip erupted a spike of pure malice. A wickedly sharp crystalline bolt that radiated in a way that the thing seemed as if it had been carved from concentrated hatred.

  “Up!” Kaeth shouted back, his face set in pure concentration.

  Everyone, including Grumps, twisted out of the way, and with a horrendous crash, the bolt of energy screamed through the air at impossible speed, tearing through the doorway. The crack of the sound barrier shattered the glass within the structure itself and created a vortex of smoke before slamming into the barrier.

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  slammed into the barrier with a sound like shattering glass mixed with tearing metal.

  For a split second, physics seemed to… just break. The crimson spike didn’t detonate on impact. It didn’t bounce off or even break. Instead, it hovered there, suspended in defiance of gravity, its tip pressed against the invisible surface of the hexagonal ward. It spun with a sickening, nauseating velocity, boring into the defensive magic like a diamond-tipped drill bit hitting hardened steel.

  The sound was an acoustic atrocity. It was as if a billion glass fingernails dragged down a chalkboard the size of a stadium. It was a frequency that made teeth ache in the gums and caused everyone’s to vibrate in their own skulls. The air inside the hallway shimmered, heat waves distorting the view as the spike pushed harder, the friction between the two opposing magical forces creating a blinding white halo at the point of contact until the bolt simply stopped.

  It sat there suspended in the air for just a second before violently shattering.

  Grumps had seen this before. He slid back into position just as an insane explosion of crimson energy showered the entire interior with tiny, wickedly glowing splinters. Thousands of them peppered everything: walls, floor, ceiling, Grump's shield, people… The sound was like a volley of whistling wind chimes made of razors, cutting through the air as they spread throughout the room.

  And then the screaming started.

  Whether they were the cartel members who'd already been neutralized or those hiding in the corners, everyone inside the building was pierced by this magic. Those squirming and moaning on the ground suddenly found new ways to suffer, as splinters didn't just hit them; they pinned them to the floors or walls.

  Luckily, the spell was designed specifically to prevent overpenetration, because the moment they punched through the prefabricated building, they evaporated into nothingness. Grump’s, however, was less lucky, as he scowled deeply. His shield took dozens of impacts, punching right through the ceramic and steel exterior, with a few unluckily going right through his arm. Malevolent light across its already-damaged surface.

  However, the iron Orc still stood there menacingly, holding his shield up despite his wounds.

  Kaeth let out a throaty, frustrated growl as he peered back into the room to find that the barrier was still holding. "I can't break it!" he snarled. "It's layered!"

  Everything shifted to automatic at that point. No discussion. No deliberation. Just an immediate tactical adjustment.

  Grumps backed up three steps, his shield still raised and covering, but creating space. The shooters who'd been working angles around him immediately disengaged, flowing back to either side of the destroyed doorframe. Within seconds, the entire 12-man entry team had reconfigured—stacking on opposite sides of the entrance in a more traditional assault posture.

  One operator, positioned behind the point man, dug into his pocket and pulled a flashbang from his kit—a nine-banger, the kind that would detonate nine times in rapid succession. He crouched to a low level and casually tossed it through the destroyed doorway.

  For a few seconds, the thing bounced around before letting off nine strobing and deafening blasts, turning anyone who wasn’t wearing any ear protection or behind something into a disoriented mess.

  The operators flooded in immediately after the last detonation—flowing through the fatal funnel from both sides simultaneously, weapons up, moving fast but controlled, scanning for threats.

  The room was a charnel house.

  Those who weren’t killed immediately let out low, horrible dying moans as several individuals were pinned to the walls or support structures by the magical shrapnel, like insects in a collection. Bodies hung at grotesque angles, held up by the slowly dissipating red spikes.

  Anyone who was still alive wasn’t for long, as the entry time flooded through the lobby of this now-destroyed room, putting a round in the heads of everyone in it. Whether perfectly still, groaning, or twitching, each body got a confirmation shot, as operators chose not to take any chances, especially when it came to reports of the walking dead.

  But there, in the back of the room, behind that shimmering barrier of interlocking hexagons now fully visible without the smoke and chaos obscuring it, stood three mages and a lone warrior. Their hands were raised, their eyes tightly closed, and their mouths moving in silent incantation as they maintained the defensive ward Kaeth's spike had failed to penetrate.

  The warrior stood in front of them, sword drawn, glaring at them with malicious intent with his short, blood red hair.

  Their primary target

  Lysandra gave the man a vicious glare the instant she flowed through the doorway. Almost instantly, the professional operator vanished, replaced by something far more primal. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl that was more menacing than human as she locked eyes with the red-headed elf.

  He was tall—taller than most elves—with features that would've been handsome if not for the expression of barely-controlled fury twisting them. In his hands, he held a longsword with a black iron hilt that was ornamental and almost holy, but the blade itself was something else entirely. White metal—not silver, not steel, but something that caught the light and held it, creating an almost ethereal white glow along its length.

  The operators kept their weapons trained on the mages, waiting for the barrier to drop at any second. But they held fire. This thing wasn’t going to drop unless the mages wanted it to, or something broke it.

  Grumps ducked through the entrance, shield still raised despite its damage, blood dripping to the floor. The giant immediately walked up to the barrier and took up position, staring menacingly at the warrior, his sledgehammer dancing in his other hand. He'd done this dance several times already and was just waiting for the moment Lysandra did her thing.

  Lysandra stalked around the barrier for a moment, surviving the carnage as the spikes fully dissipated and the bodies they were holding toppled to the floor. Her hand went leisurely to the rifle sling across her chest, and she gingerly lifted it over her head. Almost tauntingly, the woman dropped her weapon to the floor with a clatter that seemed impossibly loud during the sudden tactical pause.

  She had other plans for what was to happen next.

  Everyone braced. The operators. The mages. Even the red-headed elf behind the barrier tensed, his sword coming up into a guard position.

  There were no words. No chanting. No focusing object pulled from a pouch or waved dramatically through the air. Lysandra's remaining eye ignited with deep violet light that seemed to burn from somewhere inside her skull. And she charged. Her right index finger, extended as she ran, began to glow with the same impossible radiance.

  In the blink of an eye, Lysandra closed the distance from the front of the building to the back, extending her arm and leading with her finger like a spear point. Time seemed to slow for everyone as they watched her finger, which was glowing with a strange violet complexity, simply poke the magical ward. Not punched. Not struck. Just poked, the way someone might jab an annoying person in the chest when irritated.

  The sound of shattering glass echoed through the room, resonating at almost a sing-song frequency as the magic was simply… undone. The interlocking geometric patterns fragmented, twisted apart, and dissipated into nothingness. The magical energy stored in the hexagons floated in the air like bubbles before hissing and popping.

  The mages' eyes widened. Never in their lives had they seen or even felt anything like this. At first, they thought it was corruption, but their concentration shattered, indicating their magic was simply… turned off as a strange, primordial energy overwhelmed their senses and their ward.

  Even though the mages were in shock, the operators weren’t, and they didn't waste a second.

  Suppressed gunfire erupted from multiple angles. Rifles barked from every direction. The mages barely had time to register that their protection was gone before high-velocity rounds punched through their robes, flesh, and any magical defenses they might have had. They dropped like puppets with cut strings, and their chanting mouths fell silent.

  At the same time, Lysandra kicked off into another maddening dash. Her target’s eyes went impossibly wide, unable to process what was happening before he had to defend himself against this mad woman. Training, desperation, or pure survival instinct took over. His sword came around in a vicious upward slash aimed at Lysandra's torso, the white-bladed weapon moving with a speed impossible for any normal human to achieve.

  Lysandra's left arm shot forward to intercept the blade with that strange shield strapped to her forearm. The thing wasn't designed like a traditional ballistic shield. There was no flat surface to hide behind, no large surface area to protect the torso. Instead, there were two forward-extending four-inch prongs, two inches thick, jutting out from where it attached to her hand.

  It was hard to tell what it was for, but that was soon clear as Lysandra thrust it forward, catching and trapping her opponent's blade. The white sword slammed between those forks, letting out a truly horrendous sound.

  Metal on metal screeched so loudly it sounded as if a train had derailed in the room itself. The white blade bit deep between the shield, traveling much farther than any blade should, but stopped just before it hit Lysandra’s knuckles. The force of the strike sent bone-crushing vibrations up Lysandra's arm, but she held fast, catching the weapon as if her shield had been designed for exactly this purpose, then twisted her wrist, yanking it from the man’s hands.

  The red-headed elf's expression shifted from confusion to dawning horror, but Lysandra didn't give him time to react. Her right arm was already cocked back, her entire body coiling like a spring. Every ounce of her arcane-empowered strength channeled into what was to come next.

  After her foot came down, Lysandra leveraged her body, twisting mid-run, then threw the most vicious overhand punch she could muster straight into his face.

  The impact was catastrophic. Lysandra’s fist connected with her victim’s left eye socket, producing a sound that was part crunch, part wet snap. It was the kind of noise that made everyone in the room instinctively wince, regardless of what they were doing, as the red-headed elf's head snapped back with whiplash force, sending his body rocketing through the doorway as if he had been launched from a cannon.

  Sending the man into the next room with a crash that suggested he'd gone through furniture—or possibly a wall—Lysandra's hand went to her push-to-talk. "Try not to kill the piece of filth that's running out into the open. He's mine." Her voice came out in a growl that made it clear she was done being professional.

  Lysandra reached down with her right hand and gripped the white sword's hilt, still trapped in her shield. With a sharp twist and pull, she wrenched it free. Another horrible screech echoed out, but it was loose now, and it was hers.

  With a flip of the quick release, the now mangled shield on her forearm came free and clanged to the floor with a heavy thud. It had done its job, and now she had something better.

  A huff of hate left Lysandra’s mouth as she stepped through the doorway with the white blade in hand, following her prey into whatever room she had sent him through.