Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 485: Baptism by fire: The Faction way

The apes hit them like a wave.

No coordination, no formation, just pure aggression backed by numbers and those crude weapons that shouldn’t have worked but did. Diana’s dead zone caught the first molten blast mid-air, freezing it in space like soone had paused reality. The superheated energy hung there, suspended, while apes swung down from branches overhead screaming that chanical-howl sound that set teeth on edge.

Valencia rolled left, her rifle coming up to track one of the creatures. She fired three shots center mass. The ape jerked with each impact but didn’t fall, just shifted its grip on a branch and launched itself at another recruit.

"They’re not going down!" Valencia shouted, firing again.

Sophie’s plasma blades ignited with that distinctive hum, twin weapons materializing in her hands. The blades were maybe two feet long, pure energy contained in a shaped field, glowing blue-white hot enough to cut through most materials like paper. An ape dropped from above, bone club raised. Sophie pivoted, bringing her left blade up in an arc that caught the creature across the torso.

The plasma cut through flesh and bone with barely any resistance. The ape split in two, both halves hitting the ground in a spray of blood and internal organs.

Sophie was already moving, tracking another target, her blades leaving trails of light as she cut through the air. Another ape swung at her with what looked like a ribcage fashioned into a cage around a glowing core. She deflected the attack with her right blade, then drove her left through the creature’s skull. It dropped instantly.

But the first ape she’d cut in half was moving.

The two pieces of its body were sliding back together, flesh reconnecting like soone was rewinding footage. Within seconds, the wounds had sealed completely. The ape stood up, grabbed its dropped weapon, and charged back into the fight.

"What the hell?!" Sophie stared at the regenerating creature, her mind trying to process what she’d just seen.

Diana had three apes frozen in her dead zone, their montum completely nullified. They hung in the air mid-lunge, unable to move forward or back, caught in the field of absolute stillness her ability created. More apes were swinging around the periter, smart enough to avoid the obvious danger area, coming at the team from multiple angles.

One of the recruits, Marcus, had enhanced strength as his ability. He caught an ape mid-swing, his hands closing around its throat. He twisted, heard the neck snap, felt the body go limp. He dropped the corpse and turned to face the next threat.

Behind him, the dead ape’s head straightened with that wet cracking sound. Its eyes opened. It stood up.

"They’re not staying dead!" Marcus shouted, backpedaling as the ape he’d just killed ca at him again.

The recruits were grouping up, backs to each other, trying to maintain so kind of defensive formation. But the apes kept coming, kept attacking, and every ti they put one down, it would get back up within seconds.

Chen, still covered in filth from the earlier incident, had so kind of kinetic absorption ability. He caught an ape’s club swing on his forearm, his power absorbing the impact, then released it back in a punch that sent the creature flying into a tree. The impact should have killed it. The ape slid down the trunk, leaving a sar of blood, then stood up and started climbing again.

"This is insane!" Chen ducked under another swing. "What are these things?!"

Seraleth had been hanging back, observing, her seven-foot fra making her an obvious target but none of the apes had engaged her directly yet. She watched how they moved, how they coordinated despite their apparent animal nature, how they used their crude weapons with more skill than random beasts should possess.

Then an ape launched itself at Valencia from behind, bone spear raised to impale.

Seraleth moved.

She covered maybe ten feet in a single stride, her elven physiology giving her speed and grace that human awakened abilities couldn’t match. Her fist ca up, aid at the airborne ape’s center mass.

THOOM—BOOM!

The impact sounded wrong. Not just the aty thud of flesh on flesh, but sothing else. A second impact, displaced in ti by maybe a fraction of a second. The air itself seed to ripple outward from her fist in a visible shockwave.

The ape exploded backward, its body traveling maybe twenty feet before it crashed into a tree trunk hard enough to splinter the wood. It slid down, leaving a crater in the bark, its chest caved in so severely that ribs were visible through torn flesh.

"Thank you—" Valencia started.

The ape stood up. Its chest reford, bones pushing back into place, flesh knitting together. Within ten seconds, it was whole again.

"You’re welco," Seraleth finished dryly. "Though it seems my assistance was temporary."

More apes were closing in. Sophie counted at least twenty still active, with more screaming in the trees that suggested reinforcents were coming. Her plasma blades carved through three in rapid succession, her movents precise and controlled. Each strike was lethal. Each target went down.

But each one got back up.

Diana expanded her dead zone, catching five apes at once in the field of zero montum. They froze mid-swing, mid-jump, mid-scream as she also worked on halting their tabolism and blood flow. She held them there, her concentration intense, sweat beading on her forehead from the effort of maintaining such a large field.

"I can’t hold them forever!" Diana gritted out. "Soone figure out how to kill these things!"

An ape with a skull-club weapon rushed at Diana from outside her field. Seraleth intercepted, her hand shooting out to grab the creature’s face. She lifted it off the ground one-handed, the ape thrashing and clawing, then slamd it down onto the forest floor with force that created a small crater.

Thoom~Boom!!!

The double-impact of her strike made the ground shudder again. The ape’s skull cracked, brain matter leaking from the fissures. It twitched once, then went still.

In truth, besides her elven physiology—being eight tis stronger than an average awakened human—Seraleth had an ability. Echo Strike. When she hit sothing, the impact generated a secondary shockwave that followed milliseconds after the first. The initial strike carried her physical strength. The echo carried the displaced force, hitting the sa spot twice in rapid succession. It was devastating against armor, against bone, against anything that could withstand a single impact but not two in the exact sa location before the material could distribute the stress.

Seraleth watched it for a mont, making sure it stayed down. The skull was healing, slowly, flesh creeping across the exposed bone.

Then she noticed sothing glowing through the torn flesh of its torso. A beast core, pulsing with energy, embedded deep in the chest cavity.

Her eyes narrowed. She’d seen beast cores before, understood their function, knew they were the source of a beast’s power and vitality. But she’d never seen cores regenerate a body this aggressively.

Another ape attacked her from the side. She pivoted, drove her fist into its chest with both the primary and echo impact. The force was trendous, concentrated on a single point. Her fist punched through the ribcage entirely, erged from the back covered in blood and tissue.

And gripped in her hand was a beast core.

The ape went limp instantly. No regeneration, no healing, just dead weight hanging from her arm. The core pulsed in her grip, still warm, still containing residual energy.

"The cores!" Seraleth shouted, pulling her arm free and letting the corpse drop. "Remove their cores and they stop regenerating!"

Sophie processed that information in seconds.

She looked at the apes Diana was holding in stasis, at the ones she’d cut down that were already getting back up, at the crude weapons they carried with cores embedded in them.

"The cores are keeping them alive!" Sophie shouted to the recruits. "You have to destroy the cores or remove them completely!"

"How?!" Valencia demanded, putting three more bullets into an ape that just kept coming. "We’re not all super-strong like her!"

Diana released her dead zone, letting the five apes fall. Before they could recover, Sophie was there, plasma blades driving through chest cavities with surgical precision. She angled her strikes to pierce the cores themselves, the superheated plasma causing them to crack and shatter. The apes dropped and stayed down.

"Work together!" Diana commanded, her tactical mind engaging. "One person pins them, another goes for the core!"

The recruits adapted fast. Marcus grabbed an ape in a bear hug, holding it still while Chen drove his fist into its chest with kinetic-enhanced force. His hand punched through, grabbed the core, and pulled on it. The ape went limp.

Valencia and another recruit coordinated shots, one aiming for limbs to disable movent, the other targeting the chest area repeatedly until the core cracked under the accumulated damage.

Sophie moved through the battle like a dancer, her plasma blades leaving trails of light. She didn’t bother cutting limbs anymore, just drove her weapons through chest cavities, piercing cores with every strike. Apes dropped around her, actually dead this ti.

Seraleth was devastating. Each punch she threw carried that double-impact, the echo effect making her strikes hit twice as hard as they should. She grabbed an ape by the arm, swung it into a tree trunk, then drove her fist through its back. When she withdrew her hand, she was holding another core. She crushed it, let the body fall, moved to the next target.

An ape with a makeshift spear tried to impale her from behind. She didn’t even turn around, just reached back, caught the spear mid-thrust, yanked the ape toward her, and drove her elbow into its chest. The echo-impact from her elbow strike was strong enough that the ape’s entire torso seed to compress, ribs shattering inward. The core inside cracked from the force. The ape died instantly.

Diana was using her montum nullification strategically now, freezing apes in place so others could deliver killing blows. She’d catch one mid-jump, hold it suspended, and Sophie or Seraleth would eliminate it while it couldn’t defend itself.

The Eclipse team was finding their rhythm, adapting to the threat, working together with the kind of coordination that ca from actual training and trust.

But the apes kept coming. For every one they killed properly, two more seed to appear from the forest. The creatures were learning too, trying to stay out of Diana’s range, avoiding direct confrontation with Seraleth, targeting the weaker recruits.

One ape managed to land a hit on Valencia, its bone club catching her across the shoulder. She went down hard, her rifle flying from her grip. The ape raised its weapon for a finishing blow.

Sophie was there first, both plasma blades driving through the creature’s back and erging from its chest. She twisted the blades, ensuring they’d pierced the core, then kicked the body off her weapons.

"Get up," Sophie said, offering Valencia her hand. "We’re not done yet."

The fight continued, brutal and exhausting. The forest floor was covered in bodies, blood, shattered cores. The team was holding their own but barely. Every recruit had taken hits, was bleeding from various wounds, was running on adrenaline and desperation.

Marcus crushed another core with his enhanced strength, then stumbled, favoring his left leg. An earlier hit had done more damage than he’d admitted. Chen’s kinetic absorption was maxed out, his body glowing with stored energy that he kept releasing in devastating punches. Valencia’s shoulder was probably dislocated but she was still fighting, using her rifle one-handed.

Seraleth and the leadership trio were in better shape but even they were showing signs of fatigue. Sophie’s plasma blades flickered occasionally, the blade’s energy reserves depleting. Diana’s dead zones were getting smaller, her concentration wavering. Seraleth’s movents were still precise but slightly slower than before.

Then Seraleth’s fist punched through an ape’s chest, grabbed its core, and crushed it with casual strength. The ape dropped. She turned to face the next threat.

And realized there wasn’t one.

The remaining apes, maybe a dozen still alive, were backing away. They weren’t running, weren’t fleeing in panic, just retreating in an organized manner. They climbed into the trees, putting distance between themselves and the Eclipse team.

"Are they... leaving?" one of the recruits asked, breathing hard.

The apes started screaming. Not their usual chanical-howl, but sothing different. Louder, more sustained, almost like a call. They scread in unison, heads tilted back, the sound echoing through the forest.

Silence followed. Heavy, oppressive silence that felt worse than the screaming.

Then sothing answered.

"Rarrrrrgggh"

A roar. Deep, resonant, powerful enough to shake leaves from trees. It ca from sowhere in the forest, distance impossible to judge, direction unclear. But everyone felt it in their chest, in their bones, in that primal part of the brain that recognized apex predators.

Chen voiced what they were all thinking. "I think they just called for backup."

Sophie’s hand went to her ear, activating the communication device built into her tactical gear. "Noah, we have a situation. Multiple hostile beasts with regeneration capabilities, crude tool usage, and now sothing big incoming. We need support."

She waited for a response, her expression shifting from professional calm to concerned confusion.

"Noah?" she tried again. "Can you hear ?"

More silence, then finally Noah’s voice ca through, slightly distorted by distance or interference.

"Sophie, I can’t. I’m dealing with sothing here. The settlent’s under attack, civilians are being infected by so kind of parasite, it’s spreading fast. I need to contain this before more people get compromised."

Sophie’s jaw tightened. "Infected? Noah, what are you—"

"I’ll explain later. Right now you need to handle your situation without . I trust you."

The communication cut off.

Everyone was looking at Sophie, waiting for her to say that backup was coming, that Noah would arrive and help them deal with whatever was approaching through the forest.

"Noah’s not coming," Sophie said, her voice carefully neutral. "There’s a situation at the settlent."

"Beasts attacking there too?" Marcus asked.

Sophie thought about the word Noah had used. Infected. Parasite. Civilians being compromised. That didn’t sound like a normal beast attack. That sounded like sothing worse.

"Sothing worse," she said finally.

The roar ca again, closer this ti. Trees in the distance were shaking, sothing large moving through the forest toward them. The surviving apes in the trees were still screaming, still calling, their voices rising in what might have been triumph or hunger or both.

Diana moved to stand beside Sophie, her expression grim. "So what’s the play?"

Sophie looked at her team. Exhausted recruits, depleted resources, facing an unknown threat with no backup coming. This was supposed to be their first contract, their chance to prove Eclipse Faction could handle what others wouldn’t.

"We finish the job," Sophie said. "That’s what we’re here for."

Seraleth stepped forward, her hands covered in blood from crushed cores, her expression calm despite the approaching danger. "I agree. We accepted this contract. We see it through."

The roar ca again. Whatever was coming, it was maybe a minute away. Maybe less.

The Eclipse Faction’s baptism by fire was about to get a lot hotter.