Trapper poked the prairie with the toe of her boot, making sure the oil saturating the sub-biome hadn’t absorbed into the soil.

  Satisfied that the swath of grass was ready to burn, she set her gaze on the horizon while waiting for the horde to arrive. The kaiju was looming in the distance like a squid-shaped mountain, but it was still twenty miles away and would take at least an hour to reach this position.

  Her target would arrive well before that happened—the first wave of undead ranging in front of the titanic cephaloid. The stampede would engulf the Ivory Plains as inexorably as the rising tide before submerging Puppet Town in a river of ravenous bodies.

  As matters stood, the beasts would overwhelm the wall team within a matter of minutes, but that wasn’t going to happen on Trapper’s watch.

  The scouts hadn’t spotted any Reanimated critters yet, which meant they still had a few minutes before the chaos of combat consumed them. She used the handful of heartbeats remaining to check on the brave men and women who had worked tirelessly to complete the largest trap she’d ever set by an order of magnitude.

  Alice’s crew was inspecting the firebreaks—places where the harvesters had removed all the vegetation in the region, let it dry in the sun, and then scattered it across the burn zone. Once the foliage was out of the way, earth specialists had covered the firebreaks with fresh soil, creating a dead zone a hundred feet wide. With any luck, their efforts would be sufficient to contain the hell the trap team was about to unleash.

  Violet was waiting in Blue’s saddle beside a dozen other beasts—ready to buff them with Enhance Beast at a moment’s notice. If something unexpected occurred and they needed to beat a hasty retreat, her people should be able to evacuate in time.

  Another group of hunters was inspecting the devices lining the ground, making sure their triggers were primed and nothing was obscuring the mechanisms. Since her team was ready to rock, Trapper turned her attention to the fruit of their labors—a killing field that stretched on for half a square mile and the trap-saturated stretch of soil on the far side of the firebreak.

  After a great deal of debate, the settlements’ senior members had decided that the best way to eliminate a sizable slice of the horde was to burn them to ash—overwhelm the biome’s natural defenses and light a portion of the region ablaze. It was a risky move that could precipitate a disaster if things didn’t go as planned.

  To minimize the risk of that happening, they had picked a place where the wind was steady, cut four massive firebreaks to partition the prairie, and then treated the ground inside with various flammable substances. Trapper had rigged the burn zone with incendiary devices, which she would manually detonate with her core’s ultimate ability to control the fire’s spread.

  Puppet Town hoped to wipe out several hundred beasts with their opening gambit, along with one of the stage-three bosses—the giant rat that was running near the front of the press.

  The flames would create a temporary barrier that would stymie the stampede’s advance and guide it into the trap fields, which would whittle down its numbers while staggering its approach to the settlement. Everything is ready. She nodded in satisfaction. Now it all comes down to the timing.

  They couldn’t light the fire too soon, or it would only kill a few dozen beasts. While the undead held little regard for their own lives, their remaining instincts would prevent them from engaging in blatantly suicidal behavior. On the other hand, if her team waited too long, they would be swarmed and people would die.

  That meant Trapper’s team had to battle the crest of the wave—aided by some devices she had placed to guard their position. When the beasts further back heard the fighting ahead, they would push forward, causing them to concentrate within the kill zone. At that point, the hunters would set the prairie alight and run like hell.

  Fortunately, the Reanimated creatures were too dumb to equate the oil with danger and too aggressive to be deterred by the ground’s altered texture and the reek of chemicals saturating the soil. It let her create a trap that would never have worked on living beasts, and she took a grim satisfaction in the plan’s destructive potential.

  In addition to the oil and other flammable materials her team had sown across the region, she was using Manipulate Air to increase the oxygen content of the air above the burn zone, which would help the fire spread quickly enough to consume the unliving beasts before they had time to escape.

  I hope the firebreaks are wide enough. If something goes wrong, Manipulate Air won’t be sufficient to keep the wildfire from spreading, and we will burn the settlement down before the kaiju gets a chance. Not that we have much choice other than to go all in and roll the dice. We don’t have a chance in hell of defeating the squid if we can’t slaughter its army first.

  Her train of thought was derailed when one of the scouts cried out, “They’re coming! I see a few dozen Speed specialists leading the pack, then a solid wall of beasts following a mile or so behind. The colossal rat is with them.”

  “If you are stage one, get into the saddle now,” Trapper ordered. “Everyone else, fall into formation behind the trap clusters and get ready to mount at a moment’s notice. We need to hold this position for the next few minutes and then make ourselves scarce.”

  The trap team came running, splitting into two groups along a fortified position that was surrounded by deadly devices. The warriors formed the front line—long weapons and shields at the ready. Meanwhile, the ranged specialists moved to higher ground where they could fire over their allies’ heads.

  The beasts split up to guard both flanks, while the stage-ones in the saddle offered what support they could. Everyone with auras switched them on, causing a rush of energy to flow through Trapper’s body. Her people activated a range of barriers, magitech devices, and triggered skills to bolster their defense, and everyone with spells that required a lengthy setup ignited their cores and started casting them now.

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  At that point, there wasn’t anything left to do other than wait. Trapper knew the horde would arrive within a minute or two at most, but each second dragged on for eternity with the gallon of adrenaline flooding her veins.

  The tension in the air was so heavy she could have used it to hang her hat, and the kaiju in the distance kicked it up another notch. Her nerves were alight with a feral sense of anticipation, but she tried her best not to show it on her face, projecting the steady serenity her team needed to endure the overwhelming pressure.

  She forced herself to take a deep breath, blinking when a speck of dust fell into her eyes.

  By the time she opened them again, the battle had already begun.

  The ranged units didn’t get a chance to fire as a pair of jackals the size of Earth rhinos came streaking out of the tall grass, wavering into existence when they deactivated their stealth skills and switched to offensive powers instead.

  A clandestine assault performed at breakneck speed was an effective tactic. However, it had a fatal flaw. The traps arranged in front of the warriors were simple mechanical devices. They didn’t care how fast something hit them, and there was no way to sneak past old-fashioned physics.

  The jackals were getting ready to unleash skill combos when the ground gave out from under them. They fell into a pit that was fifteen feet deep and lined with stone spikes covered in hooklike protrusions. They might have been able to break free eventually, but Trapper’s team didn’t give them the chance.

  At her signal, a dozen acidic consumables were flung into the pit. The beasts’ growling cut off as the salvo of solvent reduced them to slurry, but her eyes were facing straight ahead, where a half dozen undead were making their final approach.

  There wasn’t time to issue more orders, but her team had prepared for this moment for weeks and already knew what to do. Spells and bolts filled the air as the ranged specialists let loose, taking down half the creatures before they arrived. The rest were destroyed by devices in the ground, but most of the traps had already been sprung, and the next wave was nearly upon them.

  A pair of scouts was tracking the horde’s advance—poised to call out the moment the rat boss entered the burn zone. Her team needed to hold out until that happened, no matter what price they must pay. A feral lucidity came over her as the danger grew with every beat of her heart.

  A trio of beasts hit the warriors in an avalanche of tooth and claw. Battle cries and bloodcurdling howls filled the air as the first blows of the conflict echoed across the biome. Trapper couldn’t make out the details, since her attention was riveted on the creature in front of her—a bright red slug the size of a cart.

  It came slithering toward her with surprising grace, activating a skill that made a legion of bladed pseudopods extend from its flesh to engulf her in a maelstrom of blows. She was still using Manipulate Air to prepare the burn zone, but she paid the mana to activate a combo, generating a fierce puff of wind to blow the slug back and evade its attack.

  Before it had time to recover, she stepped forward and thrust with her silver sword, unleashing a flurry of stabs that perforated the slimy beast like a sewing machine. The instant the System confirmed the kill, she switched to her next target—a jobo alpha that was bounding in fast.

  The next minute passed in a blood-soaked blur of violence as the trap team fended off the assault of a score of undead. They wouldn’t have been able to hold the line without suffering casualties if the critters in question weren’t the fastest members of the horde—beasts that focused on Speed, Reflex, and Control over Toughness and Power.

  Even still, her people were in danger of being overrun, and their peril only grew as the battle dragged on. That was when Trapper saw what was coming next. A solid wall of half-rotten flesh was headed her way with the rat boss leading the pack—a flood of lethal creatures that made the beast she was battling seem cute by comparison. We will dead in seconds if they reach us. We’re out of time.

  Just when she thought her team would suffer heavy losses, the cry she’d been awaiting reached her ears. “The horde is in position! Light them up and get the fuck out of here!”

  She didn’t hesitate for a heartbeat. “Raise barriers!” she yelled while using her core to activate the incendiary devices embedded across the burn zone. She had just enough time to create a buffer of vacuum with Manipulate Air before the prairie erupted like a portal to Armageddon.

  A solid wall of incandescent blaze burst into being, rising as if it sought to catch the heavens aflame. The conflagration would have cooked the hunters to a crisp if they hadn’t planned for this moment, using a synergistic blend of magic and magitech to protect them from the superheated air as they battled the remaining beasts assailing their position.

  “Blow through your mana and finish this fast! We need to be gone before the stampede circles around.”

  Trapper sensed surges of energy from a dozen skill combos as the warriors let loose with everything they had. For a few final seconds, her world was reduced to fire, chaos, and blood, and then it was over. The last critter fell dead in the dirt for the second time in its existence, and her people leapt onto the backs of the beasts waiting nearby.

  She wanted nothing more than to run like the wind and never look back, but there was one task left to complete.

  A handful of creatures that had been standing near the periphery of the kill zone when the blaze began were still coming. They were burning like candles as flesh and fat fell away, but searing air couldn’t damage lungs that no longer drew breath, and the undead could endure significant punishment before going down for the count.

  “Hit them hard!” Trapper cried while firing penetrating earth rounds from her magitech crossbow. “Before they cross the firebreak!”

  The warriors were down to the dregs of their mana, which meant it was the ranged specialists’ time to shine. A hailstorm of lethal magic filled the air, flying beside a volley of mundane projectiles. By the end of their second salvo, their work was done. A few bodies had fallen near the border of the grasslands, but the biome could extinguish fires of that size on its own.

  She leapt into the saddle behind Violet, and Blue took off in a flash. The purple-eyed hunter had upgraded Enhance Beast to work as an aura. Her magic augmented the attributes of every beast on the team as they galloped toward Puppet Town at an incredible rate—ready to bind their wounds, top off their reservoirs, and join the defense at the wall.

  Trapper was heading in a different direction and would split off soon to join the kill team. She had been issued several mana seeds and ate one now to refill her reservoir. She let the delicious flavor distract her from her fear while she examined her handiwork in its full apocalyptic glory.

  She had never witnessed such an immense fire on the Ivory Plains. The last wildfire that had overcome the biome’s protections and ravaged the region predated her arrival on Ord.

  It’s too bad the feed was cut off, she mused. This battle would have made everyone a fortune in royalties. I suppose I’ll settle for keeping my flesh on my bones, along with whatever reward the System sees fit to issue once the dust settles.

  “Good luck,” Violet said as Blue slowed long enough for Trapper to dismount. “Fire a bolt or two up that kaiju’s asshole for me.”

  “Will do.” She hopped to the ground and started to sprint. “Whip up something special in the kitchen, and I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  Trapper stared up at the kaiju cresting the horizon as she ran, refusing to give her premonition of doom power by voicing her fears aloud.