The Convergent Path (Reincarnation/LitRPG)

The Low Tier Four beast's signature blazed in Fin's perception like a beacon of pure malevolence, a storm of feral hunger closing the distance from the tree line with terrifying speed. The air itself seemed to thicken and congeal with its approach. Mayor Elmur had already retreated behind the massive gates, his portly form moving with surprising speed.

Fin turned to Triana, forcing his voice to remain calm despite the adrenaline flooding his system. "Do we have a gameplan?"

She wiped sweat from her brow with the back of one trembling hand, her mana aura flickering like a candle flame in a strong wind, guttering but not yet extinguished. "Vance," she called, her command voice cracking slightly with exhaustion. "How much do you have left in the tank?"

Vance grunted, his massive frame still heaving with each labored breath from the previous engagement. "Maybe a tenth of my reserves. Enough for one good swing, two if I'm willing to risk mana exhaustion and passing out."

Triana nodded grimly, then turned her sharp gaze to Daryl. "And you? How are your reserves holding up?"

He made a disgusted sound. "Twenty percent if I'm being generous. Barely enough to keep myself vertical, let alone fight something that is the same stage as me."

Daryl's gaze suddenly flicked to Fin, his eyes narrowing with the calculating look of someone reassessing a situation. "Hey there, porter boy. Your fancy sensing skill picking up anything else?"

Fin focused his Electromagnetic Synchronization, sweeping the surrounding area with the kind of thoroughness that left no shadow unexplored. "Just the one beast. Definitely Low Tier Four, but it's moving faster than it should be able to. Something's enhancing it."

"Right then. I can probably take it if I commit everything I have left, but that leaves me completely dry for whatever nightmare the next wave brings." He turned to Harbour, who stood as still as a statue carved from shadow. "How much you sitting on?"

Harbour's voice emerged flat and emotionless, her dreads hanging perfectly still as she stared into the distant trees where movement suggested something massive was approaching. "Thirty percent."

Fin stepped forward decisively, already storing his twin swords back into his dimensional storage with a thought. "If you can distract it for just a few seconds, keep its attention divided and prevent it from focusing entirely on me, I can end this fight before it really begins."

Harbour's void-like eyes turned to him with an intensity that felt like being studied by something that lived at the bottom of deep trenches where light never reached. Her tone carried naked skepticism. "There's absolutely no way you have significant mana left after that display against the direbear. I saw what that dissolving technique cost you."

Fin met her gaze without flinching. "I have enough."

Vance cracked his massive knuckles with sounds like breaking timber, his greatsword manifesting. Despite his obvious exhaustion, determination burned in his eyes. "Let the boy have his shot. We've all seen enough to know he's not just some pampered porter."

Daryl studied Fin for a long moment. Finally, he gave a sharp nod of acceptance. "Fine. But if you get us all killed with whatever insane plan you're cooking up, I will absolutely haunt you from beyond the grave."

Fin approached Daryl with purposeful strides, already pulling out a throwing knife. "Stand completely still for a moment and don't ask questions."

Daryl twisted slightly, frowning with obvious suspicion. "What are you planning?"

Without explaining, Fin affixed the throwing knife to the back of Daryl's shirt, using a quick burst of mana to etch a simple anchoring rune into the fabric that would keep it secured. Then he dropped another identical knife into the blood-soaked dirt at Daryl's feet, embedding it firmly with a sharp stomp that drove it several inches deep.

Daryl raised an eyebrow, clearly wanting to ask questions but apparently deciding that time was more valuable than understanding. "You're a weird kid, you know that?"

"Make absolutely certain that knife on your back doesn't get broken or knocked loose," Fin said.

Vance's massive hand clamped down on Daryl's shoulder with enough force to make the smaller man grunt, and then both warriors leaped forward with explosive speed, intercepting the beast as it finally burst from the concealing shadows of the tree line.

The creature was a nightmare that evolution should never have permitted to exist. Fifteen feet of twisted werewolf anatomy, its form was wrong in ways that made Fin's enhanced senses scream. Patchy fur covered sections of its body, but vast stretches were completely bald, the exposed skin weeping black ichor that hissed and steamed where it dripped onto the ground. The pattern suggested rot given malevolent life, corruption made flesh and set loose to spread suffering.

Its eyes blazed crimson. Claws the length of short swords dripped with viscous slime that ate away at the ground wherever it touched, leaving smoking pits in the earth. The beast moved with grace that shouldn't have been possible in a body that size, displaying Mid Tier Four coordination and reflexes despite its Low Tier Four.

It lunged at Vance with a howl that physically shook the city walls.

Vance met the charge head-on with the kind of courage that bordered on insanity, his greatsword rising to intercept claws that could have disemboweled a war elephant. The collision produced a shower of sparks that looked more like competing magic than simple steel on claw, the sound of impact echoing across the battlefield like competing thunderclaps.

Daryl flanked with the fluid grace of a born predator, his knife darting in to test the beast's defenses at joints and tendons. He drew thin lines of black blood that hissed and bubbled where it met air, forcing the creature to divide its attention between the immovable object in front and the surgical striker behind.

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The corrupted werewolf roared with fury that transcended mere animal rage, swiping with enough force to crack the ground where its claws landed. The two warriors wove around its attacks with the practiced coordination of men who had fought together through countless battles, exchanging positions fluidly, Vance's greatsword opening a gashing wound along the beast's arm, Daryl's knife finding the soft tissue behind its knee.

But fatigue was taking its toll. Their dodges were sloppier than they should have been, their breaths coming in ragged gasps that spoke of reserves running critically low. They were buying time through sheer stubborn refusal to die, but it was only a matter of moments before exhaustion or bad luck claimed one of them.

Fin stood well back from the engagement, his right hand extended as he began channeling mana with single-minded focus. Lightning Armament flared to life, but instead of covering his entire body, he concentrated the effect into a single gauntlet that wrapped around his hand and forearm. Crackling arcs of electricity built along his knuckles, the power condensing and intensifying until the air around his fist shimmered with heat distortion.

Then he inserted a Plasma Compression Core directly into the construct, the sphere of condensed mana glowed like a contained star, superheating the surrounding air until it warped visibly. The temperature spiked so dramatically that grass within five feet of him began to blacken and curl.

But he wasn't finished. Drawing on reserves of power that felt dangerous to touch, he channeled his Unmaking concept into the volatile mixture. The Legendary concept awakened with a void-hungry edge that made reality itself recoil, space actually bending away from his fist as if existence recognized something fundamentally incompatible with its continued function.

His gauntlet began to shake violently, the competing forces of creation and destruction fighting for dominance within the magical construct. Reality frayed at the edges around his fist, the air developing fracture lines like glass under too much pressure. Pain lanced through his arm in waves that made his vision white out momentarily, but he pushed harder, channeling more mana until the drain felt like having his essence pulled out through his pores.

Triana stared with an expression that had progressed beyond simple awe into something approaching religious terror. "What in the name of all gods living and dead is that?"

Harbour's face had gone pale as fresh snow, her usual unflappable composure shattered as genuine fear etched itself across her features. "It's wrong. That's not natural. That shouldn't be possible."

Onrio simply stared, his mouth hanging open, apparently having lost all capacity for speech.

The gauntlet hit critical mass, the competing energies achieving a kind of violent equilibrium that wouldn't last more than seconds. Fin's arm felt like it had been dipped in liquid fire and then frozen solid simultaneously, every nerve screaming contradictory messages about temperature and damage. He couldn't hold this much longer without risking permanent injury or worse.

He activated Quantum Leap. In one instant he stood twenty feet from the combat; in the next, he materialized directly behind Daryl, his hand touching the knife affixed to the man's shirt.

Daryl startled violently, beginning to twist with a warrior's reflexes. "What the fuck are you…"

"NOW!" Fin shouted with desperate urgency. "Get clear NOW!"

Vance's reaction time was superhuman. His massive hand shot out to grab Daryl bodily and leaped backward with explosive force, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and whatever fresh insanity was about to unfold.

Fin stepped forward into the space they'd vacated, his gauntlet-wrapped fist already driving toward the corrupted werewolf's exposed chest. The beast's crimson eyes widened with what looked like fear, as it realized far too late that it had become the prey rather than the predator.

His fist connected with corrupted flesh, and in that same instant of contact, Fin activated Quantum Leap again. He teleported back to the knife embedded in the dirt, grabbing it mid-transition as reality reassembled itself around him.

The beast froze completely, every muscle locking as if someone had pressed pause on existence itself. Then the wind began to move, not blowing outward as one might expect, but sucking inward toward the creature's chest like the world's most violent vacuum. Air screamed as it accelerated, the sound building from a whisper to a shriek to something beyond human hearing.

The explosion erupted with the force of a small nuclear detonation.

Lightning strikes forked in every direction simultaneously, each bolt carrying enough power to vaporize stone. The electrical discharge was so intense it turned the afternoon sky bright as noon, purple and white afterimages burning themselves into the retinas of everyone watching. Gale-force winds howled outward from the epicenter, the pressure wave moving faster than sound itself, stripping topsoil and hurling loose debris like shrapnel.

The shockwave hit with the force of an angry god's fist. It ripped across the battlefield in an expanding ring of pure kinetic violence, tearing furrows in the earth six inches deep. Trees at the forest edge snapped like matchsticks, their trunks exploding into splinters that became secondary projectiles. The city walls themselves groaned under the pressure.

A mushroom cloud bloomed skyward, rising with terrible majesty, smoke and vaporized matter and superheated air climbing hundreds of feet into the atmosphere. The cloud pulsed with internal lightning, each flash illuminating its roiling interior like a storm given solid form. The sound was beyond deafening, a physical force that traveled through bone and organs, making hearts stutter and lungs forget how to breathe.

Fin was closest to the blast despite his teleportation. The shockwave caught him like a ragdoll, hurling him backward with irresistible force. He slammed into the city wall with bone-jarring impact, the collision driving the air from his lungs and sending spiderwebs of cracks radiating through the ancient stone. Pain exploded through his back and ribs in a symphony of agony, his vision blurring as consciousness began to slip away like sand through desperate fingers.

But even as darkness closed in, Convergent Inevitability activated automatically. Ambient mana rushed toward him from every direction, the dungeon's abundant energy flooding his depleted channels. The power stabilized his failing body, knitting together microfractures and soothing traumatized nerves just enough to keep him conscious.

They woke one by one, groaning and cursing as they assessed the damage. Harbour pushed herself upright first, her dreads disheveled and full of dust but her body apparently intact. "By all the gods known and unknown, what in the screaming hells was that?"

Triana pointed with a trembling hand toward where the beast had stood, her voice hushed with something approaching religious awe. "Everyone... look."

Where the corrupted werewolf had existed moments before, a perfectly circular crater yawned like a wound in reality itself. The depression was at least thirty feet across and smooth as polished glass, as if the ground hadn't been destroyed but rather convinced that it had never existed in the first place. No debris littered its surface, no remains of the beast, no scattered matter that might suggest something had once occupied that space, just pristine void where earth should have been.

The crater's edges were geometrically perfect, cut with a precision that no natural force could have achieved. The surrounding ground showed scorch marks and electrical burns extending outward in fractal patterns that looked almost artistic, as if violence had momentarily achieved beauty through pure overwhelming force.

Triana's voice carried equal parts fear and wonder as she spoke, her eyes never leaving the impossible crater. "We let an absolute monster join our party. Not a beast. A monster wearing human skin."

A notification blazed across everyone's vision simultaneously:

Wave 1 Cleared
Next Wave Commencing in Two Hours
Current Survival Rate: 100%
Warning: Difficulty Escalation

The group exchanged glances that mixed exhaustion and fear.

Fin groaned as he pushed himself upright, his back screaming protests about the wall impact and found five pairs of eyes staring at him with expressions that ranged from terror to awe.