Lyra dispatched the remaining bound Gloom-Stalker with a concise, targeted beam from her focus rod, piercing its core. She lowered her weapon, her hazel eyes scanning the corpse Caine had dropped with a bare-fist strike.
"A weak spot?" Jax grunted, wiping sweat from his forehead as his leaking core finally cooled down. "Chitin armor that thick doesn't have a weak spot on the skull, kid. You crushed its skull plate inward like it was hollow."
"It's about point-of-impact force," Caine said, keeping his tone casual as he retrieved his dropped tactical knife. "If you hit the seam where the skull plates fuse, the kinetic wave travels inward."
Lyra stepped up to the dead beast, kneeling to examine the shattered forehead crystal. "He's not entirely wrong. But a standard Level 10 physically shouldn't have enough kinetic output to fracture a Gloom-Stalker's skull seam without breaking their own hand." She looked up at Caine, her gaze searching. "Your hand isn't even bruised."
"My internal recoil issue makes my bones denser during a release," Caine lied smoothly. "It's why I can't project a weapon. The energy gets stuck in my skeletal frame."
Before Lyra could question him further, her wrist-mounted locator device emitted a harsh, rhythmic blare.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
"Movement," Lyra warned, rising quickly and bringing her focus rod back up. "Multiple signals moving fast from the eastern ridge. They heard the shriek."
Jax hefted his heavy kite shield, stepping into a defensive stance. "More Gloom-Stalkers?"
"No," Lyra said, her face draining of color as she read her device's energy telemetry. "The signatures are larger. Higher density. It's a hunting pack of Razor-Claws—Level 8 to 12 threats."
"Level 12?" Jax cursed, his shield face heating up again in response to his panic. "This is an outer ring patrol route! Higher-tier beasts aren't supposed to cross the trench line!"
"The perimeter sensors must be dead," Caine said, eyeing the ridge two hundred meters out. "We can't outrun a Razor-Claw pack in open terrain. We need high ground or a narrow choke point."
"The old sub-station," Lyra pointed toward a collapsed two-story concrete structure fifty yards to their left. "Narrow doorways. We can bottleneck them!"
"Move!" Jax shouted.
The three of them sprinted toward the sub-station just as three sleek, bipedal beasts crested the ridge. Unlike the quadrupedal Gloom-Stalkers, Razor-Claws possessed long, scythe-like forearm blades made of hardened crystalline bone. Their fanged maws hissed, releasing jets of steam as they locked onto the fleeing humans.
Caine lagged behind slightly on purpose, watching the beasts' speed. They were fast, but their movements were rigid—predictable.
If I use full compression here, I'll destroy the sub-station, Caine thought, his eyes tracking the lead Razor-Claw. I need to limit my output to localized reinforcement.
They ducked into the sub-station's heavy steel doorway just as the lead Razor-Claw slammed into the outer frame, its scythe-arm shearing off a chunk of concrete with a deafening screech.