"Jax, hold the door!" Lyra shouted, backing into the center of the dusty room and raising her focus rod. "Caine, cover his right flank! Don't let them bypass his shield!"
Jax slammed his kite shield into the doorframe, wedging his massive frame into the gap. His leaking core flared violently, surrounding his shield in a aura of white-hot orange heat.
CLANG!
The first Razor-Claw rammed its bone blade directly into Jax's shield. The impact forced Jax back a step, his boots sliding through ruined floor tiles.
"I can hold the doorway!" Jax yelled, his teeth grit against the pain of his overheating body. "But my core temperature is hitting ninety percent! If I keep flaring, I'm going to pass out!"
"I've got the second one!" Lyra called out. She fired a rapid tri-burst of amber bolts through the broken window beside the door, blinding the second Razor-Claw and forcing it back into the courtyard.
The third Razor-Claw, however, didn't attack the main door. It scrambled up the exterior wall with terrifying agility, its claws tearing through concrete, and leaped down through the collapsed ceiling directly behind Lyra.
"Lyra, above you!" Caine shouted.
Lyra spun, but the beast was already in the air, its scythe-blade whistling down toward her neck. She raised her focus rod to deploy a panic barrier, but the activation lag of her low-tier device was too slow.
Caine didn't draw a weapon. He didn't have time to pretend.
He stepped inside the beast's arc, reaching up with his left hand to grab the Razor-Claw's descending bone blade mid-air.
CRACK.
His palm caught the razor-sharp edge. Instead of slicing through his flesh, the blade hit Caine's skin like steel hitting diamond. Caine had compressed his internal energy straight into his hand's epidermal layer—a localized application of his Phase 1 reinforcement.
Lyra gasped, staring in shock as Caine held a Level 10 beast's weapon with his bare, unarmored fingers.
Before the Razor-Claw could process the block, Caine drove his right fist straight into the beast's exposed chest cavity.
BOOM.
The muffled shockwave detonated inside the beast's chest. Its internal core shattered instantly, and the Razor-Claw went limp, crashing to the dusty floor like a sack of stones.
Caine immediately wiped his hand on his pants, hiding the fact that his skin didn't have a single scratch.
"You... you caught a Razor-Claw's blade?" Lyra stammered, her hands trembling on her focus rod.
"Reinforced leather gloves," Caine said quickly, pointing to his standard-issue scout gear. "And the beast lost momentum on the ceiling beam before it dropped. Finish the one outside!"
Lyra stared at him, clearly not believing the glove excuse, but the emergency forced her focus back to the door. She channeled her remaining energy into a heavy, concentrated beam and fired it past Jax's shoulder, piercing the head of the beast pressuring the doorway.
With a final heavy thud, the last Razor-Claw collapsed in the entrance.
Jax slumped against his shield, panting heavily, his face pale from thermal exhaustion. "Is... is that all of them?"
"For now," Lyra said softly, her eyes drifting from the doorway back to Caine, who was calmly inspecting his knuckles. "We need to report this. Razor-Claws hunting in packs this close to the wall means something big pushed them out of the inner ruins."