DeSean was in a combative shitshow. There were million-and-one ways for this situation to go terribly wrong. He was more likely to suffer friendly fire to the back than get struck by the enemy. But he didn’t let that distract him. He strode through the Rileys’ living room to reach back of the house, shotgun at the ready.

One of his optiling’s had a view of a broad-shouldered man dashing around the back shed. The man’s forehead protruded oddly, and his eyes were bulging in a grotesquely cartoonish way. He wore a tank-top, showing off arms with pulsating veins wrapped around obscenely large muscles.

He bullrushed the back porch and lined up his fist to smash through the backdoor with a mighty blow.

DeSean interrupted the enemy’s backdoor-fisting with a 12 gauge slug—punching a hole through the door and the attacker in unison. To both of their surprises, the slug tore a gory hole through the Enlightened Chosen’s chest but didn’t put him down. It made him stumble, vomiting blood.

The Marine veteran followed up a split second before the enemy recognized the danger. Another shotgun blast placed a slug through the man’s stomach, goring him further. Still, he stood, stumbling woozily.

Damn these guys are tough. True, but that raised an opportunity for DeSean to take advantage. “I tribute this kill to you, Princess Lylothia!”

A heavy, intangible presence loomed over DeSean. He fired a third time and necked the guy, nearly beheading him. This time, he fell.

You’ve obtained +5 Free Od.

The presence left with an air of satisfaction, making DeSean smile fiercely. He slotted more Od into Attunement. Tossing open the ruined back door, he caught sight of four Enlightened Chosens pumping the breaks. They came to a stop in the yard between the house and the shed.

“Lay down your weapon and be relieved from your heretical life, Chaos Marked!” screamed a frenzied girl with needle-like teeth and glossy, doll-like eyes. She also had a pistol she aimed at him in an undisciplined manner.

DeSean pulled the trigger, and the shotgun thundered, blowing the girl backward like she got punched in the chest by a very heavy-handed man. She’d gotten one shot off, but it predictably went awry. Just because he was facing transformed fanatics didn’t mean they knew jack-shit about guns.

You’ve obtained +3 Free Od.

Keep shooting, DeSean thought, turning his weapon to a man charging him. This one had feathers sprouting from his head. Feather Head also had his forearm raised. A shiny shield made from hardened light formed in front of his torso. He was going to shield-ram DeSean once he got up the steps and—

DeSean tilted his weapon down and shot the man’s leg off. Well, nearly. The slug definitely cracked the femur and dropped Feather Head right in front of the Marine Veteran. A shred of flesh and muscle connected the limb to the rest of the body.

Feather Head didn’t stop fighting, and the last two rear-attackers split up to circle around.

Feather Head swiped his arm at DeSean’s legs.

The Marine veteran barely dodged, forced to leap back into the house.

A cacophony of gunfire, screams, and the horrors of a battle going wrong assaulted DeSean’s senses from the other side.

Still, he put his focus on what was in front of him as the maddened, twisted fanatic crawled into the house. He gnashed his teeth and screamed vitriol—something about Chaos Marked getting flayed and blasted out of existence under the glorified gaze of the Lord of Light.

DeSean blasted at the man’s head. The shield of light remained and deflected the slug, the powerful round cracking off the conjuration’s surface. It ripped a hole into the living room sofa.

DeSean frowned. The guy was down, but he was not out. His shield thing was way too powerful to waste precious ammunition on.

Feather Head lunged at him with one arm and a leg, leaving a puddle of blood behind him. DeSean barely managed to dodge again, the Chosen’s fingers slapping along his shin.

I should reload instead, DeSean thought, turning his attention to the views from his eyes in the sky. He immediately spotted one of his targets entering through the guest restroom window. DeSean walked away from Feather Head, slammed open the restroom door, and turned the invader’s head inside-out.

You’ve obtained +3 Free Od.

“Reload.” DeSean thumbed new shells into the shotgun and walked away from Feather Head as he sluggishly tried to crawl after the Marine. On his way to the stairs, DeSean bumped into a crying Thomas. He was holding onto all of his children and trying to go in the opposite direction. Glenda wasn’t with him.

“I need to get out of here!” Thomas screamed.

“Sure, if you can get past that guy,” DeSean said, sticking a thumb at the dying but still crawling Feather Head. Without waiting for a response, the Marine Veteran turned and put a slug through his other leg.

Feather Head paled. He lost some of his maddened craze in the face of being butchered piece by piece. Still, it kept its shield raised to protect its vitals.

“Keep an eye on that,” DeSean said, brushing past Thomas and his family to deal with a more immediate threat. He climbed the steps and turned toward one of the upstairs bedrooms. One of his optiling’s had spotted the last target invading through the bedroom window.

Just before DeSean made contact, he slotted more Od into Attunement. He felt a familiar pinprick behind his ear and risked his location being found to brief Lylothia. “Ma’am, no time to talk. In the middle of a fight. I could use your aid, however. I’ll pay whatever’s required.”

“You’ve paid plenty with that last tribute, my dear. I’ll be pleased to assist you.”

The pinprick sensation faded, and DeSean received a much-needed boost in his stats. Agility, Endurance, and Focus went up 5 Od stats each. His limbs felt more energetic. His tiredness faded somewhat. He could perceive more, but not at the cost of being overloaded.

The wall beside him blasted apart as a woman with a fitness model’s body tackled DeSean. They slammed into the wooden banister, knocked the wind out of DeSean, and fell over. Through sheer will and awareness honed by past training and combat, DeSean made sure to flip over fully and let his dance partner take the brunt of the fall.

They slammed right on top of Feather Head, which was the last straw for him.

You’ve obtained +4 Od.

DeSean pushed through his dizziness and the pain of his smarting ribs. He started to wrestle the fitness model while Thomas and his boys screeched and stood by like a dumbfounded audience. Unfortunately for DeSean’s mild but still living ego, Fitness Model was considerably stronger than him—or had higher Od stats in her Strength.

The fall had barely affected her. She threw DeSean around. She slammed him on his back, mounted him, and started to press the shotgun down horizontally against his throat. DeSean heaved against it with all his strength, but he didn’t have the Strength to force his way out.

DeSean looked past Fitness Model and set his desperate, baleful eyes on the accountant. The accountant backed away, taking his children with him as Fitness Model started to crush DeSean’s trachea, her grin as wickedly sharp as a scythe.

So, this is the end? DeSean thought, disappointed. He’d figured he only lived this long because his death would be—

Fitness Model’s chest popped open and sprayed blood and viscera like having squshed berries. DeSean got a faceful of it, which was gratifying. It was also very satisfying to have the pressure on his throat alleviated. The air burned its way down as DeSean coughed and sputtered, staying supine while Fitness Model got torn apart by gunfire.

The Enlightened Chosen didn’t go down easily. She got to her feet, crossed two steps toward her attacker, then she keeled over and died.

You’ve obtained +1 Od.

Oh, good, DeSean thought, blinking away tears. I still get something for helping.

He was tempted to put Free Od into something other than Attunement, but he was dedicated to its growth. He slotted his Free Od there.

The magical current he wore like a suit thickened. The humming grew stronger, grounding itself with his core. It was a divine feeling, in a way, having a coat of mana wrapped around you like a toasty sweater on a cold autumn day. His power advanced further with each Free Od, and it wanted what he wanted. To be unleashed.

If only he had more tricks. Something more explosive than seeing through his minions’ eyes or having his patron boost him. Gotta learn wicked spells that can blast shit. Or cause doom and destruction with a few words and a flick of the wrist.

Someone⁠ crouched down next to him. After he rubbed his bleary vision clear, DeSean saw it was Mariah.

“Thanks, hero,” he said hoarsely, taking her offered hand. He stood wobbly, feeling thrashed and worn down, but remaining upright.

She looked at him sharply as if he’d owed her a life debt. He brushed that aside and focused on what was happening outside. The optilings were keeping watch.

The attackers at the front had been cut down in half. Four were dead. One was hiding behind Quinton’s truck, bleeding from a gut wound. The rest were scattered.

Three others were now circling around the house to access the back.

One of the Enlightened Chosen looked like he could be Robertor’s age. He was holding a sword made from the colors of a sunset. It was a dazzling weapon that left a burning trail behind wherever it touched. Beside him was the man who fired the first shot that exploded one of the university students.

On the other side of the house was an old woman crawling along the wall like a gecko. Each of her strides left claw marks in the wall. She reached for another bedroom window opposing the other that had already been breached. DeSean turned off the feed from his aerial optics and paid heed to the horrors going on inside.

The casualties were heavy. Quinton and his mom were leading emergency triage. If Mariah was here, then DeSean could assume her brother was okay. The girl was focusing on eliminating the threats now to extend their safety.

Time to make some snap decisions.

“Reload and stalk up the stairs,” DeSean ordered Mariah. “One hostile is going to enter through the bedroom nearest to the second-floor bathroom. I’m trusting you—”

“I got it,” Mariah grunted, reloading with expert ease before prowling up the stairs. This might be the last time he saw her alive unless she returned victoriously. DeSean put that out of his mind and headed after the threat attacking their backdoor again.

The chosen teen and the blaster man were now under the back awning, getting out from under the optiling’s view. But their shadow passed in front of the windows, giving DeSean an outline to shoot. He put a slug in the bigger of the two, smashing aside glass and tearing down the curtain.

The man-turned-monster stumbled but didn’t fall. DeSean walked forward and kept the thundering barrage up. He slugged Blaster Man so hard it forced the Enlightened Chosen backward until he hit the porch railings. Right when DeSean ran dry, the guy finally fell.

You’ve obtained +5 Free Od.

Before DeSean could start reloading and slot more Od into his favorite stat, the kid with the sunset-colored sword turned the corner and entered through the backdoor.

For a moment, DeSean felt like a clone trooper about to face down a mad sith. The air hissed, crackled, and popped around the plasma-like bade. The handle was like a little sun held in the teenager’s fist, spikes of daylight shining between the fingers.

Gunfire upstairs and Mariah’s maddened war cry reminded DeSean he got a job to do. He pulled out a single shotgun shell and started reloading his weapon. The Teenage Chosen charged down the hall with Agility far greater than DeSean’s own. He forced the Marine Veteran to backpedal for space and time.

His heel struck an obstacle lying in the hallway—Feather Head’s corpse. Bastard, DeSean thought spitefully as he fell.

The sunset sword slashed through the air DeSean had been occupying a split second prior. The tip of the blade scorched the air inches from his nose, Feather Head softening the fall. He came out unscathed—for now—but his shotgun hadn’t come out as fortunate.

The barrel was slashed and slagged, making it unusable as a firearm. As a distraction, DeSean chucked it at the crazed teen’s face. The Teenage Chosen swatted it aside, nearly hacking it in two. The weapon smashed against the wall, spreading hissing slag.

DeSean kicked backward, drawing a secondary weapon from his waist. The tomahawk. He threw that, too, not giving it much power. He scrambled back some more as the teenage murder machine stalked after him. The tomahawk had barely slowed him down.

“Isaac! Isaac, please listen!” screamed the sister of the murdered Isaiah. “Look at me. It’s your auntie. You can stop this. We can help you. All anyone and your father wanted were to do right with you, Isaac.”

DeSean wanted to yell at the woman to get back, but her words affected the maddened teen. Isaac’s killer focus broke, the fiendish grin splitting his face drooped slightly. His strange and uncanny features looked more human and reluctant as he concentrated on his auntie.

Slowly, ever so slowly, DeSean reached for another desperate plan as he shifted backward. His movement alerted Isaac, who snapped his gaze from his auntie to him. DeSean froze, hatching his plan without moving. Isaiah’s sister threw caution aside and started forward shakily but at a brisk pace.

She somehow reached Isaac without dying, pulling the boy into a hug. The kid’s face twitched and trembled. The sunset sword dimmed, and the temperature dropped noticeably, giving DeSean’s sweat-soaked body chills.

“Isaac, Isaac, look at me,” she said, cupping the teen’s face. “It’s going to be okay. We’re family. We can get through this together. No matter what happens, family will always be there for you.”

Isaac blinked at his auntie, his demeanor shifting as his smile extended just a tad wider. “The Lord of Light is the savior of mankind, the father of my new family.”

“Surprise sortie!” DeSean yelled, catching the boy’s attention before he murdered his auntie. All of his optilings flapped through the backdoor at the same time.

Isaac whirled around faster than DeSean expected. He hacked through the first optiling, the minion split into two flaming halves.

DeSean got to his feet as a band of mana snapped, the connection between him and the minion breaking along with the sensory feed. He grabbed Isaac’s auntie to yank her—she ripped herself free from his grip with surprising strength.

Oh, fuck, she invested in Strength.

“Isaac, stop!” she screamed. “You’re all that remains of my brother!”

Isaac ignored her and sliced through another optiling. He ducked under the third optiling, twisted around, and thrust his sunset-colored blade. It skewered the minion and the woman behind it like shish kabob over the fire.

Without an ounce of hesitance, Isaac smacked aside the last fleshy obstacles between him and DeSean. After his auntie’s death, the look on his face became one of pure joy.

In the same vein, DeSean had all of his mana made available to him, swelling with a need to unleash itself like an animal ready to lash out against a predator. But the distance between them was too small, and DeSean didn’t have many tricks other than summoning Lylothia’s little form.

Gunfire from above revealed that DeSean had more than tricks and trained skills. He had allies. Such as Mariah. She emptied her magazine to cut apart Issac from her position on the stairs. The bullet spray nicked him well along the free arm, torso, and hip. That wasn’t enough to stop him, though.

“DeSean, move!” shouted a voice from behind—Roberto.

The Marine Veteran didn’t question the kid. He threw himself to the side before he heard the telltale roar of a shotgun blasting off. It was different compared to firing a single, heavy piece of ammunition. The kid had buckshot, and it was a blessing none of the shots scored a hit on DeSean. Isaac tried to block the buckshot with his sword. Multiple projectiles got through anyway and ripped open his sword-holding forearm, chest, and his cheek.

“The Lord of Light will witness my heroic battle against the blight. Against the scourages of Order. I fall, but a legion will replace me!” The kid shrieked madly, the flapping hole in his face spitting up blood and spit. He should be dead, but he remained a parent’s nightmare: a fanatic rebel with a deadly weapon.

Across from him was Roberto, who was out of rounds. In the middle, DeSean crouched, looking more than vulnerable. This might be the best time to slot his free Od into something other than Magic. But before he did, Roberto threw himself forward with what looked like teenage recklessness.

Isaac skipped forward and swung a wide arc that forced DeSean to duck down, his hair singing from the passing heat trail. Roberto met the attack with a swing of his own, his shotgun flipped around where the kid held it by the barrel. Of course, the superhot saber of light sliced through the shotgun.

What surprised them all was Roberto’s willingness to continue his daredevil charge and readapt. All he had left was a sliced and slagged edge. But that edge had a point, and he put all of his Strength into shoving that point home into Isaac’s throat.

The best DeSean could do was jump in right when Isaac was about to cut into Roberto’s back. He grabbed the sword arm, prying it back and away from Roberto. It was a struggle, and Isaac still refused to die despite his injuries. Still, DeSean and Roberto kept him pacified long enough to weaken.

The scorching hot sunset sword faded, saving DeSean from getting his face melted. He might have to regrow his eyebrows, but that was a small price to pay.

Isaac’s body slumped against him and Roberto.

“Pull it out,” DeSean ordered.

“Pull out what?” Roberto replied.

DeSean’s eye twitched. “The shotgun barrel you shoved into his throat. Yank it out.”

“Oh!” Roberto did as ordered and received a gush of blood on his face. “Will that, um, finish it?”

You’ve obtained +3 Free Od.

“Congrats, you’ve killed someone in one of the most badass ways I’ve seen done,” DeSean said.

“Oh… oh… cool. I got plus nine Free Od for it.” Roberto nodded, stepping aside to let Isaac fall with a quiet thump.

The kid shivered once. He shivered twice. Just when he started to turn green underneath all that red, DeSean patted him on the back and gently turned him away.

As Roberto lost his breakfast, DeSean looked up at Mariah, who was still perched on the stairs. “How are you, spitfire?”

“My brother’s okay, so I’m okay,” she said, tapping her nail on the rifle barrel. “And I keep saving your butt.”

“Please never stop doing that,” DeSean replied.

Amusement flashed through her eyes.

Is it me, or she’s a very unusual teenage girl?

Was he really one to judge?

Best he got back to work. He left Roberto to stoop against the wall and pushed more Free Odd into Attunement before he started summoning a new optiling. The process felt slow going, especially since he had to edit the ritual to keep from summoning another trio like the last time. He managed it one go, thankfully, bringing forth the basic imp in a flash of red, air-displacing magic.

“I’ll be right back.” DeSean strode out of the back of the house, his optiling already up in the air. He found the pistol dropped by the girl with the needle teeth he’d killed. He kept walking around the house, switching from his vision on the ground to his eyes in the sky. It was still a little disorientating, but nothing taught you faster than learning on the fly while in the heat of battle.

Through this, he was safely able to outflank the last Enlightened Chosen. He was sitting behind the bullet-riddled rusted pickup he’d been in to get here. The man was halfway into the grave, but he still had that crazy smile on his face. Not all of them sported a smile, but a good amount of them did.

“Is our deaths the only way to complete your mission?” DeSean interrogated.

“You’ve gone against the offer of salvation, marked one. You could’ve been saved and enlightened, but you chose to turn against the Lord of Light, the chosen God of Order who’ll reap from this world.”

“Then what? After you kill us all, what happens next?” DeSean asked.

“That is for the Lord of Light and Order to know. All you must know is to seeketh salvation through death by our hands or by the razing spread of his glorious light.”

“So, there’s no way to change sides?”

“Only the Lord of Light and Order can decide such a thing.”

That matches what the Hyperscum offered the President. It was not an option DeSean would choose, but the information of one lowly grunt matched up with the narrative so far.

The Enlightened Chosen may certainly be crazies turned against their fellow man, but they were happy chatterboxes. Might as well milk this as much as he could.

He had a couple of more questions in mind, but something else decided to poke her nose into the affair. He could feel her urging him to let her through. He allowed since it would be rude to deny her.

His patron sparked the summoning process to life—demonic circles and scripts in neon red light appeared in the air between them—then Lylothia’s little batty form popped into view.

She hovered around in the air like a drunken bat, righted herself, then fluttered up to DeSean’s shoulder. She took a moment to look around before prodding DeSean’s cheek with her thumb claw.

“You’ve acquired enough power to sustain a fragment of myself here,” she said. “How come I had to invite myself here, my rude little mortal?”

“Ma’am, I’m in the middle of an interrogation,” DeSean muttered.

“Hm?” Lylothia looked down her little nose at the snarling Chosen. Upon her appearance, the man’s insane grin turned fiercer. The demon princess scoffed. “This one is but a lowly footman of the Heavenly Tyrants. Be rid of him, for I can answer verbatim what he would say.”

The Chosen snapped. “Begone—”

“—deceiver, hellbound bitch, horrid creature of the hells,” Lylothia said in unison with the Chosen. “Yes, yes, this is a common slander of your ilk. I’ve been dealt with you morsels before. You’ve given me quite the trouble when I had to pick your corpses from between my teeth.”

DeSean scowled. “So, can I just end this and move on?”

“Yes.”

“Even you, Chaos Marked, will find it better to seek refuge in destruction than in the bed of demons!” the dying man roared.

“Keh. I’ve been in bed with demons for a while, buddy,” DeSean said. He pulled the trigger once, twice, and thrice just to be sure.

You’ve obtained +3 Free Od.

“I really need to teach you a more offensive spell,” Lylothia noted. “While I find these… guns… quite nifty. They aren’t System recognized, so they have no Od stat enhancers. Even without that, they are poor weapons without the means to hold mana or use magic. Have you been fighting with just these weakling weapons this whole time?”

“Yes,” DeSean answered, stepping out from behind the truck. “They do the trick for now.”

“They won’t do for long, my dear. It is not enough.”

The front of the house was a smashed, riddled, and smoking face of ruin. Cordite, blood, and shit filled the air with their muddling stench. DeSean could hear the injured and the survivors barely keeping it together inside.

“You’ve lost people,” Lylothia whispered. “You have my condolences.”

“We did. But we conducted ourselves better than I originally assumed,” DeSean said, striding up the front porch.

Lylothia paused for a moment. “Really?”

He pushed open the door and peered inside. It was uglier inside than outside. They needed to get out of the house before it was totally consumed by fire, too.

“This should’ve ended with all of us dead,” he said. “But I’m not the only killer, apparently. That’s fortunate.”

“Do not humble yourself unnecessarily,” Lylothia replied. “It is your efforts that were the most needed of pillars. Without you, this defense would’ve collapsed like a stack of sticks faced with a heavy boot.”

Surviving this is a team effort, Princess. Before DeSean could get busy with triage, the System had something to say.

You’ve survived a notably difficult encounter.

Your party obtained +9 Free Od.

You’ve obtained [Great Defense Leader] on your Records.

[Great Defense Leader] — You’ve led the defense against an aggressive mob with an unprepared party. It takes grit, trust, and tactical savvy to wrest victory from a situation that had you pinned and outmatched. In recognition of your merits, you’ve earned a permanent +15 Focus.

Oh….

Shit.

DeSean had enough Od to unlock his Main Path.