Breakfast over, the group heads out. Over the course of the day, they meet up with four more swarms. There were more around, but Peter kept the bigger groups out of sight and under control. Through his masterful guidance, the group soon comes up on the next waypoint.

Of course, nothing can ever be that easy. Around this outpost stands a sturdy stone wall, and why is obvious enough. There are numerous swarms gathered at the place, all trying to scale the wall. This would look like a horrible situation if it wasn’t for how bored the people manning the wall looked.

Peter shakes his head and sighs, “I was hoping they would have cleaned up the mess by the time we got here. Looks like the garrison is being a bit lazy about it.” He pauses for a second and shakes his head again. “Not that they aren’t usually, I guess. Just that normally there would be less swarm cats around. Welp, if we want to sleep indoors tonight, we have to help out with cleaning up their mess. You guys head in to start and I will stay back in case any of you need help or it gets late.”

Courtney nods and turns to the others. “Jason, you head out first while I buff Rosha. We can’t treat this like a normal swarm and I have no clue how they will react to you so stay safe.”

With a simple thumbs up, Jason turns and jogs toward the undulating mass of cats that are doing their best to flood over the top of the wall. With so many swarms overlapping, there is a danger of stacking damage. Luckily his main defense after dodging is more inline with damage reduction instead of blocking, so more minor hits are just fine in his book.

Behind him Rosha waits. Having worked with Courtney over the last few days, she has gotten a sense for how long the buff takes to apply and so knows when to move out. With her ears up, she measures the distance and then she hears it. Not any specific part of the whispered chant but just a general feel and with that she’s off.

Ahead of her Jason has already reached the swarm cats and is fighting along with Lily. Rosha pulls back her staff and just moments before she reaches the fight Courtney’s buff lands on her. With a smirk and a small hop, she crouches down before springing up in the air. All the momentum from her run turned into vertical motion. Both hands stretched behind her head and clutching the staff, she rotates in the air. Down she comes with the staff swinging forward.

The tip of the staff makes a resounding smash as it hits the ground first, the rebound enough to cancel out Rosha’s downward motion. While this pushes her back a little the swarm cats in front of her are much worse off. The attack isn’t able to transfer the excess damage to other cats like Jason’s war stomp had but the ones it does hit are finished. No amount of communal health pool can make up for how damaged the cats within a pace of the strike have taken. Definitely overkill, but as Peter at the back commented to himself, “if it works, it works.”

Back with Jason, he is sticking closer to Lily this time. Can’t really flank them this time. This decision proves more beneficial than anyone could have expected. With Lily at his side the swarms are disrupted. While they can still get swarm damage in on the other side, Lily forces them to come at her as individuals. A real lifesaver when the damage is already double ticking away at Jason’s life.

With the interference Lily is throwing up for him Jason is able to really let go on the swarm. Instead of waiting to use his various skills as finishers, he throws them out left and right. While he doesn’t notice it himself, this is the first time he has used all his abilities to the max. Until now Jason had always relied heavily on his martial arts. Now he is throwing out blast punches and blasting away the enemies with war stomp almost non-stop.

The deeper he falls into the groove of fighting, the more deadly he gets. Inside him though, a shocking change is going on. At the core of his being burns the sun that represents his Energy. If Jason could see it now it would shock him. Never has it roiled and rioted as it does now. The constant draw upon causing chaos as he for the first time pulls upon his full Energy capacity since he stabilized his cultivation.

More and more Energy is pulled out through the threads, smaller than the System would normally permit. Slowly, to make up for this massive draw, more and more threads split off from existing ones as they grow fat on the sheer quantity of power being forced through them.

Outside, Jason is too focused to notice the changes, but Peter isn’t. While Rosha’s fight by herself is like a masterful dance and Lily’s ability to destroy swarm cohesion is amazing, he is almost forced to watch Jason’s fight by his instincts. The flashes of Energy from Jason’s punches not only become shorter but the brightness of each strike intensifies.

More amazing though is how down below the war stomp has changed. Instead of being distinct releases of the skill both his feet are now ensconced in swirls of power. The left covered in an ever blooming lotus. The right seemingly covered in fuzz, though Peter can see this is actually innumerable threads, all of which seem to reach out towards the nearest enemy.

If Rosha’s fight is a dance, then Jason’s fight is like a walk in the park. While his fists and feet do lash out his movements are calm. With his movement technique Jason walks around and each movement spells the end for numerous swarm cats.