Everyone whom wasn’t already paying careful attention the Believers jumped up and raced to the building ledge.

“Are you sure?” Jessica asked me.

Until I had spoken, Jessica had remained quiet, presumably keeping a careful track of the surroundings. Our lives were in her hands at the moment. The intel from a tracking ability was invaluable, and any lapse in her judgment could lead to monsters, or worse, True Believers, locating and trapping us upon the roof. No amount of human enhancement could survive more than a forty-floor fall, at least for now no single person in our party could manage it.

I nodded to her and focused my attention beyond the True Believers. If she couldn’t track the Fiend, that meant it was on the far side of them to us, and that was good news.

I watched with bated breath for a dozen seconds, anxiously waiting for what might happen. In those short moments, time stopped, the wind stopped, and the world stopped spinning. It felt as if only my heart beating in my chest existed, and nothing else.

That serenity lasted only a moment, and then came hell. A screech louder than anything I’d heard in my life blasted outward from across the True Believers. A pulse of sound so loud and fast the air moved, and it was visible to see.

My hands were at my ears before my brain even registered what had happened—PAIN. My head felt like it would pop any moment, and all I could do was squeeze my ears harder and clench my teeth till I felt my cheeks were full of blood and my eyes were bulging. Then the sound was gone as fast as it had come, but the damage it had dealt was already evident.

My hands fell and I looked around. The sounds of the world around me came in muffled. The words coming out of my mouth were spoken as if underwater, and the world sped up again. “Is everyone okay?” I fumbled out.

My eyes raced around the group, happy to see everyone still standing. Their faces were red, eyes bloodshot, and Maria and Richard and even Anna had blood dripping out of their ears. The rest of us had held on through sheer ability, or were fast enough in putting our hands on our ears to mitigate the damage.

Thomas used an AOE heal to top us all off and I quickly assessed the situation below. It was astonishing, and yet at the same time the sight pointed towards my expected outcome for this encounter. Thirty percent of the True Believers, give or take, were lying motionless below. The scream of the Fiend had killed outright a huge chunk of their force.

The cultists rushed together like ants defending their colony and prepared for battle. I couldn’t see the Fiend, but I could feel it. My eyes traced the building I suspected it to be on, where it had been watching and waiting, and as I did, I felt alarm bells go off. If I focused hard enough on a spot that screamed danger, I could see it ever so faintly.

It suddenly propelled off the building and jumped hundreds of feet, landing on the top of a large tree just twenty meters from the mass of True Believers. The tree shook like hurricane winds had come through, and the top leaves rippled as if the air was as hot as for a desert mirage. I couldn’t see it clearly, but it was now obvious to everyone where the Fiend had taken up position.

“We watch and don’t get involved unless we are certain it’s the right move,” I said. “Pay attention. We aren’t just monitoring what happens with the Fiend. If we can spot the person in control of the True Believers—put a face to this monster—we might just be able to really kill two birds with one stone.”

I doubted anyone could look away at this moment even if I’d told them to. Every eye locked upon the top of that tree waiting for the impending battle. The Fiend too seemed stuck in place, as it rested upon the tree without motion. I had expected it to slaughter ravenously, but it was the True Believers that started the battle.

Dozens of spells were launched in succession, so many that they momentarily blocked off my vision. The amount of spellcasters was staggering to behold. The top of the tree became a mess of colorful magic that fully concealed the Fiend within.

It was quiet after the barrage, and when the magic faded and cleared, a cocoon rested where the tree once was: clearly the result of some magical spell. Now those True Believers who specialized in melee moved forward one step at a time, slowly encroaching upon the cocoon from all sides. The Fiend, somehow trapped inside, remained motionless.

The brown cocoon was eight or nine feet long and half a man’s height off the ground. It was cylindrical in shape and had protruding ridges every few feet. Needless to say, it wasn’t all that pleasant to look at. I couldn’t tell how tight the encasement of the Fiend was.

“Is it over that fast?” Maria suddenly asked.

“Not possible,” Jessica replied, then hinted with a nod to keep watching.

The True Believers had weapons drawn and pointed at the cocoon, but stood waiting. It seemed that even they had no plan for this situation, of the Fiend putting up almost no resistance. Their spears and swords would probably have trouble piercing the leathery shell of the cocoon, which raised the question—do they cancel the magic spell and start attacking?

The cocoon suddenly started to vibrate and then buzz. The True Believers raised their weapons in response. Those who had shields moved forward and extended them in preparation for the Fiend breaking free.

It was amazing, and yet scary, to see the coordination possible when one person could dictate the commands of all these people with a single thought. The shields slammed down at the same second, and the resulting sound echoed even here to the rooftops, and was incredibly intimidating.

This was the kind of prowess that would scare almost anyone, and would definitely make an imposing force think twice about fighting a battle. Unfortunately for them, the Fiend wasn’t a human force, and definitely would not be intimidated by this display of co-ordination.

The vibration of the cocoon stopped as suddenly as it started. It wiggled just once, and then a screech even stronger than the first burst forth. The nearest True Believers were blown back several feet by the shockwave, some of them never getting up again.

Even the cocoon, which no doubt had considerable holding strength, burst like a popped balloon. The Fiend appeared from within, then dashed through a crowd of melee, sending two heads flying. Nothing could match it in this moment. It was on a rampage.

The sudden confusion left the ranks of True Believers rattled and confused. Even though I was looking from on top of a building four blocks away, I could barely get my bearings for several seconds. Those in the vicinity were probably temporarily deafened and confused, perhaps they were afflicted by the Fear status.

The Fiend’s screech was overbearing, and it was able to slaughter without resistance for nearly thirty seconds. That was how long it took for the remaining melee to band together and put up a united front. I estimated that by this point, around fifty percent of the original numbers of the cultist army had perished. That was hundreds of people dead.

It seemed like this mass death had taken place over a long time, but in fact it must have merely been a minute since that first deadly howl. In a single minute of battle, over one hundred people had died. I wiped the sweat from my brow and had to question what we were doing here.

I looked at Jessica in that moment and could see she was thinking the same thing. We weren’t going anywhere near that thing unless it was seriously weakened. I was starting to think we’d be leaving empty handed, as the Fiend was going to mop the floor with them.

Yet the cultists were no longer stunned and it was impressive to watch the brave actions someone could undertake when they didn’t care about their own life. The melee fighters had no fear at all, and pushed forward towards the Fiend regardless of the risk. Soon the monster was fully on the defensive.

The spellcasters in the back seemed to be freely pummeling the Fiend with whatever spell they knew. Collateral damage wasn’t an issue either. Everyone there was expendable, which created a terrifying fighting force.

An inferior monster would have perished immediately from such an assault, but the Fiend seemed to have some level of intelligence. Its attacks weren’t repetitive in the slightest, and there was no pattern to its offense or defense that could be exploited. It weaved through the melee, making sure to take a head or two with every attack.

The reasoning for its successful attacks was that it outclassed its opponents and must have had far greater stats. The difference in levels meant no single person there could even touch the Fiend. Trying to defend was pointless, and if you tried to defend, well you couldn’t attack. The Fiend could attack and retreat before even fearing retaliation.

This would have been a death sentence for a normal group. For us, it would have been an impossible decision to be in: give up defending and fight, knowing that you would die. And worse, you knew even that sacrifice would not deal significant damage. Self-preservation was too strong for someone who’d never been in a life-or-death situation to make that call, let alone execute it.

The True Believers, however, could give up their lives to chip away at the Fiend. The person in control had been practicing some level of self-preservation, to avoid losing his fighting force, but I could tell that he’d now switched to a zerg strategy: overwhelm the enemy with lots of small damage.

Given that the cult leader had realized the issue so quickly, he was most likely here, watching close enough to see the problem. I scanned the crowd for anyone out of place, but came up empty.

The fight turned in favor of the True Believers with that simple change in tactic. The melee and tanks didn’t try to defend at all. If the Fiend came in to attack, they all attacked. It was like the Fiend was attacking into a cactus. It took several heads with each attack, but it couldn’t dodge the barrage of swords, spears, arrows and magic.

The Fiend wasn’t completely helpless in this battle. After an attack it usually relocated, and very frequently used a flick of its tongue killed a spell caster. It was hard to see with the naked eye, but they were constantly falling. Jessica was the one who realized it was the tongue and not some sort of bullet.

By the time the melee and caster force were cut in half, the Fiend was missing a limb and its body was badly burned. Arrows stuck out of its back and it seemed to me that the several hundred people force was too big of a hurdle for the Fiend to overcome. Still, it had done considerable damage already. The True Believers numbers were dwindling fast.

“Should we start moving?” I asked. Things were developing fast, and if we waited any longer the opportunity could slip out of our grasp.

“Is it really time?” Anna asked, and from their expressions it seemed everyone else shared the implied thought that it was too soon to get involved safely.

“We need over a minute to get there. If we’re too late, the winners might be alert and recovering.” It would be terrible if the Fiend won and then escaped while we were on the way. In the same way, it would be awful if the True Believers defeated the Fiend and then recuperated. We needed to strike during the confusion.

“Look at the Fiend. Its movements are fast, but no longer so fast it can’t be followed with the naked eye. It is sluggish, and a lot of damage has clearly accumulated. On the True Believer’s side, there are around twenty melee, and twenty or so spell casters left. We can nearly take them now, let alone after they’ve had more losses.”

That wasn’t to say the Fiend was a pushover in this moment. It still sent heads flying with every attack, it just couldn’t do it as quickly as before.

“Let’s go then,” Alex said. His resolve had hardened with my words. And he set the mood for the whole group: if things went awry, Alex was the one who would be tanking the Fiend.

Richard gave a nod that he was ready and they rushed down the staircase. Jessica was directly behind them, followed by everyone else. I was glad going down the stairs was easier than going up. The feeling of impending doom I felt right now was stronger than I’d felt before.

My heart was beating so fast in reaction to that feeling, it seemed like blood was rushing to my head, and if I was going up stairs instead of down I’d probably have passed out. My body sorted itself out when I touched the sidewalk. This was not the time for any mishaps.