Then Ludger flicked his wrist.

The spheres launched.

They didn’t arc like thrown stones. They cut straight lines through the air, leaving faint streaks of mist behind them. Fast enough that the first impacts happened before the trainees even fully understood he’d attacked.

A sphere hit the lead crow-thing in the chest.

There was no dramatic explosion, just a sudden, brutal stop. The creature’s skinny body folded around the impact like rotten wood around a hammer. Feathers burst outward in a black cloud. The thing snapped backward midair, neck whipping, ribs caving, then tumbled toward the sea.

Another sphere took one in the wing joint. The wing didn’t tear. It shattered.

Bone and feather went in different directions, and the creature spiraled down like a broken kite, hitting the water with a tiny splash that looked insulting compared to the violence that preceded it.

Two more spheres slammed into a pair flying close together.

Both bodies detonated into fragments, black feathers, dark blood misting in the wind, one beak spinning away like a thrown knife.

For a breath, the sky in front of the ship became a killing field. Bodies dropped. Feathers rained.

The trainees behind Ludger made small sounds, half shock, half awe, half the sudden sick realization that those were living things a second ago.

Then the flock reacted. Not with fear. With adjustment.

The remaining crow-things spread wide, peeling away from the centerline in coordinated motion. Their formation broke into arcs, flanking patterns, spirals, some climbing higher, some diving low toward the rails, others sweeping around the ship’s sides like they’d been waiting for that opening.

They kept coming.

Ludger’s eyes tracked them for a fraction of a second, mind already shifting from “thin the front” to “stop the surround.”

He turned sharply and looked back down the deck.

His gaze landed on the five acting officers, Renn, Marie, Bramm, Jorin, and Tali, each already tense, each already trying to keep their people from freezing.

Ludger’s voice cut through the wind. “Sides!”

He jabbed his hand toward the port rail, where a cluster of the crows was angling in low.

“They’re coming from both sides,” he snapped. “Your job is to make the recruits hit them in unison and keep the rails covered. No single shots. No panic attacks. You attack together or you waste effort.”

Renn nodded hard, swallowing fear. Marie’s eyes sharpened, already calculating. Bramm shifted his spear grip like he was finally grateful for the extra reach. Jorin barked orders, voice cracking once before steadiness returned. Tali hefted the halberd with both hands, bracing her stance against the ship’s movement.

The recruits along the rails tightened into position, bows raised, mages drawing breath, melee fighters bracing for something that could slam into them at speed.

Above them, the weird crows banked and dove, wings snapping like leather whips.

Ludger faced forward again, hand lifting for another volley of Splash. The first blood had been easy. The next part wouldn’t be. Because now the enemy wasn’t flying into his kill zone.

They were trying to make the entire ship one. Renn didn’t hesitate.

The moment the first flank group dipped low, he snapped his arm up and his voice cut across the rail line like a whip.

“READY—”

Marie mirrored him on the opposite side, her tone sharper, cleaner, the kind that didn’t leave room for debate.

“WAIT FOR MY MARK, DON’T WASTE IT!”

Bramm planted his feet near the port rail, spear angled upward like a fence line. Jorin paced two steps behind the mages, shouting rhythm and timing. Tali stood closer to the midline with the halberd, not just as a fighter, an anchor. A visible reminder that someone would step in if the line broke.

They worked like they’d rehearsed it a hundred times.

Not because they had. Because Ludger had drilled them on the only rule that mattered in chaos: Unison beats panic.

The crow-things swooped closer, wings snapping, bodies thin as knives. Their formation came in layers, some high, some low, trying to overload the deck’s attention.

Renn waited until the lead arc crossed an invisible threshold.

“NOW!”

A half-dozen trainees along his section thrust their hands forward in near-synchrony. Mana condensed. Water formed.

Splash spheres popped into existence, messier than Ludger’s, slightly uneven, some wobbling like they might fall apart.

Then they fired.

The water bullets streaked into the sky with thin mist trails and slammed into the incoming crows. Not as fast. Not as brutally compressive. But enough.

One crow caught a sphere in the shoulder and jerked sideways mid-flight, wings stuttering like it had hit a wall. Another took two impacts back-to-back and spun, losing altitude fast. A third was clipped in the head and went limp instantly, tumbling down toward the sea.

Most hits didn’t outright kill. They didn’t need to. A stunned flying monster was a falling monster. Marie’s side fired a heartbeat later—clean timing, controlled output.

“AGAIN, ON MY CALL!”

More splashes went out in a second wave. Some missed, spraying into harmless mist. Most didn’t. Impacts thudded through the air like distant drumbeats. Feathers burst. Bodies twisted. Several of the crows dropped, their thin forms cartwheeling toward the water.

Ludger watched the pattern form and felt a flicker of approval. They weren’t him. But they were learning to be useful. Still, not all of the monsters played along.

A handful of the crows twisted away with unnatural agility, slipping between splash volleys like they’d predicted the timing. They came in low and fast, close enough now that the recruits could see the serrated beaks and those dead, pit-black eyes.

One swept along the rail and snapped its wings outward.

The motion wasn’t an attack like a strike.

It was a release. Dark feathers ripped free in a tight fan and shot forward like arrows, dozens of them, black streaks cutting the air with a sharp hiss.

“SHIELDS!” Bramm roared.

“UP!” Marie echoed instantly.

The line reacted like a single body.

Shields rose in a wall, wood, metal, reinforced leather, overlapping edges, braced against shoulders. The recruits locked stance, heels digging into deck planks, muscles tensing as the ship rolled.

The feather volley hit.

THUNK—THUNK—THUNK.

The sound was wrong.

Too heavy. Too solid. Not the soft patter of something light. These weren’t normal feathers. They struck shields like thrown nails, biting deep enough that some actually lodged and vibrated, quivering with residual force.

A few impacts boomed loud enough to make the younger trainees flinch behind their guard line.

But the line held. Not a single one got hurt. No screams. No blood. No panic.

Just the harsh music of black-feather projectiles slamming into raised shields and dropping uselessly to the deck like dead darts. Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

“So that’s what you are,” he muttered.

Above, the crows wheeled for another pass, wider now, angrier now, while the five officers shouted timing and the recruits began to breathe like fighters instead of victims.

The ship had become a moving fortress for one brief, precious moment.

And the enemies hated it.

“Rotate,” Ludger said, voice cutting through the chaos like a blade.

He stood near the bow with the wind in his coat and death in his eyes, watching the crow-things circle for another pass.

“Alternate lines. Defense and offense.”

Renn’s head snapped toward him. Marie’s eyes sharpened. Bramm shifted his grip, already understanding. Jorin and Tali leaned in, listening like the words were rope they could hold onto.

“Shields stay up at all times,” Ludger continued. “Half the line braces and covers. The other half fires. Then you swap on my call. No one drops guard to cast. If you can’t cast behind a shield, you shouldn’t be casting.”

The five nodded in near unison.

Renn barked first, voice hardening into command. “Front rank, SHIELDS! Second rank, READY SPLASH!”

Marie mirrored him a beat later on the opposite rail. “Hold your timing, wait for the dive!”

The ship rolled gently beneath them, but the line adjusted, boots shifting, shields overlapping like scales. The kids weren’t relaxed, nobody sane would be, but they were organized now. Fear had been forced into a corner and told to sit down.

That bought Ludger exactly what he needed.

Space.

He lifted both hands and began to write in the air. Not on paper. Not into a stone plate. Directly into the wind with mana as ink.

Runes flared in thin, sharp strokes, geometry and intent, layered so fast the shapes barely finished forming before the next line cut across them. The air around his fingers heated and shimmered as the spell scaffold assembled.

Then he wrote the words across the rune lattice like a final seal.

Twenty Homing Fireballs.

The letters burned pale-blue for half a heartbeat before sinking into the construct like a command being accepted. It drained him.

Not a dramatic collapse, not a stumble, just a clean, heavy pull on his core that made his temples ache and his breath tighten for a second. The spell wasn’t cheap. Twenty separate projectiles with independent tracking logic meant twenty separate mana expenses fighting for priority inside the rune structure.

Ludger’s jaw tightened. He forced the mana through anyway. The air in front of him bulged. Then fire appeared.

Not normal flame, dense, compact spheres, each one the size of a clenched fist, swirling with a bright orange core and a thin ring of runic light that kept the heat contained until impact. They hovered in a cluster for a fraction of a second, orbiting his hands like angry suns waiting to be thrown.

Ludger flicked his wrists outward.

The fireballs launched in arcing paths, curving up and away from the ship before bending back toward the flock like hunting hounds scenting blood. They didn’t fly straight. They corrected, tiny midair shifts as the rune logic tracked moving targets.

The crows reacted instantly, wings snapping, bodies splitting into wide evasive spirals.

Too late.

The first fireball hit a crow mid-dive and detonated.

A sharp, contained BOOM that punched outward like a fist. The crow didn’t just fall, it came apart, feathers and bone and black blood thrown into the air in a cloud.

The blast caught two others nearby.

One lost a wing entirely. The other got spun sideways, stunned, tumbling as the second fireball curved in and finished it.

More explosions followed in quick succession—twenty impacts scattered across the sky like a brutal constellation. Each detonation didn’t just kill its target; it disrupted the formation, shockwaves rippling through the flock, forcing them to break their clean lines and scatter in uneven bursts.

Feathers rained down. The air filled with the smell of burnt keratin and scorched blood.

And for the first time since the attack began, the pressure eased, just a little.

Not because the monsters were gone.

Because they’d lost rhythm. That was all Ludger needed.

“NOW,” he called, voice sharp. “READJUST. TAKE THE OPENINGS.”

Renn and Marie snapped their commands like they’d been waiting for permission.

“SWAP!” Renn roared. “SECOND LINE, SHIELDS UP! FIRST LINE, SPLASH!”

Marie’s side echoed. “Volley on my mark, MARK!”

A new wave of water spheres streaked out into the broken flock, catching stunned targets, finishing wounded ones, forcing the survivors to fly higher and wider where their feather-darts were less accurate.

Ludger exhaled slowly, ignoring the dull ache behind his eyes. He’d paid mana to buy breathing room. Now it was on them to use it.

Because the sky was still full of hungry shapes… and the sea was still waiting for the first body to fall. Still, it seemed that this had been very worth the hassle…

[Shared Recovery + 50 XP.]

[Shared Mana Recovery + 50 XP.]

[Shared Stamina Recovery + 50 XP.]

[Shared Recovery + 50 XP.]

[Shared Mana Recovery + 50 XP.]

[Shared Stamina Recovery + 50 XP.]

[Shared Recovery + 50 XP.]

[Shared Mana Recovery + 50 XP.]

[Shared Stamina Recovery + 50 XP.]

…

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