(POV: Jane Aubrie)

  My blade flashed as I carefully weaved beneath the attack of one of the invading fungal horrors. We didn't quite have an official name for them yet, but I was sure that one would soon come to establish itself.

  The majority of the monsters were surprisingly humanoid for seemingly coming from another dimension, but maybe that was just the natural course of evolution.

  I was currently trying my best to fight against a group of three invaders, all of them showing [Invader, Lv. 50-75 (95%)] when identified. Normally, monsters in that level range were barely opponents, even if I was currently only level 52 myself. These monsters were different, however. They were unreasonably strong, to the extent that I could barely hold my ground right now.

  I slashed at the leg of one of the creatures after successfully maneuvering myself into a workable position, but it was fruitless, just like all of my attacks before. While my blade, enhanced by both [Sword Aura] and [One With The Sword], could easily cut through their relatively tough bodies, their regeneration was unreasonably powerful.

  While you could defeat the weaker variants by exhausting them to the limit or destroying them fast enough for their regeneration to slip through, doing this was not in the realm of the possible for me here.

  Teleporting a short distance to the side with [Instant Evasion], I regathered my focus and took a quick peek at my status to assess my current state.

  [Name: Jane Aubrie

  Race: Human

  Level: 52 (Tier II)

  Mana: 3257/4750

  Achievements: [Hero Candidate], [Predator I], [Protector of Lerwick]

  Class: Master of the Timed Sword (Epic+)

  Active Skills:

  [Sword Aura Lv. 16]

  [Instant Evasion Lv. 12]

  [Bullet Time Lv. 9]

  Passive Skills:

  [One With The Sword Lv. 7]

  [Precognition Lv. 4]

  [Perfect Parry]

  General Skills:

  [Identify]

  [Mana Sense Lv. 8]

  [Enhanced Reflexes]

  [Pain Resistance Lv. 2]]

  I was still somewhat good on mana, but I wouldn't last forever either. Luckily for me, eliminating my opponents was not my primary goal in this very moment. We were here on a mission as a subgroup of the UWDA, which meant that I was obviously not alone here.

  While I was probably the strongest fighter currently present, the margin to some others wasn't that far. I had sent Mary to support the main force of the current mission while I was going to hold off the strongest opponents so that they could finish their mission to close the rift.

  As soon as the rift was closed, we could meet up and eliminate the rest of the invaders together. In other words, I just needed to hold out a bit longer while conserving my resources as much as possible. I didn't know how much more time they needed, which made wasting mana on unnecessary skills downright dangerous.

  Quite luckily for humanity as a whole, the UWDA and the closely connected research unit under King Astelios, which was led by Instructor Carmelia, quickly managed to come up with a sufficiently effective way to close the rifts.

  In a somewhat dangerous test, Aurelia, our resident [Sage], who took a more research-focused class with her advancement to tier 2, discovered that a localized, highly concentrated blast of mana was enough to collapse the rifts and anomalies back into nothingness.

  Sadly, though, Aurelia was currently the only known human in the entire world to have a reliable way of producing enough mana to fuel a large enough blast to disable active rifts. While there were a few fighters out there with the respective aspect or at least a related aspect, they neither had a skill to produce a blast of pure energy nor did they have the necessary ability to cast freeform-space magic of enough strength to amount to anything.

  Aurelia wasn't currently here, though, it would be way too risky to bring her anywhere close to a site of an active invasion like this one. While it took a bit of time to get as far as they did, the research unity managed to produce mana-grenades carrying enough of Aurelia's mana to destabilize and completely destroy a mid-sized rift.

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  While that meant that we didn't have a limit on how many rifts we could close at the same time, we were completely reliant on the speed that the research unit could produce more of the anti-rift grenades in. The explosives had to carry enough mana to destroy an entire rift, which was quite a lot of mana for tier 2 beings like us.

  Even if Aurelia's mana regeneration was top-tier for tier 2 with her magic-focused epic-grade class that also boosted her mana regeneration with a really good passive skill she had, it was nowhere close to enough to contend with the sheer amounts of rifts that were popping up all over the place.

  It wasn't all bad news, though. Through sheer coincidence, we found out that the blasts of mana weren't just effective against the rifts themselves, but that they were also highly effective against the invaders. While the blasts weren't exactly harmless to any humans being caught up in the blast, they were nowhere nearly as destructive for us as they were for them.

  This also meant that Aurelia could theoretically fight way above her own weight class against the invaders if she had to. While she wasn't much of a fighter herself, she was one of the most strategically important humans in this entire realm right now. Her capabilities were rather limited with her currently only in tier two, but that would inevitably change when she ascends through the tiers.

  Blake, as the [Hero], was obviously also rather important, but still a lot less than Aurelia right now. He had allegedly advanced to tier 3 recently and held an insane amount of firepower, but he still couldn't close rifts, no matter how hard he tried. In my opinion, this made Aurelia outweigh Blake every day of the week.

  If we survive and defend against this invasion long enough for her to get sufficiently strong, we might actually have a chance in our fight against the invaders.

  ---

  (POV: Mary Ashflower)

  "Dahlia, there you are, I finally found you!" I had trudged through the debris of the town that fell victim to this rift for quite a while before I actually found any of the teammates I was tasked to support. I wish I had been a little quicker, but I guess that was pretty much just bad luck.

  I knew the approximate area they were supposed to be at, namely close to the rift for obvious reasons, but I didn't know exactly where Jane and I were when we split up.

  "Mary? Why are you here, shouldn't you be with Jane? Did something happen?" She eyed me with a worried gaze that betrayed the icy expression she carried. Dahlia was a nice girl, even if she looked anything but when anywhere close to a battlefield.

  "Jane said she could handle it herself and that I should go support you guys so we can finally take care of this damn rift spewing out monsters. How far away are we from it right now? Also, I can see Carl grilling some invader over there, but where are Leyvin and Yakov?"

  "I see, if she said so, I guess we will have to trust her on that one. She usually fights a lot better alone anyways, group work is really not her forte." She flashed me a small smile before going all serious again.

  "It's luckily not that far anymore, it should be just beyond the monsters Carl is taking care of right now. Leyvin and Yakov are both out on reconnaissance, using their mobility and stealth to try and find an easier path to it. Would have been great if they could have just gotten in there to take care of the problem with a lucky grenade hit, but I guess they haven't succeeded just yet. At this point, we're probably closer to the rift than they are." Dahlia sighed softly as she motioned at me to follow her.

  "Come, let's see if Carl is making progress. His abilities are sadly still just as dangerous to his allies as they are to his opponents, so I'm mostly sitting back for now to let him work freely while I regenerate some mana."

  The purple arcs of electricity he was currently shooting at the seemingly last opponent he had remaining attested to her words. I was usually going together with Jane, which meant that I rarely saw the skills of the others fighting at full force. I had, of course, seen his skills before, but he had grown a lot since then.

  While I wouldn't call him the overall strongest in our class, Carl certainly had a whole lot of firepower available. When it came to pure destruction, I doubted that anyone else could contend apart from maybe the pyromaniac Dahlia walking right next to me. Perhaps our resident [Hero] Blake could do as well, but we barely even saw him in person anymore.

  I called out to Carl over the sounds of his fight as soon as we were within an acceptable distance. I had to raise my voice a bit so he could hear me, but that was fine with me. "Hey Carl! How's it going?

  He turned to face me the moment he heard me. The charred invader he had been grilling was certainly dead now, which he concluded as well. He walked towards us with a big grin on his face before replying. "Oh, Mary, good to see you! But what are you doing here?"

  "Jane sent me as support, I guess. She insisted she could handle her situation alone and shooed me away. While I certainly trust her decision with this, we should still hurry up, just in case."

  "Hmm, yes, I agree. Jane is certainly the exact kind of person to do something like that. Good news, though, the rift is right over there!" He said while pointing to the direction he was just fighting in. "Let's prep a space-grenade and finally get rid of that thing for good!"

  "I agree. Let's hurry before any more creatures come crawling out of there." Dahlia replied as she broke into a brisk jog. Carl and I exchanged a quick and silent agreement with our eyes before following right behind her.

  Just like Carl had said, it didn't take long before we were right in front of the rift that sat squarely in what had probably been a wide alleyway in the past. Some of the buildings were still standing, but most of them were destroyed to such a degree that being inside of them would be more hazardous than being outside.

  It was a bit saddening to see, but there was nothing we could do about it anymore. This town was basically history at this point and will have to be rebuilt from basically scratch.

  Carl and I surveyed our surroundings for any more potential threats while Dahlia prepared the grenade. They were still prototypes and a bit finicky, so you had to give them a proper check-up before throwing them at the rift.

  "It's done, the grenade should be primed. All that remains is throwing it and then hopefully watching the rift collapse. Are you ready?"

  "As ready as I'll ever be!" I replied while giving her a thumbs up.

  "Me as well, just throw it already." Carl gave Dahlia a quick smile that hinted at the fact that he wasn't as commanding as he sounded.

  "All right then, first time I'll be seeing one of them in action. I hope Aurelia did good work on these, if we can't successfully close the rift, we're pretty much fucked."

  "Here goes nothing, I guess." Dahlia mumbled as she pulled the metal pin on the makeshift grenade and threw it at the ominous rift hovering a meter or so over the ground.

  The grenade tumbled and rolled for a bit before coming to a stop right beneath the rift.

  "Nice throw, Dah—"

  My sentence went unfinished, not because I couldn't speak anymore, but because any sound just suddenly vanished as the almost imperceptible shockwave of the space-grenade passed through us. I felt like I was floating for a moment before gravity quickly took hold again.

  In the moment of the single blink I had taken the very moment my feet hit the ground again, the rift just vanished as if it had never been there in the first place. No explosion, no implosion or collapse, and not even a light show. Without any trace of its existence remaining apart from the destruction all around us, it was simply gone.