The other four reacted.

They were fast. Faster than the bipedal class, faster than anything he’d fought yet, and two of them were on him before he’d covered half the distance to the downed center one. He went left under the first one’s reach and it adjusted mid-swing with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible for something that size, clipping his right shoulder and spinning him.

He hit the ground and rolled and came up.

His shoulder was screaming.

Fine, he thought. Fine, fine, fine.

The second one came in from the right and he got the machete up in time and the blade caught it across the arm and the contact felt wrong, like hitting something that was partially not there, the resistance inconsistent.

"Tobi." Musa’s voice. Tight. "I’ve got two more building on the left, they’re circling—"

"How long can you hold the center one."

"Maybe thirty seconds it’s already pushing back—"

Thirty seconds.

He hit the shoulder-hit one twice more and it went down, the camouflage completely gone now, surface inert. He moved toward it and pressed his hand to it while the third one was still closing distance.

The absorption was fast. A few seconds. Low yield, the system noted, partial contact only.

[PARTIAL DEVOUR: PHANTOM TYPE]

[EVOLUTION POINTS EARNED: 8]

[TOTAL: 86/300]

[ADAPTIVE CAMOUFLAGE MATERIAL DETECTED]

[PROCESSING]

He was up before it finished processing.

The third one hit him properly this time. No glancing blow. It took him in the midsection with both hands and the grip was different from the bipedal class, not the crushing structural grip but something that felt like it was trying to pull rather than hold, and the sensation of it was deeply wrong in a way his body registered before his brain did.

He drove his elbow into where its face should have been and it released and he staggered back two steps.

The two that had been circling came in simultaneously.

"Musa I need the center one down."

"I’m holding—"

"Down, not held. Finish it."

A beat. "Tobi if I push past hold it’s going to—"

"I know. Do it."

The disc expanded. He heard it happen more than saw it, the specific sound of Musa pushing the ability past its comfortable limit, a compressed rushing quality in the air, and the center entity stopped pushing back against the hold and simply stopped.

Tobi moved.

Two entities coming in from the left. The camouflage was flickering on both of them now, the ability apparently requiring concentration to maintain, and under pressure it was slipping. He could see them clearly enough. He hit the nearest one with everything the new structural density could put behind the machete and it went down and he absorbed it without stopping moving, pressing his hand to it for two seconds while his body was already turning to face the last one.

The last one had stopped advancing.

It was standing ten meters away looking at him. The camouflage had dropped completely now, whether from the ability disruption or from something else he couldn’t tell. It just stood there with its too-smooth head angled at him.

He looked at it.

It looked at him.

Behind him Musa made a sound that was not a word.

He turned. Musa was on one knee. The dark ability was gone. His nose was bleeding again but this time it was also coming from his left ear, a thin dark line running down his jaw, and his face had gone past pale into something that had Tobi crossing the lot in about four steps.

"I’m fine," Musa said immediately.

"Your ear is bleeding."

"I noticed." He pressed the back of his hand to it. "I pushed past the limit."

"I told you to."

"I know." He looked up. "Is the last one—"

Tobi turned.

The last entity was gone.

Not dead. Gone. The camouflage back up and the parking lot just a parking lot again. His hearing searched for the sound of it and found nothing, which either meant it had retreated through the gate or his senses couldn’t track it at that distance.

He stood very still and listened for thirty seconds.

Nothing.

He went back to Musa. Crouched in front of him. Did the checks his mother had done on him, eyes, breathing, responsiveness.

"How do you feel."

"Like someone reached into my skull and wrung it out." Musa touched his ear. Looked at the blood on his fingers. "That’s new."

"The ear."

"Yeah. Didn’t happen before." He looked at it with the expression of someone assessing damage to equipment. "I think I found a limit."

"Don’t go past it again."

"I literally physically cannot go past it again for a while. My ability is gone." He flexed his hands. The tremor was worse than before, visible even in the low light. "Maybe two days before it’s back properly."

Tobi looked at him. At the blood on his jaw. At the tremor.

"I’m sorry," he said.

Musa looked at him. Something in his expression shifted, the assessment-of-damage look becoming something more human for a moment.

"You needed me to," Musa said. "I knew that when you asked."

"Still."

Musa wiped his jaw with his sleeve. "Find me something to eat when we get back and we’ll call it even."

Tobi helped him up.

He checked the system while Musa got his legs working.

[3 KILLS RECORDED]

[EVOLUTION POINTS EARNED: 26]

[TOTAL: 104/300]

[ADAPTIVE CAMOUFLAGE MATERIAL: PROCESSING]

[NOTE: INSUFFICIENT MATERIAL FOR FULL INTEGRATION]

[NOTE: REPEATED EXPOSURE REQUIRED]

[INSTABILITY WARNING: NONE]

One hundred and four.

He looked at the gate site. The fold in reality was gone. Just a parking lot corner. Normal concrete. Normal dark.

He thought about the last entity standing there looking at him before it disappeared.

Smart ones.

It hadn’t retreated out of fear. He’d felt that clearly. It had stopped advancing and assessed him the way something assesses a variable it hasn’t seen before. Then it had left. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Like it was going to report something.

Interesting, something ancient had said about him five days ago.

He really needed to stop being interesting.

He got Musa moving and they went back toward the campus through the dark city and the sky above them was still open and still watching and somewhere in the campus four hundred and sixty something people were sleeping without knowing that the number of things paying attention to eighteen year old Tobi had just gone up by at least one.