Inside the seal, the swarm had crossed the kill line.
Kaiden stepped into it.
The first strider in his lane was a heavy bipedal slab of muscle and gray plate, the kind of template that would have forced his pre-fusion body to set its feet, brace its shoulder, and time the swing. The fusion had taken those instructions out of his bones and replaced them with new ones.
He walked into the strider's reach the way he would have walked into a doorway, and the greatsword came around in one short low arc that opened the creature from its right hip up through its left collarbone before it could finish its forward step.
The two halves separated mid-stride and kept walking for half a beat on momentum alone before they collapsed.
[You've slain invading Strider (Level 64). +21,400 XP. +102 DMP.]
The notification flickered against the corner of his vision and Kaiden let himself read it once, fully.
'A hundred.'
His mouth pulled inward at one corner.
