Christopher was standing over the burned-out body of the White Crescent Spider. It looked as if infusing a creature of the Blight directly with Soul Heat would do the job, although he did not expect that directly touching his enemies would always be this easy.

He had earned a very decent amount of Soul Points, probably receiving the lion's share of the credit for killing the creature. He would love to check on his gains, but this was hardly the time.

He quickly looked around to see if there were more enemies, and saw that lieutenant Cerra was standing over the corpses of three other Spiders, they looked to have been thoroughly squashed somehow. Never mind that, he needed to check on Sergeant Bedo.

Bara was crouched next to Bedo with a shocked expression. Right, he remembered that the man was her squad's Sergeant. At least the Sergeant was no longer impaled, that would probably have been bad with the Soul Heat burning the spider’s body. ‘The man was still breathing but would not last much longer. The spider’s leg had impaled him straight through the abdomen and he was as white as a sheet from blood loss, and his features were twisted with pain.

Bara yelled. “We need a health regeneration potion, there is not much time!” Christopher had already been on his way to get one. As he looked at the inside of the battlement, he saw that there were many more people bleeding out all over the floor, he was pretty sure many of them were already dead. It had all happened so quickly.

He had to fight nausea that welled up at the sight. ‘Shit, he needs that potion quickly. I need to learn more about Soul Heal.’ Christopher thought. Healing wounds was a high-tier Soul effect, and he had no idea how to pull it off. Apparently, it was quite dangerous if done incorrectly so information on it was also scarce. He reached one of the supply stashes and grabbed a satchel filled with potions.

Christopher yelled out to Bara and a few others not actively helping with the defense

“Please administer the potions to the wounded, we need to hurry” Christopher popped open another Soul Force regeneration potion, pouring it into his own mouth. He could use the extra Soul Force.

Just then he heard the Constructs below spring into action. The roars, yells, and screeches reached their ears, the massive wave of monsters had finally reached the wall. From the sounds of the monsters, it seemed as if the traps did quite some damage.

The few skilled bowmen were starting to shoot into the ranks below. A few had infused some simple weapons with their own Soul Force. They might not be certified, but most people still had the ability to infuse to some degree. He needed to start imbuing the weapons, that was how he could make himself the most useful. His lackluster skill with the bow would not contribute much as it was now.

He suddenly received a notification awarding him more Soul Points.

[You have contributed in killing a minion of entropy; 60 Soul Points have been acquired]

Huh? Oh right, that last Faceless Giant must have finally died due to its wounds. He would gladly take the few Soul points.

He quickly made his way to the front line where Lieutenant Cerra was managing the defense. Without any prompting, he took to imbuing the weapons that required his Soul Heat. These were simple launchers that fired out superheated metal bolts. He was able to charge one with only four percent of his Soul Force.

They had a lot of difficulties getting their shots off. Something was firing off blobs of acid from below which send the few people that got hit screaming out of the way. He did not even dare look at the monsters below in fear of being hit.

He was happy to see that some of the troops had now taken it upon themselves to administer health potions to those in need. The limitation of the health potions also became clear. The potions did not magickly set broken bones and they also did not dispel the acid on a person’s face. This was especially gruesome as he saw the tissue on someone’s face try and heal itself while the acid was still eating through the flesh as well, he immediately looked away. At least the attacks clearly managed to kill some of the monsters and the resulting cascade of notifications was very welcome.

[You have contributed in killing a minion of entropy; 20 Soul Points have been acquired] [You have contributed in killing a minion of entropy; 30 Soul Points have been acquired] [You have contributed in killing a minion of entropy; 15 Soul Points have been acquired] [You have contributed in killing a minion of entropy; 35 Soul Points have been acquired] [You have contributed in killing a minion of entropy; 45 Soul Points have been acquired] [You have contributed in killing a minion of entropy; 60 Soul Points have been acquired]

He stopped looking there. He was happy with the Soul Points streaming in, but it was unfortunate that just imbuing the devices seemed to only provide him with a fraction of the total points for killing the creatures. His efforts also felt very futile. Yes, they were killing them, but surely this hardly made a dent in the numbers. It sounded like the traps and constructs into the wall below did most of the work really. He dreaded the moment when the charges of those devices ran out.

He heard Lieutenant Cerra yelling another order. “Balls, there are Aberrations coming among the ranks below, focus all your fire on them.”

‘We really can’t catch a break.’ Some of the most unpredictable enemy types of the Blight were the aberrations that roamed among its ranks. Aberrations were priority targets due to the danger that they posed to the wall. They had no consistent form, and pretty much every Aberration differed from the other. Their bodies were often a mix of different humanoid and beast creatures. They all had lumps and growths all over their bodies and Sin had told him that they always bore a sense of wrongness. You would be hard-pressed to find anything that differed more from nature’s design.

The creatures did have vital spots but they were just as unpredictable as their form. Even the strength would be hard to judge until you clashed with the specific Aberration. And the worst part about the creatures was that they had the uncanny ability to detonate their bodies if they so desired. Considering the tactics that the Blight was showing so far, he did not doubt that they would gladly detonate on reaching the wall.

Christopher kind of wondered how the hell people had even managed to survive this long. Maybe Entropy had a limit in what it could do just like the administrator of the world?

The problem now was that they had few resources to fight back with. The lack of Soul Mages during the entire fight had been the true bottleneck. All he was able to use were Soul Heat and Soul Frost, which left most of the constructs unused. And even these ones he had trouble keeping charged.

The lieutenant echoed his thoughts. “This is not working. They are going to get here just as the Constructs below run out, we need to get ourselves out of here. Right now!”

Most of them seemed to gladly follow her command, but others just kept firing into the masses below or trying to heal the dying with potions.

“That is an order, abandon the battlement, we need to reach the next layer of defense. I estimate that we have only thirty seconds until the first aberration hits the wall.”

He could already hear the constructs and traps working overtime. They were making strange sounds, and it was hard to match them to what he knew. He wondered if the Blight had really planned the arrival of the Aberrations to coincide with the constructs running out of charge. It once again seemed like they perfectly countered their defenses. Without the constructs and traps working they would also have the problem of spiders being able to climb freely onto the wall. He was pretty sure that they would not survive such an attack.

Long before the estimated thirty seconds were up, the first detonation arrived and rocked all of them off their feet. Christopher’s landed painfully on his shoulder and his ears were ringing. He found it hard to judge the distance of the impact but he did not think it had been even that close, despite the effect on them.

He looked with extreme worry at the other soldiers, and he saw the prone form of Sergeant Bedo, who had been launched against the far wall just like him and the others. His body lay at a broken angle, and it did not look like the man would get up again.

There were a lot of pained screams of people that looked to have been significantly impacted. It looked like there were people with broken bones, and Bara was one of them, judging by the angle of one of her arms. Christopher was close to saying the command phrase for [Bookmark] right then and there, but instead, he continued making his way for the exit into Lumen, dragging Bara with him.

The explosion was all that the remaining people needed to start moving for the exit in earnest. He did not even dare to try to save another of the fallen soldiers, it made little sense to risk himself with what he knew he would probably have to do soon. Christopher was surprised with how well he was still functioning considering how scared he was. Looking around now he just wanted to leave here with [Bookmark], but he was still able to stop himself.

They were already on the stairs when the second explosion hit, although luckily this one was more muffled and likely quite some distance from them. They were some of the last to walk out of the battlement, with the lieutenant the last to exit. During all the shaking, Christopher had those important two command words on his mind, ready to speak them at a moment’s notice.

When he exited the battlement into Lumen, he was surprised to see a large number of the Razor Wings butchered all over the ground. They somewhat resembled vultures, with a sharp beak and powerful talons. They could also launch their feathers at enemies, which were just as deadly as the rest. At least they were only of a similar size to that of a large bird from Earth. He was not sure what had happened, but he figured that the numerous wounds all over Sergeant Coley had something to do with it. He had forgotten all about his Sergeant in the hectic attack, but it looked like he had prevented the Razor Wings from attacking them from behind. He wondered if the other battlements had been less fortunate.

They heard another deep reverberation, which was assumedly another aberration blowing up against the Lumen Wall. They would likely be already streaming into Lumen through many holes all over the wall. At least their immediate surroundings were still clear at the moment.

Lieutenant Cerra took control “Alright, you have been drilled on what’s next, we are marching to the Adenium Church at once. The strong will carry the wounded. Let’s get a move on.”

Now that the wall had pretty much fallen it was time for phase two of the defense. The fact that the Blight was able to make it into the city was of course a disaster of the highest order, but they could still fight back. Lumen had several defensive strongholds scattered across the city. They were to book it for their assigned Stronghold to regroup what was left of the different platoons. And then they would strike back once again.

There were several defended strongholds in the city that would be used as the second layer of defense. Some of them were the Earls keep, The Academy, The Soulstorm Bank, The Lumen Arena, The Adenium Church, The Dungeon keep, as well as a few others that would become the new bases from which the forces would fight their battles.

The strongholds were also where the citizens of Lumen were currently sheltered. He was not too optimistic about anything they could do at this point considering the numbers he had seen. Still, that hardly meant that they should give up.

If they killed enough monsters then they should eventually dwindle. He did not think that anyone really believed it at this point, but fight they would, the others had little choice after all.