Christopher had now successfully purchased [Soul Mark] and had placed all three of them on his chosen items. This was the last thing that was really needed before he could use [Bookmark] without worry.

He tuned into the discussion between Lieutenant Cerra and the leader of the other group. The building in which they were hiding was small, so he had no trouble overhearing by getting reasonably close. The leader of the other force was only a Sergeant, so lieutenant Cerra was now in command.

Christopher quickly managed to discern what had happened to the destroyed Church stronghold from their discussion. It turned out that the Adenium Church complex had been destroyed due to a concentrated attack from Flesh Rippers and Earth Slithers before the wall had even fallen.

The few Earth Slithers that were still alive continued wreaking havoc in the distance. Christopher had still not lain eyes on the dangerous monsters called Earth Slithers. They were reptilian in nature and sported massive arms ending in claws that could tunnel through the earth. Their bodies resembled snakes, except for their mouths full of razor-sharp teeth and the claws sprouting from their bodies. Their scales were impenetrable by any normal weapons, and their size made them difficult to put down. Their bodies apparently had the circumference of a wagon, and the length of a Sternel tree.

Where the Flesh Rippers could pass the wall from above, The Earth Slithers could tunnel from beneath. The tunnels were then used by other smaller creatures of the Blight to make it past the defenses as well. He knew that Lumen had defenses to stop the creatures but they had apparently not been enough.

The Lumen Forces stationed at the Adenium Church had apparently been able to collapse the tunnels, taking out a few of the Earth Slithers. They had unfortunately eventually lost the battle. Being attacked from above and below had proved too challenging with almost all of the strongest priests manning the Sternel wall. The group that they had just merged with were only the remnants of the soldiers stationed at the Church. None of the platoons from the other battlements had made it over to the Church yet, which did not bode well for them. The monsters could already be heard rampaging after all.

The attack on the Church had happened only minutes after the sounding of the Soul Alarm. Once again it was clear that the whole thing had taken some considerable planning from the Blight. They clearly were aware of the strategic importance of the Adenium Church, and the high degree of control over the monsters was now also pretty much proven.

The survivors and people that had arrived after the destruction of the shelter had been forced to scatter all over this district of Lumen. The other force had advised the survivors and newly arrived to shelter up high and to stay hidden. He tried not to think about the number of lives that were lost. Both commanders were worried that the other strongholds had met a similar fate, which Christopher thought likely as well.

The lieutenant and the remaining Sergeants were currently complaining about the lack of Soul Mages and how it limited their options. Christopher made sure to pay attention.

They floated multiple theories about what had gone wrong. One of the Sergeants seemed to think that the Soul Mages just did not have the spine to show up at the actual battle due to a lack of combat training. Sergeant Coley seemed to think that the Soul Mages had been specifically targeted by the Blight, which was even more terrifying.

At this suggestion, lieutenant Cerra let loose a series of creative expletives that Christopher had never heard before. That would be a rather concerning problem to combat. Both theories seemed plausible to Christopher. He himself had needed to push through his fear upon first sighting the Flesh Rippers, it had taken some determination to keep sprinting towards the enemy. Soul Mages without any fighting experience might have been even more affected. And the enemy had shown a frightening understanding of how the city was organized, who was to say that they were not capable of taking out specific individuals.

There was another issue with their unit. Now it seemed that even their own platoon was falling apart. Many among their numbers had taken the fall of the Church quite harshly. They had loved ones that were supposed to shelter at this very location. Some of them wanted to return home and search for their families, hoping that they were not among those that had relinquished their lives under the rubble. Christopher could understand them well enough, he might have done the same in their situation.

Lieutenant Cerra had ordered them all to stay put, even arguing that fighting together was the only way that would give people a chance of survival, but not all of them listened. Due to this more soldiers were leaving every minute, despite direct orders to stay put by Lieutenant Cerra.

Keeping them by force was not a tenable solution, they could hardly put people in chains, and there were plenty of opportunities to slip away. It became painfully clear that they were far from a cohesive unit, which was not that surprising. They had only spent a short time together and it was clearly difficult to build much of an army in only two weeks. While all this was going on, they heard the sounds of destruction in the distance, and the occasional screams from humans and monsters made both anger and terror flow through their veins.

Lieutenant Cerra eventually came to a decision regarding their further strategy.

“Listen up. Since the enemy seems to know about everything that we have planned, I am going outside of any prepared strategy. We could make our way to one of the other strongholds, but that is probably what the enemy is counting on and the journey would be perilous. We are going to shift our strategy to one of Guerilla warfare. I will split you up into your original squads, and merge and fill them as necessary. You will hide in a suitable location, and surprise any bands of enemies that you encounter. We will pick them off a few at a time. I will leave it up to the Sergeants to find suitable positions, and to judge whether you can beat the enemies you encounter without casualties. Any creature that you take down will increase our chances of survival. The people are counting on us, you are all that stands between survival and annihilation.”

Christopher and a few others responded “Yes Lieutenant” some others just stayed silent and looked haunted. He thought it was the right call but also thought it would likely be a death sentence for many of them. They would eventually run into something that they could not defeat. Still, if he was lucky, he might be able to gain some more Soul Points. He had to be very careful about this, any attack by the enemy might be his last. It would be nice if he was fortunate enough to only run into weak bands of Goblins, but that seemed unlikely at this point. He decided, as soon as they ran into something that was too strong to meddle with, he would use [Bookmark] to get out of here.

He was once again placed in the squad under Sergeant Coley, which he was glad for since the man had proved his competence fighting the Razor Beaks. There were only four left of their original ten. He was not sure how many of them had deserted and how many had died. The two surviving soldiers of a different squad were added, in addition to four of the soldiers from the new group, bringing them back up to ten.

Christopher was very surprised when Sergeant Coley suddenly took him apart from the group.

“Christopher, I want you to be my second in command. If something manages to kill me first, then it would be up to you to lead the squad.” It was stated very matter of fact, his face not betraying any of his thoughts.

He did not quite know what to say, he felt very inadequate to lead anyone. There were plenty of people with more experience, even in the current squad.

“I’m sorry, but surely there must be someone more suited for that role Sergeant.”

“Look at the faces of your squadmates recruit. What do you see there?”

He took a quick look at the faces of the others some paces away. The emotions he read there seemed to fall between terror or an even worse vacant look of defeat. But honestly, he did not feel that much better himself, he felt much of that fear as well. One of the soldiers seemed to be hardly functioning, she was going through the motions with a haunted look. It was difficult to look at, knowing that he was able to end this madness.

“You can see it as well as I can, there is hardly any fight left in them. No, it will be you. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to die easily.”

There was little else to say after that, he just gave a hesitant nod.

They soon carefully moved through the streets of Lumen, danger looming around every corner. To Christopher, the experience was both extremely scary as well as frustrating. They had the displeasure of hearing the horrific sounds all around them. After they set out, they kept themselves well hidden, trying to avoid tangling with something that they were unable to defeat.

This unfortunately referred to most of their encounters. The Blight was still moving strangely, most groups that they laid eyes on consisted out of different kinds of monsters traveling together, which Sergeant Coley also confirmed as very unusual. They were lucky that this behavior also seemed to come at a cost to the monsters. When they were behind some cover, Sergeant Coley suggested that the senses of the monsters appeared to be dull compared to what they usually displayed. Maybe this was the cost of keeping the monsters from tearing each other apart. This might have also them from being found on multiple occasions.

There was more that kept them from being found. Sergeant Coley had ordered them to smear the guts of some flattened Razor Beaks over their bodies when they left the destroyed Church complex, and it seemed to be working so far. Being covered in monster guts did feel disgusting, and the smell was even worse, they all preferred it over being found though.

Christopher quickly realized that their squad was rather weak, with only Sergeant Coley capable of using Soul Force techniques during a fight. This meant that they were pretty much never able to find a group of monsters that they could overwhelm. They never spotted any Turned among the monsters.

While the Blight was rampaging, they were unable to make a dent in the enemy forces. Christopher did not even want to think about how badly they were outnumbered. Maybe he should have used his [Bookmark] already. This was clearly not working.