Octavius watched as the northern area of the Sanctuary was essentially abandoned. It had been decided that a little more than half of the remaining guards would take part in the attack. That left a small number of guards to secure the Sanctuary’s massive perimeter, along with policing it.

The decision had been made to draw the Sanctuary back. The Emergence had drastically decreased the number of people within the Sanctuary. With the dire need to protect themselves, the remaining civilians did not protest moving to the Southern Quarter of the Sanctuary.

There, they would be packed shoulder to shoulder as they went about their lives. He watched a group of young men walk past him while carrying every single thing they owned. That only amounted to a few animal skins and a backpack between the three of them.

As the teenagers disappeared from his sight, he reflected on how thankful he was that he had destroyed the Suppressor. If it had still existed, he doubted that such an undertaking would be possible. As it stood, there was a good amount of dissension among the populace. There were a handful of people that didn’t even move. Instead, they remained where they were.

With the massive decrease in the area that the guards needed to protect, they were stationed much closer together. Octavius hoped that they could prevent any thralls from sneaking through. There was a solid chance that a handful of thralls in the area would be outside of the Landing when the siege started. If that were true, they might go after the Sanctuary itself in retaliation. Turning his mind away from thoughts of things that he couldn’t change, he turned to face the open field of preparing warriors.

Hundreds of people milled about in small groups of four to six. Every single one of them was armed, and many were armored. Along with their assortment of weapons, each person carried some form of supplies.

After the end of the Emergence, the average level of a surviving guard was twelve. To survive the final battle, they had to fight for hours on end. After that, they were each awarded ten thousand experience points. With each fighter having superhuman stats, the trek would be much easier.

The vast majority of them were weighed down with over a hundred pounds of gear. They carried everything from food and water to pre-cut wooden beams that would be assembled to create a small fortification at the top of the trail.

The only people that weren’t weighted down with supplies were those that would travel at the edges of the column. They all needed to be prepared to hold off any attackers long enough for the others to ready themselves and join the battle.

The feat of logistics that the Sanctuary had pulled off was incredible. Everything had been prepared over a few hours. The council had decided what to do at noon, and they would be ready to move out in a quarter of an hour—at 1600 hours. They planned to reach the Landing with an hour and a half to spare before dusk.

After the final fifteen minutes passed, Octavius and his team made their way to the front of the column. He would guide the small army to the Landing, as he was the only one to have ever been there.

Robert came up to him from behind and spoke softly. “We’re ready to go. Lead the way,” he said.

Octavius nodded to the man as the column got ready to leave. All but one of the Captains of the Guard had joined the expedition. Only the southern Captain had remained behind.’

Facing forward, Octavius flashed a smile to Marcus on his right and lifted his silver spear into the air. The marine had returned it to him just after the council meeting, and the operator was extremely glad that he would have it for the battles to come.

“Alright!” he shouted over the general din of hundreds of people. His voice projected across the open area that was next to the stream with a clarity that came from years of experience, “We’re moving out. Follow the person in front of you, and don’t fall behind! Leave some space between you and the person in front of you.”

With that, he broke into a light jog. The jog for him was running pace for the majority of the guards, despite their superhuman abilities. Some people, like the mages, would even have been able to keep up at the speed that they were moving. Those people were being carried by the strongest members of the group. At the moment, Caster was being carried by Toby, whose long, loping strides easily kept pace with Octavius.

The column was only ten or so fighters abreast. There just wasn’t enough area between the stream and the trees to safely fit any more. That left the column over two dozen rows long.

As they ran, Octavius continuously gazed over his shoulder. The guards had not trained as a single cohesive fighting force. They were supposed to be guards, after all, not an army. Even so, they were able to keep the formation without too much difficulty. The column spread out to stretch over two hundred feet in length but remained in the same general shape.

The thunder of hundreds of boots, shoes, and bare feet over the stone and packed dirt of the riverbank physically shook the ground below them. They definitely wouldn’t be taking the thralls by complete surprise, but hopefully, they wouldn’t be able to figure out what the noise was before the humans were on them.

The guards had set off with grim and determined expressions. They knew that they would be fighting a group of similar size that was, on average, ten levels higher than them. Even with all the preparations that would likely turn the odds in their favor, it was a risky endeavor.

Even then, conversations began after a few minutes of running in silence. The trip would likely take them hours, and it wasn’t as if talking would give away their position any more than it already was.

Octavius turned his head to Caster, who was bouncing along on Toby’s back. The mage was extremely disappointed that he wouldn’t be allowed to use the illusion ring for the time being. They didn’t know how the thralls tracked them but didn’t want to risk it. Instead, the young man had created the very start of a wind blade and was focusing on trying to modify it with little success.

The mage grunted as Toby lengthened his stride to avoid a large rock. “Watch it,” he complained good-naturedly, “I’m trying to concentrate up here.”

Leo grinned at Octavius and rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?”

The soldier shook his head at the marine with a pitying smile. The marines had run out of ammo during the final battle of the Emergence. Luckily, they had planned for such an eventuality and put their stat points into physical stats. With their higher than average starting stats, they were among the most physically capable members of the expedition.

They had both chosen spears as their weapon of choice. Octavius didn’t know if he had influenced their decision or if it was merely that they could use their bayonet training with the weapons. Either way, they were deadly with the weapons if what the officer could remember of their flight from the thralls that morning was anything to go by.

By the time that the small army reached the tributary, someone had begun to sing. Their song choice was far from a running cadence, but more and more people joined in. Soon enough, everyone was singing, even Octavius.

As the deafening sound of hundreds of throats singing everything from Bohemian Rhapsody to the national anthems of half a dozen countries rolled over the forest, Octavius felt his own spirits bolster. The singing likely carried itself farther than their pounding footsteps, but he was loath to stop the impromptu singalong.

The wind that blew over the plains would bring scents and sounds away from the Landing, and they were still far enough away that the thralls would need to have a perception stat in the hundreds to hear them. In the end, he let it continue until the next song ended before he spread the word that they needed to stop.

The singing felt both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The songs reminded him of what he fought for and that he was a human. Over the course of the tutorial, he had been focused on moving forward. Thus, he hadn’t dwelled much on the past. The songs had made the best things about humans clear to him.

These people were from every corner of the Earth and hailed from every walk of life. Some of them were farmers from the middle of third-world nations; others were rich western businessmen. The tutorial brought them all together and showed them that they were all human.

As they approached the cliff, he pushed aside his philosophical introspection. The tributary curved to the left sharply, and he kept going straight up the hill. The roaring of distant wind reached his ears as he slowed slightly. The column was forced to weave around trees and other obstacles as they traversed the forest.

After that, they reached the cliff only a few minutes later. By that point, many of the guards had begun to sweat. Some had even been forced to drink stamina potions to remain in fighting shape. The run along the cliff was done in silence. The sound of their heavy breathing and pounding boots was masked by the howling wind as they grew closer and closer to their destination.

Every man and woman had grim faces as the reality of what they were going to do set over them. The thralls had almost every advantage. They were stronger one on one, so a pitched battle would go to them. The stone shapers made raiding the Landing suicide, as well. The only thing they had going for them was time. Every human guard was growing stronger at a rate the thralls couldn't match. Octavius gave it two weeks until they could take the thralls in a pitched battle. They only had to keep the thralls busy for two weeks, then they would stand a real fighting chance.

They encountered the first thrall a little over three miles from where Octavius guessed the Landing was. It was a thrall mage that had seen the approaching force from a tree and tried to run and get help. That close to the Landing, every eye was scanning the area for any sign of thrall sentries.

Even with it being invisible, he was able to spot it due to how it knocked into a bush in its rush to reach the clear ground next to the cliff. The bush moving in a direction opposite to the wind made the thrall’s presence painfully obvious to the members of the front ranks with a high perception stat.

Although it had a higher level than any of the humans, almost every one of its stat points was put into intelligence. If Oliver’s theory was correct, that was to allow their previous masters to get the most use out of them while they were invisible. As it ran away from the guards, however, that was its downfall.

Octavius picked out the slight shimmer in the air fifty feet ahead as it moved desperately away from them. When it realized that the small army of humans was quickly catching up to it, it began to shout.

Even from a few dozen feet away, Octavius could barely hear the thrall’s warnings. The moment that they left its mouth, they were carried away by the wind. A handful of seconds later, Octavius reached it. Moving two strides ahead of the front rank, he made his intentions clear.

He thrust forward with his spear, catching it in the back. With it mostly invisible, he couldn’t target specific weak points. Even so, the force of the blow sent the thrall stumbling to the ground.

In two steps, he reached the thrall as he began to scramble to its feet. Bending over as he jogged, he ran his left hand along its body until he caught a patch of its clothes. He lifted the smaller creature into the air with his left arm and accelerated from a jog to a run. Once he was a good deal in front of the line of humans, he moved to his left and tossed the screaming thrall over the edge of the cliff.

A few seconds later, a message appeared at the edge of his vision, telling him that he had killed it. He returned to the front rank of the expedition force and allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction. The entire exchange hadn’t even slowed the procession.

After that, they failed to encounter another thrall mage. They did find two rogues, but they escaped the humans and rushed back to their base. Octavius might have been able to catch them if he left the rest of the group behind, but he decided against it. They had nearly reached the Landing, and separating himself from the group at such a critical moment would’ve been more detrimental than anything else.

His eyes remained peeled for familiar sights. The events of that morning after he had been injured were fuzzy to him, but he was still able to recognize the location ahead. Raising his hand into the air, he shouted over the wind, “Stop! We’re here!”

Almost no one was able to hear him, but others took up the call, and it was relayed down the line. Octavius began to slow, and the others around him followed his lead. The procession came to an awkward halt at the place where the path from the Landing reached the top of the cliff. Immediately, the various guard captains took command.

Octavius nodded to his team, and they set off down the path. They knew what their job was; they had to hold off any thralls at the bottom of the path while the others set up. The fact that the cave entrance was so small meant that it would be inefficient to plug it with pure numbers. Instead, the best team was sent to stop any thrall counterattack at the bottleneck.

As he started down the path at a jog, he made sure to watch his footing. He had already relayed such information to the others; even if he hadn’t, they would have moved with care anyway. A multi-hundred-foot fall was not something that even their superhuman stats would allow them to survive.

At the same time that they were moving down the path, the rest of the humans were establishing perimeters, assembling premade fortifications, and clearing the trees from the area. Octavius peered over the edge of the path and saw a long line of black specks rushing up toward him.

“Caster!” he shouted, “See if you can slow them down with wind blades!”

The young mage was the last person in the line and stopped to do as he was told. Octavius didn’t know how the gusting wind would affect the man’s wind magic but hoped that it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

He quickly realized that it was far from a problem. A wind blade flew downward toward the thralls below with a speed that was significantly faster than the mage’s previous castings. Its near invisibility caused the approaching aliens to not notice it as he approached them.

Octavius was able to make out the curved blades and studded leather of the low-level rogues as the two groups converged. He watched the wind blade clip one of them before it slammed into the stone, visibly cracking it. The thrall that was hit toppled off of the path and slammed into the switchback below. Its momentum carried it over the thin ledge once more, and it fell to the grasslands below.

The rest of the thralls immediately threw themselves against the cliff’s wall as one of their number was killed out of nowhere. In the long seconds that they hesitated before continuing their rush up the path, Octavius turned around two more switchbacks and reached them.

He didn’t try to attack the thrall in the lead. Instead, he stopped himself with his spear leveled at it. The length of his weapon prevented the thrall from advancing at all. Its long knife had nowhere near the same range as a spear, and it snarled impotently at him.

This thrall seemed to have the same loyal fervor of so many of its brethren and tried to duck past his spear and attack him. Octavius slammed the spear into the thrall’s side and sent it falling off of the thin walkway.

When the message that would notify him of a kill failed to appear, he realized that the thrall had survived. Though, that didn’t matter much at the moment. He needed to hold the thrall off as the rest of the army finished their preparations.

The next thrall stepped up and feinted at him a few times. When Octavius failed to react, it just stood in a ready stance, prepared to take advantage of any opening.

As Octavius eyed the line of thrall rogues, he smiled grimly. He had hoped that the thralls weren’t all gathered in the feasting hall again, and it seemed his wish had been granted. If the hundreds of thralls had all been in the massive cavern, there would have been more opponents for him to fight than these rogues.

That was, without a doubt, a great boon to him and his team. If a stone shaper had been present during this phase of the attack, it would’ve been exponentially more dangerous. They had planned ways to deal with them, but them being present wouldn’t be ideal.

Octavius had only seen two dozen shapers in the massive dining hall that morning. If half of them were stone shapers, that meant that they were far from plentiful. The time it would take for a thrall to sprint into the complex, find a stone shaper, and bring it back would hopefully take a few minutes.

All of his worries proved to be for naught as the small army’s immediate preparations were completed. The first sign that Octavius had of their completion was the series of wind blades from the Sanctuary’s other mages slamming into the single file thralls, followed by large pieces of wood.

The thralls were all quickly knocked off of the ledge, and Octavius’s team was joined by a large procession of people as they hurried to the Landing’s entrance.