Christopher and the others finally spotted some monsters that they could handle. This group of monsters consisted out of three Abyssal wolves, four empty vessels, and a single Sand Impaler, which was a creature with four claws that had a deadly and maneuverable stinger. Its body was covered in short black hair.

This was the weakest group of monsters that they had spotted so far. He had seen some disturbing enemies from the spot in which they were hiding, this current group was almost cute in comparison to those monsters.

It was the first time that he would clash with these creatures, and he could feel his heart in his throat. The ten of them should at least hold the advantage. Sergeant Coley quickly formed and shared a plan. They would hide behind some large rubble in the monster’s path and then strike simultaneously by firing their bows. They would then pounce on the remaining enemies.

They were all quickly assigned their own target monsters, both with the bow and the potential combat that was to follow. Ideally, they would be able to kill all of the monsters with their arrows, but that was apparently an unlikely scenario. Christopher was certainly not a good enough shot to hit a vital point. He would be happy if he managed to hit one of the creatures at all.

Sergeant Coley would be taking care of the Sand Impaler. Christopher had been assigned to fight one of the Abyssal wolves, they were more unpredictable and dangerous than the empty vessels so he was given some trust with this assignment. He had the Wolf in his sight, its sinuous muscles rippling with power under its midnight fur, canines dripping with saliva. It looked a lot different than what he had imagined from the lectures. Its limbs as well as its snout were strangely elongated, and its fur did not cover certain parts of the head, making it look even more disturbing.

The Empty Vessels could be confused for regular humans at a first glance but were immediately given away by the strange manner in which they moved, which was stunted and clumsy, their gazes were also vacant. He could only hope that his body would never end up like one of those creatures.

Christopher knew that this confrontation was dangerous, but he would have to face an enemy eventually. He now was able to fight a relatively weak enemy with support from others so it might as well be now.

They were positioned downwind from the monsters which would hopefully give them the element of surprise. They had decided that they would unleash their arrows as soon as the leading monster reached a splintered piece of furniture on the road. He carefully nocked the arrow on his bow, readying himself to stand up from cover and shoot. Two of his squad mates were doing the same by his side, hopefully, the others were all doing the same from the different cover spots.

Christopher was waiting with bated breath; it was his assigned Abyssal Wolf that was the first to reach the splintered piece of furniture. The Wolf reached the spot, and Christopher and the others jumped up from their cover with their bows ready. Christopher took a second or two to steady his aim before he released the arrow, which managed to impact the Wolf right behind the front shoulder of the elongated front leg. ‘Not bad at all.’ A few more arrows had at least hit their targets.

Sergeant Coley was already starting to rush forward, Christopher quickly dropped his bow and drew his daggers, rushing ahead. His target was already looking towards him, it had swiveled its head in the direction from which the arrow had hit. He was upon the Wolf in seconds, he managed to maneuver to the side of the Wolf and he proceeded to successfully punch and then slice through the creature’s neck with his Adeline dagger, which cut through surprisingly easily. The Wolf swiped with its deadly claws, but it did not manage to rake him, missing by inches.

The Wolf was done, he looked towards the other creatures, and he was pleased to see that they had succeeded. Sergeant Coley had apparently assisted the few that had some difficulty. Only two of the others seemed to sport minor wounds. Even with the weakness of these monsters and their own advantageous numbers he would call this a success. At least it seemed that his current squad mates were pretty dependable.

[You have defeated a minion of entropy; 160 Soul Points have been acquired]

Excellent, he had apparently gotten all of the Soul Points for killing the Abyssal Wolf, after a day with nothing but partial contributions.

They left the corpses and quickly climbed back up to their hiding spot, looking out at the intersection of the two streets below.

They did not spot another group that they could handle, and a lot of time passed silently waiting. They knew that every moment spent in hiding meant more lives were lost somewhere else in the city, and he could see the growing frustration on Sergeant Coley’s face. They had all seen the mangled bodies, and it certainly was taking a toll on his fellow soldiers. He and the others were pushing the emotions away as well as they could, there was no time for those at the moment.

As the sun started to set and when the day was turning to night, they started seeing something strange. Through some of the windows, they could start seeing a crackling dark purple light forming somewhere high above the city. It was seeping into the building in which they were currently hiding and from which they were observing the street below. Looking up, the purple light started looking like an ominous sun shining down upon them. One of his squadmates let out a frightened whimper.

“What’s wrong?” he asked with worry to no one in particular.

“What isn’t?” one of the others answered. “That’s obviously not a good thing.”

Sergeant Coley seemed to agree, considering his worried look. “The dark purple light is what we call Blights Essence, and there is quite a lot of it up there. I have never seen it, but I know one of its uses is to turn the death into Soulless Vessels.”

This was all news to Christopher. He wondered why he had never been told about this.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it, where is the Blight Essence coming from?”

“Right, the generals and nobility prefer some information not to spread among the common people. It’s one of the powers of the Turned. They don’t want to make it common knowledge since it might be tempting to the twenty percent of the populace that has no inherent Soul Force and other undesirables. Better that they are never tempted.”

“Yet you are telling us?”

Sergeant Coley snorted. “Getting into trouble over that is currently the least of my worries. And this is not the time to hold anything back”

Right, the Blights Essence was up there now so it was better if they knew what they were dealing with. Also, none of them were likely to make it out of here alive. Christopher considered that maybe this was a good opportunity to ask a few more questions. It seemed that Sergeant Coley had lost all reservations, and he was now the second in command of this unit. He also wanted to learn more about the Turned, it had been true that people were sparse with information on these enemies. Better take this opportunity now that the sergeant was in a talkative mood.

Christopher recalled the lecture he had received on the Turned from Sin many days ago. When Sin had spoken of them there had actually been some notable contempt behind her words. The Turned were humans that had willingly sold their Souls to ally with the Blight. Not like the empty vessels that were merely the remains of humans animated, but actual humans walking over to the other side. Why they would do such a thing had been a mystery to him, but apparently, their conversion brought them incredible powers and the ability to command the creatures of the Blight, so maybe that would be appealing to some. Christopher had somewhat assumed that the Turned looked different from regular people, but what if that was wrong? If there was no visible change, would that mean that anyone he met could be a potential Turned?

“Sir, how could have things gone so wrong. We did not even come close to repelling the Blight.”

It was not just a superfluous question, he genuinely wanted to know why they had failed so spectacularly. He only had his own eyes and a smattering of information from some overheard conversations. He wanted to hear the man’s insights.

Sergeant Coley half-whispered his assessment. “Nothing about this attack was within the bounds of expectation. This level of coordination between the creatures of the Blight is unheard of, even with multiple Turned taking control. We knew that the Turned could somewhat point the creatures in a certain direction, but to have them actively working together should not have been possible. Adenium’s balls, they even had those spiders riding on those Giants! Our own organization was a mess, troops were unprepared, many people never reported for duty, and most that did were badly trained to boot. A hundred years of relative peace had clearly made this city complacent.” Sergeant Coley looked sullen.

“Shit, then who the hell is controlling these monsters. Is it just some especially powerful turned or is it something else?”

“Blight if I know, but you should have already noticed that the Blight is one step ahead of us at every turn. That explosion at the start of the fighting, I am pretty sure that was from inside of the city. I don’t know how, but it seemed like sabotage to me.”

“Could the Turned have infiltrated the city? I had assumed that they would easily be picked out of a crowd.”

Sergeant Coley was still looking at the dark purple light in the sky with concern while he answered. “This is all above my pay grade, but they should not have been able to as far as I know. Once people accept the Blights Essence, they leave their humanity behind. Their Soul Force should be turned into this Blight's Essence. I suppose that there might be spies that have not been given that conversion yet, but that would be a new strategy. The Blight has never really cared much for such tactics so far. Also, information on the location of traps and constructs is only privy to high command, and I find it difficult to believe that they could be capable of infiltrating that deeply.”

At this point, Sergeant Coley silenced their conversation. Shuffling could be heard coming from somewhere in the distance, which was soon followed by a similar sound from a different direction. At the same time, the natural light of the sun was rapidly disappearing over the horizon, leaving the crackling dark purple energy as the dominant light source. He really did not want to risk fighting anything without normal light. ‘can this get any more ominous?’

Apparently, it could. As they were watching the street below, a piece of rubble was suddenly pushed out of the way by something underneath. A human with a broken leg dragged himself out of the rubble. His first thought was to help the unlikely survivor, but that was quickly removed. A number of Soulless vessels were walking into view from where their group was observing the streets below. They were wearing the normal attire of Lumen citizens, making their origins clear. The man coming from underneath the rubble was another one. They were moving in that same stunted and unnatural manner, their eyes were vacant.

That was not all they had to contend with. A slight shaking of the ground was all they had as a warning for an Earth Slither bursting through the ground some distance away. The Sternel building where it emerged was uprooted, and it crashed into the opposing building with a loud bang, the sound was deafening. The Earth Slither was illuminated by the crackling purple sphere of light and it looked massive. He could see one of the giant claws batting at one of the other buildings and he was pretty sure it left its marks. Not long after it once again submerged into the hole from which it came. Who knew where it would emerge the next time? What if it emerged under him? It seemed that they would not be able to hide much longer. He did not want to risk one of the buildings collapsing on top of him.

It would likely be the end for him if his head was hit by some of the falling debris. It felt as if the danger had just turned up a few notches. He was trapped and surrounded by the Blight, and Lumen was probably already far beyond saving. Surely this was the time to finally use his [Bookmark], he did not really have much he could do.

He did consider taking down some of the Soulless Vessels before booking it out of here, but he was somewhat worried about the lack of natural light. He did not think that he should count on what he saw with the help of the Blights Essence shining above. The risk was not worth it.

At least he already had his Soul Mark placed on his chosen items, so he was pretty much ready.

This all really sucked, he had to force a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He knew that there would be no break for him for a while longer, he would need to be on his best for this next part.

He was as ready as he was ever going to be. This would be his first time using [Bookmark], he could only hope that it would work as intended, this was his first use after all. He slowly spoke the words.

“Use Bookmark” and his Soul lurched.